Ah Yes There We Go Again, Tasteless As Ever
Not that we were ever very tasteful in the first place. Still technically Safe For Work, with no naughty exposure of flesh or swear words and I would like to point out that naked female figure was a statue, which makes it Art and thus permissible. Besides, it was a rather small picture. Art!
Like this one
Where were we? O yes. One of the banes of being a driver in the southron regions of This Sceptred Isle are the 'Just Stop Oil' protesters, who drive their cars to a location, park up and then stroll down the road, blocking traffic. How this will prevent the government from raking in North Sea oil revenues is, currently, unclear to Conrad. They also seem to wear a lot of artificial fabrics, which are made from -
Guess who else doesn't like the JSO folks? Chipmunk Cheeks, that's who. You see, Ruffian oil is a wasting asset, as we are about to show you. What? You thought this was all going to be about a bunch of protesters? Pshaw!
RUFFIAN OIL: The standard metric for measuring Ruffian oil is the price of their Urals exports, which at the time of the 'Joe Blogs' vlog I transcribed this from, stood at $59 per barrel. It has now fallen to $56.80 p.b. - which may not sound like much, until you realise each drop of a dollar means $1,000,000 in lost revenue per day. Art!
Sunny days in Siberia. Make a note of this.
In July the Ruffians cut production by 500,000 barrels per day (hereafter 'B.P.D.'), and 300,000 BPD in September. Now, in December, they are cutting another 50,000 BPD. This cumulative total of 850,000 is 17% of daily production pre-Special Idiotic Operation. At the $59 barrel price, this was an additional daily loss of $50 million or $18 billion per annum. Back in early 2023, when Ural oil prices had spiked, pumping 5 million BPD at $90 dollars per barrel meant a daily income of $450 million per diem, totalling $164 billion per annum. A tidy sum! Art?
This x 164
In December, according to Joe's figures, the Ruffians would be making only $290 million per diem - in fact this is now down to $235 million with the new, lower price for Urals crude. Which amounts to $86 billion per annum, a $78 billion annual loss. Subtracting the new lower daily figure for oil means an annual total loss revised to $96 billion.
Oooops. Art!
"STOP STOPPING OIL!"
OIL PRICES: The OPEC+ countries are now trying to cut global oil production, in order to drive prices up, which would make Peter The Average a happier man. However - it's been a long time coming, that word - the global economy has slowed significantly, partly thanks to the Special Idiotic Operation, and demand for oil has consequently slumped. Prices did go up until September but have nosedived since then. Angola recently pulled out of OPEC+ and this has also affected oil prices. Iran, Putin's bezzy mate, is ignoring OPEC+ and producing as much oil as it can sell. Art!
SOUTH CANADIAN OIL PRODUCTION: The spectre at the feast, you might say. The South Canadian's production of shale oil has been enormous, far greater than any pundits predicted, at about 13 million BPD. So they have substantially replaced the OPEC+ cuts in oil production. Jake Broe pointed out that the Saudis tried to bankrupt these shale oil companies several years back by flooding the market with oil at $37 per barrel. This only retarded their production temporarily. On the other hand, Puffy-Phaced Petrol Pimp looks on this tactic with sheer terror, as it would immediately destroy the Ruffian oil market. This is why he flew to Saudi on his rather limited Gulf-tour of late. Then, too, Saudi's economy is easily able to weather a couple of years of low production thanks to swimming in money. Ruffia? not remotely.
REFINERIES WREKT: Thanks to a slump in demand, oil prices continue to fall, not a trend likely to be reversed in the short term, indeed it may take years for the price to recover. This is bad news for the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler, as the Ruffian economy under him is suffering badly and getting worse. There are now queues for eggs and fish that come straight out of the Sinister Union, and packaged butter is now locked in anti-theft boxes attached to prevent thieving. Art!
 |
| To prevent butter light-fingers |
КАМУФЛЯЖ: Or, 'Camouflage'. Cynical Westerners, like Conrad, are beginning to wonder about Ruffia's supposed 'adherence' to OPEC+ cuts in oil production, because this may be an excuse to hide technical problems with their refineries and pipelines. They were never experts in any oil technology, having hired it all in from the West, and the withdrawal of said expertise has definitely had an effect on their oil facilities. Art!
Siberian oil-fuelled bonfire. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
Your Humble Scribe was going to go on about all the Ruffian oil & gas oligarchs who have MYSTERIOUSLY DIED since the SIO kicked off, but - maybe tomorrow.
Thank You, Oscar And Simon
As you should surely know by now, we here at BOOJUM!'s editorial staff are a finely-honed team of professionals, bursting with vim, vigour and vinegar (when it's necessary to be a bit caustic).
Er - except for the times when I have no idea what I'm talking about. Art!
"Journey To The Galactic Killjoys"? I know what you suspect and no, it's not that Slovakian Youtube channel about infrastructure improvement projects - Art?
Conrad also unsure what "D.A." means. Unlikely to be "District Attorney" and still less the "Duck Apocalypse". Which was a very silly episode in "Disaster 1990" as published by "2000AD" when they ran short of good stories. Art!
Yes, I KNOW they're rats, not ducks. Pretend.
"City In The Sky"
Whilst one crisis on Earth has been avoided, there's trouble brewing Upstairs, which Ace is witness to.
She sighed. How many levels of
manipulation was he working on this time!
Having drifted off into this semi-reverie (very wide of the mark, if she
did but know), she realised with a start that the woman, Emilia, had just
spoken to her.
‘Sorry, chief, miles away. What’d
you say?’
Emilia sighed in a heavily put-upon way that immediately put Ace’s back
up. Snooty cow! She might be the offspring of whoever paid
for the sphere; it didn’t make her Queen.
‘I said, we need to debrief you about your time spent Downstairs.’
Ace glanced at Terry, still deep in discussion about Australian insect
life as he had been for twenty minutes.
‘Me? I wasn’t down there for more
than a few hours.’
Once again came the put-upon sigh.
‘Dorothy, nobody here has ever set foot on Earth, not for a
millisecond. Your information would be
absolutely invaluable, really. Will you
help?’
This request was put so politely that Ace overlooked the disliked
forename and the put-upon sigh that followed.
‘Uh – yes, if you really want me to help,’ she replied, as sulkily as
she dared.
Emilia smiled a sincere smile and Tabbed for a biologist to come and
collect her.
‘They’ll take you over to Broughton, less distracting than sitting in
this big empty hall with us chattering away.’
How very kind.
"The War Illustrated"
Or, war one step removed. Don't forget that TWI deliberately waited to publish pictures and information, in order that the Teutons didn't sniff out anything important. The delay was of the order of two weeks. Can you imagine that nowadays? Information about what's going on in Ukraine can be accessed almost in real time, unless someone official invokes Operational Security. Art!
These are more pictures from Italy, with TWI deliberately playing down the D-Day landings and subsequent move inland, to keep the bally Hun guessing, what?
The picture at top shows a British soldier patiently waiting, in what must be very uncomfortable accommodation, to see if any incautious enemies expose themselves. Note that he's sheltering directly behind a baulk of timber, and is further protected from view or fire by the surviving walls of the house.
The picture of Pignaturo at bottom shows the sadly inevitable fate for many Italian villages that the Teutons chose to make a stand in, because the Allies were guaranteed to pound said town to rubble with artillery and airpower. No worry for the Teutons, it wasn't their town. Taken, incidentally, by Indian troops. What price Ubermenschen?
No, Conrad, This Is Not A Cylindrical Slide-Rule
Your Humble Scribe is probably one of the last generations to use a slide rule, as at about the same time cheap electronic calculators arrived on the market. The idea of a slide rule was that you moved a cursor around, whilst manipulating the central sliding piece of the rule, to match up different metrics on both edges. Art!
Normal SRs were of the longitudinal pattern you see here. There were cylindrical ones that seem to have been for maths poseurs as their means of operation remains obscure to this day. Art!
Then I saw this on "The Daily Beast" website and wondered - Art!
Finally -
I'm finishing this blog at the time I normally begin it, as The Kids are up to visit shortly and there are presents to be exchanged. So, Conrad cannot lurk in his Sekrit Layr as he is wont to do. That would be churlish.
Pip pip pip!
No comments:
Post a Comment