Captain's Quarters -

Since when did Russia need to import uranium? They're the #5 producer of the stuff. Unless, perhaps, they wanted to make sure that the fallout from the Iranian nukes wouldn't point back to a Russian source...

Gah. I clearly managed to bugger the HTML on that.

Hey way back in 1991 while living in Moscow, Russia I heard all sorts of stuff about the Russian mafia selling under the table state secrets and weapons to any well-oiled mid-eastern kleptocratic dictator; Russia's 'under the table' arms dealings are all over the mideast.

The Russian mafia guys weren't walking around with at least thirty bodyguards per boss and wads of cashola because they struck in rich in oil.

Of course the US State Dept is determined to show that the world is full of peace, living and understanding ay whatever the cost.

After reading this thread I get the idea that a nation has the right not to sell its resources to another nation if it so chooses. Australia, for example, has the right not to sell Russia Uranium if it doesn't want to. I agree.
I guess there are different rules for different countries. If Venezuela of Iran decided not to sell the US oil, most people here would think an invasion of either country would be justified. Does this mean that Russia would be justified in invading Australia?

Stuck in oil dave?

dave -- WTF? We don't import Iranian oil to begin with. And Chavez needs the money from oil sales to pay off his personal army (100,000 AK-47s) and buy good will from other S.A. nations. If any nation decided not to trade with us, it is their loss, not ours.

OK, here's the plan: Bush should send Ambassador Joe Wilson to Australia to check up on the yellow cake sales to Russia. Wilson is a highly regarded international expert on nukear stuff. Right behind Jimmah Cahtah. If there is a camera around, Chuck Schumer could go along to distract the press.

Dave, petroleum is a global market, and no nation can unilaterally prevent another from purchasing it. If Cahvez decides not to sell the US any oil, we'll get it elsewhere. It's all one big market.

But feel free to construct straw men and invade other countries with them if you like.

“…petroleum is a global market…”

I did not realize that Uranium is not a global market, and is therefore a different case. Can you explain the difference to me?

“We don't import Iranian oil to begin with.”

This is about the 37th time I’ve had to go through this. Why can nobody on the right deal with a hypothetical question? I believe the reason is an inability to answer the question, so instead you decide to debate the feasibility of the hypothetical. OK, I’ll refine my question. Let’s say Mexico’s next election is free and fair, and Olbrador gets elected, and Mexico becomes evil. Let’s also say that democracy spreads from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, an Islamic government gets elected in Saudi Arabia, and they also become evil. Then the evil countries of Venezuela, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia all decide independently to not sell the US oil. I do not believe this shortfall could be replaced, even in a global market. If this happened, would we have a right to invade these countries or not? If so, would it be wrong for Russia to invade Australia?

"If any nation decided not to trade with us, it is their loss, not ours."
Really? Last I heard we import a lot of stuff. I don't think the US produces anything anymore. So how would we maintain our standard of living?

We don't import Iranian oil. President Clintion imposed sanctions by Executive Order in 1995, reinforced by the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act 1996 and the Iran Sanctions Act 2006, plus a few more executive orders and less important Acts. Stop making shit up, dave.

@ Dave
If Venezuela of Iran decided not to sell the US oil, most people here would think an invasion of either country would be justified.

That is an interesting comment.
Since the US decided decades ago not to purchase Iranian oil , it boggles the imagination that readers of this blog would support an invasion of Iran in response to Iran’s deciding not to sell the US any oil.

As regards Venezuelan oil, there are few refineries in the world that can handle its low-sulfur crude.

Is there perhaps a link between incoherent writing and incoherent thinking?

""If any nation decided not to trade with us, it is their loss, not ours."
Really? Last I heard we import a lot of stuff. I don't think the US produces anything anymore. So how would we maintain our standard of living?"

And they need to trade with us, we are a huge market for other countries goods. Not selling to us would hurt them. Sellers need buyers. BTW, we do make lots of things here, and if anyone stopped selling to us, as long as there was a demand for a certain item, someone here would start making it.

And are you old enough to have lived through the oil boycott done by OPEC? Or have at least learned about it? A very good book on the oil industry -- its rise and all the geopolitics going on with it is "The Prize" by Daniel Yergin. I suggest you buy/borrow it and read it. It will help you understand that petroleum is a commodity, and as long as there are willing sellers & willing buyers, there will be a market for it.

Uranium is a substance, that when processed a certain way, can create a device that will destroy a city. That's why uranium isn't equivalent to oil.

Dave notes at 10:16 am that ".....Last I heard we import a lot of stuff. I don't think the US produces anything anymore. So how would we maintain our standard of living?"

Uh, how do we pay for all the imported stuff? We must be stiffing the world with a lot of funny money and they are too dumb to know it.

As far as our standard of living is concerned, if you believe the mainstream media, we are all just faking it anyway. Gosh, the housing market is collapsing faster than the banks can evict people. By this time next week, we will be scrapping over FEMA trailers.

The end is near! The end is near!

rbj:
"Uranium is a substance, that when processed a certain way, can create a device that will destroy a city. That's why uranium isn't equivalent to oil."

Wow! An answer! Will wonders ever cease. So it would be OK for Australia to stop selling Russia Uranium because of what it can be used for, and therefore it is not OK for Russia to invade Australia for stopping the sale of it. Oil is different, because it does not have the properties of Uranium as far as weaponry, and it would therefore be OK for the US to invade countries that stop selling it to us.

That is cetainly a point of view. My problem, however, is that the US war machine is certainly dependent on oil. The military accounts for almost half of the total US consumption. A severe oil shortage will also have its effects on the US war machine. If Australia can stop selling Russia Uranium because Australia does not like what Russia does with some of it in a military sense, why can't countries stop selling the US oil if they don't like what we do with it in a military sense? Do they have that right?

heliotrope:
"Uh, how do we pay for all the imported stuff? We must be stiffing the world with a lot of funny money and they are too dumb to know it."

That's exactly correct. I am not an expert on economics, but I certainly do know that this comment is correct. Nothing is produced in the US. The only thing the US has is its military to enforce resource acquisition and the printing press for the US dollar. It's not that the rest of the world is too dumb to know that the US only survives by printing money, but the situation is not bad enough for them to react - yet. The day that China and Japan stops buying the US's funny money, the US economy goes down the crapper. Other countries will be hurt as well, but not nearly as much as the US. How do you think our economy would look if we couldn't use our military to steal resources and had to make our own products? Things would (and will) change.

"why can't countries stop selling the US oil if they don't like what we do with it in a military sense? Do they have that right?"

Yes they do. And in fact, as I pointed out before, OPEC did just that in the early 1970s. I take it you are young and not a student of history to have not known that, and that the US's response was to not invade anyone.

And there is another critical difference between oil & uranium. Oil is found world wide, U, not so much, so it is easier to control.

I'm not worried that oil producers are going to suddenly boycott the US, as we are an, if not the most, important market for oil. The countries that sell oil tend to like making money and hence need big buyers.

rbj:
"Yes they do."

That's all I was looking for. I think you are in the minority on this question among the right, however. I think the majority would support an invasion if my scenario developed, especially once its effects developed, which would be much greater than in the 70's. Thank you for the answer.

"Oil is found world wide, U, not so much, so it is easier to control."

The top 5 countries with uranium reserves have 66% of the worldwide total. The top 5 countries with oil reserves have 61% of the worldwide total. The situation is very similar.

"I think you are in the minority on this question among the right, however. I think the majority would support an invasion if my scenario developed, especially once its effects developed, which would be much greater than in the 70's. Thank you for the answer."

First of all, I'm an independent. (e.g., I want the War on Drugs to end -- legalize and regulate and tax them).

Second, your "I think". To me, that seems more projection on your part, looking to reinforce your world view, rather than having an open mind to other's opinions & views.

Dave, your answer is Yes, they would have the right to stop selling to us. We would not have the RIGHT to invade them over this issue.

It's happened in the past.

I guarantee you that somewhere, a discussion would occur over whether we would attempt to secure an oil supply to keep our entire economy working (not just the military, but the entire civilian infrastructure as well), but that would tend to be by economic means rather than by brute force, such as you see in the former (yeah, right) Soviet Russia.

Econ 101: Oil is a commodity, that means that the buyers don't really care much where they buy it from, it's all pretty much the same.

That means sellers are fungible, i.e., they are easily replaced. Only by organizing the sellers into a cartel can there be any possibility of actually excluding certain buyers from the market. OPEC tried using control of oil as a political weapon in 1973, it proved ineffective, at best, counter-productive, at worst.

Cartels aren't actually stable, every member has a financial incentive to "cheat", and sell outside the cartel rules.

Even if you could get a new Cartel going, and to exclude the United States, one of the predictable effects of a new embargo would to spur the development of oil-shale, of which the US has tremendous reserves. Once a price spike occurs that is big enough and long enough to trigger oil-shale development, the price of oil-shale derived fuel will eventually decline down to cheap oil levels. This, by itself, is a big deterrent to oil producing nations.

LarryD:
Comparing oil and uranium deposits, I don't see much of a difference between the two. Uranium should be just as fungible as oil. Your comments should apply to uranium, so the subject of this thread is plain silly. Maybe the Captain should shut it down.

Wow, dave, you don't see much of a difference between U and oil?! Seriously, you need to start studying.

Dave,

There is no compairson between uranium and crude oil.

Uranium, unlike crude oil, is VERY rare (much more so than gold) and is very hard to locate, extract, refine, and stockpile. It's an element, like carbon, and not a compound, like crude oil. Only a few countries have any uranium available to mine and sell. There is no global uranium market like there is for crude oil. That makes it a very valuable commodity and, since the supply is very limited, the denial of sales from one country to another would be devastating to the receiving country as there isn't any alternatives available.

Russia would be hard pressed to replace the amount of uranium they receive from Australia. It's not like crude oil, which can be replaced by other alternative sources like biofuel or methanol and can be bought on the global market regardless of source. Uranium can only be acquired through direct negotiation with, and consent of, those countries that have it available.

Ray:
When I look up uranium exporting countries, I find a similar spread as when I look up oil exporting countries. I don't know what your talking about.

"It's not like crude oil, which can be replaced by other alternative sources like biofuel or methanol..."

Oil cannot be replaced in any significant quantity by biofuel or methanol.

Rbj:
“….that seems more projection on your part, looking to reinforce your world view, rather than having an open mind to other's opinions & views…”

My view on the matter comes from reading right wing material, not projecting. Here is an example:

“Chavez and his allies in Iran and China should be made to understand that if oil is used as a weapon, the response we make will be with every other weapon -- military or economic -- we choose in response to such an attack.”

spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9851

I have read much more, but am too busy to find them right now. The right makes these types of statements all the time.

Ray:
“There is no compairson between uranium and crude oil.”

I can compare them. Look at the uranium and oil reserves from these two sources. Both give country reserves in percentages. Do you see a big difference that I cannot?

nationmaster.com/red/pie-T/ene_oil_res-energy-oil-reserves

uic.com.au/nip75.htm

Dave,

Your ignoring the most basic differences between crude oil and uranium. There is only a few thousands of tons if uranium available world wide, yet there is trillions of tons of crude oil available. America use more crude oil every day than the entire world's supply of uranium. That lack of availability makes uranium VERY expensive.

Uranium, being extremely dangerous, is highly regulated and controlled and can only be acquired by direct negotiations with another government. Crude oil is not. I can, for example, buy any amount of crude oil I could afford from any company that wished to sell to me regardless of the reduction of supply by a country that supplies oil, but I couldn't get ANY uranium from any source at all unless I negotiated through one of the limited amount of governments that supply it. Oil is so abundant that no single government can reduce production enough to adversely affect supply. Uranium, on the other hand is so RARE that a single government can drastically reduce the world's supply and that supply couldn't be replaced.

Also, uranium is not sold by companies, it is sold by governments. As a private citizen, uranium is unavailable to me. Since uranium is so hard to get, any reduction in supply will harm the country that requires it.

You claim that there is no widely available alternative to crude oil, but the massive production of alcohol worldwide alone shows you just how wrong you are. We have, if we wish, the ability to completely replace crude oil as a fuel source, but it would cost a lot more. It would be more accurate to say that there are no CHEAPER alternatives to crude oil, but alternatives are available.

Uranium, on the other hand, has no alternative replacement source. There is no way to manufacture a replacement to uranium like there is for oil products. No matter how much money you wished to invest, it is impossible to manufacture synthetic uranium. It is an element! You might as well try to create synthetic gold, the effect would be the same; useless.

Dave,

You can compare uranium to crude oil all you want but all you're doing is making a fool of yourself. Uranium is not some product you can buy on the open market, it is one of the most highly regulated and controlled substances the world. It is, by it's very nature, very dangerous. Not only is it highly toxic, it can be used to produce devastating weapons. That's why it's regulated and controlled. Countries mine and sell uranium, not companies. Countries may contract to the companies for services, but the countries have sole ownership and control of uranium supplies. That's one of the reasons it's hard to acquire. As a matter of fact, It is so hard to get that any reduction at all in supply will harm any country that requires it. So, how can anyone compare uranium to crude oil? You can't. It's foolish to even try.

Ray:
"There is only a few thousands of tons if uranium available world wide"

Actually, there is 4.7 million tons. See my ref,

"there is trillions of tons of crude oil available"

226 trillion tons. See my ref (336 pounds of oil in a barrel)

So there is 48 times as much oil as uranium by weight. Big deal. You get a lot more energy out of uranium than oil. I don't see the point.

"Countries mine and sell uranium, not companies."

So why can’t Kazakhstan, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, Niger, etc sell uranium to Russia? Namibia alone has potentially 282,000 tons of uranium they can sell Russia. This is nearly 100 times as much uranium as you think exists in the world.

Dave repeats himself: "Nothing is produced in the US."

Dave says: "The only thing the US has is its military to enforce resource acquisition and the printing press for the US dollar."

Gosh, what do we need resources for if "Nothing is produced in the US."?

And if we print funny money all day long, wouldn't that qualify as production?

Dave, you really didn't need to tell us that: "I am not an expert on economics..."

You demonstrated your purity of ignorance when you opined that: " The day that China and Japan stops buying the US's funny money, the US economy goes down the crapper."

Dave, China and Japan invest in the US economy. Think about that. They put their money in our hands. How do they get it back when they want/need it? By keeping their economies and our economy strong and healthy. Of course, if in fact "Nothing is produced in the US" then China and Japan are populated by idiots two branches below neanderthal.

P. J. O'Rourke has a wonderful book explaining Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Read it, Dave, it will bring light into your cave.

Dave,

Here's an example of just how rare uranium is; in 2005 Australia exported only 12,360 tons which was valued at 753 million dollars, or about 60,223 dollars a ton. There is only 716,000 tons of recoverable uranium available (at a cost of 40 dollars per gram) in all of Australia, a rather large country. Now, how does that compare to crude oil exported by, and available in, say, Saudi Arabia?

link

"You get a lot more energy out of uranium than oil. I don't see the point."

The point is that uranium is so hard to get that any reduction of supply by Australia to Russia will harm Russia greatly. That the one fact you seem to be missing. You keep comparing the global availability uranium to crude oil and that's worse than foolish, it's counter productive. The global supply of uranium is not the same as the global supply of oil. There are huge difference as to the per-unit costs that vary greatly from country to country. The biggest difference is the cost of production between countries. Just as is it is a lot cheaper for us to produce a pound of rice than most other countries, Australia has a relatively large amount of uranium that they can extract, process, and sell at a lot lower cost per pound than most other countries. That's a huge bargaining chip! Oil isn't like that, there is only one price per barrel of oil, no matter what country the barrel comes from. That is what is meant by a Global Market, which tends to stabilize prices. One universal price per unit by any country that supplies oil.

Uranium is not sold on a global market. It is sold on a per-contract basis and that means the prices will vary greatly between suppliers. Also, each supply will vary as to the purity of it's uranium as you just don't dig it up and sell it, it must be refined. That refinery process will also vary from country to country, affecting the purity of the uranium, and that will force additional costs on any country that needs to perform additional refinement from a supply that is less pure.

Russia may find be able to use another source, but it's going to cost them a lot more and they may not be able to absorb the higher costs a new supplier will charge. If this wasn't true, then Russia would already be buying from the other countries and Australia's supply wouldn't have much of an effect. That's not what is happening though. Russia has to deal with Australia, they don't have much of a choice.

Ray:
"There is only a few thousands of tons if uranium available world wide..."
"There is only 716,000 tons of recoverable uranium available...in all of Australia..."

heliotrope:

"You demonstrated your purity of ignorance when you opined that: 'The day that China and Japan stops buying the US's funny money, the US economy goes down the crapper.'"

"China will conclude that rapid accumulation of dollar reserves no longer serves its interests sooner than optimists think...If central banks decide that $2.5 trillion in dollar reserves is enough, the result will be a sharp fall in the dollar and a sharp rise in U.S. interest rates."

Slight reductions in euity investing happened recently, with this result:

"U.S. direct investment abroad exceeded foreign direct investment in the United States, and U.S. purchases of foreign stocks exceeded foreign purchases of U.S. stocks. High equity inflows are more likely to come because a further fall in the dollar makes U.S. assets fire-sale cheap than because of a scramble to get in on another IT boom."

Read the whole article:
foreignaffairs.org/20050701faresponse84415/brad-setser/how-scary-is-the-deficit.html

I read that two years ago when it was "fresh."

Remember, you are the one who cries that "Nothing is produced in the US." For you then to toss one Foreign Affairs opinion piece as some sort of proof of......?.......won't strengthen your hand as a percipient in things economic.

It appears you prefer to believe the worst. That is your right and you are welcome to it. But fair warning: every insurance company, retirement fund, endowment fund, market fund, IRA, etc. is based on a thriving and growing market. The retirement fund for the State of Califorinia is larger than the economy of France. If you and the doomsday authors of the Foreign Affairs opinion piece are right, then all of the above are on the brink of collapse. But a quick review of the past two years will show how far off base the authors are.

I don't think you have a good grasp of how many extremely bright money people are being excoriated by your remarks.

The outskirts of Suva in Fiji is hospitable to Americans. It is a nice tropical paradise and home to a number of Americans who have lost their confidence in the American spirit. Just a tip.

heliotrope:

"then all of the above are on the brink of collapse."

Yes, they are. Within a few years at most. That's why all of my money is not in those areas, and even before the collapse I am doing very well (much better than the stock market). When the collapse happens, I will be fine (and will even make money). You will not. I guess we put our money into our worldviews. Good luck.

You are a major piece of work! When our economy folds, you will be sitting pretty? HELLO! Are you hoarding turnips or gin? Take my advice and head for Fiji. You will find many, many soul mates there.

People make the precursors for luck. You should get started. Happy trails partner, see you in the funny papers.