Mmarrkk

ConocoPhilips: Time to Embrace Natural Gas Transportation

Fitz: not surprised with the lack of response. BOD's, unfortunately, just like to get along!

Yes, $145/BO was a disaster in general. Yes, it helped me out a lot as an investor in oils and an employee of oil/gas co'. But on a macro level, given the state of the economy, it was bad. Now, layer on that oil price on top of the ever increasing debt, the soon to be increasing taxation, the anti-business legislation we seem to see everyday, and the precarious condition of the stock market, I think it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back! The stimulous money only stimulated a lot of government pocket books and executive salaries and union chief's savings. It isn't going to what needs stimulating. My wife's small business is doing well, but will probably not make it through healthcare reform due to the taxes and requirements that will be placed on them. Based on what she's read of the bills so far, she'll just shut it down and lay off the employees and let them go as contractors. Fine with me...I get my full-time wife back! But the employees will probably not be too happy!

I'm still pushing nat gas as a transport fuel and I'm fighting with all of my energy and money the cap/tax/trade bills. Those will drive costs way too high at the wrong time. Its too much, too soon, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons and needs to be put on the back burner (nat gas burner BTW) until our economy is out of ICU.


On Oct 30 05:10 PM Michael Fitzsimmons wrote:

> long_on_oil: hey, i love BP and STO. of all the earnings released,
> i think you'd have to say that BP and CVX had the best quarters.
>
>
> Mmarrk: i have sent emails to Conoco's BOD. no reply, and obviously
> no success. in light of all their investments in natural gas plays,
> i just don't undertand COP management's aversion to natural gas transportation.
> what jim cramer tonite, he's in OK interviewing some natural gas
> heavyweights. i am sure they'll be talking about it. the U.S. will
> have to migrate to natural gas transportation at some point - we'll
> have no choice. the question is, will the government wait until there
> is rioting in the streets, or will we do it before a crisis. of course,
> i think last year's $145/barrel oil was a crisis...
>
> auto44: if you are compariing to the US dollar, it's a good question,
> but a better question maybe this: china, india, brazil, france, and
> germany have all said they are in favor of a new world reserve currency
> not based on a single country. so, the real long-term question is
> this: what will the U.S. dollar be valued to wrt a new world reserve
> currency based on a basket of currencies, gold, and silver? the answer
> to this question, i believe, is: "less than it is valued today".

Recycling U.S. Coins into Silver

Fitz: one thing to be concerned about with LNG is the overall low low cost of incremental production. Once the liquifaction plant, ships and re-gas plants are built and financed, the cost to run the Middle East plants and get the gas to the U.S. shore is dirt cheap. Think less than $3/mmBtu. Imports are down right now (thank goodness) due to there being other markets. If the Europe market dries up, then LNG will hit our shores and will displace some of the more expensive gas.

Now, overall, that won't kill off the general premise of using Nat Gas for transport; LNG will keep the price low for a while. But it does get us back into a dependency we'd rather not have. Going forward, big LNG exporters will be Qataris, Iranians, Russians and Australians. Only one of which I feel totally comfortable with!

ConocoPhilips: Time to Embrace Natural Gas Transportation

Increasing dividend? Good.

Borrowing money to pay dividend? Bad

Increasing dividend while increasing borrowing to pay for said increasing dividend? I just don't understand!

You are right about the natural gas transportation. Maybe we need to direct this line of thinking to the B.O.D.'s?

Why Is Congress Agnostic About Natural Gas?

Right ON Mr. Orr.

Why Is Congress Agnostic About Natural Gas?

Obamma has bigger priorities...free healthcare to his major constituency groups..."cash for clunkers" so that we turn perfectly good, functioning vehicles into scrap...Cap'n'Tax so that we penalize refineries and make greenies happy...raising income and death taxes. He just can't get around to making natural gas a big piece of his grand plan. Plus, no one in his administration has positioned themselves just yet to reap big profits from N.G. Give them some time to load up the boat then he'll push it! Probably waiting on Charlie Rangel and Mr. Geitner to get fully invested and to figure out a way to cheat on their taxes when they make profit!

Seriously, I just don't think he gets it...plus he's still in the pocket of Coal!

Tiber Oilfield Spells Major Upside for Prices

Elliott: Great article with just one item I'd like to take you up on:

"The reserve estimates you often hear quoted in the news are for estimates of original oil in place (OOIP), the total amount of oil contained in the reservoir."

This is incorrect. When someone uses the term "reserve" or "reserves", by definition this is what is recoverable. The word "resource" is used at times to define something less certain.

2020 sounds like a long time from now!!

BP Strikes Oil, Enhances Exploration Potential in Gulf of Mexico

BP and Shell are both creating lots of jobs here in the U.S., are were until we hit this little speed bump known as a recession/depression. But no matter where their stocks are housed and their CEO is housed, both have huge presences in the u.s. and employ thousands here in the U.S. So, if jobs are important, they are employing large numbers. And the exporation work is done here in Houston.

Guess you are worried about Hyundai as well, even if they are building cars in Alabama? Should we change the name? Same employees, same local taxes, payrolls, etc.

BP Strikes Oil, Enhances Exploration Potential in Gulf of Mexico

Uncle: in case you don't know this, BP's office is located in Houston and it is staffed by over 75% Americans. So this is a very American operation. Once the platform is installed, it will be staffed by Americans. And, they pay taxes here in America.

Oil Is Still the Key to U.S. Economic Future

ripskii: increasing pressure on gas lines will increase the capacity a bit but not a huge amount. And there are a lot of problems with increasing the pressure! First, most pipelines operate close to the max operating pressure so there are mechanical/safety issues. Second, in order for the pressure to be increased, there has to be some compression to boost that pressure. Compression takes money and it takes time to build and install. Third, when the pressure increases, it increases the back pressure on the wells that produce into the system. As back pressure increases, the production rates of the wells drops, decreasing the volume produced. So, either overall production will fall or we will have to install more compression. See second concern above!

As storage fills and reaches capacity, you will see the pipeline pressures start to increase all by themselves. This results in "backing out" wells that are lower pressure. Its kind of a natural curtailment to production when we are producing too darned much!


On Aug 04 10:58 AM ripskii wrote:

> Fitz: I've been wondering what the effect of the U.S. gas storage
> capacity reaching the full status will have on the industry production
> and pricing? You can see that current excess production going into
> storage is reaching record proportions. When we reach "full" it will
> also have a big impact on where to store the large increases in LNG
> projects coming on line in the near term. I've read somewhere that
> if present trends continue our capacity will reach full in a a fairly
> short time. I've even heard that capacity can be expanded by increasing
> pressure in the gas lines. Any thoughts on this?
>
> www.americanoilman.com/

Oil Is Still the Key to U.S. Economic Future

Fitz: welcome back!

LNG: once the LNG liquifaction plants and re-gas plants are constructred, those huge capital investments are "sunk costs" and the profitability is based on incremental operating costs. The cost to buy gas in Qatar, liquify it, ship it to the US and re-gas it are very low...in the $2-3 range. Remember, Qatar gas is so plentiful it makes the shale plays look small! So, with a $2-3 cost, yes LNG is competitive. And someone above was right, these LNG plants in the Middle East have contracts that allow/force them to get this gas over to the US market if other markets won't take the LNG.

I think LNG will be a factor, but it won't be a doomsday factor as I once thought and others are thinking. Other markets are starting to improve and will relieve some of the pressure!

Boone's delaying the wind farm project is a very good example of why it will be a long time before wind and solar and other alternative energy supplies are competitive with oil/gasoline/coal/dies... gas. The market just isn't there yet.

Hope...fading. Change...all I have left after taxes! The new Obama as Heath Ledger's Joker poster...priceless! As our Bought-and-Paid-For Congressmen/women and Senators come home for summer recess, let's all make an all out effort to get around to their town hall meetings and give them a piece of our minds. Let them know that energy policy is important and it doesn't look like Crap-And-Trade. That Natural Gas is vital to our future. And that we don't want GM-Chrysler Health Insurance/Healthcare.

The Bear Case for ConocoPhillips

Uhhmmm epeon, BP makes just about the same amount of natural gas in the U.S. as COP! For a long time, they were #1/#2 in US natural gas, with the difference only being a smidgen. Now some of the large independents have supplanted them atop the leader board but they are still in the top 6 and are still pretty close to each other.

My Thoughts on Oil

Crocodilian: I have to agree with Fitz on this. Chu is a loser when it comes to energy policy. His concern about diverting nat gas away from power gen, etc. is so outdated its hilarious. Has he checked the gas storage reports lately? Maybe he should start reading those EIA reports every now and then. We have estimates of QUAD's of gas in the Marcellus and Haynesville (not BCF, not TCF but QCF's). Maybe that's getting a bit frothy but the point is we have huge resources. Companies aren't even drilling them right now due to the lack of market demand and storage. Why do you think all of these companies have cut way back on their drilling budgets and some companies are shutting in wells and/or curtailing production?

Chu might be a boy wonder genious scientist, but he's just not very practical nor knowledgable.

I agree with Fitz: Fire Chu Now!! And Fire His Boss Too!!! We can only dream!!!! (sorry Fitz, couldn't pass up a "bash Bobomma" moment).

My Thoughts on Oil

jan300: leaking CO2...if it gets to the water formations we'll call it Perrier and make a killing!!

My Thoughts on Oil

Fitz: agree that Fiat's selling the NGV and that's great. Its just that their legacy doesn't give me a warm fuzzy on quality or meeting the needs. "Fix It Again Tony" was well-deserved! I owned a couple of those little Fiat's way back when. Why two?? Because you had one in the shop on a monthly basis so you needed a spare!!

I'd much prefer the Honda NGV be widely available but they seem to think limiting the market for this is a good idea???

How about Honda buys out GM and starts work on a NGV Suburban, Acadia and/or Silverado? Now there's a product line I could get behind. Of course, that would violate that new CAFE standard edict that will soon be stuffed down our throats or up some other body orifice. But maybe they could build a bunch of those toy cars that someone else could buy and even out the averages! I'm sure not buying those little junksters.

My Thoughts on Oil

Andy1234: Directionally you are right regarding US-based oil/gas companies with respect to falling dollar. However, if you look at international oil/gas companies like BP, Total, Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, etc., they are international companies but sell a product based on the US Dollar (oil). And many of them have costs that are tied to US Dollar as well. So they tend to move in tandem with their US counterparts like XOM, COP, CVX, etc. Plus, the US-based companies all have huge portions of their operations in international locations. XOM has a majority of their income from international sources as do others.

But if you are banking on a collapsing dollar, oil should prosper. And who wouldn't bank on the collapse of the dollar? We are printing greenbacks like toilet paper, our budget has blown up and we now own that crappy company GM in partnership with the villains who put them there...the UAW. The only other more dismal partnership than a US Govt/UAW partnership is the Fiat/Chrysler/UAW partnership...crappy Italian management combined with crappy engineering combined with excessive labor costs!! And with a bunch of marxist gov't officials...can't wait to see their first product off the assembly line. It will probably be a high top tennis shoe sized little clown car that plugs into the wall, gets a bazillion miles to the gallon, but only goes 3 miles and is a rolling casket for anyone in it when it encounters another vehicle...or a bike!