US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1575

On January 14 2015 10:50 Sub40APM wrote:
What are they waiting for re:crushing of things? Capital investments are a pretty long term thing so even if at some point they cut the taps off the money sunk in by American producers has already been deployed.

Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman owns 9% of SandRidge Energy Inc's (NYSE: SD ) outstanding shares. That's a rather outsized position for Cooperman's hedge fund, Omega Advisors, as it had been a 12% position within that fund. Needless to say, Cooperman made a big bet on SandRidge Energy. However, it's not a bet he's willing to double down on now that the stock is 75% off of its 52-week high. Though, he's not giving up on the stock either.

There's a lot of value, but...
Earlier this year Cooperman did up the ante on his SandRidge Energy bet by raising his stake to its current position. He'd already gone on record saying that he thought the stock could double from its then $5 price to upwards of $10 per share, if everything went right. Meanwhile, CEO James Bennett thought the stock was worth upwards of $15.50 when it was selling for $6.25 per share. However, those calls were made when oil prices were well over $100 per barrel and there was a general consensus that prices would stay at, or above, that level. However, with the price of oil falling like a rock, it has acted like a weight and taken SandRidge Energy's stock down along with it.

If the price of oil stays this low for a long period of time, this could be a big issue for SandRidge Energy. That's because at the company's current well cost it won't make much, if any money, in the future if current oil prices persist. As we see on the slide below, the company was banking on a $90 oil price in 2015 in order to earn a decent return on drilling new wells.

As the return sensitivities chart shows, the lower oil prices go the weaker the company's returns on new wells. It's important to note that the chart doesn't even project returns when oil prices are less than $80 a barrel. So, we're left to guess at the company's breakeven point.

Why this is a problem
The problem here is that if oil prices stay low for a long period of time then SandRidge Energy would be in trouble. This was noted by Leon Cooperman in a recent CNBC interview where he discussed his position in SandRidge and why he's not buying more of its stock at the current distressed price.

On January 14 2015 11:07 IgnE wrote:


Shale oil and gas requires thousands of small wells, and there has basically been constant new drilling to meet demand, since production from the wells starts to decline rather quickly. It also kills a lot of alternative energy investments that aren't directly about oil, and hurts Venezuealan, Russian, and Nigerian oil production, among others.

On January 14 2015 11:34 IgnE wrote:
Tar sands for example has a very low EROI (energy return on investment) compared to other forms of oil, and so it will be very hard to make tar sand oil work even if you have already sunk millions and millions of capital investment into the project.

On January 14 2015 12:23 Sub40APM wrote:

I just read an article that says the opposite, that the big cost on tar sands was the initial capital but once you start digging that crap out and burning it into oil or whatever the cost is actually relatively bearable?

Anyway good point GreenHorizon, surprised the Saudis dont just rake in billions on front running the oil futures.

"As a policy for OPEC, and I convinced OPEC of this, even Mr al-Badri (the OPEC secretary general) is now convinced, it is not in the interest of OPEC producers to cut their production, whatever the price is," Naimi was quoted by MEES as saying.

"Whether it goes down to $20, $40, $50, $60, it is irrelevant," he said.

On January 14 2015 12:23 Sub40APM wrote:

I just read an article that says the opposite, that the big cost on tar sands was the initial capital but once you start digging that crap out and burning it into oil or whatever the cost is actually relatively bearable?

Anyway good point GreenHorizon, surprised the Saudis dont just rake in billions on front running the oil futures.

On January 14 2015 13:12 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
US: Oh your going to cut that production that's cute, have fun tacking Daesh, and Al Nusra without military funding etc.
OPEC: .....

Not to mention the western world and it's infrastructure of renewable energy grows by the thousands everyday, electric car makers, and of course domestic oil production in which the US can simply state domestic customers and concerns come first.

On January 14 2015 13:20 IgnE wrote:


Please link. I believe that is technically incorrect but maybe I'm wrong. Tar sands are an extremely bad EROI, and I don't think capital investment is the primary problem.

Unlike shale oil, which requires constant drilling of new wells to maintain output levels, once an oil-sands site is developed it will produce tens or hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, steadily, for up to three decades.

On Monday, major producer Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. became the latest to underscore the resilience of oil-sands growth. The company said lower oil prices will force it to trim investment on new projects and curtail its growth forecast—but it still expects overall output to grow about 7% over 2014 levels, and it vowed to keep spending on expanding output at its biggest oil-sands mine over the next two years.

Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, on Monday walked out of a heated PBA meeting after some cops questioned his hardline stance against Mayor de Blasio.

Shouting and shoving erupted among cops at a tense Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association meeting in Queens on Tuesday, according to union sources.

Tempers flared toward the end of the nearly two-hour session at Antun's in Queens Village when some members began yelling at PBA President Patrick Lynch over his declaration that Mayor de Blasio owes cops an apology.

"This is what my members want: they want more cars, better vests, more manpower,” one cop shouted, according to the sources. “They don't want an apology.”

Another union member told Lynch: "I don't care about an apology. I want to know what you're going to do to protect us."

Lynch said he disagreed about the importance of an apology, according to the sources.

The meeting then disintegrated into a physical conflict between cops who support Lynch and those who don’t, the sources said.

"They were screaming,” one source said. “Lynch's guys got up and there was shoving and pushing. It got ugly."

The source said delegates had been getting questions from their cops.

“They want to know if there's a plan,” the source said, referring to whether cops should make more arrests.

Del. Joseph D. Morrissey on Tuesday won a special election to keep his seat in the 74th House of Delegates district, making him the first jailed lawmaker in modern Virginia history to win reelection.

On January 14 2015 15:32 RCMDVA wrote:
The most un-killable cockroach of a local politician here in Richmond just won a special election after :

He gets arrested for a felony (sex with minor).
He says it never happened. She says it never happened. Her momma says it never happened.
He says he thought she was 22. She was 17.
He pleads guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
He fucks up and gets his probation/work release revoked. He's in jail serving out the time.
He resigns from office and a special election is called.
Then it is announce that the 17yr old is in fact pregnant. Daddy is 57.
Dems call a firehouse primary locking the incumbent out of the race, nominating some retired AFL/CIO guy I think. Incumbent then runs as an independent. Some republican also runs.
On the eve of the election, police raided his offices for new shit.



http://www.richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/charles-city/article_a9102796-ca6f-5eb0-b3eb-967881e4ca50.html

WASHINGTON -- The White House announced on Wednesday that it is setting new goals for reducing methane emissions in the oil and gas sector, aiming to cut those releases by 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025.

While methane emissions have dropped in recent decades, Dan Utech, the special assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said in a call with reporters Wednesday morning that the expansion of oil and gas development in the U.S. has put those emissions on track to rise 25 percent by 2025 without new controls. The administration says the methane rules are key to meeting the overall emission reduction targets that President Barack Obama has called for.

"The U.S. is now the largest oil and gas producer in the world, providing an abundant source of energy to power and heat American homes and businesses," said Utech. "At the same time, methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas with 25 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide."

Specific regulations related to the effort are expected later this year, but the White House did lay out a plan for meeting the goal. The Environmental Protection Agency is now beginning a rulemaking process to establish new standards for methane and volatile organic compound emissions from new and modified oil and gas wells, as well as natural gas processing and transmission infrastructure. The EPA said it plans to introduce a draft rule in the summer of 2015 and a final rule in 2016.

The White House also said that the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management will issue updated standards for venting, flaring and leaks for oil and gas wells on public lands sometime in the spring of 2015. And the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration will issue new safety rules for pipelines sometime this year, Utech said.

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans voted Wednesday to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but with the requirement that millions of undocumented young people, parents and others be put back at risk of deportation.

The DHS funding bill was the opening shot in what is likely to be a contentious weekslong fight over how to deal with appropriations for the agency before its funding runs out at the end of February. For now, Republicans and Democrats have drawn lines in the sand: Most GOP House members said they would not vote to fund DHS without measures to end many of President Barack Obama's immigration policies, while Democrats and the president have vowed to oppose anything that includes those amendments.

But the vote also showed a schism in the House Republicans -- this time from moderates rather than the usual revolts by immigration hardliners. Those moderates nearly derailed an amendment to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, which helps undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Twenty-six House Republicans joined with Democrats to oppose that amendment, which narrowly passed in a 218-209 vote.

The vote on the full bill was 236-191. Ten Republicans opposed final passage, and two Democrats split with their party to support it.

"We do not take this action lightly, but simply, there is no alternative," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a floor speech just before the vote. "It's not a dispute between the parties or even the branches of our government. This executive overreach is an affront to the rule of law and to the Constitution itself."

But what comes next is unclear. In the Senate, members such as Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have said a DHS bill must include measures to block Obama's executive actions on immigration. But other GOP senators have expressed wariness over adding contentious measures to a must-pass bill and threatening a DHS.