California

California, home to 1 of every 8 Americans, continues to experience "Peak Oil". Or at least Peak Gasoline Consumption. Here is the graph of that yearly data (in 000,000's, not 000's, please excuse y axis label error on graph).

That graph is starting to look familiar.... Italy, Japan, Spain, Greece, California... besides declining supply/demand of transportation fuels, what else do these entities have in common? Disastrous finances, and this is no coincidence.

Spain and Italy

I really need to change the name of this blog to The European Energy Crisis. Peak Oil exports is upon them and it is wiping the floor with them.

While Spain's bond yields dominate the news, those interested in Oil should read this report in its entirety.

Unlike the U.S., Spain is 99%+ DEPENDENT on foreign Oil and Natural Gas. While there might be a glut of Nat Gas in the North American market, that just is not the case for Europe.

Spain's net imports of Oil are down 10% from their peek in 2005 thru 2010.  Spain's net imports were down 7% in 2011 from 2010. I think 20% peak to today is in the bag... and this is with Libya coming back on line!

The data in this graph is from the IEA. Unfortunately, the data comes in 5 year increments before 2005, so the slope of the graph does not accurately reflect the decline. However, you can see that Spain is back to late 1990's Oil supply. Meanwhile Spain's population has increased 20% during that time.

Given that world oil exports continue to decline, and China and India continue to increase their imports by out-bidding countries like Spain, is there any hope that Spain can increase its Oil consumption in the future?

NAFC.

Greece now. Spain (or Italy) soon. So... who, exactly is it that China, Japan, German, the U.S. are going to increase exports of their goods (and services) to?

Certainly not Spain. Or Italy. In fact, it looks to me like the Eurozone is going to show the rest of the world what Peak Oil means as a practical matter.

Italy is in worse shape because of its shear size and the percentage of debt to GDP. Italy is 90% dependent upon imports for its Oil supply. Oil imports and consumption have declined by 20%. Natural Gas has already been substituted for Oil for electricity generation - the low hanging fruit has been plucked. Even so, and with the switch from gasoline to diesel, diesel consumption/supply is still off over 5% from  peak to 2009... its more than 10% thru 2012.

Here's the graph for Italy:

After looking at this IEA report I can only conclude that Italy will be coming off the rails in the very near future.

Japan is in the same boat:

Greece is small potatoes. Spain is big potatoes. "Where's the beef?" Italy.

The BIG LIE regarding Greece

World Oil Exports peaked in 2005 at 40.2 million barrels of Oil per day. Today, Oil exports are almost certainly under 34.5 million bpd for 2012 (my guess. We do know Oil exports were down to 35.2mm bpd for 2010).

Here is a link showing Oil Imports into Greece from 2001 to 2009. I have been unable to find data for 2010 - 2012 First Half... but I feel pretty comfortable in betting that Greece Oil imports for that period have absolutely cratered. I am going to lick my thumb, hold it to the wind and guess imports are off 20% to 35% from the 2007 peak for Greece.

So... did Greece's crash cause the decline in Oil imports or did the decline in Oil imports create a negative feedback loop (vicious cycle) that finished off Greece?

I know... I am a "hammer", and to a hammer everything looks like a nail... but I think I have good reason to think "nail!" in this case.

Take a good, hard, long look at Greece. They were the first of the industrialized nations to be out bid for their Oil needs. Other nations are going to look a lot like Greece as the dominoes do their thing over the next 10 (or 20) years or so. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland are on deck but this is not just about the fiscal basket cases. Yes, they are going to lose the early rounds of the bidding war, but it won't stop there. The early "winners" will not have a seat when this music stops.

Food prices are already being squeezed to the limit - so much so that the cost of Food Stamp/Food Assistance from the U.S. Federal Government is going to eclipse $80 Billion in 2012, up 135% since 2007! Not quite up there with the Military/Social Security/Medicare, but will likely top the Homeland Security Budget in the next few years as biggest of the rest - so don't look to bio fuels for much additional help. "Tight Oil" (Shale, etc), Schmight Oil, might pick up 10 to 20% of the slack caused by declining imports - and then again it might not.

The market response to $100 per barrel Oil is now known - no increase in crude and condensate, even with "Tight Oil", but a large increase in Natural Gas Plant Liquids (primarily ethane, which cannot be used as a transportation fuel), and bio fuels/ethanol which had the unpleasant unintended consequence of driving the price of food out of reach of the poor who then leaned on the government who borrowed the money to pay for the food to feed the poor... Got that? In what universe does that make sense?

The western industrial economies are going to have to share a dwindling supply of exported Oil with the ChIndia behemoth whether it likes it or not though our policy makers will talk about anything and everything else.

Not that it matters... whatever they say, its all Greek to me. Oil speaks my language.

"The changing definition of Oil"

I have a fairly simple strategy for trading Oil:

1. Oil is going to have a massive spike that I will endeavor to be long for.
2. Somewhere in the middle of all of this the world is likely to experience another Lehman Brothers type event coming, most likely, out of Europe. That will be the moment to get long.

Of course, the spike could come BEFORE that Lehman type event… 

There has been a great deal of propaganda in the Media. Let me show you some hardcore data that will put this all in perspective.

Here is a link to the PDF from the U.S. Office of Highway Policy Information. Please skip all of the myriad data and go straight to the graph on Page 9. That chart is the graphical representation of Total Vehicle Miles Travels (“VMT”) in the U.S. and as you can see, VMT peaked in 2007 – RIGHT ON SCHEDULE.

Total VMT takes into consideration EVERYTHING: Milage improvement, electric cars, hybrid technology, hydrogen power, bio fuels, Nat Gas, Shale Oil, Tight Oil, Oil Sands, magnets, the tooth fairy - everything. If technology/fuel replacement/efficiency overcome the decline in Oil supply then total VMT will continue to increase. If they don't, it won't. It is a simple as that.

In fact, the ONLY metric that matters to the U.S. as far as energy/Peak Oil is concerned is Total Vehicle Miles Traveled.

Kurt Cobb, had this to say recently:

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How changing the definition of oil has deceived both policymakers and the public

Everyone knows that world oil production has been running between 88 and 89 million barrels per day (mbpd) this year because government, industry and media sources tell us so. As it turns out, what everyone knows is wrong.


It's wrong not because the range quoted above can't be found in official sources.  It's wrong because the numbers include things which are not oil such as natural gas plant liquids and biofuels. If you strip these other things out, then world oil production has been running around 75 mbpd this year. The main thing you need to know about the worldwide rate of production of crude oil alone is that it has been stuck between 71 and 75 mbpd since 2005 (calculated on a monthly basis). And, that has already had huge negative effects on the world economy and world society through high energy prices that are partly responsible for our current economic stagnation.

But because natural gas plant liquids production has been growing rather rapidly due to recent intensive drilling for natural gas and because those liquids are misleadingly lumped in with oil supplies, people have been mistakenly given the impression that world oil production continues to grow. Not true! What's growing is a category called "total liquids" which encompasses oil, natural gas plant liquids, biofuels and some other minor fuels. Total liquids are growing only because of large gains in natural gas plant liquids and minor gains in biofuels. And, this is why it is so important to understand what natural gas plant liquids are.

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Production of Crude and Condensate, the stuff that can be refined into transportation fuels, has not increased in over 6 years despite massive price incentive to do so. Natural Gas Plant Liquids are doing wonders for the Petro-Chemical feedstock industries, but are, for the vast most part, unavailable as transportation fuels.

The Industrial West’s economies of the U.S. and Europe have hit Peak Oil. Yes, the U.S. increased its production of LTO or “Tight Oil” by about 600k bpd (to put that in perspective, the U.S. consumes over 18 million bpd, down from over 22 million bpd) and ethanol by about 900k bpd. And over the next 20 years LTO might hit 1.2mm BPD. Unfortunately, imports declined by 2.5 million bpd and we can see the net impact in the VMT data listed above. Ethanol is constrained by the Corn crop and since ethanol already consumes half the crop, unless we are willing to give up eating our corn-derived diet I don’t see much increase from that area (and I am not taking the drought into consideration here as hopefully it is a one-off. I shudder to think of the consequences should this be the beginning of a multi year drought.)

The U.S. now has 16% real unemployment (U6) and 1 in 7 Americans are on Food Assistance from the Federal Government and this has been pretty much the case since the VMT data peaked in 2007. Coincidence? I think not.

The U.S. economy is automobile centric. Growing the economy in real terms with an ongoing decline in total VMT is not going to be possible. Oh, we might increase sick care, or death care, of government services to goose GDP, but real demand? The U.S. has been running $1Trillion + deficits in order to stimulate demand for 4 years now and it hasn’t worked – and it won’t work in an environment of declining VMT.

Lest you believe the hype on Natural Gas:

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2m.htm

The U.S. has brought Nat Gas production BACK to where we where in 1970 by increasing average daily production about 20% from average lows. About 1/3 of the U.S. energy BTU’s are provided by Nat Gas. And that 1/3 experienced a 20% growth in production. Oil provides a little over 1/3 of U.S. energy BTU’s, and Oil BTU’s declined by about 14% or so since 2007.

In short, Nat Gas might be instrumental in preventing a national Trucking Crisis (and it might not. T. Boone Pickens and his folks are working on that as I write this, but they are a long way from being a force to be reckoned with) and Nat Gas will be helpful in diverting petroleum from Fleets uses to Nat Gas but Nat Gas production is never going to replace Oil BTU’s for transportation fuels. NOT NOW, NOT EVER.

The world’s Oil exporters (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Kuwait, Norway, Mexico, the U.A.E., et al) exported an average of 40.2 million bpd in 2005. In 2010, that number fell to 35.2 million bpd (Source: Jeffrey Brown, Energy Bulletin, this is a link worth reviewing - the graph says it all). Exports are back to their 2000-2002 volumes. Importers (the U.S., Europe, China, India, et al) cannot import more Oil than the exporters are exporting. While world production of Crude & Condensate has plateaued, there is little doubt that Oil imports for the U.S., et al has certainly peaked.

I tell you this to share with you why it is that I think that a move to $200+ for a barrel of Oil (Brent and WTI) is inevitable. I reject the propaganda.  I do not think Oil imports will go to zero. Canada, for example, will be exporting to the U.S. for quite some time. But Oil imports WILL continue their inexorable decline in my opinion (though Iraq could goose total exports and change the equation in the short term. Iraq remains the $64 question). Confirmation will be found in the VMT data, not in the unaudited reports from OPEC. I also believe that the European story is loose and fluid with significant potential for a serious economic disturbance. 

Drought

Self-Sufficent. Prepped. Self-Reliant.

Bull Sh#!.

If you don't have rain, you have nothing.

Middle Tennessee has had no rain to speak of for nearly a month. None is expected in the next 10 days. Every step I take, I hear "crunch!". Thank G-d we bought hay early, and if it were not for our well, the garden would be as dead as fried chicken. Or as dead as our corn "field" (patch), which is very, very dead. Or as dead as our hay fields, which are as dead as Kelsey's Nuts. Did I mention the forecast is for 100 + degree days and we've had no rain?

I cannot imagine enduring this 100 years ago, because we would f***ing starve (besides being baked to death) if we weren't provident enough to carry enough preserved foods for a bad year. What if its 2 bad years?

No water. No food. Pretty simple, really. And I am really grumpy about it.

I have often said that if a 1936 summer showed up in the U.S., we would have REAL trouble. REAL TROUBLE. Its only a matter of time... could be 100 years from now, or it could be this is just week 1...

Corn prices were falling hard. Now they are trading lock limit up.

Peak Vehicle Miles Traveled?

From the U.S. Department of Transportation.

You can skip the copious data and go right to the graph on page 9. If Peak Oil is auto centric, and at least I think it is, then it might well be here for the U.S. It is going to be very hard (read: impossible) to inflate housing, increase consumer demand, and generate jobs in the environment depicted in that graph.

I have been working diligently on the homestead, which has left little time for blogging, with no small success (other than our corn crop, such as it is, which failed this year due to drought conditions). Our gardens are very productive. Our next agenda is tackling the growing of animal feeds. I am trying to move over to all horse/mule power (I bought a team of experienced Draft Horses and an inexperienced and untrained mule. The mule and I are both beginners but the mule is breaking better to all of this than I am... it is not as easy to use a sulky plow as it appears in the youtube videos) for next year.

I will put up some videos shortly of our mule breaking experiences.

What is "Food"?

I have been noodling the American Obesity/Food Stamp nation issue much of late. Then I saw this article.

Much of it was the usual blather - except this:

The committee also grappled with one of the third rails of American politics: farm policy. Price-support programs for wheat, cotton and other commodity crops prohibit participating farmers from planting fruits and vegetables on land enrolled in those programs. Partly as a result, U.S. farms do not produce enough fresh produce for all Americans to eat the recommended amounts, and the IOM panel calls for removing that ban.

Got that? The USDA (Department of Agriculture), the Federal Agency charged with shaping and enforcing Agriculture policy, the Agency that issues guidelines for healthy eating - is the same agency whose policies have led to insufficient supplies of the food stuffs that THAT Agency recommends for THEIR recommended diet. WTF??!!

Which leads me back to the basic question: What is "Food" in America? Is it enough calories, as in a state prison cafeteria, to maintain life? Or something else?

I often see articles like "The 10 Super foods". The list varies, but blue berries, wild salmon, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, and other fresh fruits and vegetables seem to always make the list.

Then a looked up what the average family receives in food assistance from the Federal government. There are 115mm households or so in the U.S. 22mm of them receive food assistance - receiving an average of $277 per month? I have a farm and we produce most of our own food and still spend $1200 per month on fresh fruits, vegetables, sea food (although some of that is surely household supplies unrelated to food) for the family. One of the reasons I put in the soft fruit garden was our berry bill has averaged several hundred $$ per month... (and, no, I am not advocating expanding increasing Food Stamp benefits... we have already addicted 1/5 of all households to government food assistance.)

In any event, it seems to me that the average American cannot afford the foods on the list of the 10 super foods. Yes, the average American has enough to eat - actually TOO MUCH to eat - but the foods on the "Super Foods" list is not represented in the average American's diet.

Why?

"Food activist" (whatever that is) Michael Pollan blames farm subsidies. Maybe. And maybe people just don't like broccoli as much as they like potato chips soaked in partially hydrogenated corn oil/twinkees/coco puffs.

The fact is that growing blueberries is difficult and expensive compared to growing corn.  If people are not willing to pay for it, well, farmer's won't grow it. Is Pollan suggesting we subsidize broccoli/cabbage farmers? I really don't think that that will influence your average 4-year-old's opinion on broccoli, but hey... you never know.

Let's be even more forthright: I sincerely doubt that the U.S.'s upper middle class and lower wealthy are  eating all that unhealthily. My bet is that the entrenched underclass and the lower working class - the people actually receiving food assistance (see, the government would have you believe that all of those "fatherless" homes have NO adult male present - Baloney. These homes have one/or more adult males present consuming those food calories provided by SNAP/Food Stamps... he's just not the father of the kids in the household - and he is not officially receiving assistance) have abysmal diets.

And we can adjust the diets of these people with farm policy?  NAFC.

The hard fact is that there is very little that can be done for the diet's of the inner city poor and working class from a policy standpoint. Not to worry. People are NOT dumb. Given enough time and incentive they will work it out or perish, and nobody likes that second option.

A bigger question is: Why are 25% of people in my rural county on food assistance? Why no blueberry or asparagus patch instead of a yard that needs to be mowed (and never is)?

The industrial demands of the 20th century that brought the rural population to the cities will needs be undone - and it will get undone, one way or the other. Mechanization, robotization, computerization, off shoring, et all, will continue their onslaught on people with average abilities, gifts, and motivations.  These people are no longer needed on any assembly line because there ARE NO assembly lines anymore (at least not in the G7 nations) - and we need to get over that. China is not stealing "our" jobs, The Machines are.

But who in their right mind would want a "job"? "Jobs" are for poor, "uneducated" (people with humanities degrees that don't actually know how TO DO anything) people that do not own land.

For eons, our ancestors migrated at risk of life and limb for the promise of land and the security it brought. Today our young people think a corporate job/municipal job and a mortgaged condo represent security, and maybe that was true - for a couple of seconds on the evolutionary day scale for mankind. How much longer that is true is very, very much up for debate.

I was visiting with my Amish friend at Brubacher's Tack in Scottsville, KY. We got to talking about things financial, the Japanese earthquake, and GMO seeds from Monsanto (among other topics)... he was interested in my experiences working in New York in the securities business. I looked around at his 120 acres of land with planted crops, mature fruit trees, hand pumped and windmill pumped wells, barns, draft horses, buggies, 30 head of cattle, 50 head of sheep, gardens, green houses, horse powered saw mill and grain mill, his artisan shop where they make leather tack, harness, and saddles, and his 10 children and 30 grandchildren (he's my age give or take) all living within walking distance (none of whom will ever develop a drug or alcohol problem, go to jail, get divorced...) and I said: "this (gesturing to his spread with my hand) is real wealth. Paper money can be gone in an instant."

I wonder if he could sense a touch of envy.