For you pollies or fence sitters who want to immediately be drop-kicked into action...or for you doomers who feel like a good scare (and I'm talking about a GOOD SCARE), go to www.sightings.com, and go to the archives for 1999. Then click on the Nov.30th show where he interviews John Whitley. Listen and weep...

-Orson

p.s.-I'm warning you, this show is NOT for the faint of heart!

-- Orson Wells (wells@whitebulb.com), December 04, 1999

Answers

Please tell me that it's not John Whitley that pea-brain electrical engineer from the Bronx who was on Art Bell not too long ago. If so, don't listen to that guy -- he's really an English Lit Major from some diploma mill out East. If it's someone different, my apologies. I can't get into the site now. All the Pollies must be home listening to it. (yeah, right)

-- (Gandorf@north.side), December 04, 1999.

One more thing, fast-forward 3 minutes through each break except the one at the top of the hour...fast-forward that one until you get to the top of the next hour. John Whitley starts during the second hour.

-- Orson Wells (wells@whitebulb.com), December 04, 1999.

Is that the same John Whitley that posts to this Forum?

-- x (x@x.x), December 04, 1999.

Yep, I'm afraid it's me :)!

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), December 04, 1999.

So, what was so scary about the interview? Was it credible information? What's the deal?

-- Ohio Bob (ohiobob@buckeyestate.com), December 04, 1999.

What was so scary is that a) He is VERY credible b) Even if he weren't (which he is), the facts he gives are incontrovertible c) The way he puts the 'pieces of the puzzle' together is incredibly eye opening d) He makes a very strong case (and I mean VERY STRONG) for TEOTWAWKI even though he never actually says it...

This is an interview that ALL pollies and DGI's should be made to listen to

-Orson

-- Orson Wells (wells@whitebulb.com), December 04, 1999.

I'm scared!..............really...........no.... really!........please..somebody, I'm really scared!.....

-- for real (for@real.com), December 05, 1999.

Comon and just post the important sentences. Nutshell the thing.

-- billburke (billburke@here.com), December 05, 1999.

For those of us who don't have the time to wade through a 2 hour show or whatever, fearing a wild goose chase, just tell us what he said. If it sounds interesting then I'll go there.

-- S. David Bays (SDBAYS@prodigy.net), December 05, 1999.

Yes, what is his "very strong case" for TEOTWAWKI in a nutshell? Not that I believe that Y2K will be TEOTWAWKI, but I am interested in what his argument is.

-- Ohio Bob (ohiobob@buckeyestate.com), December 05, 1999.

When I went there and clicked on the Link, all that came up was a white web page with a nonsense one-line text.

Could somebody please make a hot link to this please? Can't get to the right page.

Cool, same John Whitley! Going to pay more attention to you now :-)

-- want to listen (stymied@site.nogood), December 05, 1999.

Here's the link:

Lin k

Select the November 30 broadcast to listen. Skip forward approximently 1/4 of the way through on the Real Audio slide bar when John Whitley starts talking.

This is the SECOND REPORT I have now heard in two days (Don McAlvany's recent Real Audio) that we are facing MASSIVE oil shortages.

-- Listen to This (revelations16@hotmail.com), December 05, 1999.

Thanks, Orson.

Thank you, Mr. Whitley. I enjoyed listening to the show. You spoke about several subjects of interest to me during this show. Keep up the good work!

-- Sharon (Sking@drought-ridden.com), December 05, 1999.

All I get is a blank web page with just this line on top:

pnm://RAARC001.broadcast.com/shows/endoftheline/9911/end113099.rm?Stre amID=115948

So, can't listen.

-- oh well (sounds@interesting.John), December 05, 1999.

Massive oil shortages.........hahahhahahahhahahaaahahahaha........thanks for the good laugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of the worlds major oil producers have their 'taps' turned on about halfway simply because if they produced any more, the price of oil would plummet to ridiculous levels where they would be giving away the stuff.......

The Saudi's could crash world prices alone by turning up the taps a bit more............where I lived until 3 months ago they are sitting on oil reserves that are much greater than all of that in the middle East countries combined!!

Sorry, this is just another blatant BULLSHIT scare story that appeals to doomers.......there is LOTS of oil. How do some of you guys keep on falling for this foolishness??

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), December 05, 1999.

"...'taps' turned on about halfway"?????? What is THIS frigging BS????!!!!

Look, Craig, if you are trying to out-Cherri Cherri, you are doing a great job. Keep up the good work.

But, like Cherri, don't expect to be taken seriously....

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), December 05, 1999.

You know the guy's a real hard-core doomer when, upon being asked, "How long will it take to fix all of this?"

He replies, "I don't know if it can ever be fixed."

The most terrifying part of his answer is that I tend to agree with him.

-- Me (me@me.me), December 05, 1999.

I've known John (via the net) for quite a few years, and he ain't from da Bronx. (but I am, heheheheh)

He's an ex-pat Brit living in Canada, and I've never seen anything to suggest that he's not honest, sincere, and on the level.

If I ever make good on my promise to take my wife to Toronto and go to the world's best Chinese restaurant -- Sai Woo -- I'm gonna see if he'll join us.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), December 05, 1999.

Craiggy baby, get your facts straight about the oil industry and then come back to this forum. I know more than a little about the oil industry and you are waaaayyyy off base with your comments. You obviously don't know what you are talking about. It's not that oil will be disappearing, it's the problems in getting out of the ground, getting it to tankers, getting it to refineries, refining it, and getting it to customers that is the problem. Got it???

-- Ohio Bob (ohiobob@buckeyestate.com), December 05, 1999.

Great show John, thanks for the heads up Orson.

That's a great post Craig, I printed it out and added it to my all time stupidest quotes list.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 05, 1999.

Bob and Nikoli........

You're both friggin' idiots.........

I know the oil industry.......there is very little problem getting it out of the ground..

You're both paranoid fear-mongering unstable dingbats who wouldn't know the difference between an oil well and your own assholes........

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), December 05, 1999.

You go, Craig! These bozos just love to scare themselves stupid. Any scary story will do, as long as it supports their view of EOLAWKI.

-- Orangeman (not@there.anymore), December 05, 1999.

Craig, you're a knucklehead man, do you realize what you said?

What difference is it going to make that they only have the taps turned on halfway if the refineries are broken? It's not that we don't have the oil, it's that we won't be able to refine it. That's called a supply shortage!

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 05, 1999.

Please, all, don't waste your time with Craig. All he's done is post insults, interspersed here and there with a bizarre assertion out of nowhere. He's obviously not serious.

-- eve (123@4567.com), December 05, 1999.

King of Stench:

Great opportunity to use a phrase your buddy Andy has used on me:

"You are a blithering idiot."

If you think all the world's oil producers are cranking at full tilt, you are one ignorant, ignorant person. Heck, there are hundreds of discovered wells in Texas with caps on them as we speak. FACT. Have been for years. Buddy of mine was working for a drilling company back during the so-called oil shortage in the 70's. In Texas. They'd strike oil several times a month; cap 'em off, move on to the next one.

There will be no shortage of oil.

And as for the man who has strong arguments for TEOTWAWKI: people used to have strong arguments for the earth being flat. Both scenarios are equally likely.

Face it; your Doomer bus has run out of gas. Why can't you folks just gracefully own up to the fact that you're WRONG?

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), December 05, 1999.

Chicken Little,

How much work does it take to make a capped well operational?

And what about the refineries, distribution, electric, etc. -- all essential components to get the oil to market?

-- eve (123@4567.com), December 05, 1999.

The reason US wells are shut is because much of this production is stripper wells and have some of the most expensive operational costs in the world. When oil prices drop below $15, like late '98, its not the big +4,000 barrel a day Mideast wells, or off shores, its the 3 or 4 barrel a day Texas/Okla strippers that become uneconomical. If you don't think US production is past its peak, you are delusional.

In terms of spare capacity, there isn't much. There's virtually none outside of OPEC. Any even within OPEC its flat out false to say they're only producing at half their potential. Like back in the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia can bump it up close to about 10 M barrels a day (from their current 8). The Venz have another 1 or 2 and a few members of the rest of OPEC have another 100-200,000 barrels a day and THATS IT. And some of this will be needed to make up for the political games that just took out Iraq's 2.5 mil barrels/day.

If you had any spare capaity, why wouldn't you be producing it into these $25 crude economics???

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), December 05, 1999.

...and for US capped wells, many are down, AND OUT. Lets again go back to the Gulf War for an example- crude went to $40 and it encouraged another 200-300,000 barrels a day of restarts and domestic production increases - and THATS IT. Compare this to the 70 million barrels a day the world consumes.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), December 05, 1999.

I used to think some of the pollies here had a reasonable leg to stand on, because there was insufficient hard evidence to really form an opinion on just what the results of Y2K were going to be. That all went out the window with the NIST report, and John Kosinem's report on embeds last month. We now know with absolute certainty that major segments of the infrastructure are going to be toast on or shortly after rollover due to failures in embedded systems. Replacement parts for the failed systems haven't even been designed yet because no one knows exactly which ones are going to fail, and the custom applications are virtually unlimited. The ramp up from failure to design to production to repair is a complicated process requiring a fully funtioning infrastructure devoid of time pressures. Obviously this environment is not going to exist due to the nature of the problem.

Our resident pollies dissapeared in masse for over a week after the disclosure of the chip reports, only to return with not logical arguments, but blathering idiocy about uncapping wells and turning up production in existing fields. Denial has now turned to hysteria, because like it or not their own polly master has held their face to the mirror and forced them to peer into the abyss. The polly position is clearly completely untenable at this stage, as anyone with a reading comprehension level above second grade could see. I'm not going to hurl profanities or engage in further discourse with these people, it is pointless and a waste of time , which is our most valuable remaining rescource .

Even a modest reduction of 6 to 8% in refined product is going to result in rationing, and even a best case scenario under currrent remediation levels is going to triple that shortfall. Personally I think the threshold of the systemic domino effect is going to be crossed and oil-power-supply failures are going to cascade to an unrecoverable point in pretty short order.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 05, 1999.

Mentioned above.. the McAlvaney report on oil: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001u nG

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), December 05, 1999.

I believe that if all the oil in the world's oil fields is pumped, refined and burned over the next 30 years, it will result in the total loss of of our planet's eco-structure. It may be already too late to stop the climate changes which will kill our children and grand children. The decision has been made by people we don't know to pull the plug. hang on, like it or not, we are going back 100 years

-- don (don@aol.com), December 05, 1999.

has anyone here heard of the IEA? before you decide on how much oil is left you need to read their mission statement. The US is a member. you will find it at IEA.com

-- terry (tmcmi@alltel.net), December 05, 1999.

Excuse me. I meant IEA.org (I've been sprayed with the chemtrails and have a sore throat and stuffy head affecting my thoughts)

-- terry (tmcmi@alltel.net), December 05, 1999.

Well said Nik.

We have been debating this stuff for a year and a half. Remember that the oil crisis in 73 was ARTIFICIAL and caused by human MANIPULATION. This one will be REAL and caused by infrastructure FAILURE.

-- a (a@a.a), December 05, 1999.

Downstreamer asked......."If you had any spare capacity, why wouldn't you be producing it into these $25 crude economics???"

Very simply Downstreamer, because if they do produce more then the price drops rapidly as evidenced as little as one year ago when oil went below US$11.00 per barrel......

For example the Saudis are MUCH better off pumping say 7 millions barrels a day at $25.00 per barrel than if they pumped out 9 million barrels at the likely price of $15.00 per barrel

And it does not take much extra supply on the market for the price to crash.........that's why they have OPEC.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), December 05, 1999.

Downstreamer asked......."If you had any spare capacity, why wouldn't you be producing it into these $25 crude economics???"

Very simply Downstreamer, because if they do produce more then the price drops rapidly as evidenced as little as one year ago when oil went below US$11.00 per barrel......

For example the Saudis are MUCH better off pumping say 7 millions barrels a day at $25.00 per barrel than if they pumped out 9 million barrels at the likely price of $15.00 per barrel

And it does not take much extra supply on the market for the price to crash.........that's why they have OPEC.

Oh, for many decades countries in OPEC have 'cheated' on their quotas to some degree as long as they felt they could get away with it however they have always paid the price for it later.......perhaps they are getting their brains together for once and sticking to some degree at least to their agreed upon production quotas......

On the other side, don't expect crude oil prices to keep on increasing because if they get too high then there are many oil wells and alternate methods for getting oil out of the ground that then become economical to operate and this imminent extra production then causes the price to go back down again..........it's the law of supply and demand.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), December 05, 1999.

Somebody please unstick this broken record.

One more time. Cars will not run on crude oil. Trains will not haul coal to power plants on crude oil. Jets will not fly with tanks full of crude oil. tanks will not run on crude oil. Ships will not sail with engines fed crude oil. Bearings on billions of machines will sieze up if lubed with crude oil. I don't care how much crude oil the Saudis or anybody else can get out of the ground, it is totally irrelevant. If you cannot pipeline it, ship it, refine it, repipeline it, deliver it to it's final destination, in useable quantities, it is completely irrelevant. Read rinse and repeat until brain engages.

And if I were living in Canada with this pearl of wisdom newly installed in my foggy polly mind I would struggle through the haze down to the basement and check to see if my furnace would run on crude oil. Without Electricity.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 05, 1999.

Nikoli, This Craig seems a little slow on the grasp. I would invite him to spend awhile here in Bermuda to learn firsthand how the supply chain works, but he wouldn't have any time left for preps. (besides we've got enough Pollies, and very little space)

on de rock

-- Walter (on de rock@northrock.bm), December 05, 1999.

Chicken Little and Craig are in total denial about this issue and any Y2K issue, for that matter. Let them be. They will discover the truth soon enough.

-- Ohio Bob (ohiobob@buckeyestate.com), December 05, 1999.

A couple of comments...yes craig...oil production can be ramped up...downstreamer...you are right too about Texas oil wells only producing 3 to 4 gallons a day...however there is a rumor that a BIG oil gusher was capped long ago by the government for national security reasons...don't laugh at that - it could happen...anyway, what you guys don't understand is that it's the chicken and the egg question...if you've got unfrastructure (and I think oil is essential to that) based upon something that might fail all at once like the embeddeds then what comes first the chips or infrastructure(ie. electricity) It's going to take all of the infrastructure intact to replace those chips, let's hope there's lots in storage somewhere.

Lurker 13

-- lurker 13 (lurker13@nowhere.here), December 05, 1999.

Folks:

I think that Craig is right about this one.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), December 05, 1999.

You think Craig is right about this one!!

Well, that makes 3 so far, anyone else want to join the idiot club?

LOL!

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 05, 1999.

I'd like to see the line of logic that came to that conclusion myself Hawk.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 05, 1999.

There is no line of logic. Pollies are incapable of using logic, only mindless spin and idiot drivel. It's pointless to waste time with them, since they probably won't be around much longer anyway.

-- (brett@miklos.org), December 05, 1999.

I'm always amazed at the simple solution or reasoning given by pollies for truly complex problems such as the crude oil to gasoline to into your tank system. If there's a word for beyond complex, it would be applicable here. The sad and scary thing is that some of these pollies are in charge of remediation programs worldwide. We've heard the project leaders time and again issue the "non-event" crap to the press as if their organization is the only one on earth. It happened again in the San Jose Mercury today. If you truly don't know want the problem is, THERE IS NO SOLUTION...

-- PJC (paulchri@msn.com), December 05, 1999.

It is incredible the rationalizations that people can come up with in order to keep themselves from accepting even the POSSIBILITY that what we say is true. I can't decide if it's entertaining or upsetting...maybe it's entertainingly upsetting.

-Orson

-- Orson Wells (wells@whitebulb.com), December 05, 1999.

This doesn't mean that there won't be supply problems, but when I worked as a geologist for Atlantic Richfield in 1968, the East Texas Oil Field was regulated beyond belief--to keep the prices up. It was, and I suspect still is, regulated by the Texas Railroad Commission.

Another interesting tidbit of info: the Prudhoe Bay oilfield, discovered that summer, already had 50 years "PROVEN RESERVES". Not long thereafter, the "oil shortage" was announced.

For those of you who are too young to remember...

ALK

-- Al K. Lloyd (all@ready.now), December 05, 1999.

Funny thing about that press release from the International Energy Association - saying something to effect of "making good" any shortfall"

See, like was pointed out above with respect to the "artificial" shortage from OPEC turning off the tap for a little while, if/when y2k-induced failures cause oil/natural gas/international shipping/refinery problems/distribution problems/internal shipping problems/billing problems/receipt problems - the failures cannot be solved by the IEA. If prblems occur, the IEA can say anything it likes, hell, even Washington can say anything it likes, but the oil won't move, won't pump, won't refine, won't ship until the computerized processes all work.

Now, they may not fail. Some will be fine. But how many? How long will it take to get enough working "godd enough" to get oil moving again - and at what cost to the environment? To the economy?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 06, 1999.