Tag: energy decline

A Local Perspective / Russian Fuel Tanker Arrives in Nome

I present a conversation regarding this news story from a fellow trend researcher who hails from Nome.  [With her permission under anonymity as ‘trend researcher’ or TR.]

One thing about the peak oil research I do, is that it has brought me to the most interesting, local perspectives on all things energy related, in a myriad of different places that I’ve never visited.  The connections through internet technology are vast, marvelous and mind-broadening.  In that spirit, I share this conversation – with some incredible photos from the article. [click to full view] ~ GP

Skier crosses the frozen Bering Sea ice to the Russian tanker Renda on Sunday.
Photo by David Dodman, KNOM Radio Mission Da

TR : The Russian fuel tanker arrived at my hometown to save them (temporarily) from $12 a gallon gas and heating fuel.  My brother was hired at 100 bucks an hour to lay an ice road with his cat for two fuel hoses, stretched 700 yards long connecting the tanker to the town tanks (after the shore-ice fasts around the vessel so there won’t be a spill).

They generally get fuel by barge in fall from Washington State refineries (after the crude is shipped from Alaska to Washington!); however, this year the barges could not make it due to the “Epic Alaska Typhoon” that was supposed to kill everyone but did not.  Then the barge could not get in due to an extremely early pack ice descent from the north, part of the global weirding.

Where do they usually get their fuel from?  In the paper, it stated they loaded up in South Korea and stopped in Dutch harbor for gasoline.

TR:  Russia is the only country with a cargo ship capable of moving behind an ice-breaker ship through pack ice a foot thick.  Meanwhile, believe you me, Big Oil is watching closely since the success of the trip adds fuel to their fire as they plan to drill near Nome through the pack-ice and then get the oil to the refineries…

The Renda off the coast of Nome on Monday, January 16.  Photo by Sue Greenly
Why the near mile long hose?
 

TR:  The ship can’t get any closer to land, very shallow there; Outer Continental Shelf.  The alternative was to fly fuel in by plane, all million gallons of it, planeload after planeload and send prices to levels most would be unable to afford.  All this to help a mere 3,000 people make it through a cold ass winter.

We’re glad to hear your hometown will have the fuel they need this winter and hope your brother makes a nice chunk of change.

TR:  He is a hero and that makes him even happier.
The Healy breaks ice near the Nome on Jan. 14. The Healy is assisting the tanker Renda as it moves into final position for offloading nearly 1.3 million gallons of fuel for the city.  U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow
Read more about this 11 day journey and view more amazing photographs at Alaska Dispatch

A Simple Exercise

Official Excerpt from Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

by Michael C. Ruppert

Take a 20-dollar bill out of your wallet and set it in front of you.  Now take a glass of water and set it next to the cash.  Pretend that the glass of water represents a barrel of oil.  Look at them both for a second.  Then ask yourself a question:  What do they represent?  If you keep distilling your answers down to their purest essence, you will see that the money and the oil both represent the same thing: the ability to do work.  Both are useless if there is nothing to buy, drive or eat.
And yet our economic system, what we call capitalism but which is really something else, is predicated on debt, fractional reserve banking, derivative financing, and fiat currency. Therefore it requires that there must be limitless growth into infinity for it to survive.  Growth is not possible without energy.
Now look at the barrel of oil and realize that the earth is a closed sphere, and that without the oil and natural gas, the financial system is doomed.  There is nothing on our horizon – other than wishful thinking – that can completely replace hydrocarbon energy.  The surest way to see this is to realize that, as the human race starts down the inevitable slope of shrinking oil and gas supplies, we have seen no hydrogen powered F 18 Hornets or M1 Abrams tanks.  We have seen no vegetable oil-powered Bradley fighting vehicles or solar powered guided missile frigates.
There are many factors that the rulers of the American empire now have to manage as they read their own delusional map of the world.  They have to:
  • Apportion dwindling resources among competitors, some of whom possess nuclear weapons;
  • Maintain and expand their control over enough of the oil and gas remaining to ensure their global dominance and maintain order among the citizens of the Empire;
  • Simultaneously manage a global economic system, made possible by hydrocarbon energy, that is collapsing and in which the growing population is demanding more things that can only be supplied by using still more hydrocarbon energy;
  • Acknowledge that they cannot save their own economy without selling more of these products;
  • Control the exploding demand for oil and gas through engineered recessions and wars that break national economies;
  • Hide the evidence that they are systematically looting the wealth of all people on the planet – even their own people – in order to maintain control;
  • Maintain a secret revenue stream to provide enough off-the-books capital for purposes of providing themselves a distinct economic and military advantage, improving their technological posture, and funding covert operations;
  • Repress any dissent and head off any exposure of their actions;
  • Convince the population that they are honorable;
  • Kill off enough of the world’s population so that they can maintain control after oil supplies have dwindled to the point of energy starvation.
In the case of the War on Drugs, I infer that the result of some 30 years of effort, fueled by billions of dollars and managed by the “best and the brightest,” is exactly what was intended.  This is the premise from which I began looking at the events of September, 11, 2001, as I watched the second airliner hit the World Trade Center.
I do not claim to have presented or reconciled every fact.  That rarely happens in a complicated homicide investigation.  The tasks of the investigator are to produce a reasonable explanation based upon evidence that establishes probability, and to eliminate reasonable doubt that a crime was committed and that the guilty have been successfully identified.

If I can make a case in this book that explains these events, identifies the suspects, and makes more sense than any other interpretation of the available and demonstrable facts; if I can then get it out in a way that further empowers our collective learning; if that helps to break down the destructively false paradigm that governs so much of our life today – then I have contributed something that is hope-giving for all of us.  Otherwise, the future looks pretty grim.  This is a race against time.

Michael C. Ruppert ~ April, 21, 2004
Got lifeboat?
The Refreshment Center is home of the
Official Excerpts from Crossing The Rubicon