Capitalism

Texas Fracking and the Death of Big Oil

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It isn’t often you see the death of a major worldwide industry. Last week I saw the death of the “Big Oil” economic model. It just died at the hands of Texas oil frackers who have developed a new “disruptive technology” that has made obsolete all the pillars of technology underpinning large, vertically integrated oil companies. More importantly, the same is true of all the petro-states that nationalized Big Oil’s assets in the 1960s to make all the state oil companies around the world today.

I found this out doing my day job last week as a Defense Department quality auditor visiting a mid-sized oil service company diversifying into federal contracts. The meeting was about issues with the contract they won and touched on others they have bid on. As a side bar at lunch the following points about their main business came up:

1. Oil field spending has died. Rig count in the USA is the lowest it has been since 1940.
 
2. One oil rig controller company these folks worked with saw a year over year drop of 72% in its business.
 
3. Another company they supplied had their “Cap-X” budget drop from ~$400 million for 2015-2016 to little over $30 million for 2016-2017.
 
4. One drilling company they supplied went from 120(+) new wells last year to _12_ this year.
 
5. This supplier sold a lot of copper tubing for “frack-log” drilling. That is the drilling of holes in good oil-bearing rock without fracking rock for oil immediately — and here is the new part — to take advantage of a new long-flow fracking technique.

While most of the points above are due to the Saudis’ oil price war on Texas frackers. An ex-Big Oil geologist I know put it this way —

The entire reason for the price drop was because the Saudis wanted to destroy fracking in the United States in order to keep us dependent upon them in order to keep them getting a free defense. The Saudis will have to diversify and start spending money on defense before the price goes back up, or they will be in serious trouble.

The technique in Point #5 above marks another “fracking revolution” that is of growing importance to the USA. This new fracking energy revolution will upend the world order as we know it. Political winds willing, America may well be a net hydrocarbon exporter in five to eight years.

Explaining why that is requires some background in Texas oil fracking.

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Book Review: The Myth of the Robber Barons

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The Myth of the Robber Barons, by  Burton Folsom

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MythOfRobberBaronsCover‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ ~George Orwell, 1984

Controlling our view of the past – even our view of the present – is an obsession with the Progressive Left. Our understanding of history  deeply influences our thinking and philosophy. Among other things, it shapes our view of both the morality and social-economic effects  of  free market capitalism versus socialism.

To that end, a group of  enormously successful people from the 19th century were  demonized by turn of the century  Progressives and have continued to be demonized as The Robber Barons by  Leftist historians in primary school and college texts ever since. More subtly, through dark Orwellian references in Leftist entertainment programs and media, they have been thoroughly maligned in the popular imagination as well. Yet few people know who these people actually were and what, for better or worse, they actually did in their lives and how their works affected our lives even today. In his book, Robert Folsom sets out to take fresh look at people we would today call entrepreneurs.

 

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The Mars Chronicles

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Little noticed by many, but SpaceX has moved another step towards a Mars landing (from Nasa Spaceflight).

SpaceX has entered  into an agreement with NASA for a Dragon mission to Mars, set to take place as early as 2018. Known as “Red Dragon”, the variant of the Dragon 2 spacecraft will be launched by the Falcon Heavy rocket, ahead of a soft landing on the surface of Mars. The mission is also part of an agreement with NASA to gain further data on Mars landings.

Getting mankind to Mars was the original purpose for the creation of SpaceX. Everything they have done, from building the Falcon rocket to creating the commercial launch service, has been to lay the technological and financial foundation  for putting people on Mars, permanently. The next developmental step is to build and test the Falcon Heavy, a three booster version of the Falcon rocket.

FalconHeavy
Falcon Heavy

Falcon Heavy will generate over 5 million pounds of thrust from 27 Merlin engines  (9 engines x 3 cores) and have a payload of 119,000 lb to LEO and 30,000 lb to Trans-Mars  Injection orbit (TMI) and 26,000 lb direct to Mars. Launch cost, minus payload, is expected to be around $90 million. According to Elon Musk,  “Falcon Heavy will carry more payload to orbit or escape velocity than any vehicle in history, apart from the Saturn V moon rocket.” Falcon Heavy is expected to debut this year and make its maiden voyage from Vandenberg AFB. According to their agreement with the USAF, certification to carry national security payloads will occur after 3 successful flights and 2 successful consecutive flights.

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CRS-8 Dragon: Hosted Webcast

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It’s steps like this that move the space program forward. Notice this wasn’t done by NASA or ULA or the ESA. It was done by a private company that didn’t exist 15 years ago. 37 minutes, including the launch, recovery of the 1st stage, and deployment of the Dragon capsule.

BTW, very cool to me that Spacex did not require the help of a traditional media company for any of this. And it’s actually much better than anything they typically produce. In addition, the people in this video are in the Hawthorne, California, SpaceX facility where these rockets are designed and produced. They designed and built this rocket. And they’re watching it perform almost real time. How amazing is that?

One of the early developmental tests:    GRASSHOPPER 325M HOP | SINGLE CAMERA (HEXACOPTER)

Government, the things we do together.

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Barack Obama is fond of describing government this way.

As President Obama said the other day, those who start businesses succeed because of their individual initiative their drive, hard work, and creativity. But there are critical actions we must take to support businesses and encourage new ones that means we need the best infrastructure, a good education system, and affordable, domestic sources of clean energy. Those are investments we make not as individuals, but as Americans, and our nation benefits from them.

That was a reaction to Romney’s criticism of his silly comment.

I prefer the quote attributed to Washington.

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

Now, we see a new imposition.

The Department of Labor says its so-called fiduciary rule will make financial advisers act in the best interests of clients. What Labor doesn’t say is that the rule carries such enormous potential legal liability and demands such a high standard of care that many advisers will shun non-affluent accounts. Middle-income investors may be forced to look elsewhere for financial advice even as Team Obama is enabling a raft of new government-run competitors for retirement savings. This is no coincidence.

Labor’s new rule will start biting in January as the President is leaving office. Under the rule, financial firms advising workers moving money out of company 401(k) plans into Individual Retirement Accounts will have to follow the new higher standards. But Labor has already proposed waivers from the federal Erisa law so new state-run retirement plans don’t have the same regulatory burden as private employers do.

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