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Thursday, September 23, 2004 |
 Does the popular mood in Iraq matter? Are we getting good feedback on what that mood is? The answer to both is probably no. If a population is passive, their desires are inconsequential in determining outcomes. Only those willing to fight matter. Second, given the security situation in Iraq, almost all of the "officials" and reporters returning from Iraq have a very narrow view of the country. They are hiding in hotels and other secure zones. For the most part, the people they talk to are working for/with them (drivers, for example) or work at the limited number of places they frequent. Almost none have talked to people willing to fight or actively support the fight against the US presence in the country (a sense of their morale is critical). Listen for the qualifiers the next time you hear a story from a person that just returned from Iraq.
4:33:17 PM 
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The national oil reserve should be converted into an instrument of market stabilization. Currently, the US maintains reserves in place for times of war or severe supply disruption. The US reserves should be refocused to become a service that sells oil to make up for any political/guerrilla induced production shortfalls. This would require a much larger reserve (1 billion barrels is a target). If Iraqi guerrillas reduce Iraq's production by 1 m barrels, the US should sell oil to make up the shortfall. If Venezuela stops production due to political turmoil, replace their 2.5 m barrels a day. The net benefit to the world from this over the last month? ~$2-3 billion.
11:43:34 AM
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The Belmont club reviews my global guerrilla analysis on the optimal size of terrorist groups. Nicely done.
7:51:00 AM
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WSJ. China's deep pocketed oil companies are on the hunt for big oil. They can't find any given a variety of restrictions (it isn't an open market). Sudan is their only "controlled" source (China currently imports 2.5 m barrels a day, with an estimated 6 m barrels a day by 2015):
China does have promising investments in the Sudan, where China National Petroleum Corp., PetroChina's state-owned parent, holds a 40% stake in a consortium that is developing sizable fields. But for now, the consortium is only producing about 300,000 barrels a day, with China getting a good deal less, analysts say. That is a drop in the bucket when the world is consuming more than 80 million barrels a day, and China more than six million.
7:22:20 AM
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Furl was just bought by Looksmart. Another nice product that I use has been picked up. It is an advanced archive system that allows you to save Web pages, categorize them (via metacontent), and search them. It is one of those systems, that if there was a competitive market for browsers, would be built into the browser right now.
6:58:12 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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