Peak Scenarios

If you click on image you will get a larger image with so-so quality.
To get a higher quality printable image, click on "Other Charts" link to the right at bottom of my Links List. This will take you to my Flickr account that contains all my charts. This image should be listed circa August 20th, 2006. Follow directions to "all sizes" to download large version.


I'll be writing explanation for this image shortly.

Top Oil Exporters (Large PNG)

Top Oil Exporters

CBS and Katie Couric

To reintroduce Katie Couric to the country as a serious yet still accessible evening news anchor on Sept. 5, CBS has embarked on an image campaign worthy of a presidential candidate.

The network’s efforts will put her face on the front of every city bus in New York next month as part of a promotion that would cost in excess of $10 million if the national television commercials featuring her were bought by an outsider.

For all the maligning of the evening news as a dinosaur lurching toward extinction, the prize CBS is pursuing remains among the most lucrative and high-profile in television: the biggest share of the nearly 25 million viewers who still tune in to the three main news broadcasts each night, and the bulk of the nearly $400 million spent each year by advertisers trying to reach them.

NYT

Lebanon Conflict

The following from two stories in NYT


-BOUDAI, Lebanon, Aug. 19 — Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos landed near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek on Saturday and engaged in a lengthy firefight in what the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, called a “flagrant violation” of the cease-fire brokered by the United Nations.

-The Israelis said “the aim of the operation had been to disrupt terrorist activities against Israel and to prevent arms from being transported to Hezbollah from Iran and Syria.” Any such resupply effort would itself violate the Security Council cease-fire resolution.

-The raid took place overnight under the cover of sonic booms from Israeli jets flying overhead, which occur often over Lebanon. But this time they masked the sound of helicopters bringing in the commando unit and two Humvee vehicles. Villagers said the soldiers were dressed in Lebanese Army uniforms.

-The success of the effort was a matter of dispute. One Israeli special operations officer was killed and two commandos were wounded, one seriously, but an Israeli Army spokesman in Jerusalem said the “objectives had been attained in full.”

-The Israeli Army said it would continue such raids until “proper monitoring bodies are established on the Lebanese borders,” another task for the United Nations forces in Lebanon. On Friday, a top Israeli commander warned that Israel would halt any resupply efforts and vowed to kill the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

-Europe, which had been expected to lead the force, has been slow to make any firm troop commitments. U.N. officials have called on Europe to offer more troops to balance commitments from Muslim countries.

-Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev urged the international community to follow through on its commitment to provide troops, saying the cease-fire could be in danger if the peacekeepers don't quickly deploy.

-''Words alone are not going to solve the Lebanon problem,'' he said. ''We urge the international community to follow through on its commitment.''

EditGrid Test

EditGrid Test

http://www.editgrid.com/user/oil_ceo/Crude_Production.xls

Lebanon Conflict Update

Week number 4
Sunday, July 30th, 2006 Day 19

-At least 54 people - including some 30 children - are killed in Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese town of Qana

-Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah land near Kiryat Shemona, Nahariya and Maarot. No injuries reported

-Israeli artillery continues to shell the area around Bint Jbeil after pulling back ground forces on Saturday

-Five people killed in Israeli air strike on the village of Yaroun

-156 Rockets fall in Northern Israel, wounding 8
-NYT cumulative dead: Lebanon- 550+, Israel 52+



Monday, July 31st, 2006 Day 20

-Israeli ground forces exchange fire with Hezbollah fighters near Kfar Kila

-Israel says it will suspend air strikes for 48 hours following the attack on Qana

-Israeli aircraft carry out strikes on roads near the village of Yanta near the border with Syria

-There is a brief lull in fighting following an Israeli attack on Qana, which killed at least 54 people, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rules out an immediate ceasefire



August 2006


Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 Day 21

-Israeli officials say war planes have launched several attacks across Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers and hideouts, as well as a road to Syria in the Bekaa Valley, which the army says was hit to prevent weapons smuggling

-According to the Israeli army, 20 Hezbollah militants are killed in fighting around the Lebanese villages of Taibe, Adayseh and Rob Thalantheen

-There are fierce clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters around Ait al-Shaab,
Israeli forces stage a fresh incursion at Houla, according to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil)

-CNN reporting 3 soldiers killed in Ait al-Shaab, 22 wounded

-CNN reporting 560 cumulative Lebanese civilian dead



Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 Day 22

-Hezbollah fires more than 220 rockets at towns in Israel, mainly in the north and including Nahariya, where one person is killed, Karmiel, Kiryat Shemona, Maalot and Safed

-After air strikes and the landing of Israeli commandos by helicopter, there is heavy overnight fighting in Baalbeck

-A Hezbollah rocket lands near the town of Beit Shean, the deepest point yet hit inside Israeli territory, and another in the West Bank, near the village of Faqua

-Israeli planes attack a Lebanese army base south-east of Sidon, killing three Lebanese soldiers

CNN reports that fighting has been going on for 3 days at Ait al-Shaab


Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 Day 23

Israel drops leaflets to warn residents of Beirut of a new military operation against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in turn warns that the group will bomb Tel Aviv if Beirut is attacked again.

According to Israeli officials, Defence Minister Amir Peretz tells top army officers to begin preparing for a push to the Litani river, which is up to 30km (19 miles) north of the border.
Fighting rages on the ground in south Lebanon with four more Israeli soldiers killed. Hezbollah again targets northern Israel, killing at least eight civilians.

Diplomats at the United Nations say delegates from the UK, France and the US are close to agreeing on a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) warns that fuel shortages are increasingly hampering humanitarian relief operations in Lebanon.



Friday, August 4th, 2006 Day 24

-Israeli air strikes damage bridges along a highway providing a key aid route into Lebanon, from Arida on the Syrian border

-More than 20 people - thought to be farm workers - are killed in an Israeli air strike near the village of Qaa, in north eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria

-Two Israeli civilians die in the village of Mughar and in Kiryat Shmona as Hezbollah rocket attacks continue - at one point more than 40 are fired in half an hour

-At least five people are killed in Israeli air raids on bridges over the main road heading north of the Lebanese capital to Syria, with other air strikes on the town of Jounieh north of Beirut and the suburb of Ouzai in the south of the capital

-Two Israeli soldiers are killed amid continuing clashes in southern Lebanon, including around or near Markaba, Ait al-Shaab and Naquora

-Israeli warships shell the southern Beirut suburbs of Haret Hreik and Roweiss


Saturday, August 5th, 2006 Day 25

-Israeli commandos clash with Hezbollah fighters in a raid on an apartment the city of Tyre from where Israel said long-range missile had been launched hours earlier. Eight Israeli soldiers are hurt and several militants killed

-Hezbollah says it fired more missile at Haifa in retaliation for the Tyre raid, wounding at least five people

-An Israeli soldier is killed after coming under Hezbollah mortar fire in the eastern village of Taibe

French-US draft resolution to be discussed by Security Council at 3pm. Agreement by France and US in morning. Israel so far "praises" resolution.

Resolution to be voted on Monday or Tuesday. Mandate of any International Force to be set out in 2nd Resolution. At 3pm, CNN reporting Lebanese cabinet has problems with resolution.

Saturday, August 5th, 2006 Day 26

Hezbollah and Lebanese already rejecting Cease-Fire resolution.

Link to complete Chronology of Conflict

These reports are compiled from bullet points released by the New York Times and the BBC everyday and items mentioned in New York Times articles and in CNN reports.

Images on Oil Drum

If you clicked in to get larger images of two things I posted on The Oil Drum on Thursday, Blogger's photo service is down, so I'll post them here later.

They are on my Flickr page : http://www.flickr.com/photos/theoilceo/

Jim Jubak on ExxonMobil

Jim Jubak has written the following in Defence of the company everyone loves to hate:

Stop whining; ExxonMobil is doing its job

Want to get mad at somebody? How about oil-company executives like Lee Raymond, who resigned as chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil last December after pocketing $4 million in salary, $4.9 million in bonus and $32 million in stock -- just for 2005? Or the boneheads in Washington who, flush with oil and auto company campaign dollars, have kept automobile mileage standards stuck at the same level since 1985?

[...]

Want a short-term fix? Drive less. Drive slower. Car pool. Take a bus. Buy a more energy-efficient car. Put a solar hot water heater on your roof. Lobby Congress to stand up to Detroit and require higher miles per gallon in the cars it builds.

[...]

That's because it's getting harder and harder to find significant new oil reserves -- and more expensive to develop them. It simply costs more to produce oil from deep ocean sites or to extract natural gas from tight sands and oil shales. Inflation in the oilfields is running at 10% to 15% annually because everything from pipe to drilling rigs is in high demand and tight supply.

Oil and Gasoline Correlation Charts

In an effort to project what American gasoline prices might look like in the near future, I have run the following correlations between the price of crude oil and the average price of regular gasoline paid at the pump.

The data points represent the average price of crude oil in a given week and the average price of gasoline in the following week. The center-line is a computer plotted trendline. I added the longer parallel outside lines to mark a probable path.

This first chart uses data going back to Jan 2002, when prices were obviously much lower.





This second chart only uses data going back to January 2004, so we get slightly different results. I have also added in a second data-set(in pink) which are simply 4-week trailing moving averages of the original raw, weekly averages.



As you can see, for any given price of either crude-oil or gasoline, there is a wide range of corresponding possible prices for the other commodity.

From this analysis, it is within reason to suggest we could be seeing $4 gasoline as early as when we hit $90 oil. Or it could take as much as $120-oil.

War Without Victory

Yesterday, I saw the first actual mention of an international force that would be deployed in Southern Lebanon. At least it was the first time I saw such a thing. It was in the New York Times. I think it was all of one sentence long. It suggested that France would be providing a large number of the 15 to 20,000 troops envisioned. Previous to this, that's all anybody was doing – "envisioning" things. Now they are actually talking about things. I guess this is progress if a cease-fire is the goal.

While there is much talk of civilian deaths, "proportionality," and the horrors of war, nothing will actually happen until somebody "does" something about it. The two parties directly involved in this conflict, Israel and Hizbollah, have stated consistently and repeatedly what their goals and intentions are – and these intentions are clearly at odds with each other. So what you are going to see is this conflict continuing much as it has been for at least two more weeks. That is, unless there is some monumental change in some other factor that is effecting this situation. Some unknown factor, which I haven't seen anybody even mention. Some surprise. I don't see either side tiring of the fight in the next two weeks.

The UN typically acts slowly. It could be argued that the more severe the crisis, the slower it acts. I don't see any way that any type of a cessation of hostilities can happen for at least two weeks after an international force is authorized. What will be the make-up of the force? How will it get there? How will it deploy? And most importantly, what will its rules-of-engagement be?

While it is fine and good to debate what or who is right or wrong, or what "should" be, the real issue is what will actually happen on the ground.

The history of the conflict in Bosnia in the 1990's comes to mind. If it serves as any type of a indicator, we have a long way to go.

It makes no sense to talk about a cease-fire or "peace" as if it could happen at any time by some vague wave of a magic wand. There won't be any cease-fire for a minimum of two weeks. I'll throw out August 16th as a date. I have to be realistic, I fully expect even this date to be delayed.

Steven Erlanger reported the following in a piece today in the NYT Online:

Giora Eiland, Israel’s national security adviser under former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, predicts a solution in the next week or so “that is far from Israel’s original intent.”

He sees a political package negotiated at the United Nations that includes an exchange of Lebanese prisoners, with Israel regaining its two soldiers; a security zone in southern Lebanon under the control of a multinational force; an Israeli promise not to violate Lebanon’s sovereignty; and “a general understanding or commitment by the Lebanese government to be responsible for Hezbollah’s behavior.”

But “the most important thing will be missing from a deal,’’ he said, “the dismantling of the military capacity of Hezbollah.”

Middle East Bibliography

The Kingdom Arabia & The House of Saud
Robert Lacey(1981)


What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
Bernard Lewis (2002)


Sleeping with the Devil How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Robert Baer (2003)


How Israel Lost The Four Questions
Richard Ben Cramer (2004)
- Cramer won Pulitzer Prize for Middle-East reporting in 1979


The Persian Puzzle The Conflict Between Iran and America
Kenneth M. Pollack (2004)


The Assassins' Gate America In Iraq
George Packer (2005)

Google Earth Lebanon Conflict

You will need to have GoogleEarth installed on your computer. Simply click on links below and they will open GoogleEarth and take you directly to the site indicated. You may need to zoom out a bit when location is reached to get better focus. I haven't figured out a way to set the altitude yet.

Saudi Arabia

Ras Tanura
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=26.655988,%2050.173439&output=kml


Lebanon

Maroun al-Ras Lat:33.106520° Long: 35.444316°
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.106520,%2035.444316&output=kml

Bint Jbeil Lat: 33.115132° Long: 35.432406°
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.115132,%2035.432406&output=kml

Qana Lat: 33.209179° Long: 35.298528°
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.209179,%2035.298528&output=kml

Baalbeck Lat: 34.003143° Long: 36.212317°
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.003143,%2036.2123178&output=kml