Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thank you.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/exclusive-russian-oil-output-cuts-are-unavoidable-as-drone-attacks-shrink-exports-sources-say/ar-AA1ZZAy7 Russian oil exports continue to get hammered by Ukraine. Let’s not forget that the Ukraine is teaching the world…
OPEC crude output down by 7.3 Mb/d in March from Feb. See https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/opec-oil-production-crashes-amid-conflict-hits-lowest-level-since-june-2020/129939556 That’s a drop of 8% of World…
Frac Spread Report for the Week Ending April 2 The frac spread count rose by 7 to 166. From one…
For a go-getter who wants some control over their energy cost/supply and transport costs here is an example of what…
Rig Report for the Week Ending April 2 The rig count drop that started in early April 2025 when 450…
38 responses to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 11, 2025”
The easiest way to get to a lower population-
““Financial constraints big driver of global ‘fertility crisis,’ UN finds…
““I want children, but it’s becoming more difficult as time passes by,” a 29-year-old woman from Mexico said in the survey. “It is impossible to buy or have affordable rent in my city. I also would not like to give birth to a child in war times and worsened planetary conditions if that means the baby would suffer because of it.””
Major US climate website likely to be shut down after almost all staff fired
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/11/climate-website-shut-down-noaa
Trump’s EPA announces major rollbacks to power plant pollution limits
• More than 200 health experts say regulatory proposals will lead to biggest increase in pollution in decades
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/11/trump-administration-epa-pollution
Sorry, I just noticed you posted the same thing as I did below. Thanks
The Trump admin essentially fired all the scientists working the Climate.gov blog and web site. So likely no more monthly blogging about ENSO predictions and polar vortex.
story here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/11/climate-website-shut-down-noaa
Not that they can do any kind of prediction of when the next El Nino or La Nina will occur. This is the randomness they get.
Fullbright Scholarship Board resigns. Maybe they could expand to MMA and golfing scholarships.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/11/fulbright-board-quits-trump
Members of the prestigious Fulbright program’s board have reportedly resigned in protest of what they describe as unprecedented political interference by the Trump administration, which has blocked scholarships for nearly 200 American academics.
The board, according to a memo obtained by the New York Times, accused the state department of acting illegally by cancelling awards already approved for professors and researchers due to travel overseas this summer, following a year-long selection process that concluded over the winter.
.
.
According to sources who spoke anonymously to the New York Times, the department’s public diplomacy office has begun sending rejection letters to scholars based primarily on their research topics. Areas of study reportedly targeted include climate change, migration, gender studies, race and ethnicity, and various scientific disciplines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6mXqOk63Ss
5 minutes
The problems in Russia are demographic, which is to say inevitable.
They don’t have enough 20-30 year old men in the pipleline to defend their borders. Ukraine is making it worse.
Short of starting a nuclear war, which is suicide for the oligarchs….Russia is in trouble.
Zeihan is the only guy I have come across getting this correct.
I have to disagree.
This would only be true if an opposing side did not have the problem. But reduced availability of soldiers is now a problem everywhere. It’s not like Ukraine and the West have tons of young men willing to go die to beat Russia.
Only the poor third world now has lots of disposable young men, but they lack military capacity.
Price of oil is about to go way up. Bank on it!!
A Pig from Florida–
https://www.alternet.org/wayne-ivey-protests-trump/
Expected
“ICE raids Orange County car wash, 7 employees taken into custody”
Make America Great Again
“The raid occurred at approximately 9:30 a.m. on Monday at the hand car wash, which is located at the southeast corner of Magnolia Street and Talbert Avenue in Fountain Valley.”
““They don’t ask any questions,” Romero said. “They only grab, grab, grab the guys, take them to the van. They don’t give you a chance to speak. They don’t have a chance to say, ‘Oh, let me see [if] I got my papers.’ … They only grab the guys and take them. No questions. It’s not fair.”
https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2025-06-11/ice-raids-orange-county-car-wash
It was 54 years ago this weekend, the first weekend after my freshman year of high school. I started my first job at Flan’s Car Wash in Bellflower. I was still 14 years old and minimum wage was $1.65. I was paid $1.35 and earned just over $500 in 1971 working up to 15 hours on the weekends. My first duty in my employment was to clean the passenger inside interior and back windows. On a regular 8 hour Saturday, I would climb into about 100 back seats and do my thing.
https://www.hippostcard.com/listing/los-angeles-ca-flans-automatic-car-wash-old-cars-postcard/20953556
Do you think MAGA’s children are lining up for their new job opportunities?
******
A little additional nostalgia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQvryYTztzw&list=RDXQvryYTztzw&start_radio=1
“Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again, again”
No Kings, please
Yeah but think of all those Young Republicans who are finally going to be able to pick tomatoes for 12 hours a day in Arizona.
Bad news lads.
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION MAY HAVE CROSSED ‘PLANETARY BOUNDARY’ FIVE YEARS AGO
“A team of planetary scientists, ecologists, and marine biologists affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and one in the U.K., has found evidence suggesting that parts of the world’s oceans have already passed what has come to be known as a planetary boundary. By using a wide variety of resources and findings from prior studies, the researchers discovered that the planetary boundary for ocean acidification has been crossed by approximately 40% of the world’s ocean surface water, and 60% of subsurface water. Such crossings, they also found, began at least five years ago. The researchers also note that a planetary boundary does not represent a tipping point—it is still possible, they claim, to reverse what has been done by ceasing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-ocean-acidification-planetary-boundary-years.html
“.. it is still possible, they claim, to reverse what has been done by ceasing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.””
Ceasing GHG emissions is not a possibility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHM8BlDNtaA
5 minutes
Zeihan: Saudi Arabia is losing the oil war. Kazakstahn is becoming a significant player.
I think Zeihan gets USA Shale wrong.
U decide
Zeihan as usual is easy to explain: He is pro-American, shale is American, so shale is better than everything else and nothing can compete.
He knows a lot of stuff but he can’t get a grip on his biases.
Trump’s FAA Pick Made a Claim About His Pilot License That Won’t Fly
Can these clowns ever tell the truth?
First they would have to be able to tell the difference.
Interesting piece on Israeli-Iranian War, paints a very problematic future for world peace.
https://theconversation.com/iran-israel-threshold-war-has-rewritten-nuclear-escalation-rules-258965
Excerpt:
Israel’s conflict with Iran represents far more than another Middle Eastern crisis – it marks the emergence of a dangerous new chapter in nuclear rivalries that has the potential to reshape global proliferation risks for decades to come.
…
When preventive strikes become the enforcement mechanism for nonproliferation norms, the entire architecture of nuclear governance begins to crumble. Without these frameworks, the world faces an unstable future defined by cycles of preventive strikes and accelerated nuclear proliferation – far more dangerous than the Cold War-era standoffs that shaped nuclear governance.
It is difficult to think that Israel does not feel enabled by the mindless support of the American government. Today both seem to think that brute force is the best form of international relations. Note also that both countries are being led by felons.
Perhaps superficial similarities.
However, there are some very fundamental and dramatic differences between the two and their current use of kinetic action.
Of course there are differences, size being the most obvious. I’m not sure about the kinetics. Both have histories of bringing the best trained personnel and best hardware to play. Both have experienced the limits of using force to obtain their goals. Neither have learned the lesson very well. American kinetic action recently seems to be in an all too familiar mode; picking on the weakest available opponent. What’s different is that the opponent is domestic this turn.
I’m not sure if the Israeli government considers Palestinians domestic or foreign. They certainly demonstrate utter disregard for the suffering of innocents. They will never achieve their goal of living safely among hundreds of millions of neighbors whom they treat like dirt.
The Israeli assault on Iran seems to fit a historical mode for Israel, highly skilled and more reckless than American actions. I’ve always assumed that to be based on Israeli assumptions that the US will bail them out of whatever mess they make. We usually do because their messes seem small to us. It turns out they aren’t. Another lesson we haven’t learned. This could be pretty bad for all concerned.
JJHMAN
I disagree in whole or part with several of your positions regarding justifications for certain actions in the ongoing conflict or past kinetic actions by the US and Israel, but won’t debate them in this space. I’m also not going to argue that any of the actors are blameless. This is too complicated for this forum.
However, I will suggest that some of your opinions appear to be poorly informed by military history. Urban conflict in particular. Are you familiar with the details of recent examples like Grozny, Fallujah or Mosul? Or, reaching back a bit further, perhaps you’ve researched the debate over the four allied raids on Dresden in 1945? Understand the history and differences between combatants and non-combatants?
I doubt it.
Its all a little more complicated when one of the nations attempting to develop nuclear bombs and a huge arsenal of ballistic missiles has been on an overt mission to destroy one of the other countries in their neighborhood for decades.
For example, neither Pakistan or India have proclaimed the intention to erase the other from existence, or have taken actions in attempt to accomplish that. So in that situation a stalemate on nuclear forces can be a stable scenario.
It is apparently easy to forget that one of the nations already has a nuclear arsenal and has assaulted, insulted and stolen land from its neighbors consistently for many decades.
That is not to pretend that Iran or the Arab states are well behaved but they have been treated irrationally by Israel and Israel’s mentor for a very long time.
You can pick an era that demonstrates that any of the actors was truly a bad guy and use that as a base to support your prejudice. Nothing will get resolved in the region until both sides recognize the irrationality of their respective histories.
Unfortunately with religion as the excuse for many of the actors, and the larger powers that could affect the outcome have their own agendas, rational behavior is not likely any time soon.
https://newrepublic.com/post/196858/trump-plots-revenge-no-kings-protests-ice
Trump plans to expand ICE enforcement in cities with largest No Kings protests.
Excerpt:
But it’s also worth noting that the three cities the president named directly had some of the largest protests in direct opposition to him and his policies. Los Angeles saw 200,000 protestors, Chicago saw 75,000, and New York City saw 50,000. All three of these deep-blue liberal cities brought a bigger crowd than Trump’s own military birthday parade, and each one is a sanctuary city. Trump’s messaging here is unambiguous: The president will make you and your city a target out of sheer spite for immigrants and the community members supporting them. Protesting the president’s crackdown makes you a threat to his administration.
Trump on the Army & King birthday parade:
Domestic： Strong condenmation of foreign agression
Foreign: Eliminate cult and DEI
Longest day of the year in Northern Hemisphere.
Isn’t that June 20th, not the 16th?
Rgds
WP
That is right, in eastern Australia the winter solstice is the 21st June.
No, it’s June 21st, not the 16th or the 20th. I know because that’s my birthday, I will be 87.
I might forget so Happy Birthday
I stand corrected.
From Google’s AI answer-machine (my least favorite source):
The longest day of the year, also known as the summer solstice, is the day with the most daylight hours. In the Northern Hemisphere, it occurs on either June 20th or 21st. In 2025, the summer solstice is on June 20th. In Sebastopol, CA, where the user is located, the longest day will have approximately 15 hours and 11 minutes of daylight, according to online resources.
It’s all good… nothing to worry about….
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/06/12/texas-approves-use-of-fracking-wastewater-to-irrigate-crops/
rgds
WP
it has lots of expensive minerals, K, Ca, Li, and rare earth
“And we thought it was bad when we learned a depressed Richard Nixon was wandering around the White House drunk out of his mind during Watergate…”
Expert: Climate warming has a less significant impact on the ice situation in the Arctic
18 June/ 12:21
Saint Petersburg. Climate warming has a less clear impact on the ice situation in the Arctic from the point of view of the development of the Northern Sea Route. This was stated by the director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute Alexander Makarov.
He noted that on the one hand, there is a warming trend, but the navigation of recent years has shown that the ice in the Arctic will not disappear anywhere in the coming decades.
“When we say that there is less ice in the Arctic, we are only talking about the fact that there is less of it in the summer. And 2020 was the last year when the Northern Sea Route was completely free of ice in the summer. And even if there is less of it, the cover is now forming twice as fast as before,” said Alexander Makarov.
He emphasized that summer in the Arctic lasts 10 weeks maximum. And most of the year the NSR is completely covered with ice. Based on this, the tasks facing the Russian Federation are clear and specific – year-round navigation. And the solution cannot be done without icebreakers, including new ones.
“As for the forecasts for 50 years, the amount of ice will be about the same. Once every 10 years we will have one year when there may be no ice cover in the summer. There will also be a time with slightly more difficult navigation and ice conditions,” he shared.
According to him, by the middle of the century there will be a certain cycle of climatic cooling, which will affect the ice situation, among other things.
The duration of the ice-free period over the past 50-60 years has increased by about one week per year, and the ice has decreased by 20%. At the same time, in some areas of the Arctic it is warming 4.5 times faster than the average on the planet, for example, in Central Taimyr.
New posts are up
https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-june-2025/
and
https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-thread-non-petroleum-june-18-2025/