The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

You just like saying "fungible"

Doesn't everyone? 

[derspiess]

You just like saying "fungible"

Doesn't everyone? 

Not me.  Sounds like some fungal infection or something.

[Razgovory]

Raz, why are you continuing this conversation with Viking?

Fuck if I know.  If we are to judge Islam by the way it's members behave then my in experience is that they come to this country and get jobs.

[Malthus]

You just like saying "fungible"

Doesn't everyone? 

Not me.  Sounds like some fungal infection or something.

You take the "fun" out of fungible. 

[Barrister]

You just like saying "fungible"

Doesn't everyone? 

I know I do.   

Fungible.

[Viking]

Raz, why are you continuing this conversation with Viking?

Fuck if I know.  If we are to judge Islam by the way it's members behave then my in experience is that they come to this country and get jobs.

The fact is that Muslims are statistically more likely than members of other religions to engage in violence against non-believers. And when they do, they almost always justify that violence by their religious text and teachings.

In Vancouver the only violence carried out against non believers that can could be attributed to relgious intolerance or motivation that I can recall* was carried out by Christians who murdered a doctor who performed abortions.  The murderer and his co-conspirators justified the crime on the basis that they were carrying out God's will. 


* It may well be that homophobic violence may also be an example of that but I don't think anyone has actually claimed it was God's will that they attack homosexuals.


In my community, statistically speaking, Christians are far more dangerous than any other religious group.  This of course is not to suggest that Christians are in any way dangerous.  This is just to point out your logical fallacy of attributing the behaviour of extremists to a whole group.

I too can define my own data set to get whatever result I want.

[The Minsky Moment]

Fun or not, it's not 100% precise to say that oil is generally fungible.  There are different grades or levels of "sweetness" and the existing refinery capacity is set up to accept certain kinds of grades.  Viking could probably supply the technical details.  But some refineries in the US are set up to handle lighter sweet crude; others heavy crude.  It is hard to modify this because refineries are big capital projects, and NIMBYISM basically means new refinery construction is practically impossible.

Right now because of the shale boom, which produces sweeter grades, there is a lot more available sweet oil for the existing refinery capacity - hence the prices of those grades are repressed.  But the refineries using heavier grades have had intermittent problems securing sufficient supply.  As it happens, the Saudi oil tends to be of heavier or sour grade.

[The Minsky Moment]

Also NIMBYism is almost as fun to say as fungible.

[Malthus]

Interestingly, the NON-fungibility of the natural gas market (as opposed to oil) is a major political concern: Russia's threat to turn the gas pipes off gives them more clout in Europe than they otherwise would have.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the Leviathan field goes on-line through Greece. Any of you heavy-hitting economics types know anything about that? Minsky? Viking?

[Viking]

I wanted to write: when they wont need Gulf oil anymore, and it made me think: is it possible that the Saudis are in these powerplays because the US is getting closer of not needing them?

The US already doesn't need them.  The vast majority of our oil imports come from Canada and Mexico.  We get hardly anything from the Gulf.

So why not ditch them?

The fungibility of oil. The US is keeping the world oil market functional, it is not securing it's own oil supply.

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbblpd_m.htm

Canada exports almost as much to the US as the entire OPEC (including angola, venezuala and ecuador). The US produces almost as much as it imports.

[Admiral Yi]

Also NIMBYism is almost as fun to say as fungible.

Not even close.

[Viking]

Fun or not, it's not 100% precise to say that oil is generally fungible.  There are different grades or levels of "sweetness" and the existing refinery capacity is set up to accept certain kinds of grades.  Viking could probably supply the technical details.  But some refineries in the US are set up to handle lighter sweet crude; others heavy crude.  It is hard to modify this because refineries are big capital projects, and NIMBYISM basically means new refinery construction is practically impossible.

Right now because of the shale boom, which produces sweeter grades, there is a lot more available sweet oil for the existing refinery capacity - hence the prices of those grades are repressed.  But the refineries using heavier grades have had intermittent problems securing sufficient supply.  As it happens, the Saudi oil tends to be of heavier or sour grade.

US refineries are set up to handle "West Texas Intermediate", which is an oil with a certain density (increases with higher atomic numbers for the hydrocarbon molecules in the mix).... well sort of... In the US that is the traditional benchmark because so many refineries have historically used it, but that changes. For example the entire point of the Keystone Pipeline is to move down heavy oil from the tar sands of canada to the same refineries which 10 years ago were refining the much lighter oils from the gulf. There are actually places in the world where you can put crude (oil out of the ground) straight into a tank and drive a diesel engine. 

n.b. sweetness of oil refers to sulpher content.

There is a basic spot market. This is the WTI price in the US and the Brent price in the UK. These prices refer to specific early fields which were eventually benchmarks for pricing all the other kinds of the crude in the market. These are used a benchmarks for other crudes of higher or lower API Gravity (a oilbusiness specific way of rating oil quality) so contracts for the other types of crude will be relative to the spot market in Brent and WTI. Note the Brent field has been shut down iirc, so there is no true brent anymore, just the benchmark and oils which are mixed to meet the benchmark.

So oil isn't fully fungible from a refiners point of view and the saudi oils (mostly from an ancient coral reef half the size of the great barrier reef) are mostly very light. So a big explosion there would mean that refineries would have to changetheir process streams adding more crackers , or working the ones they have overtime. I suppose there is somebody out there who has already realized that a bit of surplus cracking ability at refineries might be useful.

However worst case scenario if you have to swap out the easy to refine saudi oil for nasty canadian tar is that the refinery's production capacity is reduced after a week long shut down to adjust the refining process.

[mongers]

Thank goodness the discussion has turned to proper stuff like oil, rather than nonsense like or about religions. 

[Viking]

Interestingly, the NON-fungibility of the natural gas market (as opposed to oil) is a major political concern: Russia's threat to turn the gas pipes off gives them more clout in Europe than they otherwise would have.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the Leviathan field goes on-line through Greece. Any of you heavy-hitting economics types know anything about that? Minsky? Viking?

Leviathan is probably nice to have, but it isn't a huge field in any way. Probably larger than average though... It will make israel self sufficient in gas though.

[Viking]

Also NIMBYism is almost as fun to say as fungible.

My favorite word is "Thixotropic", meaning to lose viscocity if mechanical energy is applied to a fluid, like how if you shake ketchup is starts flowing.