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Tuesday, August 17, 2004 |
 AT outlines a debacle surrounding "Saddam without a moustache" and the siege of Sadr (disturbing and difficult to confirm given the news black-out in Najaf). A measure of the effect of the various fatwas issued by the ayatollahs is that by last Saturday, no fewer than 4,000 Iraqi security forces in Najaf were reported to have defected to Muqtada's Mehdi Army. Officials at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense admitted, for example, that "more than 100 Iraqi national guardsmen and a battalion of Iraqi soldiers chose to quit rather than attack fellow Iraqis".
5:14:38 PM 
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Sadr continues to disrupt oil production (and internal oil transportation). The militia is preventing repair to the central pipeline (it's still burning).
10:22:53 AM
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Houston Chronicle: "Expats are leaving in large numbers. I'm talking about the expats with a lot of petroleum experience. It's a brain drain. The terrorists are targeting petroleum expertise. They're trying to embarrass the royal family."
10:11:01 AM
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Sean Park adds an important factor to the thinking on future oil prices: Given the relatively inelastic short term nature of crude oil supply/demand curves, it is natural that 'front' contracts exhibit much higher volatility that longer dated contracts. Indeed over the past 15 years, localized spikes in oil prices have been proportionately much more isolated to spot or short dated contracts. Yesterday you could hedge Nymex Light Sweet Crude for Dec2009 delivery at $36.13pbb...this is up from under $30pbb in June and as $27pbb only 3months ago: an increase of 33% !!!
NOTE: This demonstrates that if we use market indicators like the price of oil as a measure of our success, we are losing.
8:22:29 AM
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Time. Pentagon to contract study of potential casualties in Iraq (with the Dupuy Institute). Unfortunately, old models of guerrilla war won't serve as a method of calculating future casualties.
8:02:02 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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