More Fight, Less Fuel

Just now I've been reading the "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on DoD Energy Strategy, subtitled, "More Fight Less Fuel."

The thing goes on and on -- 150 and lots of fancy seals. It's a little dry...

Finding #3: The Department lacks the strategy, policies, metrics, information or governance structure to properly manage its energy risks.

"There is currently no unifying vision, strategy, metrics or governance structure with enterprise-wide energy in its portfolio. DoD efforts to manage energy are limited to complying with executive orders, legislation and regulations ..."

I wound up at this report through a link on an AP article.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Think you're being gouged by Big Oil? U.S. troops in Iraq are paying almost as much as Americans back home, despite burning fuel at staggering rates in a war to stabilize a country known for its oil reserves.Military units pay an average of $3.23 a gallon for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, some $88 a day per service member in Iraq, according to an Associated Press review and interviews with defense officials. A penny or two increase in the price of fuel can add millions of dollars to U.S. costs.

The article goes on to say:

"Overall, the military consumes about 1.2 million barrels, or more than 50 million gallons of fuel, each month in Iraq at an average $127.68 a barrel. That works out to about $153 million a month.

Historically, these figures are astounding. In World War II, the average fuel consumption per soldier or Marine was about 1.67 gallons a day; in Iraq, it's 27.3 gallons, according to briefing slides prepared by a Pentagon task force established to review consumption."

The article is careful to say that this is a drop in the bucket compared to world oil consumption...
They have to say that? The American Military is consuming so much oil fighting in Iraq it is important to note they are not disrupting world energy flow...

"More Fight Less Fuel."
more fuel more fight
more fuel less fight
less fight less fuel

This Oil Is Not Good To Eat

I'm not sure how I feel about this project today.
There are moments when the new thing I learn feels far bigger than anything I expected, and at those moments I think it would be nice to move backward -- to tell the snake, thank you very much but I am not hungry just now. That apple is unappealing, not because anyone ordered or because you hiss in that way that you do -- simply because I am happy enough, looking around at things the way I see them today...

There was a protest today -- in a today ahead of us now -- in Armenia. There was an election. Some people feel it was rigged. Some people protest. Some people are wounded. The short Reuters story says:

"We were asleep," said one of the protesters who had been keeping an overnight vigil in the square.

"They came and they started to beat us up. They had truncheons," said the man, who showed Reuters a broken finger. He declined to give his name.

The protests had risked destabilising Armenia, a former Soviet republic that lies in a Caucasus mountains region now emerging as an important transit route for oil and gas supplies from the Caspian Sea to world markets.

I didn't know there was oil in Armenia.
I did know there was a genocide there. A million and a half people died.



I've been reading around a little this morning -- often on Wikipedia, which I don't trust in the least -- also on some university sites, which I do tend do believe. One of the things I read said that the difference between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide that took place during WWI was that the Holocaust was religious and the Armenian Genocide was political. Hitler is said to have looked to the world's forgetting of the Armenians as supportive evidence that no one would care what he did to the Jews.

There is an unattributed quote on Wikipedia that places oil discovery in the region as early as the 3d and 4th centuries.

"The following paragraph from the accounts of the famous traveler Marco Polo is believed to be a reference to Baku oil: "Near the Georgian border there is a spring from which gushes a stream of oil, in such abundance that a hundred ships may load there at once. This oil is not good to eat; but it is good for burning and as a salve for men and camels affected with itch or scab. Men come from a long distance to fetch this oil, and in all the neighbourhood no other oil is burnt but this.""

In October a headline in the Times read, "Turks Angry Over House Armenian Genocide Vote."

ISTANBUL, Oct. 11 — Turkey reacted angrily Thursday to a House committee vote in Washington to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey that began during World War I, recalling its ambassador from Washington and threatening to withdraw its support for the Iraq war.

The article went on to say,
The House vote comes at a particularly inopportune time. Washington has called on Turkey to show restraint as its military mobilizes on the border with Iraq, threatening an incursion against Kurdish insurgents. On Thursday, Turkish warplanes were reported to be flying close to the border, but not crossing it.

Since that time the Turks have crossed over it.
It's a lot of oil -- the pipeline in the Caspian Sea...

There was a poster hanging in my favorite bakery in high school -- it read:

"I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia."
-- William Saroyan

A friend has been involved for a decade or more in a documentary project in Armenia.
Take a look at his beautiful website. Go to the Armenia Portfolio.



I have this theory that Adam and Eve weren't expelled at all -- they were just focused further out. Nothing at all was different, they just hadn't noticed the way things were.

I Didn't Learn A Thing

Sometimes you just need to know the story.

Or at least an idea of a story... Yesterday it came up that Central Asia is another major factor in the short term issues of energy production, and I had no idea why.

There's a bunch of oil and natural gas in Central Asia. It's seen (by the government by the oil companies by some economists) as one possible source of release from dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

I know so little I actually had to pull out a map -- where is this area I'm about to try to talk about -- this morning I read a December article which laid the issues out pretty well, it seemed ... the article centered around an energy field in Uzbekistan.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

I had to pull out a map. Sometimes my lack of geographical knowledge scares me. Bukhara is somewhat central Uzbekistan; two countries north of Iran and Afghanistan -- two countries west of China.

((seems mighty close to the problem area itself...))

Anyway -- there's a lot of energy there -- natural gas and oil. There seem, from this article, anyway, to be two major issues with supply -- one is that Russia has a major stake in the production there. They have put a lot of money in, are putting in more, and have no inclination to leave the area for western development. To hear the story the whole globe is still in a land grab -- Russia V. The West -- or Exxon V. Lukoil. Somehow I'm imagining a spaghetti western...

It's funny -- you think a threat is no longer a threat when it ceases to be talked about -- or the immediacy is subverted. We can get over a thing and while it isn't looked at or talked about we can almost forget it existed... Having grown up in the height of the cold war, it is not hard to imagine that the tensions between the US and Russia need little air to reignite...

There's another issue in that humanitarian issues are pretty questionable in the region:

In May 2005, President Islam A. Karimov’s troops opened fire on a mixed crowd of escaped prisoners, gunmen and antigovernment demonstrators in a square in the Fergana Valley town of Andijon, killing hundreds in what human rights groups say was the worst massacre of street protesters since Tiananmen Square in 1989.

I forget who said it to me, but not too long ago someone repeated to me a theory that terrorism really started because of the first US involvement in the middle east. Culture clashes and the imposition of values...

I read another story this morning about American Universities moving into the middle east -- capitalizing, again, on the oil wealth.

How does that seem like a good idea? I have no doubt that there is a thirst for an American-style education -- especially in a place where that may not have existed before -- but the mind must reel... What if women aren't wanted. What if they are? What if the things Carnagie Melon wants to teach aren't what the students -- or the parents or the government want to learn? On NPR this week I heard that 35% of Americans don't believe in evolution... Only to say, the issues of education are not simple.

These seem like the same issues to me.

Entering --

Imposing... conquering...

and what values are expendable... for what reasons...

How do external values come into a society and put pressure on that society to change through and imposition of difference? How does a visiting culture put pressure on its own values in the pursuit of money?

What did I learn about Central Asia... I realize I barely talked about what it was I was trying to understand... I'm glad to know where it is -- what I should keep look out for.

Wherever there is oil, this place will take its turn in our sites. Where ever we set our sites there is potential for devastation.

Maybe I didn't learn anything today.

There's no place like now

A few days ago I wrote that I was playing a bit of an energy game -- one that projected future fuel requirements based on the current state of affairs.
It seems I'm not the only one...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — War in Iran. Gasoline rationing, at $5 a gallon. A military draft. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Double-digit inflation and unemployment. The draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

This is where current energy policy is leading us, according to a nightmare scenario played out

played out where, you might ask -- in a basement while mom fixes a snack and a group of 12 year old boys take turns with a joystick? Oil Shockwave...

as a policy-making exercise here on Thursday by a group of former top government officials.

Far into the future?
2009.

The ignition for the game was $150 a barrel oil.
Oil yesterday closed above $100. It had hit $100 but hadn't closed there before.

The factors in the game included sanctions against Iran, instability in Central Asia and the political situation in Venezuela. I don't know what the Story in central Asia is -- guess I should figure that out tomorrow.

The group was led by the national security adviser, played by Robert E. Rubin, secretary of the Treasury during much of the Clinton administration. At one point, weighing a variety of unpleasant options, Mr. Rubin said in near despair, “This wouldn’t be this big a problem if the political system a few years ago had dealt with these issues.”

Carol M. Browner, the Democratic former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who played the secretary of energy, chimed in, “Year in and year out, it has been difficult to get a serious energy policy.” She and others noted that previous Congresses failed to act on auto mileage standards, efficiency measures and steps to replace foreign sources of oil. Michael D. McCurry, President Clinton’s former press secretary, who played a senior counselor to the fictional new president, said that energy issues were barely discussed in the 2008 campaign.

I'm not sure what piece is so alarming -- the proximity of the panic date -- the extreme and yet entirely plausible circumstances -- or, more than all that, the fact that private companies and retired government officials are enacting awful scenarios simply to try to get some attention -- and that the answers over and over revolve, in the future, of someone saying no one did anything now.

In the game, now is foregone...

Thursday’s exercise, the organizers acknowledge, was a bit of a stunt to publicize the issues and nudge Congress and the presidential candidates.

A few minutes ago, my alarm went off. I was downstairs and it went off loudly with an annoying rock song and scared the life out of my 7 year old daughter who had climbed into my bed for protection. I wonder what the world will look like for her.

I wrote a a friend I was feeling vulnerable yesterday...

Vulnerablity is a funny thing -- we can feel it and strong at the same time -- regard and disregard concern at the same time.

He didn't answer.

I don't know -- maybe I want to give someone in Washington a pair of ruby slippers:
There's no place like now; there's no place like now; there's no place like now.

Car free... calm... quiet... breathe...

I don't know -- yesterday I was writing about saying goodbye -- how does that enter in to conversation -- how do you say it when you can't imagine the future -- the new life...

And then comes a breath of fresh air...

A city is being planned in Abu Dhabi which will be entirely solar powered, zero carbon emissions, 100% recycling, car free... a future with clean air and less pollution. If plans hold, it will be up and running by 2016 -- my kids won't even be in college yet!

Groundbreaking is scheduled for Saturday for Masdar City, a nearly self-contained mini-municipality designed for up to 50,000 people rising from the desert next to Abu Dhabi's international airport and intended as a hub for academic and corporate research on nonpolluting energy technologies.

The 2.3-square-mile community, set behind walls to divert hot desert winds and airport noise, will be car free, according to the design by Foster + Partners, the London firm that has become a leading practitioner of energy-saving architecture.

The community, slightly smaller than the historic district of Venice, will have similar narrow pedestrian streets, but shaded by canopies made of photovoltaic panels. It will produce all of its own energy from sunlight.

Water will flow from a solar-powered seawater-desalinization plant. Produce will come from nearby greenhouses, and all waste will be composted or otherwise recycled, said Khaled Awad, property manager for the project.

The first phase, to be completed over the next two years, will be construction of the Masdar Institute, a graduate-level academic research center associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From an article in The International Herald Tribune by Andrew C. Revkin.

In the Times DOT Earth Blog there's an interactive promotional video about the project -- it looks like something out of the Jetson's -- but it also looks pretty... "enjoy a fresh cup of coffee on the veranda in a car free environment..."

Car free... calm... quiet... breathe...

While it is unrelated to oil, I was further lifted this morning by a new report issued by the World Health Organization proposing a global anti-smoking campaign. The report goes tracks world-wide who is smoking and where in order to combat the situation with a huge anti-smoking communications.

There is hope.

Revkin makes a really big point that none of the major movements in sustainable energy happening here in the US. Even his lead in the International Herald Tribune pits the Gulf as an unlikely spot for such strides and why not Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico... I would further complain that while this story was given prominence in the International Herald Tribune, which is the international paper of the New York Times Corp., the story is relegated to the blog (albeit the best blog in the country) in the Times itself.

The World Health Organization report was funded by mayor Bloomberg himself.

I don't know -- I think where we live is all messed up. Power and money and an inability to change the situation we are in... overwhelming.

But there are people out there doing it -- and I don't care who they are or where they live -- we are all people. We are all here together -- and while I would prefer to say that we will be part of the solution, I'm just glad someone is working on a solution this morning.

Car free... calm... quiet... breathe...

Collective Punishment

Today I am thinking about oil as weapon. Oil and gas.

Adel Hana/Associated Press

The Times reported this week:

GAZA — After widespread criticism of its decision to cut off supplies of industrial diesel oil required to run a power station that serves Gaza City and its hospitals, Israel resumed fuel shipments on Tuesday on what it said would be a temporary basis.

The European Union, which pays for the fuel, called the cutoff “collective punishment,” but Israeli officials said they were simply trying to convince Gazans of the need to stop militants from firing rockets into Israeli towns and farms.

Meanwhile in Kenya,

Police officials defended the heavy use of force and said that mobs carrying gasoline had been sighted in Nairobi's business hub on Wednesday. On Thursday a man was surrounded by riot police in the city.


Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

It's cold in the house this morning. I'm frustrated with some of the situations in my life. It is desperate in the world. Power. Need. Explosion and the desire to create -- change, death. I'm grateful it is not desperate here. I wish the world could feel the same. I'm grateful that my children were born to this way of life.

Luxury Items

I have to say, I will be very glad to go back to my normal way of doing this project -- I feel pretty cut off from the world, in a funny way -- I still haven't talked to my gas station guy, but I hope to today on my way out to dinner... I still did use the Internet a little today -- but only to verify a few things -- not to find anything; it's still cheating, I know.

Even without the Internet, I still like to try to pull in information from different places -- so this morning's log is an experiment -- I hope it works.

First thread --
After yesterday's post, first I thought, that's great, maybe they simply don't put petroleum products into hair care products -- that sounds like a good idea and also a relief. But then I got to thinking that maybe that really does have to do with the choices I've made and the stores I shop in.

So I went to a place I never go to buy cosmetics.
CVS.
Sure enough, Propylene Glycol and petrolatum are main ingredients in many brands of shampoo.

I'm going to divulge something that rather mortifies me now -- the shampoo I buy is one of the most overpriced things I indulge in. I'm actually a little relieved to find out (as I did yesterday) that this is actually a drug addiction... anyway, this is a figure I should not and normally would not tell anyone.

Okay --
Suave shampoo markets itself as an affordable alternative to salon shampoos. They use petrolium products.
$.17/oz.
Neutrogena shampoo is a Johnson & Johnson product -- they don't use petroleum products. $.91/oz.
That's 5.35 times the price of the alternative.
I use (probably this is about to change...) Bumble and Bumble shampoo -- after which my head feels totally relaxed and happy.
$1.45/oz.
That's 8.35 times as much.

One way of thinking -- I can afford not to spread petroleum on my skin. I can afford to decide to use that bit less of oil, too. Health and environment and future are all interwoven in this economic decision/ luxury.

This got me to thinking about the price of doing the right thing. This is not a new question for me -- last year I stood for 2 hours in the old cemetery in Harvard Square with two Cambridge friends discussing the pros and cons of buying local. We were talking about book stores. The thing is, Amazon sells books for dollars less a book. I believe in a local economy -- that it's better for the globe -- I also have limited resources these days (my shampoo is a throw back to the days before I decided to embrace my poetry full-time). Should I say, if I can't afford to buy them locally I can't afford them?

Second thread --
It concerned me in the reading about Nigeria. They are not saying, get out. They are saying, make sure we see the reward. Of course we understand this -- at any level. People should be housed and fed and educated. Still, it's different than the conversation in Alaska -- we live off the whale; please don't kill it. There's a story I can look at when this little Internet ban is lifted -- one thing is that developing nations are asking to be subsidized for not making money by destroying the environment.

Third thread --
I pulled out a book this morning -- in my attempt to stay non computer based -- The Idiots Guide to Understanding Iraq, by Joseph Tragert. It's dated now, written in 2001 -- but it still has some interesting stuff in it.

One is a time line. Gulf Oil Company was the first US company to enter Iraqi oil fields in 1928. That's a pretty long history.

Another is that: "until recently the agricultural sector in Iraq could support the population. The combination of wartime damage to irrigation infrastructure and increased urban population means that Iraq must now import food." Remember, now -- we targeted that irrigation system on purpose.

Another aside -- the produce in the middle east is amazing. I lived briefly on a Kibbutz in Israel farming avocados. Oddly enough, I worked fixing the irrigation system. It took me a good year to eat tomatoes and avocados in the States again -- there they had more flavor and texture. Not shipped, not sprayed, not refrigerated... The way fruit should be. I'm sad to think that for Iraqis this is another casualty of war -- with all they've lost, there is something so fundamental about the experience of senses. Touch. Taste. Smell.

I'm not sure all these threads are really connected the way I'd hoped -- still they feel that way. Money, Land, Choice, Privilege.

After all of that, I kind of wish I'd done something more in tune with the holiday. If you are reading this today -- whatever your faith and circumstance -- I hope your day is warm, with a cookie, some relaxing, a little luxury and love.

Unreliable Currency

Yesterday I came across a story from December 8, that was published by The United Press International (UPI) reporting Iran would no longer accept US dollars for oil. link

Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari was quoted as saying Saturday that because "the dollar is no longer a reliable currency," his country would no longer accept it in oil sales, RIA Novosti reported.

I can't substantiate the article. I've been trying for an hour. I found it because I was trying to follow up on a story that the Pope had called for a world-wide automobile buying boycott. That story was widely reported -- by nobody reliable, and I decided it was probably completely made up.

The piece about Iran is small, 145 words including the dateline. I've found the information repeated on lesser news sources, but they, no doubt, simply read the same article and repeated the information. I trust UPI enough to think it's probably true -- I don't trust them enough to call it true. And I have no idea what it means.

It could just be noise, or it could be a war gong, right? In any event, it doesn't sound good. If true, it certainly means tension is continuing to build between US and Iran -- that the dollar is being put up for question probably means someone is trying to egg on the powers that be here -- their version of sanctions, I suppose -- or maybe their way of raising our prices without the political ramifications of raising oil prices, if we need to pay more by money exchanges in the billions of dollars; but that is completely speculation. The alternative to that reading is that Iranian ministers truly believe the dollar is going to collapse in the very near future -- which seems more unlikely.

Rules of reporting: Whenever you come across something reported only once it is suspect. Whenever you come across something repeated verbatim or wild-fire fashion it's suspect. Whenever you come across something specifically not reported, it's also suspect. Just as in anything else, the less you know the less grounded a situation is.

Communication is scary and lack of communication is scary. The currency of connection. Unreliable at best -- better to look someone in the eye over breakfast -- give them a hug.

What does seem clear is that War doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

The woman I stood behind in the post office line yesterday -- two of her kids were in Iraq, one had recently returned. Her daughter-in-law, standing next to hear with a heavy leather Marine Corps bomber jacket, had finished her time in the service. Another daughter was looking at a deployment in 2008.

The following is from an article that ran in the Times 20 years ago:

U.S. Gulf Policy: Hostage to the Iranians?
By Elaine Sciolino
Published: September 6, 1987
REAGAN Administration officials deny suggestions by critics that their new involvement in the Persian Gulf has locked the United States into an open-ended policy, driven by conflicting goals and a changing military commitment. But they have given no indication of a long-term strategy for reducing the American Navy presence there, which has more than tripled since March.