freefall51

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  • Recapping My Great Calls on Oil
    You never should own an airline.
    Aug 17 22:11 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Time to Pull the Trigger on Four Oil Service Stocks
    On RIGs taxes:

    From RIG's 10Q filing ending June 20, 08 I understand

    1.) They are a Cayman Islands company. The earnings are not subject to income tax in the Cayman Islands because the country does not levy tax on corporate income.

    2.) They pay taxes all over the world through operation of various subsidiaries in a number of countries throughout the world. Income taxes have been provided based upon the tax laws and rates in the countries in which operations are conducted and income is earned. .

    3.) They pay taxes in the US only for key subsidiaries that reside in the US.

    4.) The estimated annual effective tax rate for the six months ended June 30, 2008 and June 30, 2007 was 12.5 percent and 14.9 percent, respectively based on estimated annual income before income taxes for each period after adjusting for certain items such as net gains on rig sales and various other discrete items.

    5.) The taxation rate is low and has dropped since last year. Due to the diversity of the places where taxes are paid, I would assume a certain stability of the tax rate. The big unknown is the liability for unrecognized tax benefits that increased to $482 million, including interest and penalties. This may or may not be due some time later. There are some disputes going on with the tax authorities in the US and Brazil.

    As a consolation in case of liquidation of the company the liability probably wont be paid off.
    Aug 17 11:54 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Time to Pull the Trigger on Four Oil Service Stocks
    You are speaking my mind.
    Aug 17 10:28 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Oil: Demand Destruction Overdone?
    I think the steep gradient of the recent oil price increases was as important as the absolute level, shocking a lot of people and letting them pull their horns in. Now the public is conditioned to these prices and with some price relief the shock effect is fading out. We are coming closer to the next round of price increases. Gas prices are still only half of what the Europeans pay. I would agree however that the Americans of all folks in the world have the biggest potential to save energy and make a difference to the oil price.
    Aug 17 10:11 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Negative Trend for Oil Exploration and Production Stocks
    I hate to admit this. But whenever I followed Zacks advice as a subscriber I lost money. Zacks is most mostly a momentum - go with the flow -service. Once the flows has been identified the market turns around on a dime. Better to buy conviction and keep the view on the horizon.
    Aug 14 10:11 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Offshore Drilling Is Not the Solution
    Geophys,

    I can feel your pain.
    Aug 14 01:46 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • $200 Oil: Before Decade's End, Not Year's
    The addition of 50,000 cars/day in Asia adds about a 10 days equivalent of US oil consumption per year to the demand pool.
    Aug 11 10:16 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • The Risks of Falling Gas Prices: Bad Decisions, All Over Again
    At a visit in 2004 at one of the large tar sand players in Edmonton a number of ~ $ 20/ barrel was floated to make tar sands extraction viable. That may not have taken into account some of the massive price increases that the tar sand players later experienced in their projects. The $ target probably went up from there.

    So it not so much the price rather than the complexity of the projects that limits the output of oil from CAN. Should stand at 1.5 mm barrel/day if I am not mistaken or 2 % of the world oil production. Nice addition but not earth shattering yet. Mining and processing sands is way different from just pumping.
    Aug 11 01:36 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Chicken and Egg: A Currency Called the Oil/Dollar?
    The oil industry is doing a absolutely vital job to support this society. That said it is clueless at best and disingenious at worst to tell the people that soaking the oil industry with a windfall tax will do any good. If the oil industry as a body is subject to an additional tax in the same way none of these companies will have a competitive advantage or an incentive to eat that tax. Instead they will pass it onto the people with the following effects:

    1.) The prices for oil products will go up for everybody
    2.) The oil companies will sell less, which partially will offset the additional tax
    3.) The oil companies will have less funds to invest in their business (linked and supported by other peoples business), hire employees (some people) or distribute earnings to their shareholders (again the people).

    There could not be a more stupid way to set the economy up for failure and betray the people's interest. The only guys that really will profit from this short term are the proliticians that sell this nonsense. Politics should only be concerned what they need to do to let business (of all sorts) thrive rather than trowing stumbling blocks.

    If an industry is smart enough to make money it should also be smart enough to spend it. It does not take any no-value-adding polititician to do that for them. Disgusting, in my not so humble opinion.
    Aug 10 16:44 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Crude Oil, Gold Prices Plummet: Time to Get Cautious About Dollar Bears
    The comment is better than the article.
    Aug 10 10:25 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Transocean Reports Solid Earnings, Time to Short?
    I keep thinking if $ 130 oil makes gas cost $ 4/gallon and that is supposedly unsustainable, then look at Germany where the gas price is an approximate double. Due to lack of alternative people drive anyway. To get a sense how much try one of those famous traffic jams like on the A8 between Munich and Salzburg during holiday season. This qualifies as discretionary idling - not even driving.
    Aug 08 19:28 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Houston to Obama: Smell the Oil
    RIG is doing most of their business in foreign parts of the world, where they pay a chunk of their taxes. They still pay $ 700+ M taxes per year in the US. It could be more if the leading political minds in the US were not dumb enough to keep this fabulous company out of their country.

    In the meantime I hope for the sake of my retirement account, that if the windfall tax materializes, RIG will move their headquarters from Houston to the tax heavens of the Caymans in a heartbeat, where they already have an office.

    Sometimes it is better to be happy with what you got and not getting greedy. That freaking little former city organizer that promotes the wind fall tax on oil companies must be out of his mind.
    Aug 07 23:58 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Yes, Oil Prices Can Actually Go Down
    I am going to install a propeller on the back of my truck that drives my car. The stronger the wind blows the faster the propeller will spin and the car will just zoom along. Or does it? May be only backwards? Oh, then I got to install the steering wheel and the headlamps on the backside of the car? Idea, anyone?
    Aug 07 08:48 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Exxon's Record Taxes, Capital and Exploration Spending in Perspective
    Noteworthy indeed
    Aug 03 10:56 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • The T. Boone Pickens Approach
    Fitz,

    All the arguments you bring forward could have an alternative explanation. Let me pick up some:

    1.) Glaciers melting

    Have you recently looked at one? Have you noticed how dirty they have become almost to the point of being hardly recognizable. (I was at the Grossglockner Glacier/ Austria just two weeks ago). There is a lot of dust and dirt from air pollution that precipitates on the ice and accumulates there ove time. Those dark particles absorb a lot of heat from light or IR radiation other than white reflecting snow or ice and this effect lets the surrounding ice melt.

    No connection to CO2 though.



    2.) Increase of storms and insurance claims

    There may be undulating active and less active periods of storm activity. I am not sure if the record taking about storm activity was all that accurate in the past. Galveston went under in the 1900 hurricane because people were not even aware that something bad was coming. I claim the accurate history of storm activity is relatively short.

    A spike in insurance claims has more to do with the increasing density of the population and the idiocy to let people build homes at the shore lines of the Gulf of Mexico and even worse below the water line such as in New Orleans.

    Again no connection to CO2.



    3.) Increased drought

    I believe that during the Great Depression the Midwest was called the dustbowl. So what has changed ever since? Again an increased population density causes more publicity and media attention today if there was a drought.

    Impact of CO2? Actually I have no good grasp on droughts.





    4.) High summer temperatures in cities

    High temperatures were already a subject of a song of the 70’s “Summer in the City”. So this is not a new theme. You are actually confirming the point that I was making. The cities have a microclimate that is impacted by reflective radiation of solid surfaces. Some of it is picked up by temperature meter stations.

    Impact of CO2?

    Only if you see the same temperature increase reported in the city in the cool woods surrounding the city. Talk about that.


    5.) Ancient CO2 enclosed in ice cores

    Again I repeat that the correlation of CO2 with warm periods is not proof that CO2 is the cause of a warm climate. It could be a byproduct of high activity of plant and animal life. You did not make an argument against that.


    6.) Acknowledgement of global warming by vast majority

    I don’t give a damn about that. I have been long enough in the scientific community to understand that the goal is always to get the next investigation project funded. So you got to assume there are a couple of people whose interest is to come up with results that fit their needs and keep the fire alive, while the rest of the population is just copying.

    Ever heard of the king that was naked and every one of his cronies consented, that his clothes were really nice. Only the fool dissented…..



    7.) The changed opinion of GW Bush on global warming

    I think you are gravely mistaken, assuming that GW has changed his mind unless you have talked to him personally and he told you that. GW is not that way, that he is wavering that easy.

    However he may have recognized that he will not get any more bonus points from the world community by holding on to his opinion. At this stage of his career he is more concerned what the lasting picture of him will be in the history books. So he gives in. There is no risk for him. What has he got to loose?


    Your turn.
    .
    Jul 27 13:22 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article

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