Possible Chinese involvement in fighting ISIS

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texx1

Junior Member
The whole energy independence is getting more unlikely. Shale oil boom in US has pretty much played out since the estimate for Monterey Shale formation (contain 2/3 of US shale reserve) has been reduced by 96%.

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Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California's vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national "black gold mine" of petroleum..

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.....

Meanwhile most shale oil companies are relying on junk bonds to finance their operations which is only sustainable if near zero interest environment continues. It's pretty much another bubble in the most classic sense.

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delft

Brigadier
US leaders know very well what's going on in Iraq and the Middle East, as America has the best State Department and intelligence gathering organs money can buy.
There have been complains about the quality of the State Department for many years. Ambassadors for many countries, including The Netherlands, are habitually recruited from the ranks of the fund raisers for presidential campaigns which leave fewer such places available for professional diplomats. The information available about the situation in countries where US interfere is often woefully inadequate because the diplomats ( Iraq! ) hadn't done the work and the intelligence services got interested at too late a date. Perhaps the price of a squadron fighters would be enough to get a better diplomatic service but the money isn't there.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
The whole energy independence is getting more unlikely. Shale oil boom in US has pretty much played out since the estimate for Monterey Shale formation (contain 2/3 of US shale reserve) has been reduced by 96%.

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Meanwhile most shale oil companies are relying on junk bonds to finance their operations which is only sustainable if near zero interest environment continues. It's pretty much another bubble in the most classic sense.

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Something is very wrong with the LA Times article, because it says Monterey Shale formations is 2/3 of US shale oil reserves, and only contains around 13.7 billion barrels of oil. The US Geological Survey said Colorado's Piceance Basin alone contains around 1.5 trillion barrels of shale oil, and last I looked, a trillion is a thousand times bigger than a billion.

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The U.S. Geological Survey has updated its assessment of in-place oil shale resources in the Piceance Basin in western Colorado.

Development of oil shale has significant technological and environmental challenges and no economic extraction method is currently available in the U.S. Therefore it is unknown how much of the assessed in-place (total amount present) resource is recoverable.

"For the first time in 20 years, we have an updated assessment of in-place oil shale in the Piceance Basin of Colorado," said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. "The USGS scientific report shows significant quantities of oil locked up in the shale rocks of the Piceance Basin. I believe it demonstrates the need for our continued research and development efforts."

The Piceance Basin has an estimated 1.525 trillion barrels of in-place oil shale resources. This study also found an estimated 43.3 billion tons of in-place nahcolite resources in the Piceance Basin. This mineral is embedded with oil shale in many areas, and produces large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when heated in oil shale processing. Oil resources can only be obtained from oil shale rock when heated to great temperatures, 530 to 930 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures are required because oil shale does not contain crude oil but instead contains kerogen, which is an organic precursor to oil that must be heated for oil production.

The Piceance Basin contains one of the thickest and richest oil shale deposits in the world and is the focus of most on-going oil shale research and development extraction projects in the U.S.

This new assessment is about 50 percent larger than the 1989 assessment of about one trillion barrels. Almost all of this increase is due to assessments of new geographic areas and subsurface zones that had too little data for previous research and assessments.

The USGS is updating its assessments of oil shale resources in support of recommendations in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The USGS is also conducting oil shale assessments in the Uinta Basin of eastern Utah and the Greater Green River Basin of southwest Wyoming.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
There have been complains about the quality of the State Department for many years. Ambassadors for many countries, including The Netherlands, are habitually recruited from the ranks of the fund raisers for presidential campaigns which leave fewer such places available for professional diplomats. The information available about the situation in countries where US interfere is often woefully inadequate because the diplomats ( Iraq! ) hadn't done the work and the intelligence services got interested at too late a date. Perhaps the price of a squadron fighters would be enough to get a better diplomatic service but the money isn't there.

You spotted the difference between career State Department civil servants and appointed ones. It's possible to have bad career officials, and good appointed ones, but generally speaking, career State Department bureaucrats actually have some expertise in foreign affairs, while the appointed ones may have no qualifications other than being friends/supporters of Presidents or kingmakers.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
I don't believe you are acting in good faith in the discussions. I have already addressed the notion of free loading many times.

Well you're a hypocrite! Good faith would be if you would answer the question and you undoubtedly are avoiding it. Why? Because you're grasping at thin air. And I've already destroyed your pitiful answers of what China is getting for free just by giving you the definition of a freeloader which doesn't match what you're charging. All you do is point out the investments China has at risk. How is that free again? How hard is it to point out what's free China is getting as you've charged? You even told people to have a broader definition of words in general and you still can't do it. You can't even meet your own requirements. So quit your whining, aka demanding.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
There have been complains about the quality of the State Department for many years. Ambassadors for many countries, including The Netherlands, are habitually recruited from the ranks of the fund raisers for presidential campaigns which leave fewer such places available for professional diplomats. The information available about the situation in countries where US interfere is often woefully inadequate because the diplomats ( Iraq! ) hadn't done the work and the intelligence services got interested at too late a date. Perhaps the price of a squadron fighters would be enough to get a better diplomatic service but the money isn't there.

Blackstone probably hasn't read the headlines this morning. I saw the 60 Minutes interview with President Obama last night. He said the US underestimated ISIS not taking them seriously for two years since they made themselves public.
 

delft

Brigadier
You spotted the difference between career State Department civil servants and appointed ones. It's possible to have bad career officials, and good appointed ones, but generally speaking, career State Department bureaucrats actually have some expertise in foreign affairs, while the appointed ones may have no qualifications other than being friends/supporters of Presidents or kingmakers.
Just having the appointed ones around discourages the career people. That combined with the question Where is the nearest flattop rather than What is the opinion of the diplomates there and in the surrounding countries and a lack of funds leads to a lower quality diplomatic service.
For an even stronger opinion I give a citation from The Saker:
Most of us are used to think in terms of super-power categories. After all, US President from Reagan on to Obama have all served us a diet of grand statements, almost constant military operations followed by Pentagon briefings, threats, sanctions, boycotts, etc. I would argue that this has always been the hallmark of western "diplomacy" from the Crusades to the latest bombing campaign against ISIL. Russia and China have a diametrically opposed tradition. For example, in terms of methodology Lavrov always repeats the same principle: "we want to turn our enemies into neutrals, we want to turn neutrals into partner and we want to turn partners into friends". The role of Russian diplomats is not to prepare for war, but to avoid it. Yes, Russia will fight, but only when diplomacy has failed. If for the US diplomacy is solely a means to deliver threats, for Russia it is a the primary tool to defuse them. It is therefore no wonder at all the the US diplomacy is primitive to the point of bordering on the comical. After all, how much sophistication is needed to say "comply or else". Any petty street thug know how to do that. Russian diplomats are much more akin to explosives disposal specialist or a mine clearance officer: they have to be extremely patient, very careful and fully focused. But most importantly, they cannot allow anybody to rush them lest the entire thing blows up.
From an article posted by The Saker on 27 September:
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Verum

Junior Member
How did the discussion drift from "CHINESE involvement in fighting ISIS" to US involvement and US politics?
 

JayBird

Junior Member
I note the word "demand" is being used often to try to portray something which is obviously not. Constant usage doesn't make it so.

Your frequent usage of "demand" is giving me a headache. We are going into circular mode.

Your frequent usage of "Free loader" is giving a lot more people headache here. You are doing exactly the things you accusing other posters of doing. Which make you a hypocrite.
 
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