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Eastwood

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Eastwood

  1. Look at this braggart with 12" of soil on his property...
  2. NCOs are the backbone of our entire military. Specifically, NCOs who know how to get exactly what they need from those below them and above them the vast majority of the time.
  3. Russia should have realized that they should treat their former satellites better, lest they run to a better opportunity. Of course it is advantageous to us for Ukraine to be EU/NATO. We offered a better deal. It was Russia's job to offer an even better one. They didn't. Same with North Korea. The Chinese offers the dictatorship what they want, so they stay under Chinese influence. It is a different story with Taiwan. The US offers the better deal. That's foreign policy in a nutshell. Convince other countries that they are better off dealing with you than the other superpowers. And what this whole ordeal has shown that Russia is a superpower in nuclear arsenal only. They are an economic, diplomatic, and militaristic midget. The world has seen it and even if Ukraine eventually falls, no one, absolutely no one, outside of dictators that we don't tolerate will think that they will get the better deal between Russia and the US.
  4. And this blows up any legitimate argument he has. All sovereign nations have the right to control their own destiny. They looked across their eastern border and decided they didn't like how things were going. They decided they wanted to be more European than Russian. Ukrainian blood, and ONLY Ukrainian blood, ran in their streets to start that process in 2014. Then Russia removed all doubt by taking Crimea. If Ukraine wants to join the EU, that is their sovereign right to seek that membership. Same as NATO. The above quoted argument is the geopolitical equivalent of "this wouldn't have happened if she didn't dress that way." Bullshit.
  5. Legit question: Can we do a tortilla drive and how many tortillas do you think we can send across the pond? Bacon, eggs, potatoes, and cheese can be grabbed there, but tortillas and canned refried beans could be imported. The boy could set up a breakfast taco station and feed as many people as supplies allow.
  6. He wants a Ukraine to no longer be a sovereign nation. He has lied about his intentions in Eastern Europe for over a decade and you want to take him for his word today? What he wants for Ukraine is what he wants for all former Soviet satellites.
  7. I believe the Russians blew the dam that Ukraine built to keep the bulk of fresh water out of Crimea. So, the water situation is not as dire, but the food issue still remains. To be honest, the food situation has been dire country-wide after the first week.
  8. Putin is way more scared of us than we are of him. So, just like a snake, we need to give him an avenue to slither away, if he so chooses. But make no mistake about it, Putin is definitely mulling over the idea that he can set off a tactical nuke in a less consequential part of the world (meaning non-NATO) and the rest of the world will hesitate to fire back. We've done a good job of making him second guess that, though, and we need to continue to do so. The real danger in MAD has always been one side becoming so fearful of the other that they see a first strike as the only way to protect themselves. They'll go for the decapitation strike in the hopes that they prevent an extended retaliatory strike and they can be king of the ashes after. We cannot make Putin that fearful, but we also cannot let him set off chemical or biological attacks that will drift over NATO. We're in a real tightrope situation here and I am seriously curious as to what out defense condition is, right now. After seeing what Ukraine has done to Russia and what we did against the Wagner Group a couple of years back, Russia stands absolutely no chance against NATO without the use of nukes. Our best hope is removal of Putin from within. Otherwise, we are looking at a world held hostage to Putin's designs, no matter how sloppily executed they are.
  9. You can't eliminate all risk, but I certainly had a much harder time finding a job than my friends who were programmers and other tech jobs. I even tinkered with the idea of going to the coding boot camp that UT offered back in 2016, but decided against it. My attempt to mitigate risk was by becoming an attorney. If oil and gas goes away, I just transition to real estate law, which I also have experience in. It was costly, but it has already started paying dividends.
  10. I'm 3rd generation O&G and have been in it for 15 years. I don't mind risk, but that doesn't mean I can't wish for stability. I have positioned myself to be "boom/bust proof" to mitigate the risk and make sure that if I transition out of the industry that it won't come with a big pay cut. But to say that those wishing there wasn't risk shouldn't be in O&G is quite the broad brush, doctor.
  11. As two the first two paragraphs, you and I are in complete agreement. I spent over $100k and four years of downturn to make myself "boom/bust proof" because I learned my lesson the first bust around. Adapt or die. But I'm way more fortunate than the blue collar industry types. Their skill set can transition to other industries, and in reality, if renewables had the level of market share that fossil fuels did, then we would probably see salaries almost equal to, if not equal, to the oil and gas industry. We have to bridge that gap for the blue collar portion of the industry and the white collar portion that doesn't fit in well with renewables (PEs with zero engineering experience in other fields, geologists, etc.). I'm much more fortunate in my flexibility and it was still almost devastating to me. I'm tired of leaving large swaths of people behind as society makes progress. The transition has been handled very poorly, thus far, and we have the resources to make the transition very tolerable for those at risk of major economic disruption. But as to your last paragraph, it is getting extremely hard for small caps to borrow for capex. The inability to borrow is weighing heavy on drilling schedules and lower level M&A. On the one hand, it has lead to healthier business practices during long periods of stable commodity prices because capex is built mostly on cash flow, but if commodity prices tank, it is almost impossible to borrow on favorable terms, these days. ESG looms heavily on these decisions, as well. It's not a mythical cabal. It's the court of public opinion that has been led to believe that renewables are 1) reliable, 2) cheap, and 3) easy to implement. So, any institution that wants to invest or lend to O&G creates a ton of loops to jump through so they can tell their shareholders that they are environmentally responsible and "doing their part." It's created the situation we are in now. We should make long term national energy policy on what is reasonably achievable. In this thread, and the thread on the old site, most of us "barons" were extremely concerned about the "lower for longer" O&G market creating a massive vulnerability to black swan events. It will take months to ramp up production to where it needs to be and thousands upon thousands of new jobs. We've seen what happens next. We'll over-drill while prices are high, demand destruction will ramp back up, we'll hit some economic turbulence, the price will tank, and a whole new generation of blue collar O&G folks will have a better life ripped out of their hands before they knew what to do with it. It isn't based off of my personal job situation, but the economic reality for hundreds of thousands of people who will flock to the industry for the hopes of better life. If America is going to suddenly demand that we drill, baby, drill, then I want a policy that will catch the vulnerable parts of the industry that falls out when the inevitable drop comes. Am I jaded? Absolutely. But it isn't my situation I'm worried about. It's those who are affected by the boom/bust the most. I want us to do it right, this time (said every oil man who has been burned by a bust over the last 60 years).
  12. How so? Have you ever been laid off from a job due to the market-wide conditions of a commodity, faced with the decision of either having to start from scratch, taking a huge pay cut in the process, or roll the dice on competing with a completely over-saturated job market with the hopes that things get better in the near future? And I've worked both renewables and oil and gas. Renewables paid less than half for the same work. And while you're wondering how you're going to make ends meet over the long term, you have to read articles about how great it is that the oil and gas industry is in shambles and how people yearn for the day that oil companies are no longer needed without taking into account the people and communities that depend on those jobs. I've stated this in here before: I believe in climate change. I think we absolutely have to move away from fossil fuels. But coal country showed what happens when you ditch the product and don't account for the people who depend on the demand of that product. We need to not only work on transitioning our energy needs away from fossil fuels, but transitioning the people and communities who depend on the oil and gas market for their livelihood. I've been through three boom and bust cycles. I tried transitioning out of the industry, but nothing matches the pay and benefits. I am all out of sympathy for those who cheer on the death of the oil and gas industry in one decade only to cry about high gas prices the next. Come up with a transition plan that doesn't devastate entire communities and rural America more than it already has and I'm all on board.
  13. The majority of companies outside of the supermajors had to beg, borrow, and steal just to get to today and are, wisely, using the current prices for paying down debt and some of the public companies are returning value to shareholders instead of huge Capex increases. If this were any other industry, it would be praised as good business. Let broader society squawk to their hearts' content. They benefited from almost a decade of depressed prices while trying to tear the whole industry down without any meaningful effort towards replacing it with a viable alternative, viable jobs with similar pay for those displaced, and looked the other way when hundreds, if not thousands of small towns in plays across the nation had their economies gutted.
  14. I mentioned it before, but I wrote my paper in 2010 and predicted he would be the first super power dictator since Hitler. What a difference less than a decade makes.
  15. I can afford $3.50 gas, but I can't afford $2 gas... But I also can't afford $6 gas.
  16. It's not like they're kitted out. I wonder how much a Russian conscripts ruck weighs.
  17. Did you hold your CHK?
  18. Username does not check out...
  19. Well, shit or get off the pot, Vlad. Are we doing the damn thing or not. Your choice.
  20. My history is a little rusty, but I think it was at the tail end and everyone going home from the war exacerbated the spread.
  21. There's a good number of posters here that you wouldn't want to share a foxhole with. Football board out front should have told you.
  22. I'm holding on to my XOM because I got it for $45 a share and the dividend ratio can't be beat at that price. Honestly, looking at all the mid and small caps, looks like this scenario was already priced in. Jumping in now is an investment in "higher for longer."
  23. I agree that the EU should cut him off. But every dollar you take from Putin he takes from his people. So, my prior post still rings true under your scenario.
  24. Making random people from Ukraine suffer because Russia has a shitty leader is stupid. It's a shame that what might be otherwise decent, random citizens from Russia have to endure the economic pain brought on by their leader's actions, but we have no other avenue of retribution against Putin. We have to take away his money, national identity, and prestige. Then, hopefully, the people will take his power.
  25. Dead Hand came after Learned Hand died. Coincidence? I think not. Also, I've felt like dying after reading some of his opinions, so this checks out.
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