Baltic Dry Index. 3929 +15
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
This weekend, more on the continuing Deepwater oil rig disaster, that but for the grace of God hasn’t yet become a calamity of fouled marshes and waterways. Matt Simmons, a respected oil industry analyst, fears the oil leak might go on for years. Mr. Simmons though isn’t an engineer, and hopefully his fears will prove to be unfounded.
Gulf Oil Leaks Could Gush for Year
"We don't have any idea how to stop this," expert says.
Christine Dell'Amore National Geographic News Published May 13, 2010
If efforts fail to cap the leaking Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico (map), oil could gush for years—poisoning coastal habitats for decades, experts say.
Yesterday a smaller dome was laid on the seafloor near the faulty well, and officials will attempt to install the structure later this week.
But such recovery operations have never been done before in the extreme deep-sea environment around the wellhead, noted Matthew Simmons, retired chair of the energy-industry investment banking firm Simmons & Company International.
For instance, at the depth of the gushing wellhead—5,000 feet (about 1,500 meters)—containment technologies have to withstand pressures of up to 40,000 pounds per square inch (about 28,100 kilograms per square meter), he said.
Also, slant drilling—a technique used to relieve pressure near the leak—is difficult at these depths, because the relief well has to tap into the original pipe, a tiny target at about 7 inches (18 centimeters) wide, Simmons noted.
"We don't have any idea how to stop this," Simmons said of the Gulf leak. Some of the proposed strategies—such as temporarily plugging the leaking pipe with a jet of golf balls and other material—are a "joke," he added.
"We really are in unprecedented waters."
Gulf Oil Reservoir Bleeding Dry
If the oil can't be stopped, the underground reservoir may continue bleeding until it's dry, Simmons suggested.
The most recent estimates are that the leaking wellhead has been spewing 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons, or 795,000 liters) of oil a day.
And the oil is still flowing robustly, which suggests that the reserve "would take years to deplete," said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
"You're talking about a reservoir that could have tens of millions of barrels in it."
At that rate, it's possible the Gulf oil spill's damage to the environment will have lingering effects akin to those of the largest oil spill in history, which happened in Saudi Arabia in 1991, said Miles Hayes, co-founder of the science-and-technology consulting firm Research Planning, Inc., based in South Carolina.
During the Gulf War, the Iraqi military intentionally spilled up to 336 million gallons (about 1.3 billion liters) of oil into the Persian Gulf (map) to slow U.S. troop advances, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hayes was part of a team that later studied the environmental impacts of the spill, which impacted about 500 miles (800 kilometers) of Saudi Arabian coastline.
The scientists discovered a "tremendous" amount of oiled sediment remained on the Saudi coast 12 years after the spill—about 3 million cubic feet (856,000 cubic meters). (See "Exxon Valdez Anniversary: 20 Years Later, Oil Remains.")
Oil Spills Create Toxic Marshes
Perhaps most sobering for the marsh-covered U.S. Gulf Coast, the 2003 report found that the Saudi oil spill was most toxic to the region's marshes and mud flats.
Up to 89 percent of the Saudi marshes and 71 percent of the mud flats had not bounced back after 12 years, the team discovered. (See pictures of freshwater plants and animals.)
"It was amazing to stand there and look across what used to be a salt marsh and it was all dead—not even a live crab," Hayes said.
Saudi and U.S. Gulf Coast marshes aren't exactly the same—Saudi marshes sit in saltier waters, and the Middle Eastern climate is more arid, for example. "But to some extent they serve the same ecological function, which is extremely important," he said.
As the nurseries for much of the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico, coastal marshes are vital to the ecosystem and the U.S. seafood industry.
It's also much harder to remove oil from coastal marshes, since some management techniques—such as controlled burns—are more challenging in those environments, said Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall.
"Once it gets in there, we're not getting it out," he said. (See pictures of ten animals threatened by the Gulf oil spill.)
Gulf Coast Should "Plan for the Worst"
Depth isn't the only factor that can stymie attempts to plug an oil leak.
The 1979 Ixtoc oil spill, also in the Gulf of Mexico, took nine months to cap. During that time the well spewed 140 million gallons (530 million liters) of oil—and the Ixtoc well was only about 160 feet (49 meters) deep, noted retired energy investment banker Simmons.
Efforts to contain the Ixtoc leak were complicated by poor visibility in the water and debris from the wrecked rig on the seafloor.
Also, the high pressure of oil in the well ruptured valves in the blowout preventer, a device designed to automatically cap an out-of-control-well. Recovery workers had to drill relief wells nearby before divers could cap the leak.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100513-science-environment-gulf-oil-spill-cap-leak/
Below, more on what the great vampire squids securitised, told ratings agencies to rate as triple-A, sold on to unsuspecting “clients” worldwide, and then bet against knowing the securities would drop to zero. Not to worry though, Ebenezer Squid says that the clients were very sophisticated educated marks, with no right to expect to make money from buying Goldman branded products.
Never Give A Sucker An Even Break
W.C. Fields.
Silencing the Whistleblowers
Financial reform won’t prevent another bubble if banks bulldoze their internal warning systems.
Posted Sunday, May 9, 2010 - 11:13pm
In early 2006, Darcy Parmer began to worry about her job. She was a mortgage fraud investigator at Wells Fargo Bank. Her managers weren’t happy with her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t doing a good job of sniffing out questionable loans in the bank’s massive home-loan program. The problem, she said, was that she was doing too good a job.
The bank’s executives and mortgage salesmen didn’t like it, Parmer later claimed in a lawsuit, when she tried to block loans that she suspected were underpinned by paperwork that exaggerated borrowers’ incomes and inflated their home values. One manager, she said, accused her of launching “witch hunts” against the bank’s loan officers.
One of the skirmishes involved a borrower she later referred to in court papers as “Ms. A.” An IRS document showed Ms. A earned $5,030 a month. But Wells Fargo’s sales staff had won approval for Ms. A’s loan by claiming she made more than twice that—$11,830 a month. When Parmer questioned the deal, she said, a supervisor ordered her to close the investigation, complaining, “This is what you do every time.”
Amid the frenzy of the nation’s mortgage boom, the back-of-the-hand treatment that Parmer describes wasn’t out of the ordinary. Parmer was one of a small band of in-house gumshoes at various financial institutions who uncovered evidence of corruption in the mortgage business—including made-up addresses, pyramid schemes, and organized criminal rings—and tried to warn their employers that this wave of fraud threatened consumers as well as the stability of the financial system. Instead of heeding their warnings, they say, company officials ignored them, harassed them, demoted them, or fired them.
More.
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2010/05/07/silencing-whistleblowers?page=full
Still, Wall Street has form , as they say. I wonder when RICO will apply.
Man: There's been a mistake in my change.
Whipsnade: Ah, at long last, an honest man. Want to return some money?
Man: No, I'm short!
Whipsnade: Don't brag about it. I'm only five-feet-eight myself.
W. C. Fields. You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man.
Wall Street's New Honor Code
By Daniel Kadlec Monday, Jun. 25, 2001
The evidence of naked greed on Wall Street is, and long has been, as plain as the words spilling from bankers' mouths. Bear Stearns boss Ace Greenberg once said he didn't give a hoot about job applicants' education so long as they had "a deep desire to become rich." Donald Trump opined that "you can't be too greedy." Who can forget the greed-is-good speech from the felon Ivan Boesky, memorialized in the 1987 movie Wall Street?
From Michael Milken to Mary Meeker, me-first Wall Street has been billboarded for two decades. Even before that it was an open secret. The mystery is that so many are shocked--shocked!--to learn that bankers take kickbacks for allocating shares of a hot IPO, or that analysts tout stocks not for their potential but because cheery opinions help reel in underwriting fees and a monster year-end bonus.
-----"We're taking this very seriously" and plan to clearly disclose conflicts on the front of research reports and issue more sell ratings, says Andrew Melnick, director of global research at Merrill Lynch. O.K., we're waiting. But investors have their own guideline: Wall Street's history. It doesn't stir much faith that the little guy will ever be put first. We might be better off just understanding that and leaving things be.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000181-2,00.html#ixzz0npNqJSzo
This CDO is an insult to a man's intelligence - even mine...It's impossible, inconceivable, incomprehensible, and besides that, it's no good. And as for the continuity, it's terrible.
With apologies to “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.” 1941.
More on Monday. Have a great weekend, everyone.
GI.
No comments:
Post a Comment