The news says that New Belgium Breweries will be making their Fat Tire, and some other assorted beers, available to South Carolinians as of June 1, 2009. That sounds like good news for beer consuming South Carolinians and New Belgium.
The bad news for New Belgium is that their website is a fucking disaster. Perhaps to be fair, it isn’t that bad. However in my opinion, it shouldn’t be so difficult to find the FAQs.
I’ll be very honest with King Abdullah, with whom I’ve developed a good relationship, indicating to him that we’re not going to be eliminating our need for oil imports in the immediate future; that’s not our goal.
Instead the goal is to spend money. At least that’s how I interpret it.
Not that I’ve necessarily said it here, but elsewhere at least, I have said that our efforts to lower oil prices by cutting demand are potentially foolhardy. It sounds good in theory, but OPEC can pretty much offset whatever we do. If they match consumption cuts with output cuts then we shouldn’t expect the price to go to $30/bbl and stay there anytime soon. It looks like that might be happening.
The good news:
The International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental body which advises rich countries, thinks that global oil consumption will fall by 2.6m barrels a day (b/d) this year, or about 3%
The bad news:
OPEC has announced three separate rounds of production cuts since September in a bid to steady prices. In all, it has vowed to trim its output by 4.2m b/d. Analysts reckon its normally ill-disciplined members are indeed pumping some 3.3m b/d less.
If the US is any indicator, stocks of fuel have peaked and are starting to be drawn down, potentially reflecting the quantity-supplied-quantity-demanded imbalance.
EIA reported oil stocks as of May 27, 2009
That leaves [OPEC] with as much as 6m b/d of spare capacity to bring back into use should demand pick up. Saudi Arabia alone says it could pump 4.5m b/d more than it is now.
That’s good news because with that much spare capacity, people will be a little less likely to freak out.
In other oil/energy news, it took me a few minutes to figure out how the following paragraphs worked together. The interceding paragraphs, as well as all the following paragraphs, were all about oil and gas development.
The International Energy Agency on Wednesday repeated its warning that reduced investment in energy could result in future supply shortages and a new oil price spike in a few years’ time…
IEA chief economist Fatih Birol had already told Platts in a May 20 interview that lower investment as a consequence of the global economic crisis threatened future energy security as well as the effort to combat climate change.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how oil and gas investment were important to combating climate change. It appears that one has to ignore that the whole rest of the article is written about oil and gas development and be careful to note that the opening paragraph only refers to general “investment in energy.” So there you go. News you can use. If you under-invest, you could end up with not enough.
For me, one of the joys of flying is that I have some free time to read a magazine or a book. My magazine of choice is the Economist, which I generally only buy when I am flying. It’s always full of good articles, and I think they hit the nail on the head regarding the awful climate change bill making its way through Congress. The last sentence pretty much sums things up:
But America’s leaders do not seem to think Americans are ready for straight talk about energy.
I recommend reading the whole thing.
Those are not the words the Washington Post used to describe the sad goings on between GM and the government, but the WaPo is leaning in that direction.
[I]n its aggressive dealings with U.S. automakers, most recently General Motors, the Obama administration is coming dangerously close to engaging in financial engineering that ignores basic principles of fairness and economic realities to further political goals…
[I]t’s too bad that the Obama administration has not thought more deeply about how its bullying of bondholders could convince future investors that the last thing they want to do is put money into any company that the government has — or could — become involved in.
I do dislike that the WaPo leaves room for this to be considered some sort of oversight… as if the administration was really, truly ignorant of this concern. Sorry, but I’m not willing to give the administration that much credit.
Here’s a few doses of “what the hell is wrong with the government“?
The [fuck you and your good habits] credit card bill heading to the House of Representatives includes a rider that could help settle whether concealed weapons will be permitted in national parks
What? Guns, credit cards, and national parks?
Starting in the 1980s, park visitors were allowed to bring in their guns only if they were dismantled, or unloaded and stored in a car trunk. In January, the Bush administration changed the rule, allowing licensed gun owners to bring in weapons.
That rule was struck down in March by a U.S. District Court judge, who ruled that the Interior Department had not completed a required environmental impact study for the proposal.
A change in the rule about who can carry required an environmental impact study? Geezus.
For the past several years the state Agency for Nuclear Projects has received $5 million from the U.S. Energy Department for its legal battle against the waste project. But Obama’s proposed fiscal 2010 budget provides the agency with just $3.2 million for the year.
A similar shortfall is playing out among the counties that also rely on federal money to fight the dump.
Unbefuckinglievable
