Russia's "interesting position" gets a little more interesting

Back in August (when the Guns of August were thundering in the eastern parts of was still nominally "Ukraine") over at MilPub my buddy Al wrote about the Curious Case of Russia. He noted that:

"The Cold War was primarily a standoff between two military powers. The Soviet impact on, and involvement in, the world's economy was negligible. Probably one of the major reasons the USSR collapsed. It was Soviet military, and the resultant political power, that we wanted to keep in check. We are now dealing with a new Russia, and that new Russia has become an economic player far greater than the old Soviet Union. Now, when Russia rattles it's political saber, there are economic ramifications of concern. Yet we still seem to be stuck in the Cold War mentality that Russia is always to be opposed."

and quoted an editorial from one of the Athenian newspapers that in their opinion "...a "stable and powerful Russia" is a key ingredient to global economic security."

Well.

I'm kind of intrigued by this for several reasons.

One is that it tends to reinforce my suspicions that the rump-Soviet state is, in fact, what I called it back in August: "...a lot of the Soviet weaknesses...overlaid...with 1) a thicker layer of corruption and 2) an excessive, almost-Nigerian-level of extraction resource dependency." The Post article makes an interesting point, that:

"There's one way, and only one way, that this ends: with capital controls. Or, in plain English, by making it illegal for people or companies to turn their rubles into foreign currency. That would get rid of the selling pressure, and let the ruble settle at a new, lower equilibrium. Putin, though, is loath to use capital controls, because his political base—the oligarchs—wants to move their money abroad, whether that's to their London or New York hideouts."

So the "tyrant" is an economic hostage to his political condotierri, another little reminder of the old saying about doing anything with bayonets (or in this case, the long knives of your criminal crony-capitalist "pals"...) except sitting on them.

The other is that it gives me a nasty little cat-smile remembering all the Usual Idiots who were fulminating about how manly Vladi Putin was and how the United States needed a sharp dose of his shirtless manly manliness to counteract the emo-girly-man Kenyan Usurper.

To quote O'Brien from the Post: "At this rate Putin will be riding around shirtless because he can't afford one anymore."

Perhaps the single most worrying part about this is the reminder that Russia - still a major Eurasian power and a nuclear one at that - is neither stable nor as powerful as it thinks it is.

This isn't to talk up my own country, whose political response to the Great Recession has been to double- and triple-down on the great shift to oligarchic meanness and stupidity that characterized the fucking Hoover Administration, but to note that for all that my country seems to be overrun with morons who think that "government is the problem" that if you deliberately set things up to govern badly it will be badly governed. And that after a bad government the next-worse idea is to turn the levers of power over to a bunch of rich pricks whose only concern is their own profit. That's the sort of thing about the incoming Republican Congress (as expressed recently in the loathsome Wall Street Welfare rider to the cromnibus spending bill...) that makes me sleep poorly at times.

But I don't think I'd be sleeping nearly as well if I lived in Gdansk, or Tallinn.

The Abyss Peers Back

This is why sometimes I think I'm so shot full of luck I can't deserve it; I get paid to do this.Now, admittedly, I'm pretty leg-weary, and skittering across this iced-over log bridge was a little hairy, but look at this place!Can you imagine - someone pays me to spend a beautiful sunny day hiking here? That a part of my living consists of visiting places just this gorgeous?I try and remember that when I'm sitting a drill rig in a trash dump in the pouring cold rain. Those days? Hell, I don't get paid enough.But let me tell you a little story as you enjoy the pretty pictures.This morning I stopped at the Super 8 Motel comp breakfast to fuel up. The morning was cold, I needed something hot to start the day, and I didn't want to spend the time it would have taken to go across the road to the Denny's or whatever chain crapateria was open at six o'clock.The motel breakfast was belly timber without being particularly good. But to get outside of it I had to spend about fifteen minutes in the same room with a television set to FOX at ear-pounding volume.I generally try and avoid Rupert Murdoch's vanity project just because I've seen enough in snippets here and there to know that I have no patience with it; I prefer my tall tales with heroes or fairies, thanks. But this morning I had no escape.The three avid viewers were a drill crew from Jensen, and they were cheerfully gutsing the nasty waffles and the FOX "news" with equal gusto, and it was something of a revelation to me; I don't think I've ever watched an entire FOX "news" story before.

And this one was one I was somewhat familiar with; gas prices.

Like most geologists, I started out in the oilpatch, and my academic training included a fair bit of petroleum geology, so I know a bit about both the mechanics and the economics of getting dinosaur wine to the fuel pump nozzle. But what came out of the television this morning bore no real resemblance to anything I have ever encountered.First there was a screaming headline about how fuel prices were skyrocketing and might even reach (gasp!) five dollars a gallon by June. Some sort of FOX news numbnut came on to explain to the rubes marks viewers that this was like a tax that hit them right in the wallet. There was a completely gratuitous reference to state gasoline taxes (without the mention that they are typically mandated by law to be used for gasoline-related projects such as roadwork). And something about how the switch to "summer blends" was involved (without mentioning that the summer is high-demand time for fuel as people fly and drive more - I guess FOX doesn't do "supply and demand")Then for the "opinion" portion of the story FOX produced that internationally-respected petroleum economist, Definer Of Civilization's Rules and Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civilizing Forces (as Charlie Pierce likes to call him) N. Leroy Gingrich. The man who personally turned the entire legislative branch of the United States government into a ludicrous raree sideshow in pursuit of a blowjob proceeded to do to the oil industry's pursuit of domestic petroleum leases what Monica did to the 42nd President and just for entertainment threw in some jabs at the Kenyan Usurper's general ickiness.-30-, as Jack Webb said in the movie of the same name; end of story.

Now, I don't pretend to be a brilliant petroleum savant, but where in Spindletop's name in this ridiculous farrago were the CAFE standards, international speculation in petroleum futures, the current fiascos in the Middle East, the drop-in-the-oil-barrel tininess of the "domestic oil leases" relative to U.S. demand, and that perennial Republican favorite, the Magic of the Market^TM?Especially the latter; what's the point of having a Market if it doesn't do what markets are supposed to do - respond to increased demand relative to supply by raising prices?I mean, the entire six minutes or so of supposed "news" left you with the following information; gas prices are going up (why? who knows - magic, maybe, or because Obama hates oil companies), states tax gasoline and that's BAD, high prices are BAD, drill, baby, drill, and N. Leroy Gingrich is an expert on oil production.And the thing is, the three Jensen guys sat there and ate it up. Their comments suggested that what they got - gas prices are going up, states tax gasoline and that's BAD, high prices are BAD, drill, baby, drill and N. Leroy Gingrich as expert on oil production - was what they wanted.Sometimes when you gaze into the abyss for six minutes the abyss peers back, and fuck me with a tri-cone bit if it isn't as fucking stupid as a fucking ginormous bag of fucking hammers.No wonder We Are So Fucked.

How's that "drill, baby, drill" thing working out for you?

Count me as unsurprised that an offshore drilling accident is making a mess of the Gulf Coast. Drilling in general tends to be chancy and offshore work is even more chancy. This wasn't an if, just a when.What I am perplexed at is the exact technical details of why this borehole is still blowing out. The technology to shut in wells and boreholes is pretty mature; the first ram-type blowout preventer (BOP) was engineered in 1922. Every well I ever logged had a full BOP stack in place which was tested every day. The idea is the same as the "SCRAM" switch on a nuclear reactor pile - if something bad happens the thing is designed to trip and shut everything down.

Clearly this isn't happening, but why? Was this an engineering error - the stack wasn't placed correctly to shut in the borehole? Or was something operational screwed up - some error of maintanence or function - that caused the BOP to fail to operate? The linked story says that "BP (the rig operator) is still trying to activate the well's blowout preventer." which suggests that the BOP is thought to be in place and functional and, more indicatively, suggests that the problem was human error that prevented the BOP from activating when the rig detonated.

There's a couple things to think about here, as well.

First, even back in the late Seventies and early Eighties when I worked in the oilpatch most of the people who worked for the drilling, exploration and oil companies were neither careless nor stupid. Many of them were or were descended from outdoorsmen, most of them loved the wild lands if only because they hunted or fished. The oil majors' companymen knew perfectly well that the public considered them greedy, careless or both, and that every spill that made the papers was harmful for their profits as well as a target for everyone who wanted them off the public lands and heavily regulated on the private ones.

But they also had a bottom line to think about. So they had to tread a very sharp edge, worrying about their surroundings but worrying about their margins as well. Everybody I knew, for example, had a scare story about PHI, the helicopter company that flew us on and off the ocean platforms. PHI wasn't a big name like the airlines. And it operated in a low margin business, and so we figured it was working pretty close to the edge. It seemed very likely to us that PHI would be willing to pencil-whip a safety check or scheduled maintenence if it meant ending the month in the black. So while a catastrophic spill could damage careers at Shell or BP, well, taking a chance with environmental precautions that paid off in decreased expenses? I can see where and when some might consider that an acceptable gamble.

Second, oil exploration work is - although I didn't know it at the time, having not yet been in the Army - a lot like military service. Every once in a while it's dangerous. But mostly its either skull-bendingly boring or completely, bone-rippingly, ceaseless, brutally hard labor. Either way you can't goof off for a moment - there are WAY too many things that can kill you - but there's a ton of wasted time as you're drilling an inch an hour. And when you're topholing through gumbo off of Louisiana or tripping out a drilistring from 6,000 feet you're doing the same thing over and over, usually at the very top end of control, often in the cold, the wet and the dark, for hours at a time.

So how do bad things happen on drilling rigs? In a lot of ways, it's pretty amazing that bad things don't happen all the time. But accidents in drilling - like casualties in wartime - are going to happen. And, as in war, the problem is that you spend a hell of a lot of time preparing for something that doesn't happen...until it does. And sometimes, as appear to have happened here, that sudden insane transition from everything working right to everything going wrong just runs ahead of your planning and experience.

So what frustrates me about the "drill, baby, drill" crowd is their obstinate refusal to accept that petroleum dependency is a dead-end street that is often, almost inescapably, signposted with dead men and fouled waters.We're discovering, extracting and consuming petroleum at several orders of magnitude faster than it can be produced geologically. So the cul-de-sac is up ahead, and unless we're prepared for it we're going to be in an ugly place when we reach it; out of gas and with no alternative to keep us going. And since these spills are inevitable, the risk versus return (as the prospects become more marginal and the drilling more difficult) becomes much less acceptable.

But, again, this stinks to me of the same shoving-our-fingers-in-our-ears-and-singing-"lalalalala!" that we've seen over and over again; invading semifailed states in central Asia...arresting poor people for jumping our border...whistling along as our economy is looted by speculators...pretending we can "fix" the medical system with a handful of nails and a roll of duct tape.

We seem to have substituted motion for direction and making loud noises and waving our arms for actual thinking. I have no idea how this will work out, but I can't imagine any way it will end well.