Israel – Turkey Pipeline
WaTimes –
Leaders in Israel and Turkey envision a network of four underwater pipelines for transporting Russian oil and natural gas, with feeder lines to Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon…
… Delivery of oil and natural gas by means of pipelines that traverse Turkey and Israel through conduits beneath the eastern Mediterranean is considered more practical than an overland route across turbulent Central Asia.
More incremental innovation, driven by the fact that the non-oil energy adoption curve is incredibly long in an area with numerous sources of the stuff. It will be interesting to see how guerrillas attack this pipeline, GG submarines?
Cascading Effects of High Oil Prices
This excellent NYT article offers a glimpse at what is to come – some themes it touches on:
- Significant loss of mobility.
- Forced community solidification.
- Transporation costs for people and products skyrocket.
- Alternative fuel sources boom.
- Significant wealth polarization.
Economist On Oil
Bubble thinking about oil peaking in the Economist –
In fact, oil production capacity might actually grow sharply over the next few years…
…Technological breakthroughs such as multi-lateral drilling helped defy predictions of decline in Britain’s North Sea that have been made since the 1980s: the region is only now peaking…
…New technologies like 4-D seismic analysis and electromagnetic “direct detection” of hydrocarbons are lifting that “recovery rate”, and even a rise of a few percentage points would provide more oil to the market than another discovery on the scale of those in the Caspian or North Sea.
Incremental innovation will not be enough, especially when potential is decreasing due to other than pure supply constraints (global guerrillas). Manufactured fuels will prolong the life of oil, but not for the 15-20 years the article discusses.
Alternative Energy Sources
Popular Mechanics has a nice little roundup of other-than-oil energy sources.
CIA Fires Officer
NYT –
“A C.I.A. officer has been fired for unauthorized contact with the media and for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. “This is a violation of the secrecy agreement that is the condition of employment with C.I.A. The officer has acknowledged the contact and the disclosures.”
Specifically “Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst” was fired for leaking the secret prisons story and other assorted tidbits. It is, however, a complicated situation – the release of such information caused the US to lose the moral highground (as did engaging in such activities in the first place) , but also served to illustrate several key faults – the lack of effectively adapting to the new world of information, an inability to garner real effective HUMINT, and inability to adapt to fighting 4GW.
On the other hand, the populace was more informed and the media came out on top (several of the leaked stories won Pulitzers).
All in all, this is just another step along an evolutionary trajectory with both sides of the argument in a state of flux.