Egypt, Suez Canal, and Oil Prices?

Is the USA Democracy "Full", or "Faux"?

garygid said:

Is the USA Democracy "Full", or "Faux"?

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You know it's a full representative democracy, Gary.

And since you were around before I was born, if you're not happy with the gov'ment, why did you let it get this way?

Tried, but couldn't change it, because it is a Faux Democracy.
The power is not "with the people", unless it gets like Egypt.
(My viewpoint, of course.)

The situation has taken a turn for the worse, with Mubarak letting loose his hooligans. But this also seals his fate with the international community.

evnow said:

The situation has taken a turn for the worse, with Mubarak letting loose his hooligans. But this also seals his fate with the international community.

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Yeah, heard about it this morning - sent a chill down my spine. During two of my military tours I worked with the folks that do the 'noncombatant evacuation operations' - NEO - like the ones pulling the US and other citizens out of Egypt right now. Things can get really ugly really fast once they take a turn for the worse.

I hoped that the Egyptians could pull-off the change of government without getting to this, but once Mubarak announced that he wasn't going to step down until the fall elections...

When do the UN peacekeepers arrive?

edit...oil, gold, and silver are down a bit today - not much concern for Egypt overall? :?

garygid said:

Tried, but couldn't change it, because it is a Faux Democracy.
The power is not "with the people", unless it gets like Egypt.
(My viewpoint, of course.)

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Absolutely cannot agree with this. Of course, like Egypt, the people in the US that would rather sit on their...hands...don't get the power anyway. Not because they don't HAVE it but because they won't USE it.

Who's to blame - companies getting what they want or the public that are too lazy to care?

Dingdingding..."Can I have "Get Off Their Lazy Butts" for $200 please Alex?"

AndyH said:

edit...oil, gold, and silver are down a bit today - not much concern for Egypt overall? :?

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I guess people are coming to the same conclusion that Nate did (that I posted earlier) - poorer countries with little oil are more at risk than oil rich ones.

AndyH said:

Absolutely cannot agree with this. Of course, like Egypt, the people in the US that would rather sit on their...hands...don't get the power anyway. Not because they don't HAVE it but because they won't USE it.

Who's to blame - companies getting what they want or the public that are too lazy to care?

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Absolutely. Very few people care or know what is happening. If they did there is a ton of information available and they can keep throwing out the incumbant even if there are only two parties. US has the highest % of incumbants re-elected of any democracy.

evnow said:

AndyH said:

edit...oil, gold, and silver are down a bit today - not much concern for Egypt overall? :?

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I guess people are coming to the same conclusion that Nate did (that I posted earlier) - poorer countries with little oil are more at risk than oil rich ones.

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And here's our disconnect - I think it's about transporting the crude, not the small countries with few wells in the ground.
I guess more oil flows out of the Persian Gulf than the Suez and Egyptian pipeline, so if Egypt goes off-line OPEC can just open the taps another 64th of a turn.

AndyH said:

And here's our disconnect - I think it's about transporting the crude, not the small countries with few wells in the ground.
I guess more oil flows out of the Persian Gulf than the Suez and Egyptian pipeline, so if Egypt goes off-line OPEC can just open the taps another 64th of a turn.

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Oh - Suez transports 1 mbpd a day - significant but can be easily rerouted. Also, since the center of action is Cairo, may be Suez is not thought to be at a big risk.

evnow said:

Absolutely. Very few people care or know what is happening. If they did there is a ton of information available and they can keep throwing out the incumbant even if there are only two parties. US has the highest % of incumbants re-elected of any democracy.

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Whoa...that changes the viewpoint a bit... When we vote, we're not fighting against the party we want to remove, and we're not fighting for the folks we want elected - our real opponent are the folks that don't read before they vote! (Crud...except for the folks that really do like oil refineries over clean air and clean water. :shock: )

a certain party has done a great job of keeping their base
distracted with guns, god, embryos and evolution while
picking the pockets of those very people. :shock:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7435

There are restrictions on the tanker size that can fit through the canal. This is mainly based on draft, or the depth of the tanker underwater, which has to be less than the 66 ft depth of the Canal, but there is also a bridge over the canal that the tankers must pass under. Those that fit into this range are designated as Suezmax tankers. In terms of the classification of tanker sizes they lie in the mid-range of those available. In a typical day about 1.8 mbd of oil passes through the Canal, which is about 5% of the global oil tanker trade.

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In anycase, there may be an end in sight to the Egyptian turmoil now with the opposition & government starting to talk. Chances of Suez canal problems look low indeed.

evnow said:

In anycase, there may be an end in sight to the Egyptian turmoil now with the opposition & government starting to talk. Chances of Suez canal problems look low indeed.

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And TV news reported today that the opposition was splintering between those who vow to continue demonstrations until Mubarek leaves the country, and those who are content for Mubarek to manage the transition to democracy, thinking the reforms made thus far are unstoppable if people remain vigilant.

Meanwhile, in news from the Gulf...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/06/AR2011020601441.html

[The resignation of Kuwait's interior minister] could signal an attempt to weaken the calls on social media sites for street demonstrations Tuesday outside parliament to protest "undemocratic" practices by Kuwait's government. If major crowds gather, it would mark the first anti-government rallies in the Gulf since the toppling of Tunisia's strongman ruler

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http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFLDE71505M20110206

Global oil prices could exceed $110 a barrel if political unrest in Egypt continues, a member of Kuwait's Supreme Petroleum Council said on Sunday.

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walterbays said:

http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFLDE71505M20110206

Global oil prices could exceed $110 a barrel if political unrest in Egypt continues, a member of Kuwait's Supreme Petroleum Council said on Sunday.

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Just scare mongering.

The real possibilities now are in
- Jordan
- Syria
- Yemen
- Libya
- Algeria

The last two could impact oil supplies.

ps : It is interesting to note that the dictatorships are crumbling not because of the Iraq war as some neocons argued, but because of a revolution in a country few had heard of - Tunisia.

BTW, apparently nobody had imagined instability in Egypt, in US administration ?!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06policy.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

The mixed messages have been confusing and at times embarrassing — a reflection of a policy that, by necessity, has been made up on the fly. “This is what happens when you get caught by surprise,” said one American official, who would not speak on the record. “We’ve had endless strategy sessions for the past two years on Mideast peace, on containing Iran. And how many of them factored in the possibility that Egypt,” and presumably whatever dominoes follow it, “moves from stability to turmoil? None.”

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The cat's been let out of the bag (though quite a number of people have suspected this for some time):

WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.

The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to choke off demand.

However, Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, met the US consul general in Riyadh in November 2007 and told the US diplomat that Aramco's 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to keep a lid on prices could not be reached.

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More discussion at The Oil Drum.

Now that Mubarak is leaving - it will get more interesting. Nothing like success to inspire revolutions.

Oh well, the old man isn't ready to leave yet. So what now ?

Mubarak did resign today (or was forced to by the military). If other countries follow this peaceful path, there is little to fear from falling regimes - though it is early days yet.

hodad66 said:

a certain party has done a great job of keeping their base
distracted with guns, god, embryos and evolution while
picking the pockets of those very people. :shock:

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Maybe this movie will have some effect. Trailer embedded in the news link posted.

I couldn't put a bumper sticker on my new Leaf, but I might get a sign for the rear window.

"Bin Laden hates this car" says the bumper sticker on former CIA director Jim Woolsey's plug-in hybrid. Though he's no longer in the secret service, Woolsey cares about defending America's national security, and for him that means weaning the country off its dependence on foreign oil.

The former spook turned clean-tech venture capitalist is just one of the all-American heroes who feature in Carbon Nation, an intriguing new documentary about climate change solutions aimed at the American right.

Touring the States after its premiere last night , Carbon Nation bills itself as an "optimistic, solutions-based, non-preachy, non-partisan" film. The take-home message is that what's good for the climate is also good for the economy, for national security, for health, for nature – and for America.

Speaking at the UK preview last month, director Peter Byck said he "wanted to find the common ground" on solving climate change, and that meant reaching across the political spectrum. "There are a lot of people who can't stand listening to Al Gore.".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/feb/11/carbon-nation-climate-change-documentary