Dr. Gary forced to pull Articlegreenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread |
Normally I don't do this but it really caught my eye. If Dr. Gary ain't lying on this (no offense intented mind you) then this really is a frightening development. Combine this, with all of the latest news, CEOs worldwide taking early "retirement", Bill Gates bailing at rollover, Clinton having the family all close at hand, Navy in the Harbors and ports, and the fact that the spin is starting to break down and malfunction in some part of the world, then, now I'm really frightened.(My apologies to Homer and Dr. Gary)Update: I Have Pulled the Text to Satisfy the Lawyer. Gulf Oil Exports in Doubt -- Bloomberg
Comment:I have been asked by a lawyer from Bloomberg to remove this story from my site. He says that the link I posted does not work. There is a reason for this: it's too long. Here is the link:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?ptitle=Top%20Financial% 20News&s1=blk&tp=ad_topright_topfin&T=markets_bfgcgi_content99.ht&s2 =blk&bt=blk&s=628e6e5a
You can piece it together in your browser's address box, beginning with the first piece. Use your CTRL-C, CTRL-V clip board option, block by block. I suggest that you do this. This is a very important article. Read the original. -snip-
On Bloomberg's front page, as of 11 a.m., there is no trace of this story. On its Top Financial News page, it's missing. It was there at 7:14 a.m. This article has gone down the memory hole. This is from BLOOMBERG (Dec. 20). In compliance with the lawyer's request, I have pulled the original.
Rut Roh Raggy...
-- Billy Boy (Rakkasan101st@Aol.com), December 21, 1999
I printed the article yesterday. This is scary.
-- No Polly (nopolly@hotmail.com), December 21, 1999.
yep, I tried to read the article and it's gone.Is that one of the most incredibly long URL's you've ever seen or what?
Mike
====================================================================== =====
-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), December 21, 1999.
Hey, this is exactly the way they did in in 1984 (the novel). The protagonist changes history by chaing the text of articles. Hmmmm.
-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 21, 1999.
Hey, this is exactly the way they did in in 1984 (the novel). The protagonist changes history by changing the text of articles. Hmmmm.
-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 21, 1999.
Cant get it, even with careful cut/copy/ paste, keeps giving me back aconnection timed out scren. DId they pull it?
-- LauraA (laadedah@aol.com), December 21, 1999.
Went to the link. Area where article should be is blank.
-- (Here@today.com), December 21, 1999.
I believe R.C. posted pieces of this yesterday and interjected his comments. If you scan the threads from 12/20 you should be able to find it. Link anyone? It does seem awfully strange that Bloomburg would pull it. Pressure? And from whom exactly?
-- Scottsworth (NewEnglander@Ct. com), December 21, 1999.
I tried to post the article but get message, "Not enough storage available to process command" ??????
-- pho (owennos@bigfoot.com), December 21, 1999.
I printed this article yesterday too. They must be scrambling to keep their fingers in all the holes that are starting to appear in the 'spin' dyke. Can TPTB keep it together until rollover? I'm betting the sheeple are so apathetic that they can.
-- Poof! (where@didit.go), December 21, 1999.
RC, the article, and the Link off this thread:
Let the (oil) chips (embedded) fall where they may. UN says Arab oil nations are toast?
-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), December 21, 1999.
Is this the article?
-- Chester (Chester@chester.net), December 21, 1999.
Still available (as of 10:58 PST) at:http://www.prorege.com/north/7181.html
-- pho (owennos@bigfoot.com), December 21, 1999.
Yeah ... same thing here. I was able to go to the page, but the text is blank. Someone hiding something, eh?
-- Bruce (broeser@ccgnv.net), December 21, 1999.
Arab Gulf Oil Producers May Not Be Prepared for Millennium Bug, UN Says By Sean EversArab Gulf Oil Producers May Not Be Prepared for Millennium Bug
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Gulf Arab states responsible for half the world's oil reserves may not be adequately prepared for the year 2000 computer problem, the United Nations and U.S. government officials said.
Computer failure and resulting disruption to production and transportation facilities in the six Arab Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain -- could boost oil prices, which have already more than doubled this year.
Governments and companies in the Middle East won't be ready for the date changeover on Jan. 1, 2000, due to a lack of funding to deal with the ``millennium bug'' computer glitch, the United Nations has said in a report. The bug is a theoretical problem that may cause some computers to malfunction if they misread the two-digit date ``OO'' as 1900 instead of 2000. ``It would have been nice if they had started a year or two earlier, but we're optimistic there won't be any interruption in oil flow,'' said John Koskinen, chairman of the U.S. President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. ``However, our oil inventories are sufficient to handle any eventuality for a few weeks.''
The U.S. government set up a reserve in 1975 to provide an emergency supply of oil in the event of a crisis, such as the Arab oil embargo of 1973. It currently holds about 573 million barrels of oil -- equal to two months of imports -- according to the Energy Department. The U.S. has tapped the reserve only once, in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War.
Oil companies doing business in the Gulf and local officials in the region said they are concerned about the lack of progress being made by government-run utilities, such as power and water.
Saudi Arabia Confident
However, Saudi Arabia, responsible for about 10 percent of the world's daily oil supply, said it is confident its computer systems will be ready to recognize the year 2000. ``Our worst case scenario would be to lose power for an extended period of time,'' said Saleh al-Zaid, head of the Y2K preparation team at Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company that exports more than 6 million barrels of oil per day. ``If that happened we would have enough oil stored at export terminals in the kingdom, Rotterdam and the U.S. to meet all our customers' requirements for about eight to nine days,'' he said.
Most of Saudi Arabia's critical oil installations have their own power plants. These include the Abqaiq facility, which can process 6 million barrels a day, as well as export terminals on the Gulf, gateway for 90 percent of its oil exports.
Mexico Ready, Too
Venezuela and Mexico, two other large exporters to the U.S., also said supplies won't be disrupted by computer breakdowns, and guaranteed all deliveries in the first days of 2000. They agreed to make up shortfalls in world output elsewhere if hobbled by the millennium bug.
Other Gulf producers, however, may not be in good shape.
Kuwait, which holds 9.3 percent of known global reserves, said the various components of its oil industry -- production, refining, shipping -- have different timetables for dealing with the computer bug. ``The production side is the most advanced and is finished testing,'' said Mifhari al-Obaid, an assistant managing director at the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. ``In an emergency we would be able to run manually if the data systems stop.''
At least one-third of all nations won't have fully tested and fixed their computers by Jan. 1, despite the expenditure of between $300 billion and $600 billion by the world's companies and governments, according to analysts. ``As far as some of the oil companies in the area, a lot of them have just looked at what we call the front-end IT systems, and have not looked at the embedded systems,'' said Ron Nelson, a Dubai-based Y2K computer consultant.
Hidden Threat
Embedded systems consist of computer chips used outside of computers -- in power-distribution equipment, pipeline pump controls and other devices. ``Everyone considered Y2K as a PC-based problem, when in reality it was much larger,'' he said.
U.S. companies are joining in the fight against time in the Persian Gulf. Exxon Mobil Corp. said it is working with its joint venture operations in Saudi Arabia to prepare for the bug. ``We have organized training workshops and set up different in-house committees to tackle this issue,'' said Curtis Brand, chief executive officer of Mobil Saudi Arabia Inc. ``We are ... comfortable with the progress.''
Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil are partners in the SAMREF refinery on the kingdom's west coast, which refines about 350,000 barrels a day of crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel and gasoil, a group of fuels that includes heating oil.
)1999 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Terms
-- (Here@today.com), December 21, 1999.
Try here:Arab Gulf Oil Producers May Not Be Prepared for Millennium Bug, UN Says
Reprinted for Educational/Research purposes only:
Arab Gulf Oil Producers May Not Be Prepared for Millennium Bug, UN Says
By Sean Evers
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Gulf Arab states responsible for half the world's oil reserves may not be adequately prepared for the year 2000 computer problem, the United Nations and U.S. government officials said.
Computer failure and resulting disruption to production and transportation facilities in the six Arab Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain -- could boost oil prices, which have already more than doubled this year.
Governments and companies in the Middle East won't be ready for the date changeover on Jan. 1, 2000, due to a lack of funding to deal with the ``millennium bug'' computer glitch, the United Nations has said in a report. The bug is a theoretical problem that may cause some computers to malfunction if they misread the two-digit date ``OO'' as 1900 instead of 2000.
``It would have been nice if they had started a year or two earlier, but we're optimistic there won't be any interruption in oil flow,'' said John Koskinen, chairman of the U.S. President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. ``However, our oil inventories are sufficient to handle any eventuality for a few weeks.''
The U.S. government set up a reserve in 1975 to provide an emergency supply of oil in the event of a crisis, such as the Arab oil embargo of 1973. It currently holds about 573 million barrels of oil -- equal to two months of imports -- according to the Energy Department. The U.S. has tapped the reserve only once, in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War.
Oil companies doing business in the Gulf and local officials in the region said they are concerned about the lack of progress being made by government-run utilities, such as power and water.
Saudi Arabia Confident
However, Saudi Arabia, responsible for about 10 percent of the world's daily oil supply, said it is confident its computer systems will be ready to recognize the year 2000. ``Our worst case scenario would be to lose power for an extended period of time,'' said Saleh al-Zaid, head of the Y2K preparation team at Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company that exports more than 6 million barrels of oil per day.
``If that happened we would have enough oil stored at export terminals in the kingdom, Rotterdam and the U.S. to meet all our customers' requirements for about eight to nine days,'' he said.
Most of Saudi Arabia's critical oil installations have their own power plants. These include the Abqaiq facility, which can process 6 million barrels a day, as well as export terminals on the Gulf, gateway for 90 percent of its oil exports.
Mexico Ready, Too
Venezuela and Mexico, two other large exporters to the U.S., also said supplies won't be disrupted by computer breakdowns, and guaranteed all deliveries in the first days of 2000. They agreed to make up shortfalls in world output elsewhere if hobbled by the millennium bug.
Other Gulf producers, however, may not be in good shape.
Kuwait, which holds 9.3 percent of known global reserves, said the various components of its oil industry -- production, refining, shipping -- have different timetables for dealing with the computer bug. ``The production side is the most advanced and is finished testing,'' said Mifhari al-Obaid, an assistant managing director at the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. ``In an emergency we would be able to run manually if the data systems stop.''
At least one-third of all nations won't have fully tested and fixed their computers by Jan. 1, despite the expenditure of between $300 billion and $600 billion by the world's companies and governments, according to analysts.
``As far as some of the oil companies in the area, a lot of them have just looked at what we call the front-end IT systems, and have not looked at the embedded systems,'' said Ron Nelson, a Dubai-based Y2K computer consultant.
Hidden Threat
Embedded systems consist of computer chips used outside of computers -- in power-distribution equipment, pipeline pump controls and other devices. ``Everyone considered Y2K as a PC-based problem, when in reality it was much larger,'' he said.
U.S. companies are joining in the fight against time in the Persian Gulf. Exxon Mobil Corp. said it is working with its joint venture operations in Saudi Arabia to prepare for the bug. ``We have organized training workshops and set up different in-house committees to tackle this issue,'' said Curtis Brand, chief executive officer of Mobil Saudi Arabia Inc. ``We are ... comfortable with the progress.''
Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil are partners in the SAMREF refinery on the kingdom's west coast, which refines about 350,000 barrels a day of crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel and gasoil, a group of fuels that includes heating oil.
-- (pshannon@inch.com), December 21, 1999.
Ooops! Somebody beat me to it by mere seconds!
-- (pshannon@inch.com), December 21, 1999.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?ptitle=Top Financial News&s1=blk&tp=ad_topright_topfin&T=markets_bfgcgi_content99.ht&s2=blk &bt=blk&s=628e6e5ac58c4426f0689b3ea54ec664
-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), December 21, 1999.
Chester,Yes. That is the article. It hasn't been pulled from Bloomberg. I think most people were just having problems with the loooong URL. Gary North had to pull something else a while back because of copyright problems. Most likely that's what happened here.
-- Bloomer (Long@URL.com), December 21, 1999.
Arab Gulf Oil Producers May Not Be Prepared for Millennium Bug, UN Says
DUH
This is NOT news, expect Major Oil Problems !
-- Dan G (earth_changes@hotmail.com), December 21, 1999.
North just doesn't understand the nature of the news business. But the way he's writing these days, it's beginning to look like he understands less and less about anything. But that's okay. There's 42 buses waiting for him in Canada.Remember, according to North, it's been a "lousy century."
-- Buster (BustrCollins@aol.com), December 21, 1999.