Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries

Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries:

"The top sources of US crude oil imports for May were Canada (1.840 million barrels per day), Saudi Arabia (1.579 million barrels per day), Mexico (1.116 million barrels per day), Venezuela (1.030 million barrels per day), and Nigeria (0.851 million barrels per day)."

I found this very interesting. Canada is our single largest source of crude oil, about 17% more than Saudi Arabia. Iraq isn't even in the top five, and if you walk through the list, it's not a very pretty sight. Lots of unstable countries, and countries that are not very friendly with the United States. These include Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, and Libya.

I'm posting and commenting on this list for several reasons.

First, to my friends in Canada. If Karl Rove wants to visit, I highly recommend not letting him into your country. No good can come from a visit by Rove. Double that for McCain, but he was already there and apparently he doesn't realize Canada is a foreign country. I would keep an eye on him. He keeps running ads about off shore drilling and his energy plan. After re-reading through his plan, it's a quick read and requires no technical background, he *may* be considering Canada part of his plan. Again, keep an eye on him.

Next, I don't agree with either party, but at least Obama is using credible technical resources (academic and industry) rather than industry-only.

Here is what I think the US should focus on in the next five to ten years:

• Drill off shore and in ANWAR. By drill, I don't mean pump oil from production wells, perform the studies necessary to accurately estimate the size and scope of any and all reserves in the United States. There is little risk to the environment and it will provide accurate information, currently not available, to make an informed decision.
• Nuclear Power. This has to be revisited. Consider a standard design for reactors, which increases safety and reduces cost. Also, plan to reprocess waste material instead of burying it in a salt mine. It doesn't have to be safe enough for humans to ingest, but somewhere in between. Charter the appropriate scientists to come up with some options and review, and this is not a ten year study, give us your best information within a year. At this point, we will have enough information to make an informed decision. Sound familiar?
• Forget ethanol.  It can’t be pumped, it’s hydrophilic (absorbs water), it’s corrosive, poor net energy, need I go on?
• Forget Hydrogen, at least for now and as a vehicle fuel.  Read “The Hydrogen Myth” and other references.  Look at the specifications for the BMW mixed fuel car – it generates half the performance when using hydrogen fuel.
• Biofuels are viable, just don’t compete with food (use non-food source material), and target generation of diesel or clean burning oils.  I’m quite interested in generating methane and other simple hydrocarbons from algae.
• Wind power generation – there are huge possibilities in some areas of the United States.
• Solar generation – we need tax benefits and contracts to sell back power to local companies at pre-defined rates.  Tax benefits have to be long term to make it a simple decision for homeowners and encourage wide spread adoption.  I’m an engineer and I can barely figure out how to complete energy rebate forms for my new HVAC system installed last year.  One page and you should be able to do the math in your head to figure out the payback and net cost.

 

Technorati Tags: politics,energy

Gas Prices - what's the fuss?

Businesses are significantly impacted by the price of gas, particularly trucking, but I am tired of hearing news outlets incessantly beating the drum about the price for regular gas.

I maintain that for every dollar increase in the price of gasoline, the cost to the average consumer is $50 per month.

The average person in the United States drives 12,000 miles per year.  The average car gets 20 mpg.  At this rate, they buy 600 gallons of gas per year.

12000 miles per year/20 miles per gallon = 600 gallons/year

The price of gas has increased about $1 per gallon since last year, so this is $600 per year or $600/12 = $50 per month.

I'm more concerned about the increase in the price of cream for my coffee, which has almost doubled in the past year.  Bread and other staples have increased at an alarming pace, and quite frankly, I spend quite a bit more on food than gasoline in a month.

$50 per month is less than the cable bill for most households.  $50 per month is less than my than my home water/sewer bill. $50 per month is less than I spend on coffee.

Every time I see the news on TV, they lead with the price of gasoline.  I don't care about the price of gas, I care about health insurance, food, education, and my local taxes.  $50 per month is a rounding error on my monthly budget, not something that I need to hear about every night.

 

Technorati Tags: economy,energy,news

MSN.COM - W32.Spybot.Worm in the wild

There appears to be some malware in the wild.  I received a MSN note from one of my MSN Contacts this afternoon.  The FQDN for the link was gallery.aokhost.com and the link includes my MSN e-mail address and it has a sentence about "Hey, is this really your pic?" or a similar phrase.  The URL includes a PHP script and the users MSN contact (username@domain.com).  It appears the PHP script loads the malware and the user Contact is used only to lure you to click the link.  The malware is dumped to C:\Windows\msn.com on my Windows XP Pro system.

I am running Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 with current virus definitions. It appears to have run once, then SEP11 quarantined it, but a system restart was required to fully remove it from my system.

It does not appear that any other damage was done to my system other than hitting my Contacts and spawning the IM's to everyone on my list.

Symantec Corp Edition 10.1 with current virus definitions will remove the infected file after a system restart.  The Symantec link is below and they have a whole page of remediation tools for W32 malware.

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2003-053013-5943-99

Technorati Tags: malware,MSN,software,antivirus

RSS Web 2.0 Suite for Individuals - NewsGator

RSS Web 2.0 Suite for Individuals - NewsGator

I paid for FeedDemon and I use the mobile client as well. It's a great product and I am lost without it, but the thing that is not pointed out in the press releases is that Newsgator has a great subscription model. You also have to consider the Newsgator applications (FeedDemon, etc) as part of a larger system.

You subscribe to Newsgator, this central subscription on the Newsgator server. Client software can then be installed on laptop, desktop, mobile clients and your view of the central subscription can be managed depending on your client needs. With your subscription, your client (mobile, web, and Feeddemon) will synch with the central server, so if you read a bunch of feeds at work, flagged some for follow-up or saved them to a Clippings folder, when you log in at home, they are already marked as read, or flagged into your Clippings folder.

For me, this is well worth the subscription, not only from a time savings, which is huge in my case, but because review of the Clippings let's me rapidly review lots of feeds and distill and manage the good stuff.

Feedstation is another application that is linked to Feeddemon. It can be configured to automatically download multimedia content of RSS feeds (typically, but not limited to audio podcasts) onto my primary workstation where I sync it with my Zune (I know your a Mac guy, but I *really* like the Zune with 2.3 rev firmware - I can synch podcasts wirelessly and have FM radio for working out on my bicycle trainer (Christmas gift to Dad) at home).

Technorati Tags: RSS,synchronization,tools

Audiograbber - MP3 conversion utility

Audiograbber  is my preferred MP3 conversion utility.  It does an awesome job, it will auto generate a directory hierarchy based on the artist name and album name and you can customize the MP3 name based on track, title, etc.  It supports Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and other output formats.

I like to use the LAME (LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder) add-in for MP3 support.  After searching Google, it appears that the ad-driven freeware sites are getting too high up in the Google Search order.  For reference I recommend searching sourceforge.net for open source solutions before you go to an ad site.

Technorati Tags: mp3,LAME,CD,music,sourceforge