Friday Film: "Oceanographer in the Polar Regions" US Navy (1969)

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 5 July - 2 August 2023

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea

Saturday Is Old Radio Day - Family Theater "The Colonel's Daughter" (1957)

Friday Film: "Freighter at Sea" (1948)

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 28 June-26 July 2023

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: The Green Hornet "Citizen Insurance Racket" (1938)

Friday Films: "Submarine Salvage"

Saturday IS Old Radio Day- Rogues Gallery "Blood on the Sand" (1945)

Friday Film (on Saturday) - Seabees in Normandy" (1944)

Remember When We Were Protected from Oil Price Increases Because We Were Basically Petroleum Energy Independent?

Reuters headline Saudi Arabia, Russia deepen oil cuts, sending prices higher

Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world's biggest oil exporters, deepened oil cuts on Monday, sending prices higher despite concerns over a global economic slowdown and possible further interest rate increases from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Oh. gosh, was it only a few years ago that the US was mostly petroleum independent? Well, Reuters has an article that declares that the US was not really energy independent, because, well, it depends on how you define "independence"

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For Andrew Campbell, Executive Director of the Energy Institute at Berkeley Haas ( here ) “energy independence” is a “political slogan, not an economic or technical concept with a clear definition” often used by politicians to “imply that a country is insulated from global energy markets”.

“This is rarely the case,” he said.

“If a country produces all of the energy that it consumes, does not participate in international trade in energy, does not import energy-intensive products and does not send energy-related pollution to its neighbors or the atmosphere, then I would consider it energy independent. I don’t think any country meets that definition.”

Harrison Fell, a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA ( here ) said “energy independence is a tricky concept” and said it was often quantified by comparing energy production to energy consumption, but cautioned that the implications of this may be misunderstood.

So, we pass laws making it virtually impossible to build new refineries, which means we ship crude offshore to be refined, and that means we can't ever be energy independent?

Reuters also reports the EPA is screwing around small refiners by denying exemptions from a ridiculous law, which means lower output of gasoline and other products - which will raise the price of gasoline to consumers U.S. EPA denies nearly all biofuel blending exemption petitions

President Joe Biden's administration on Friday denied almost all outstanding petitions from oil refiners asking to be exempted from mandates that require them to mix biofuels into their fuel.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has the authority to issue the exemptions, denied 26 petitions from 15 small refineries who applied for waivers for the 2016-2018 and 2021-2023 compliance years, the agency said on Friday. There are still two pending petitions.

The agency also disclosed which oil refiners submitted petitions in July 2022 or later, as well as which oil refiners are participating in an alternative compliance schedule that allows them flexibility in complying with biofuel blending laws.

Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of biofuels into the nation's fuel mix, or buy tradable credits from those that do. The EPA can, however, award exemptions to some small refiners if they prove that the obligations cause them undue harm.

I keep being reminded of the old Walt Kelly comic in which Pogo announces who is responsible for problems, which when it appeared in 1971, was directed at the problem of pollution. Now we find the "cure"- when carried too far - is no piece of cake either. Moderation in all things.

Saturday IS Old Radio Day- "The Pirate of Orleans" from Vicks Matinee Theater (1945)

Friday Film - "The Fire Control Technician" (1968)

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 31 May – 28 June 2023

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea

Saturday IS Old Radio Day - 21st Precinct "The Nolen Brothers" (1953)

Friday Film - 'Naval Gunfire in Support of Land Forces" (1946)

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th!

Saturday Is Old Radio Day - "Death is a Joker" Inner Sanctum (1941)

Friday Film: "U.S. Navy at the Helm -Life on a Destroyer" (2019)

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 24 May – 21 June 2023

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea

Please join us at 5pm on 25 June for Midrats Episode 659: Keeping the US Undersea Advantage, with Bryan Clark

For generations, a great comparative advantage the United States has enjoyed at sea is the superiority of its submarine force.

It has become simply an assumption in our war planning to the point it is treated as almost a natural part of the environment.

Of course, nothing stands still in war. Time and technology usually finds a way to blunt any advantage, leverage any vulnerability.

As the challenge at sea grows, what can the US do to maintain the comparative advantage under the sea?

Returning to Midrats this Sunday is Bryan Clark, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute.

The starting point for our conversation will be the recent report he co-authored with Timothy Walton this month at Hudson’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, Fighting into the Bastions: Getting Noisier to Sustain the US Undersea Advantage.

If you do miss the show live, you can pick up this episode and others and add Midrats to your podcast list simply by going to you use Apple Podcasts here. Or on Spreaker. Or on Spotify.