Ah, heck! Just Keep Rubbing It In, Already!

You may be getting tired of hearing it but the U.S. shale oil industry just keeps playing the hits. They get more efficient and economical over time. In the last five years they've become the swing player in global oil prices and soon they'll be the dominant player.

This chart compares U.S. oil fields and their productivity and the article at this link goes into more detail about how we soon will be the driver of world oil pricing. Our ability to bring production on-line and take it off-line quickly as demand waxes and wanes will be the key.

I don't know about you but I feel like hugging a fracker.

Danger Will Robinson!

(If you get the reference, congratulations. You're AARP card is in the mail.)

There is, indeed, danger in using these 12 practices in managing your IT operation, which you'll see if you follow the link. (If you don't have an IT operation, then maybe they'll apply to something else you do in the business world.)

I've been in IT for 35 years and most of these warnings hold true in my experience. Let me take just one as an example and you can read the article for the rest.

I first heard this in the 1980s (Yes! the 80s) and I doubted it then. My professional colleagues are my colleagues and we work together for a common purpose: to serve our real, paying, customers. The CIO article has a pretty good take on why this is a bad idea and I urge you to read it and see if you agree with this and the eleven other practices that are (to put it kindly) counter productive.

If You Want It, Here It Is, Come and Get It!

The title's from a Badfinger song, if you want to hum along. Yesterday I found a link with an enormous (and I do mean enormous) amount of graphic evidence of temperature changes going back centuries.

This clip shows the Medieval Warm Period, which I've shown previously. If you follow the link at NoTricksZone you'll find more charts that you can drink. I'll come back and repost on them when I've had a chance to absorb them.

Ding Dong the OPEC is Dead!

Well, maybe ... probably. In the 70s, OPEC was the big bad wolf or the bogeyman under the bed.

Check out this article on the demise of the cartel and (I hope) come one step closer to my belief in the power of free people and free markets.

The End of OPEC is Near!

If this is true then I am delighted. I wish there were a word in English like schadenfreude.

Since at least World War I, the West has been fighting wars in the Middle East for oil.

As an afterthought, OPEC is a cartel that exists from the governmental control of the assets in question. The governments of the West (particularly the United States, if you're old enough to remember the 70s) have been complicate. It appears the game is almost up.

A free market that is set free will easily dismantle a cartel. Fracking is said market.

Why OPEC is finished

What will happen to the Middle East now that they no longer have the whip hand with oil?

Fracking technology (and a more-or-less free market) means any decrease in OPEC production means a cost cycle that will drive more US production. There's more here at the PowerLine blog.

Record Exports!

This is what happens when you let the free market do its work. Follow this link to see that the United States is now setting records for the export of oil. Not the import; the export.

If you're old enough to remember the 70s (and, unfortunately, I am) you may remember when exporting oil was made illegal. In 2015 exporting was legalized when no one outside the industry as paying attention. Now we produce so much we can export it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want to prevent wars in the Mideast, then make the value of oil lower and lower and lower. Drill baby drill.