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During the week beginning 17th January, Ireland's nemesis, the Troika, came to town for its quarterly visit.  The Troika comprises the IMF, the ECB and the EU Commission, the three bodies that have been lending sufficient money (€65½ billion) to Ireland to enable it to continue in business without bothering to eliminate its gigantic deficit that last year casually added yet another €25 billion to the national debt of over €120 bn.

The price of these loans (wrongly** called a “bailout”) is that Ireland's fiscal and economic policies must conform to the Troika's diktats.  Every quarter they come along to check progress on things like budget cuts and tax increases, and award a gold star for good performance.  (Greece is going through the same process but always gets a black mark for non-conformance, a source of schadenfreude for the Irish - tempered with a little envy and admiration at the Greeks' naughtiness.)

**They are wrongly called a “bailout” because if you are in a sinking boat and someone gives you a bailout, it means he scoops out the water and throws it over the side and in time you are back floating properly again; the water in your boat is gone. 

The Troika's so-called bailout, on the other hand amounts to lending Ireland money that Ireland must then use to repay loans to creditors, most of them in the home countries of the principal Troika players - the US, Germany, France.  Ireland remains sinking in just as much debt; it's just that the creditors are now the Troika, albeit at perhaps lower interest rates than before.  Water has been scooped out of the bow of the boat and deposited in the stern. 

The institutions actually being bailed out, in the sense that their debt reduces, are in fact the creditor banks in countries other than Ireland.  The Troika' is interested in Ireland only to the extent it can be forced to save those foreign banks.  For if they sink, the consequences for their host countries could be catastrophic.  If Ireland sinks, who cares?

As a result of the latest visit, the Troika once again gave Ireland a gold star for its obeisance. 

Two press conferences were then held on the same day but in different venues.  First up were a couple of Irish ministers at the high table:

They made various breezy statements, and a couple of strange ones.  One of these was that they had secured agreement that perhaps €2 bn of the proceeds from the sale of state assets could be diverted from paying down debt to so-called job-creation wheezes.  However when this was put to Istvan Szekely of theTroika in the second press conference, he clammed up, which in effect was a denial of any such deal. 

The dramatis personae for the Troika's conference comprised 

I found the Troika conference pretty outrageous.  Here was a bunch of foreigners spouting to the Irish people via the Irish media about Irish fiscal policy and performance. And there was not a single Irish elected politician in sight. I know a separate press conference had just taken place, but how can Irish politicians just step aside from the Troika's event and hide like that?

Elected Irish representatives, and through them the general Irish populace, have become mere obedient vassals of the unelected Troika, who like seagulls fly in, shit on everybody and fly out again.

Top marks, however, to Vincent Browne for skewering the ECB's slippery Klaus Masuch (sounds like a German) who only waffled when asked to justify the demand that Irish taxpayers pay the private gambling losses of the defunct Anglo Irish Bank. As journalist Michael Lewis pointed out some months ago, Anglo only ever had six branches and no ATMs, and its only trade was to borrow tens of billions from European banks and lend it to developers. It had absolutely nothing to do with the general Irish public.

Faced with direct questioning, Masuch clammed up in confusion, ably protected by the Troika's local minder Mrs Nolan (who though Irish is however a professional EUrocrat on the EU payroll).

Ireland's pain is all about saving German banks from their own folly and Masuch knows it. Ireland be damned. 

Ireland surrendered its sovereignty when it agreed to accept loans from the Troika as a result of having brainlessly socialised the private gambling debts of private banks, Anglo Irish among them.  What we have seen this week is that ghastly surrender in action.   

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Truth About Fraccing - 3rd January 2012
Alternative URL: http://www.tinyurl.ie/frac

Fraccing is an old technique, but due to advances in sophisticated technology it is enjoying an unparalleled renaissance and creating an energy revolution of astonishing proportions

This post is divided into six parts:

1. Introduction

2. Reservoir Rock Explained

3. Fraccing Explained

4. Fraccing Criticisms Debunked

5. Hydrocarbons Unleashed by Fraccing

6. Fraccing in Ireland

1     Introduction

The negative publicity that has been swirling round the world about hydraulic fracturing for the past year or so has been driving me nuts.  Lots of things drive me nuts but usually it is because I have might have a different opinion about something, for example whether or not Barack Obama has the faintest idea of his duties as an American president. 

But what drives me nuts about fraccing is not an issue of opinion but of facts. 

Let's start with the word.  Within the oil and gas extraction industry it has been spelt with two Cs for as long as hydraulic fracturing has been routinely practiced, which is over half a century.  But when the media suddenly woke up to the word they immediately spelt it fracking, not bothering with even a phone call to check the correct spelling.  Of course these are the same media people who think “media” (print, radio, TV, internet etc) is a singular noun, not the Latinate plural for medium, so they clearly have spelling issues. 

Then there's the “novelty” of fraccing.  But after fifty years of successfully improving hydrocarbon production rates across the world by applying this technology, it is by no means a novelty.  It is a novelty only for media too lazy to do a bit of Googling or make a few phone calls. 

Finally, there is the environmental threat that fraccing imposes.  Of course anything with that toxic word “environment” is an instant publicity-grabber, which is why this entirely invented scare has gained so much traction.  But this merely reflects the media's boundless enthusiasm for carrying out no research or fact-finding whatsoever.    Emotions rule in that strange world of illiteracy and sloth. 

So let's have a look at what fraccing actually is.  It's all pretty simple. 

2     Reservoir Rock Explained

An oil and/or gas reservoir is not a big swimming pool waiting to be drained.  Think of it instead as a giant, solid sponge, ie rock full of pores, each pore being filled with, typically, a bit of water with a bit of oil on top and a bit of gas on top of that.  The ratio of pores to sponge-rock is called the porosity - the higher the porosity the more fluids are present.  The porous sponge-rock  material will usually be

When a well is drilled into the middle of the porous sponge-rock, or reservoir rock as it is known, the fluids will flow only to the extent that one pore is connected to another, which is known as permeability. 

Where both porosity and permeability are low, as they always are with shales, you can have a real problem on your hands. This is exacerbated where the oil happens to be viscous, flowing more like treacle than petrol. 

That's where fraccing comes in. 

3     Fraccing Explained

It's a simple concept.  A well is drilled through the reservoir rock layer.  Water is then pumped at ever higher pressure into the reservoir-rock until it simply cracks open.  The resulting fractures make a much larger area of the reservoir-rock open to the wellbore, which therefore increases the flow of fluids into the wellbore. 

There are refinements of course.  For example,

Some of these additives happen to be toxic, so when the treated water is recovered from the well it is either cleaned to facilitate safe disposal or else stored for re-use on another well.  This is no different in principle from the way nasty waste water is responsibly dealt with in countless other industries. 

The wells themselves can be very sophisticated when tackling the low-porosity-low-permeability problem. 

Advances in directional drilling have been key: this is the technology whereby wells don't have to be drilled vertically, they can be steered in very precise pre-determined directions through the rock.  Though in former years wells would be drilled vertically before fraccing, these days such wells will always be turned to a horizontal direction within the reservoir rock layer which it will then penetrate for a kilometre or more in order to maximise exposure to the well bore when fracced. 

For the same reason, they will often also be drilled “multi-laterally”, meaning that as the well enters the reservoir-rock, it will divide into several distinct fingers reaching through the reservoir.  Individual fraccing operations are then carried out in sequence, tailored for each such finger. 

Modern seismic technology (which detects the shape of subterranean rock strata by bouncing sound waves off them) also permits ever smaller reservoirs to be detected.  Using directional drilling techniques, these are then accessed with wells that snake along tortuous paths several kilometres long, like a jet-fighter stalking its prey, before veering horizontal and sprouting fingers.  Just imagine the engineering sophistication that causes all this to happen, when all you -  at the surface - can do is

Once fracced, the next job is to produce gas and/or oil from the reservoir in order to get a return on investment.  Sometimes, fraccing alone will suffice.  Sometimes flow has to be helped along (“stimulated” in the jargon) by for example drilling injection wells nearby, and pumping fluids (such as steam) down and along their fractures until the reservoir hydrocarbons are forced into the fractures of the producing wells.  In any event, the end product is oil/gas that must be treated in conventional fashion before sale. 

Now let's have a look at the objections.  They generally fall into six categories. 

4     Fraccing Criticisms Debunked

Notwithstanding what I have just written, there is however a way that fluids can theoretically migrate upwards from the reservoir and cause damage.  The well itself can provide such a pathway unless it is properly designed and constructed according to the most elementary standards of what is known as well engineering (declaration: I am a well engineer). 

When a well is drilled, the hole is “cased”, that is lengths of steel pipe - known as casing - are screwed together and run into the entire length of the hole, after which liquid cement is pumped down and up the outside of the casing.  When set, the cement bonds the casing to the rock, which prevents fluids from migrating along the outside of the casing.  Measurements and tests are conducted to determine the integrity of the casing and of the bond and if necessary repairs are carried out.  Thus a properly constructed well will leak fluids neither when they are pumped down the well into the reservoir rock, nor when fluids emanate upwards out of the reservoir-rock. 

However, just as a house from which an incompetent builder has left out a few roof tiles will leak when it rains, so a well which is incompetently drilled may also leak under pressure.  The solution to such leaks is not to ban houses or wells, but to construct them properly, according to basic engineering norms and to put in place a suitably enforced regulatory regime.  Imagine a world where an occasional mistake due to avoidable incompetence leads to the proscription of all activity in that field.  We would have no technology at all - no aircraft, no medicines, no cars, no buildings, no internet, no nothing.  It is an absurd proposition.  

In fact, none of the criticisms of fraccing stand up to scientific scrutiny.  They mostly boil down to a fear of the unknown and a special suspicion of oil companies and their motives.  The root cause of this is, of course, the oil companies' own abysmal record of explaining to the public what they do, how they contribute to global economic prosperity and development, and their own internal policies on ethics (this, for example). 

5     Hydrocarbons Unleashed by Fraccing

The boom in fraccing activities over the past few years has come about as a result of a perfect storm:

The results have been truly astonishing.  Just a few years ago, people were earnestly wringing their hands about the imminence of so-called “peak oil” and thereafter a global decline in production with catastrophic effects on human welfare.  I never agreed with these gloomy, ignorant predictions, which is why I wrote a post in 2005 called “When Will the Oil Run Out?”. Some time later this resulted in a feature article in the Irish Times. In similar vein, in 2008 I posted another piece, “Beware the Peak Oil Salesman”. 

My main point was that as the oil price increases, so

In particular, the new availability of massive gas volumes as a result of fraccing are having a direct moderating effect on oil prices.  This will become ever more apparent as modern techniques spread for converting gas to easily transportable liquid products, such as Shell's new GTL (gas-to-liquid) technology in Qatar. 

I remarked that “oil and gas are found not in the ground but in that unfathomable, inexhaustible resource that is the human brain”.  And so - yet again - it has proved, thanks (and much to my own personal surprise) to that veteran technology, fraccing. 

For not only has fraccing continued to open up tight - that is, low-permeability - sandstones and limestones as it always had, but it is now able to set about shales.  Shales are found everywhere and have long been known as repositories of hydrocarbons, particularly gas.  But they have equally been regarded as far too tight to ever tackle, unless so close to the surface they can be dug out by open-cast mining and the rock heated and treated to squeeze out its precious cargo.  Huge deposits measured in billions of barrels are already being extracted in this tedious way from, among others, Canadian tar-sands and Venezuelan bitumen. 

Modern fraccing techniques have, however, opened up the deeper shales all over the world as a whole new hydrocarbon resource comparable in scope to the massive oil finds of the last century. 

For example, the remarkable chart below appears in the December 2011 issue of the Energy Institute's Petroleum Review, December 2011 (p38).  It shows how, thanks to fraccing, shales and other tight reservoirs have over the past few years dramatically reversed what was thought to be the inexorable thirty-year decline in America's gas reserves (CBM stands for coal bed methane, another newly exploitable resource). 

Reserves will continue to climb, so that the days of American dependence on foreign energy (notably oil from the Middle East and Africa) now appear to be numbered.  The US currently imports some ten million barrels a day, which costs a massive trillion dollars every three years.

Drastically cutting oil imports because of the extra domestic energy liberated by fraccing has enormously beneficent implications for America and thus the world,

Moreover, while the numbers may differ, the general shape of both of the above two charts is similar throughout much of the developed world.  Oil imports have been going up and up for decades as growth-driven demand has soared while production has declined.  But suddenly fraccing has resulted in new gas and oil which are dramatically changing the domestic energy picture. 

The UK provides a further example.  The British Geological Survey so far estimates that up to 150 billion cubic metres (5 trillion cubic feet) of shale gas exist onshore, which is the equivalent in calorific terms of some 900 million barrels of oil.  This is equal to 18 months of the UK’s requirements and worth over £50 billion (€60 billion) at today’s prices. However, offshore shale gas in British waters, already prolific in terms of conventional oil and gas, is likely dwarf that available on land.

We are truly witnessing an international energy revolution, the likes of which was inconceivable less than a decade ago.  Forget what some people still say about “peak oil”: it is and always has been nothing but a Malthusian-style myth. 

6     Fraccing in Ireland

Since this blog is written in Ireland, I have to end with the Irish angle on fraccing. 

Three companies have expressed an interest in exploring and fraccing shales for onshore gas – Tamboran Resources (Australian), Lough Allen Natural Gas Company (Irish) and Enegi Oil (Canadian).  They have their eyes on 8,000 sq km spread over a dozen different counties.  I cannot judge the technical merits of their proposals, but the few public utterances I have heard (eg here) have been suffused with ignorance of the technology, which does not bode well for their projects. 

Nevertheless the issue of fraccing within Ireland is moot. 

Professional objectors have already organised themselves into something called “No Fracking Ireland”.  It now has its own Facebook page and “clever” slogans like “Frack off” and “Stop fracking with our water”, with a little flame to remind us of the fraudulent clip shown above from the movie Gasland. 

No Fracking Ireland has no doubt been much inspired and encouraged by the successes of the Shell to Sea campaign which has for years been trying to stop or stymie Shell's development of the offshore Corrib gas field, though with exceedingly sparse scientific basis for its objections. (I wrote about this in some detail last November).  Apart from garnering international attention, the major achievement of Shell to Sea has been to treble the costs and the delivery time of the project. This has not only delayed Ireland's energy independence but guaranteed that there will be no profits to tax for a very long time.   

But perhaps Shell to Sea's principle accomplishment is to turn Ireland into a pariah state as far as oil and gas investment is concerned.   It will be a generation before the travails of Corrib will have been forgotten.  Meanwhile, with Ireland's political risk in the order of 200-300% thanks to Corrib, any sane investor is far likelier to look to less politically costly environments, such as Iraq or Somalia or other hotspots, to sink their wells.

Thus, you can be sure that whatever they may say in public, Tamboran and its colleagues will in fact never carry out any fraccing in the foreseeable future.  No Fracking Ireland will probably claim credit for this, but it properly belongs to Shell to Sea. 

Meantime however, the rest of the developed (and less developed) world will continue to ride the crazy fraccing horse to energy independence and prosperity, leaving indebted Ireland behind.

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Issue 218’s Comments to Cyberspace

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Quotes for Issue 218

- - - - - C A N A D A - - - - -

Quote: “To meet the targets under Kyoto for 2012 would be the equivalent of removing every car truck, all-terrain vehicle, tractor, ambulance, police car and vehicle off every kind of Canadian road.”

Peter Kent, Canada's environment minister,
announces that Canada is withdrawing from the Kyoto Treaty,
the first country to do so. 

Climate change poseurs notwithstanding,
many more will surely follow.

- - - - - I S R A E L   /   P A L E S T I N E - - - - -

Quote: “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state - (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.”

Newt Gringrich, US Republican Presidential Hopeful,
states the bleedin' obvious and is excoriated for his trouble. 

Quote: “A distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Howard Gutman, President Obama's US ambassador to Belgium,
shows his own anti-Semitic leanings
by providing excuses for Muslim anti-Semitism. 

It is as if he has never even read a word of the Koran or its Hadiths
and their anti-Jew rhetoric such as

“The Hour [Judgment Day] will not come
until the Muslims fight the Jews and
until the Jews hide behind the trees and rocks and
the trees and rocks will say,
‘O Muslim, O Servant of God! Here are the Jews! Come and kill them!’”

- - - - - € U R O - - - - -

Quote: “There might be some assets worthy of consideration — precious metals, for example. But other metals would make wise investments, too. Among them tinned goods and small calibre weapons.”

Warren Buffet's Hathaway investment vehicle gives its advice
about how to  hedge and prepare for a break-up of the €uro

Quote: “Telling a European that one has to earn her or his health-care benefits or social insurance or pension or access to amenities and infrastructure is equivalent to challenging a brick wall to be flexible and dynamic.”

Constantin Gurdgiev, Ireland-based Russian economist

- - - - - T O P   G E A R - - - - -

Quote: “Frankly, I would have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean how dare they go on strike when they have got these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?”

Jeremy Clarkson's solution to strikes by public “servants” in the UK.

Unfortunately he later (sort-of) apologised for his joke. 
Apparently a joke which offends people is not a joke.

[Of course a joke which offends no-one is never funny.]

Coincidentally, sales of Mr Clarkson's latest DVD, “Powered Up”, soared.

- - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - -

Quote: “Difficult choices are never easy.”

Who knew?

Ireland's Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, makes a truly profound observation
in his first-ever State of the Nation address. 

Indeed, it was only the sixth such speech since the foundation of the state,
the last one being 25 long years ago by a criminal predecessor.

Quote: “Connemara ..., as it is open to the Atlantic, [and] in terms of cloud computing, we have dense thick fog for nine months of the year, because of the mountain heights and the ability to harness this cloud power, there is tremendous scope for cloud computing to become a major employer in this region ... the Government should be doing more to harness clean industries for the Connemara area ... wind energy and cloud computing are two obvious examples.”

Connemara councillor Seamus O Scanail, Independent, sets out his vision
for the regeneration of his windswept constituency.

Fellow councillor Martin Shiels remarked that
“you must be a fecking eejit to think that
cloud computing had anything to do with climate”.

Late note (20 Jan 2012):
Sadly this story turns out to be a hoax.
Hat-tip: Mark Humphrys

ISSUE #217 - November 2011 [135+2267=2702]

Corrib – Ireland’s Last Offshore Development for a Generation - 26th November

Protests – overwhelmingly unfounded and politically unchallenged –
have trebled the cost of developing Ireland’s offshore Corrib gasfield. 
This huge “political risk” will deter further such investments for a generation.

Many years ago, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a Dutch company with an Irish name, Shell Teoranta BV, whose raison d’être was to seek and hopefully find oil offshore Ireland (“Teoranta” is Irish for "“Limited”).  It drilled a number of wells – for  example, on 19th December 1979, the Irish Times featured a photo of a jack-up rig drilling an exploration well just offshore Dublin – but to no avail.  All the holes were dry.  Concluding that Ireland was a lost cause, Shell Teoranta packed its bags and shut up shop, though not before claiming a huge write-off from the Dutch taxpayer for all its futile Irish expenditure, a provision of Netherlands law which explains why Shell Teoranta was registered there. Shell reckoned it had better uses for its shareholders' money than to fritter it away on the ultra-long-shots of Irish exploration. 

Fast forward a few decades and Enterprise Oil, a significant independent British oil company though not in the same league as the majors, disproved Shell's pessimism by discovering, in 1996, a small-to-medium sized gas field offshore Mayo, which it called Corrib.  Containing natural gas reserves eventually calculated to be around one TCF, ie a trillion cubic feet (equivalent to the energy of about 170 million barrels of oil), it lay 3,000 metres below the seabed in waters 350 metres deep some 83km off the north west coast of Ireland.  Notwithstanding that weather and sea conditions are among Europe's wildest, and that Ireland possesses the barest of offshore oilfield infrastructure, the economics were nevertheless positive – albeit marginally so – thanks largely to the improved (from the oil industry’s standpoint) contract terms promulgated in 1987 by Energy Minister Ray Burke. 

Enterprise Oil had never before attempted such a demanding project.  Yet in the year 2000 it decided to go ahead with bringing Corrib’s hydrocarbons ashore anyway, quickly busying itself with organizing finance, drawing up engineering plans and ordering equipment.  Yet its inexperience manifested itself early on and remained long undetected when it failed to discuss in any detail its plans with the local people, listen to their concerns and secure their enthusiastic support.  This is an elementary but vital step in the project process that the international oil industry has learnt the hard way over many decades. 

The world-wide eruption of protests in 1995 at Shell's environmentally sound decision to sink the North Sea platform Brent Spar in the far Atlantic was one of that company's bitterest lessons.  This reputational catastrophe showed in starkest terms that it was no longer sufficient for the industry to be right; it must convince those who might be affected (even if only emotionally) by its plans that it is right.  Even Greenpeace eventually acknowledged that Shell's original plan would have had minimal ecological impact – Brent Spar had been comprehensively voided of all toxic material and there is anyway little life on the Atlantic seabed at a depth of 2½  kilometers.  Shell realised that its prior philosophy of “Trust me” must be replaced by one of “Show me”.

Enterprise Oil's failure to ensure that the locals were onside over the Corrib development was a mistake with enormous long term implications, as anyone with but a passing interest in the activist Shell-to-Sea organization will be aware. 

In April 2002, Shell, chastened no doubt by the voracious acquisition of the US oil companies Arco and Amoco in recent years by its arch-rival BP, splashed out £3.5 billion to buy Enterprise Oil, whose portfolio of assets fitted rather well with Shell's.

But like someone sitting down to a lunch of two dozen luscious Gillardeau  oysters, the world’s most expensive, only to discover a bad 'un among them, Shell found itself responsible for delivering a demanding major offshore development project in Ireland, by no means a blockbuster, in the country it had with good reason foresworn twenty years earlier.  Oh, and its return to Ireland meant it had to refund Shell Teoranta's juicy rebate from the 1980s back to the Dutch taxpayer.  

Nevertheless, Shell in good faith put together a team, including some Enterprise personnel, to take over the Corrib project.  Drawing on its extensive experience and expertise in this type of deep water harsh environment, it reviewed the Enterprise plans and in 2003 agreed a budget of €800,000 and four years.  First gas, as it is known, was expected in 2007.   

In outline, the plan was

In this little-developed, sparsely-populated rural part of County Mayo near the tiny village of Ballinaboy,

Among the necessary legislative consents and authorizations already in place by then were

So all was looking rosy.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, quite a lot as it turned out.  None of it technical or financial or labour-related, the classical reasons most big projects run into trouble. 

Shell's first error was not to realise that there was a potential problem with the residents in the Ballinaboy area of County Mayo where the onshore pipeline was to be laid and the gas plant built.  Understandably, families were initially fearful that gas explosions might destroy their houses or even kill them.  They strongly preferred that the gas plant be located offshore (out of sight out of mind). 

Enterprise Oil had done very little to explain to the residents not only the project, its robust safeguards and the virtual impossibility of the disaster scenarios they imagined, but also the benefits it was likely to bring to that relatively impoverished area in terms of employment, regeneration and reputation. 

On the issue of explosion, designing an onshore pipeline is one of the easiest tasks an oil and gas engineer faces. 

Thus a properly designed, operated and maintained pipeline simply will not fail, and speculation about failure is pointless. 

Though the onshore pipeline was (initially) to run within 70 metres of some homes, as for the plant itself, it was sufficiently remote from residents' buildings for them to be unaffected even in the highly unlikely event of a disaster. 

But by the time, Shell recognised it had a problem with the locals, that problem had transformed from a rational fear to an emotional fury.  With the fury came press attention, with that came international interest, with that Corrib became a cause célèbre, and an opportunity for professional objectors everywhere to vent their manufactured spleen at a wicked multinational oil company whose only desire is to destroy the lives of simple natives.  

Inevitably, Shell's past “sins” were thrown into the pot, notably

The professional objectors have on several occasions been joined by overseas protestors, including the son of Mr Saro-Wiwa.  And with the inauguration in November of the left-wing Michael D Higgins as Ireland’s new president, the objectors now number the First Citizen among their supporters.  Though some funds are raised via websites, it is unclear who provides the bulk of its funding, but Sinn Fein and other sinister sources have been cited.  I have asked the major anti-Corrib pressure group “Shell to Sea” where it gets its money and am still awaiting a reply. 

Meanwhile, from the moment Shell got involved with Corrib until the present, it has been on the back foot in trying present its side of the story to the world while simultaneously progressing the project. 

I first wrote about these objections, in some detail, almost two years ago, in a piece titled “Organizational Dementia”. 

The project itself has been exemplary in its technical aspects, and indeed in many ways is an industry trailblazer.  Shell, and particularly Ireland, should be in the position of bragging to the world of its prowess.  Ireland should be using the success of Corrib as a means to attract not just future investment in offshore (and indeed onshore) exploration and production, but also the vast, highly technical contract industry that supports such activities. 

Instead, the project is conducted almost behind closed doors and talked about in whispers, in the shadow of continuous low-level but toxic protest, for fear of unleashing another round of hysterical tabloid agitation.  Earlier this year, a private, low-key purely technical presentation about the project to a select group of about fifty interested engineers had to be cancelled when Shell-to-Sea got wind and threatened to disrupt the meeting and call in the media. 

For Shell, all these difficulties has pushed up the price tag from €800m to €2.5 billion.  But the nation is also paying a terrible cost that, both now and in the future, that no country can afford in these times of financial crisis and meltdown. 

It is instructive to compare Corrib with other recent major offshore development projects.  One such is Norway’s Ormen Lange, in which Shell holds 17% and recently took over the running of the field:

So Ormen Lange, by any measure a bigger more complex project even than Corrib, was delivered on budget in just 3½ years.  Corrib, on the other hand, is expected to take twelve years - three times as long as originally planned – and to cost three times its original budget. 

Have a look at another major construction project in an entirely different industry – aircraft construction.  Boeing dreamt up its 787 Dreamliner in January 2003 and eventually delivered it in October 2011.  This was 3½ years behind schedule, a big overrun, which was solely due to technical problems, apart from a two-month Boeing Machinists Strike. 

Corrib’s far greater delay, by comparison, is due not to technical problems at all, nor financial ones nor labour ones.  Local politics, and the way they were handled, are entirely to blame.  How embarrassing is that? 

The local politics boil down purely to those objections by local people, and their national and international supporters, to the onshore elements of the project, objections with only the thinnest veneer of legitimacy to start with, and none at all following substantial concessions instituted by Shell, principally

Meanwhile, for the past eight years the politicians have steadfastly looked on with, at best, bemused disinterest and without the slightest concern for Ireland’s industrial reputation.  Moreover, enforcement of the law has been low on their priorities and many (including the current president) have overtly supported the activists. 

So view Corrib from the standpoint of outside investors.  A major, innovative project that has encountered no substantive problems in terms of technology, finance or industrial relations, is nevertheless delivered three times over budget and over time, due entirely to local impediments and the complete lack of political will to overcome them. 

People will look at Ireland, and surely assign it a massive political risk of 200% to 300%. 

The Corrib experience is such that there will undoubtedly be no further major investments of this nature in Ireland for at least a generation until this one has been forgotten.  Even industrial investors in other heavy industries will be looking askance at Ireland and asking themselves if the favourable corporate tax rate of 12½% is really worth the enormous cost of all the political hassle it can expect from local objectors and the spinelessness of politicians. 

Far better to sink your money in havens such as Somalia and Iraq where the political risk will be much less punitive than in the erstwhile Celtic Tiger. 

Ireland's chance to showpiece its technical expertise and perhaps secure for itself a permanent corner of the massive, lucrative and long-lasting offshore market for the future is gone. 

Meanwhile, Shell is licking its wounds and battling on.  Eventually, once gas finally begins to flow in 2015 (?) it will get its money back, but it will be a long long slog. 

Declaration of interest:
I worked for Shell for thirty years, though not through the Corrib period

Late Note:
This post was re-published, with my permission,
by Royal Dutch Shell plc .com, a site that mainly tries to catch Shell out.

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Criminal Deception by Creditor Banks - 9th November 2011

Creditor banks, by failing to discount debts
they know will never be repaid in full,
are guilty of criminal deception
that in other industries is severely punished

In the mid-Noughties, Shell was convulsed by a major, almost existential crisis, which, unlike those of a decade earlier, was of an entirely non-technical non-environmental nature. 

In 2004, Shell confessed that for several years it had been exaggerating its oil reserves by a whopping 3.9 billion barrels, or 20%.  A company's oil reserve statement is its best estimate of how much future oil it is able to produce based on current technology, current oil prices and current legislation; the more it has the richer it is.  Shell's overstated reserves meant overstated future profits and thus an overstated share price, which promptly crashed wiping out £3 billion of investors' savings

As a result, Shell had to pay, inter alia, a $381 million settlement to shareholders, a $120m fine to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and a £17m fine to Britain's Financial Services Authority.  Phil Watts the CEO was fired, retired to his secluded mansion in the south of England and dare not ever visit the USA for fear of imprisonment. 

In other words, the penalties when a private commercial company deceives the markets as to its wealth are very severe. 

Which brings us to the EU's banking crisis.  The PIGIS of €uroland, soon to become the BIPIGS (Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain), are facing economic ruin because they each have debts so great that no-one in his/her heart believes they can ever be repaid in full.  But if all (or even some) of the BIPIGS default, the €uro will come crashing down and the EU itself will probably split asunder.  That is why the EU, aided by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have been “bailing out” stricken countries as their debts fall due, in exchange for severe austerity to bring national budgets back into balance (eventually). 

But the term is a misnomer.  If I am in a sinking boat and someone bails me out, it means he scoops out water and throws it out of the boat.  The EU/ECB/IMF troika is doing no such thing.  Under intense pressure from Germany and France in particular, it is lending money to allow countries like Ireland to pay their debts, but of course those countries still owe the money, just to the troika instead of to the original creditors.  In other words, water is being “bailed out” of the prow of the boat and transferred to the aft; it's still sinking just as fast. 

What is actually getting “bailed-out” is of course the BIPIGS' creditors - those banks and institutions so intrinsically stupid that they lent billions to equally stupid countries like Ireland who were always incapable of repayment.  And who are those creditors? Overwhelmingly, they are German and French financial institutions.  They are so exposed to the BIPIGS that should they default, the whole Franco-German banking system is in danger of collapse.  If that weren't enough, beyond Europe, German banks are also holding up to a hundred billion dollars (some say a trillion dollars) of American sub-prime mortgages, whose utter junkness triggered the current financial tsunami in 2008. 

But the question to ask is this.  Why are these banks carrying these debts on their books at full their value when it is quite obvious that they should be written down to a figure that reflects the very real risk that their creditors will default partially if not totally? 

These are just two examples of why the German, French and other bondholding banks and institutions should already have written down the value of their loan books by something in the order of 50%.  But they haven't because this would make them look bad and devastate their own share prices. 

Yet what, exactly, is the qualitative difference between

I would say there is no difference.  Yet Shell (rightly) gets fined hundreds of millions and its CEO, in order to escape an American jail, has effectively to go into semi-hiding for life. 

This gets to the heart of the rottenness of the EU's banking system and the EUrocratic élite who are conspiring to conceal what is in effect a criminal enterprise of deception.  Right now, the German and French banks are in deep trouble because they have nothing like the wealth they are pretending to have. 

Last year, John Lanchester published an acclaimed book called “Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay”.  The sooner Merkozy get their arrogant heads around this notion the sooner some kind of solution, involving mass default followed by mass rebuilding, can occur.  The more they kick the can down the road with their lies, the bigger the can is getting and the more painful the inevitable outcome will be. 

Jonathan Swift, in his prescient poem  of 1734, “The Run Upon the Bankers”, wrote

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall.

But he is wrong, for his verse assumes the bonds will be repaid.  But as Mr Lanchester explains, today's mega-giga-bonds will largely not be repaid.  As such it is the debtors (which includes the BIPIGS) who have the soul of the Merkozy creditors and their ilk, not the other way round. 

Putting off the evil day, whether it is through shying away from default or criminally falsifying the balance sheets of creditor institutions, is only making the ultimate day of reckoning far worse. 

Late note (13th November):

Behind its paywall, the Sunday Times reports that Italy's new prime minister Mario Monti says that  “growth should come not through further recourse to debt but through removal of the obstacles that have acted as brakes on our growth”. 

He must have read this post.

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Simple Principles of Job Creation - 9th November 2011

Creating jobs would be easy if only Governments
would remove roadblocks and get out of the way

Everyone is at it.  Telling you how much of other people's money they are getting rid of investing in the quest to “create jobs”:

Interestingly not one of these esteemed gentleman has ever, in fact, created a single job in his life.  Oh he will tell you about this initiative and that tax concession and the other festival he arranged, which resulted in thousands of new jobs.  But in every case he has (a) used other people's money to do what he wanted to do and (b) never met a single payroll himself.  The jobs have actually been created by businessmen risking their own cash. 

The other interesting point is that among the entire political class across the world there is a conviction that it can only create jobs by spending money - money that of course belongs to other people (known as taxpayers).  That's why they prefer to talk about “investing”, as this is a more upbeat-sounding euphemism which suggests there might one day be an economic return (ha!). 

But if these revered Statesmen were to talk to a few actual, you know, businessmen who actually do, you know, create jobs, the scales might fall from their eyes.  Because any businessman will tell you that the single biggest obstacle to job creation is the series of roadblocks thrown in his/her path by the State itself. 

Remove the roadblocks and the jobs will simply follow, just as traffic flows smoothly once you take away the barriers.  And the beauty of this is that it costs no money to take stuff away.  Yes, job creation is - or can and should be - all gain and no pain.  Let me count the ways, or at least some of them.

Will any of this simple shopping list happen?  Maybe bits of it here and there. 

But there is an inherent problem with governing a country, whether through dictatorship or democracy.  The governing class believes its function is to make new laws and to perpetuate itself.  What candidate campaigns with the slogan “Strike Down Laws”.  Yet where is the logic in continually creating new legislation, ad infinitum?  Surely it is much more rational first to eliminate or reduce or simplify laws that no longer make sense, and to make new ones only in extremis?  Surely each administration should seek to leave office with fewer statutes on the books than it encountered. 

But it never does.  Its instinct is always to do more and to do that it always thinks it has to spend more. 

Creating jobs by doing less?  Just removing barriers and getting the hell out of the way?  Letting free workers and free employers make deals together without interference?  Perish the thought. 

That is why ever more hard-working taxpayers' money will be frittered away on “job-creation” wheezes.  Yet new jobs will emerge, but only in spite of, not because of, such blundering “assistance” from Governments throughout the Western world. 

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Issue 217’s Comments to Cyberspace

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Quotes for Issue 217

- - - - - L I B Y A - - - - -

Quote: “Libyan laws in future will have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its ‘basic source’ ... Libya's ban on polygamy will be lifted ... in future bank regulations will ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia”.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council
and de facto president makes plain at the earliest opportunity
that post-Q'Daffy Libya will be a Sharia state. 

Is this what it was all for?

Quote: “I've come to know Saif [Q'Daffy, son of Moammar] as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values as the core of his inspiration.”

David Held, professor of political science
at the London School of Economics,
waxes lyrical in May 2010 as he introduces Q'Daffy Junior
to give the annual Ralph Miliband memorial lecture,
in honour of the late father of the David and Ed Miliband,
the latter being the leader of Britain's Labour party
and a great pal of the professor. 

Prof Held it was who also accepted a £1.5m donation from Q'Daffy Jr
to the LSE's Global Governance research centre. 

Prof Held hurriedly resigned in October 2011 just before before
a report on the university's cosy relationship
with the Libyan dictatorship was published.

Meanwhile, Q'Daffy Jr remains on the run,
in fear of his life from anti-Q'Daffy Libyans and
in fear of his liberty from an indictment for crimes against humanity
by the International Criminal Court. 

- - - - - U S   P R E S I D E N C Y - - - - -

Quote: “The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008 [to get me re-elected], then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own’.”

President Obama frightens the horses by horrifying them with the notion
that a Republican presidency would herald
a new, painful era of self-reliance in America. 

Imagine such an abysmal scenario:
free-born American citizens being responsible for themselves,
instead of leaving that to a nanny Federal government.

Quote: “I have never sexually harassed anyone.  Yes, I was falsely accused while I was at the National Restaurant Association ... When there are facts, bring them to me, let me face my accusers.”

Oh-oh.  Herman Cain, the Republican's new, charismatic,
black presidential aspirant issues a (somewhat weak) denial
to accusations that he sexually harassed two women in the 1990s,
to whom he made a cash settlement. 

This could well mark the end of his bid. 

- - - - - I S R A E L - - - - -

Quote: “I can't stand him [Benyamin Netanyahu] anymore, he's a liar.”

President Sarkozy moans to President Obama about the leader of a mutual ally.

“You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day”,
responds an ever sympathetic Mr Obama.

Why doesn't someone just rid the world of that turbulent Zionist entity?
What's that?  Ahmedinijad is doing his best?

- - - - - I T A L Y - - - - -

Quote: “I don't know if it was me inside. Yes, it's true it is my car and the registration number is mine but I really don't want to say anything else. All I will say is that there is nothing to be ashamed about. Anyway who said that I stayed the night? I'm not making any other comment. So they say my car left at 10am in the morning? People just jump to conclusions. Maybe I left at 3am and came back at 9am - who knows? Whenever I am invited I go.”

Beautiful brunette Francesca Pascale, 25,
a regional councillor 
in Uncle Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party in Naples,
“explains” her nocturnal activities.

Late on the night of desperate negotiations to keep his job as prime minister,
his girlfriend drove her Smart car into Palazzo Grazioli, his Rome residence,
getting a wink from the guard.  The car did not leave till next morning.

Hat tip: Philip O'Sullivan 

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ISSUE #216 - October 2011 [350+1628=1978]

Now that the competition is over, with the All Blacks the worthy champions, I can admit that there is an even better score-tallying website, run by a car rental company of all things. Click here. 

Shalit Released from Hamas Captivity

Is one Israeli worth a thousand Palestinians?

On 18th October 2011, Israeli Sergeant Gilad Shalit, 25, after 5½ years of captivity by Hamas, is freed at last, in exchange for over a thousand Palestinian convicts in Israeli jails. He looks tired and dazed, but otherwise healthy, as he replies to questions from an Egyptian TV reporter.

However, Melanie Philips observes that off camera behind Sgt Shalit was a “man in fatigues and wearing a black face mask and the green headband of the Qassam brigades – Hamas’s military wing – and with a video camera in his hand”, with his other hand resting on the back of Sgt Shalit's chair. The frail young man was clearly being intimidated.

Nothing is as it seems in that benighted part of the world. 

Meanwhile, in exchange, the Israelis released 1,037 prisoners, nearly all Palestinians and other Arabs, many of them unrepentant multi-murderers.  Little good can surely ensue. 

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The Irish have low stress rates
because they do not take medical terminology seriously

Click here for more stuff of similar intellectual, er, integrity ... 

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Civil Partnership as Sexual Apartheid - 8th October 2011

The most unpopular man in a gay marriage university debate

Trinity College Dublin's Philosophical Society is one of the world's most prestigious student debating fora, and regularly invites celebrity guests to speak.  “The Phil” as it is colloquially known was founded in 1683 as a paper-reading society for the “discourse of philosophy, mathematics, and other polite literature”.  It is said to be the world's oldest debating society and is currently on its 327th annual session.  Its patrons, disreputable and otherwise, include

Three years ago I (distinctly not a celebrity) was invited to speak at a debate about drugs legalisation, which I reported on here. 

Last week, they had me back again to speak against the motion “This House Believes Civil Partnerships are Sexual Apartheid”.  It's apparently not easy to find someone prepared to make himself unpopular by rejecting the social conformities of the day.  But if you need someone to speak against gay marriage, against global warming, pro-Israel, against Obama, I seem to be your man! 

My fellow speakers, all but one of whom spoke with great verve and oratory, were:

For the motion:

Against the motion:

Anyway, I showed up, was treated to an excellent dinner with Guinness and wine and presented my speech in front of an audience of about 300 attending the debate.  I was, inevitably, labelled by other speakers (especially Mr Gay World 2009) “dishonourable”, “homophobic”, “dishonest”, “a bigot” and other colourful epithets I don't remember, and all without a shred of evidence.  I also elicited the evening's biggest cry of “Shame!”, of which I am rather proud.  

So I must have been saying something right. 

Moreover, I was delighted to see that the spirit and practice of free speech is so alive and robust at The Phil. 

(Incidentally, I have argued elsewhere that the Left often has to resort to fancy name-calling and lots of noise because their arguments are usually so thin that demolition of their opponents' case purely through logic doesn't work very well.) 

Following the debate itself, the evening proceeded with three successive drinking sessions and notwithstanding the earlier fireworks we all became best of friends.  It ended with a cohort walking to a nearby night club called Prhomo (which is a sponsor of The Phil) until the early hours; I thoroughly enjoyed my first trip to a gay bar, not least because the beer was only €3 a pint (compared with €4-6 elsewhere). 

Here is my speech.  You can make up your own mind as to how “dishonourable”, “homophobic”, “dishonest” and “bigoted” it is. 

A voice-vote was held after the last speech.  It fell overwhelmingly in favour of one side of the debate.  I leave you to figure out which!

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Issue 216’s Comments to Cyberspace

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Quotes for Issue 216

- - - - - S T E V E   J O B S - - - - -

Quote: “The world has lost a visionary, and there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.” 

US president Barrack Obama pays tribute
to Steve Jobs, the late founder and CEO of Apple

Quote: “To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community: I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as CEO of Apple.”

Steve Jobs, the founder and visionary CEO of Apple,
and inspiration for iEverything,
bows to the pancreatic cancer that, sadly, has been
slowly killing him for seven years

“10yrs ago we had Steve Jobs, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope
... Now we have no jobs, no cash and no hope!”

Anonymous

- - - - - L I B Y A - - - - -

Quote: “We are asking Israel to use its influence in the international community to end the tyrannical regime of [Moammar] Q'Daffy and his family.”

Ahmad Shabani, a rebel spokesman and member of Libya’s emerging leadership, makes a curious and encouraging call to Israel for help;
perhaps for Mossad to find and even eliminate Libya's ex-leader.

Quote: “I am afraid if we don't act, they will burn Tripoli.  There will be no more water, food, electricity or freedom.”

Libya's Col Q'Daffy, in a Chemical Ali moment,
as Tripoli falls, signalling his own demise

- - - - - U K - - - - -

Quote: “If we want to have any hope of mending our broken society, family and parenting is where we’ve got to start ... So from here on I want a family test to be applied to all domestic policy. If it hurts families, if it undermines commitment, if it tramples over the values that keep people together, or stops families from being together, then we shouldn’t do it.”

David Cameron, in a welcome burst of pro-family oratory. 

Let's see whether he actually promotes such fine words into legislative action. 

- - - - O B A M A ' s   U S A - - - - -

Quote: “Your policy has been one which I fully understand - I’m not second-guessing - of one child per family.”

US Vice President Joe Biden tells the Chinese Communist Party
that its policy of industrial-scale enforced abortion, infanticide and sterilisation,
with a strong bias for female gendercide,
is just fine by America

Quote: “I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above above the world, he's sort of god.”

Evan Thomas, editor of Newsweek magazine,
being interviewed by Chris Matthews,
who once declared that Mr Obama gave him a “thrill up his leg” or something.

Well he is a thrilling god.  Isn't he?

Quote: “Those of us who were bewitched by [Obama's] eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography:

Drew Westen, a columnist in the New York Times,
belatedly agrees with my own contemporaneous observations
of Senator Obama as an “empty gong”. 

It is rare that the NYT will allow any criticism of the Chosen One.

Quote: “President Obama - this is personal to you. All the black people was proud - we got a black president. You acting like one now, B. Pay your f**king bills on time!”

Felonius Munk (real name Denis Banks),
 a black comedian and commentator, is not impressed
by the US deficit caused by out-of-control federal spending

Quote: “It's true, I am not an American. I was not born in Hawaii, I wasn't born in the United Sates of America, I come from Kenya.”

This is an extraordinary, unforced admission on video
by the US president that he is constitutionally ineligible
to be the US president. 

But its' a hoax,
albeit an extraordinarily skilful one.
Enjoy the Youtube clip!

- - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - -

New (11 Oct) - Quote: “I want justice for my father.  I believe that you know the names of the killers of my father and I want you to tell me who they are.  You were on the army council of the IRA [when he wsas murdered by the IRA]”

David Kelly, 35, whose soldier-father was murdered at age 35
by an IRA team of four while trying to rescue Don Tidy,
a supermarket executive kidnapped by the IRA in 1983,
discomfits Martin McGuinness, Irish presidential candidate and ex IRA boss

Quote: “Just because you are chained to the post doesn’t mean you can’t bark at the dogs.”

Dáithí Ó Sé, host of the 2011 Rose of Tralee contest,
and recently engaged to the 2009 New Jersey Rose Rita Talty,
after journalists chided him for observing
that all the Roses are “so beautiful”.

- - - - - S T E Y N - - - - -

Quote: “A woman's place is in the kitchen dressing a 1,200-pound moose she took down out back at dawn.”

Mark Steyn, columnist, author and proud sexist

-  -  -  -  -

Hat-tip John Connolly

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http://tinyurl.ie/g0 or

http://goo.gl/OlXp or

http://url.ie/djgf

Gift Idea
Cuddly Teddy Bears
looking for a home

Good to report that as at
14th September 2009
he is at least alive.

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Discover the World

My Columns in the

 What I've recently
been reading

“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme.

But it's not entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as

See detailed review

+++++

This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. 

BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability.  

Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia.  

The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. 

However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. 

It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. 

As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history.

Note: I wrote my own reports on Macondo
in May, June, and July 2010

+++++

A horrific account of:

More details on my blog here.

+++++

This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II.

After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939.

From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. 

After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison.

Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,

Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life.  Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book.

There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document.

+++++

“Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”

This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP.

With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. 

Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. 

ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is.

+++++

This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment. 

It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations.  For example:

The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions.

And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks.  Weird.

++++++

A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics. 

It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as

It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains.  For instance:

The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. 

However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. 

+++++

This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation.

The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India.   

Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. 

He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. 

The book amounts to a  very human and exhilarating tale.

Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan.

+++++

 
Click on the logo
to get a table with
the Rugby World Cup
scores, points and rankings.

After 48 crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are, deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA

England get the Silver,
Argentina the Bronze.  Fourth is host nation France.

No-one can argue with
the justice of the outcomes