Gallimaufry

[trysail]

A collection of articles, images and rants that happen to catch my eye— it's that simple— nothing more, nothing less.

__________________




http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aaj18lIVVdLw



Supertanker Owners May Copy Frontline, Withhold Ships
By Alaric Nightingale

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Owners of supertankers delivering the world’s seaborne crude oil may emulate industry leader Frontline Ltd. and stop leasing the vessels until a plunge in rental income is reversed, shipping analysts said.

“We expect other owners to follow suit,” Arctic Securities ASA analysts Martin Sommerseth Jaer and Erik Nikolai Stavseth said in an e-mailed report today. “Ship owners are now likely joining forces to limit vessel supply.”

Daily returns for very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, on the industry’s benchmark route from Saudi Arabia to Japan have slid 93 percent to $6,237 since peaking in January, Baltic Exchange data show. Frontline will anchor ships and decline cargoes until conditions improve, Jens Martin Jensen, chief executive officer of the company’s management unit, said Aug. 4.

The four-week supply of ships fell by 16 vessels yesterday, double the number of charters, Imarex Asia Pte, a Singapore- based unit of freight-derivatives broker Imarex ASA, said today. That raised the question of whether some owners may be withholding carriers from the spot market, it said.

About 39.6 million barrels of crude are shipped by sea each day, according to data from Clarkson Research Services Ltd., a unit of the world’s largest shipbroker. The International Energy Agency estimates global demand will average 86.5 million barrels a day in the present quarter.

$10,000 a Day
Owners may follow Frontline’s lead while rental income remains below $10,000 a day, Simon Chattrabhuti, head of tanker research at ICAP Shipping International Ltd., said by e-mail today. That’s the amount ICAP estimates owners need to pay crew, repairs and other operating expenses.

Once finance costs are included, Frontline requires $31,100 a day, it said May 21. The company is the world’s biggest supertanker operator.

The world’s 10 largest VLCC owners control 237 of the ships, according to Clarkson. That equates to 45 percent of the 532-strong fleet of the vessels, according to Lloyd’s Register- Fairplay data on Bloomberg. A VLCC can carry 2 million barrels of crude.

Frontline’s decision has caused freight derivatives to strengthen, implying charter rates will rise later this year, Lorentzen & Stemoco A/S and First Securities A/S said in a joint report today.

Charter rates as measured by the industry-standard Worldscale system declined 0.3 percent to 47.21 points on the Saudi Arabia-to-Japan route today, according to the Baltic Exchange.

The Baltic Dirty Tanker Index, a broader measure of commodity shipping costs, climbed 1.8 percent to 779 points today after sliding 11 percent in the prior nine sessions.

 

[eyer]

Interesting info, trysail - thanks.

 

[trysail]

BP CAP MKTS AMER INC 4.200% 06/15/2018​

http://cxa.marketwatch.com/finra/BondCenter/Controls/Charts/BondDetailChart.aspx?ID=MTAzNzNRQUE4&Range=1year&GraphType=Price&random=80999​

 

[trysail]

George Washington's Farewell Address
Published 17 September, 1796

Excerpts from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington's_Farewell_Address



The Dangers of Political Parties

Washington continues to advance his idea of the dangers of sectionalism and expands his warning to include the dangers of political parties to the government and country as a whole. His warnings took on added significance with the recent creation of the Democratic-Republican Party by Jefferson, to oppose Hamilton's Federalist Party, which had been created a year earlier in 1791, which in many ways promoted the interest of certain regions and groups of Americans over others. A more pressing concern for Washington, which he makes reference to in this portion of the address, was the Democratic-Republican efforts to align with France and the Federalist efforts to ally the nation with Great Britain in an ongoing conflict between the two European nations brought about by the French Revolution.

While Washington accepts the fact that it is natural for people to organize and operate within groups like political parties, he also argues that every government has recognized political parties as an enemy and has sought to repress them because of their tendency to seek more power than other groups and take revenge on political opponents. He argues that these parties' efforts to seize power and exact revenge upon their opponents have led to horrible atrocities and will ultimately end in despotism as people throw their support behind the most powerful faction and the faction focuses on increasing their own power instead of promoting the public liberty.

Washington goes on to acknowledge the fact that parties are sometimes beneficial in promoting liberty in monarchies, but argues that political parties must be restrained in a popularly elected government because of their tendency to distract the government from their duties, create unfounded jealousies amongst groups and regions, raise false alarms amongst the people, promote riots and insurrection, and provide foreign nations and interests access to the government where they can impose their will upon the country.

The Importance of Credit, and the Sparing Use of Government Borrowing

Washington provides strong support for a balanced federal budget, arguing that the nation's credit is an important source of strength and security. He urges the American people to preserve the national credit by avoiding war, avoiding unnecessary borrowing, and paying off any national debt accumulated in times of war as quickly as possible in times of peace so that future generations do not have to take on the financial burdens that others have taken on themselves. Despite his warnings to avoid taking on debt, Washington does state his belief that sometimes it is necessary to spend money to prevent dangers or wars that will in the end cost more if not properly prepared for. At these times, argues Washington, it is necessary, although unpleasant, for the people to cooperate by paying taxes created to cover these precautionary expenses.

Washington makes an extended allusion, possibly in reference to the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania which he led a national army to put down, on how important it is for the government to be careful in choosing the items that will be taxed, but he also reminds the American people that no matter how hard the government tries there will never be a tax which is not inconvenient, unpleasant, or seemingly an insult to those who must pay it.

Foreign Relations, the Dangers of Permanent Foreign Alliances, and Free Trade

Washington dedicates a large part of his farewell address to discussing foreign relations, and the dangers of permanent alliances between the United States and foreign nations. This issue had taken special prominence in American politics during conflict between France and Britain, known as the French Revolutionary Wars, and the efforts of the Federalists to join sides with Britain and the efforts of the Democratic-Republicans to convince Washington to honor the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, which established the Franco-American alliance, and aid France. Washington had avoided American involvement in the conflict by issuing the Proclamation of Neutrality, which in turn led to the Neutrality Act of 1794. He clearly tries to further explain his approach to foreign policy and alliances in this portion of the address.

Once again making reference to proper behavior based upon religious doctrine and morality, Washington advocates a policy of good faith and justice towards all nations, and urges the American people to avoid long-term friendly relations or rivalries with any nation. He argues these attachments and animosity toward nations will only cloud the government's judgment in its foreign policy. Washington argues that longstanding poor relations will only lead to unnecessary wars due to a tendency to blow minor offenses out of proportion when committed by nations viewed as enemies of the United States. He continues this argument by claiming that alliances are likely to draw the United States into wars which have no justification and no benefit to the country beyond simply defending the favored nation. Washington continues his warning on alliances by claiming that they often lead to poor relations with nations who feel that they are not being treated as well as America's allies, and threaten to influence the American government into making decisions based upon the will of their allies instead of the will of the American people.

Washington makes an extended reference to the dangers of foreign nations who will seek to influence the American people and government. He makes a point to say that he believes both nations who may be considered friendly as well as nations considered enemies will try to influence the government to do their will and it will only be "real patriots" who ignore popular opinion and resist the influence of friendly nations to seek what is best for their own country. It is likely that Washington's own experience during the Citizen Genêt affair, when a French diplomat traveled to America raising militias to attack Spanish lands, privateers to seize British ships, and rallies to sway American opinion in favor of an alliance with France against Washington's orders to stop his activities in the interest of American neutrality.

Washington goes on to urge the American people to take advantage of their isolated position in the world, and avoid attachments and entanglements in foreign affairs, especially those of Europe, which he argues have little or nothing to do with the interests of America. He argues that it makes no sense for the American people to wage war on European soil when their isolated position and unity will allow them to remain neutral and focus on their own affairs. As a result, Washington argues that the country should avoid permanent alliance with all foreign nations, although temporary alliances during times of extreme danger may be necessary, but does say that current treaties should be honored although not extended. (Despite his claim that current alliances should be honored, Washington had in fact through the Proclamation of Neutrality not honored the Treaty of Alliance, which promised aid in case the French were ever attacked by the British.)

Washington wraps up his foreign policy stance by advocating free trade with all nations arguing that trade links should be established naturally and the role of the government should be limited to insuring stable trade, defending the rights of American merchants, and any provisions necessary to insure that the government is able to insure the conventional rules of trade.

 

[trysail]

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/liquid_thorium_reactor_large.jpg​

 

[trysail]

http://geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif​

http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm

 

[Songcatcher]

Japan will probably move on to hydro energy.

 

[trysail]

http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg
Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sum through July 31, 2010. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern
Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/lime green boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.


Note: Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone data is spotty prior to the introduction of reliable satellite monitoring, thus the ACE represented at the beginning of the 1980s is likely underestimated due to missing data.
Thus, it is possible that the current global collapse in TC ACE is comparable to lows experienced prior to 30-years ago... ​

http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/

 

[Songcatcher]

I mean hydrogen based energy.

Not hydro, because it's cost inefficient as American presidents.

 

[Songcatcher]

Are you calling my people stupid, dickhead?

 

[rosco rathbone]

"medley, mixture, hodge podge, jumble"

 

[Songcatcher]

Take a good look at the map.

What surrounds Aichi?

Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka.

Aichi is fucking Birmingham, UK.

 

[trysail]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/In-La-signs-of-regrowth-seen-apf-3190572679.html?x=0&.v=1


In La., signs of regrowth seen in oiled marshes
Cain Burdeau and Jeffrey Collins
Thursday August 12, 2010

BARATARIA BAY, La. (AP) -- Shoots of marsh grass and bushes of mangrove trees already are starting to grow back in the bay where just months ago photographers shot startling images of dying pelicans coated in oil from the massive Gulf oil spill.

More than a dozen scientists interviewed by The Associated Press say the marsh here and across the Louisiana coast is healing itself, giving them hope delicate wetlands might weather the worst offshore spill in U.S. history better than they had feared. Some marshland could be lost, but the amount appears to be small compared with what the coast loses every year through human development.

On Tuesday, a cruise through the Barataria Bay marsh revealed thin shoots growing up out of the oiled mass of grass. Elsewhere, there were still gray, dead mangrove shrubs, likely killed by the oil, but even there new green growth was coming up.

"These are areas that were black with oil," said Matt Boasso, a temporary worker with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

As crude from a blown-out BP well oozed toward the marshes after an April oil-rig explosion, experts had feared it would kill roots in marsh grass, smother the mangroves and ultimately dissolve wetlands that plant life was holding together. State, federal and BP PLC cleanup efforts were focused on preventing that from happening by burning and skimming the oil, blocking it with booms and sand berms and breaking it up with chemical dispersants.

Whether it is a triumph of cleanup work, the marshes' resiliency or both, scientists have reported regrowth of grasses, black mangrove trees and roseau cane, a lush, tall cane found in the brackish waters around the mouth of the Mississippi River.

"The marsh is coming back, sprigs are popping up," said Alexander S. Kolker, a marsh expert and coastal geologist in Cocodrie, La., with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

He's working with a National Science Foundation team looking at the effect of the BP oil spill on Louisiana's vast but severely stressed marshland -- also known as the Cajun prairie -- where trappers, shrimpers and alligator hunters have made their living for generations. Louisiana, the state worst hit by the oil spill, is home to the vast majority of the northern Gulf's marshland.

Coastal Louisiana is covered in a thick mat of salt marshes that thrive on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, where land merges with the sea. The marshes provide life support for fauna and flora in the Gulf, said Bob Thomas, a zoologist at Loyola University, and up to 90 percent of commercial fisheries depend on them for some stage of fish development.

Young bull sharks, for example, make a beeline for Louisiana's estuary to feed on catfish, bait fish and crabs, bulking up before returning offshore to pursue bigger meals, he said.

Many other Gulf species do the same thing. Blue crabs, menhaden and shrimp all come into the marsh to feed on the nutrient rich waters of the bays and marshes, where peaceful grazing is easier. Many freshwater bird species also come down to the marsh to feed, mature and nest.

Even before the spill, south Louisiana had been losing about 25 square miles of marshland a year, a total of about 2,300 square miles since the 1930s, mostly due to levee construction, logging, shipping and oil drilling. Only about 5,300 square miles of marsh and swamp remain in the state.

Louisiana accounts for about 30 percent of the nation's coastal marsh and about 90 percent of its marsh loss, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Associated Press calculations based on how much coastline government scientists say was affected by the oil spill indicate that at most 3.4 square miles of Louisiana marshland was oiled, an area stretched out over hundreds of miles of coastline. At least some of those areas appear to have begun to bounce back.

Ivor van Heerden, a BP-hired environmental scientist, said the damage may be even less than that. He said federal, state and BP oil spill survey teams have found only 550 acres of marsh that have been oiled, less than 1 square mile.

"In all sectors the plants have continued to grow, even in the very worst areas," he said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concurred with van Heerden's figure but said it and other federal agencies are still calculating just how much marsh was oiled and what the effect has been, said agency spokesman Ben Sherman.

Marshland closest to the Gulf took the worst of the spill, absorbing oil and keeping it from oozing farther inland. Even losing a little of it would be a blow to the ecosystem.

Michael Blum, a Louisiana State University biologist who toured the marsh of Barataria Bay on Tuesday, said some of the grass won't stick around much longer.

"You're seeing exposed roots," he said. "The expectation is that you will have loss of the protective sheet, you have marsh that anchors the marsh in place, and if they die off they no longer have that anchor."

He added: "There's the possibility that land loss will be accelerated, or there will be a pulse of land loss associated with the BP oil spill. The question is how much and where."

Many other questions remain about how much environmental damage the spill inflicted. Scientists want to understand the effects of the chemical dispersants BP used to break up the oil and look more closely at how the smallest forms of life, things like fiddler crabs and spiders, have been affected.

"This is sort of the initial macroscopic view," said Tom Bianchi, an oceanographer and marsh expert at Texas A&M University working with the National Science Foundation team.

He said water from the oiled marsh showed problems. "We did see some particulates, silts and clays coming out of the marsh, clogging our filters," Bianchi said. That, he added, was a sign of marsh death, which could weaken the soil and lead to erosion.

The dominant plant species in coastal Louisiana is the spartina, better known as smooth cordgrass or salt-marsh cordgrass. Found from New England to Texas, it can take a beating, which is giving scientists reason to hope.

"It is used to living in severe environments, salt water and soils that are completely flooded, and that combination would kill almost any other plant," said Steven C. Pennings, a University of Houston ecologist studying the oil's effect on Louisiana's landscape.

Irving A. Mendelssohn, a coastal plant ecologist at Louisiana State University, said the wetlands data so far is good news for fishermen who depend on the ecosystem to produce shrimp, menhaden and other seafood.

"My gut feeling, based on what I have seen, based on the recovery people have observed, I doubt that the impact to the wetlands is going to create a significant problem for our coastal fisheries," Mendelssohn said.

People in Louisiana know just how vital the wetlands are and how much they stand to lose.

"The marshes are what I am afraid of," said Kathleen Barrilleaux, a 57-year-old cafeteria manager at an elementary school near New Orleans, sitting back in a fold-out chair at the end of a long day on the pier fishing with her family near Barataria Bay.

For now, she and her son-in-law, Joseph Breaux, a 41-year-old grain elevator worker, are upbeat.

"I don't see an oil slick or nothing," Breaux said. His two daughters and wife were going back and forth on the pier tending to a fishing line and crab nets.

He said he saw no signs of oil on the crabs they pulled in or on the croaker fish they caught.

"We're going to have us a crab boil," he said.

 

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aEEncZzuHi90

Harvard Speeds Up Evolution, Shops Secret to DuPont
By Arielle Fridson

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Evolution often plays out over millennia. George Church says he can make it happen in days.

He and his team of researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston invented a table-top machine that can generate multiple changes in the DNA of bacteria all at once, speeding up the evolutionary process. Aiming to sell the technology for use in chemicals, energy, and the drug industry, they’re talking with DuPont Co. and other companies, members of the team said.

Church, a 56-year-old genetics professor, is a pioneer in synthetic biology, the field in which scientists manipulate DNA to create organisms that don’t exist in nature, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Aug. 16 issue. Researchers may one day be able to use these techniques to develop cotton that’s waterproof or bananas that stay ripe for months, according to scientists in Church’s lab.

“This is going to change the way we think about manipulating biology,” said Harris Wang, one of the team leaders, in a telephone interview.

The technology, known as multiplex automated genetic engineering, or MAGE, was created by Church, Wang, Farren Isaacs, and others in Church’s group. It can induce 50 different gene alterations in a population of bacteria almost simultaneously, creating billions of cellular mutations in a matter of days, the team said. They can then identify the most- useful mutations, the scientists said.

Altered Bacteria
Manipulating bacterial cells is as old as biotechnology itself. What’s new is that Church’s machine automates the process of repeatedly introducing modified DNA into many cells, thus inducing multiple specific changes at the same time. Scientists can adjust the types of alterations --substituting genes, inserting them, or deleting them in the bacteria.

The MAGE machine was first presented in an August 2009 paper in Nature.

Using this technology, Church and his associates genetically altered E. coli to produce lycopene, the pigment in tomatoes that may be a cancer-fighting nutrient. Some of the altered bacteria produced five times as much lycopene as they would have made if enhanced by older techniques.

The Harvard team spent just three days and $1,000 in supplies to accomplish this. It would have taken months to do it the old way, Church said in an e-mail. The team has patented the technology and aims to start selling it to other researchers and to companies later this year at about $90,000 a pop, Church said in a telephone interview.

Dozen Companies
At least a dozen companies are now in talks with Church’s group, researchers said, including DuPont, based in Wilmington, Delaware; Life Technologies Corp. in Carlsbad, California, a biotechnology company making tools for medical research; Koninklijke DSM NV, a chemical company based in Heerlan, Netherlands; and Amyris Biotechnologies Inc., a renewable-energy company in Emeryville, California.

DuPont spokeswoman Tara Steward declined to confirm or comment on any discussions with Church’s team, as did Life Technologies spokesman Tim Ingersoll, Koninklijke spokesman Andre van der Elsen, and Erin Kinsella of Amyris.

This isn’t the first time Church has played scientific revolutionary. He helped start the government-funded Human Genome Project, which decoded the entire human genetic blueprint in 2000. That triumph came after a spirited race against a private effort led by geneticist Craig Venter, who runs the J. Craig Venter Institute, based in Rockville, Maryland. The teams shared credit for the milestone.

Church and Venter are once again sharing the limelight. In May, Venter and his team reported in the journal Nature that they had inserted a fully customized strand of DNA into a living cell, creating what they call the “first synthetic genome.”

Tricked Cells
In contrast, the Harvard team modifies DNA directly in live cells, which are tricked into thinking it’s their own genetic material, Wang said.

“Practically, these two approaches will eventually meet somewhere in the middle,” Wang said. While MAGE can produce high quantities of cells with many functions, Venter’s method can design cells that can be used as templates to build on, he said.

“MAGE strikes me as a typically Churchian idea: big, cutting-edge, high-risk/high-reward,” said Misha Angrist, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Institute of Genome Sciences & Policy, in Durham, North Carolina, in an e-mail. “George always seems to look several steps ahead of where the field is.”

Clyde Hutchison, a member of the Synthetic Biology Group at Venter’s institute, declined to comment on MAGE.

Venture Capitalists
The Harvard team has worked with engineers at Boston Engineering Corp., a closely held engineering-services company in Waltham, Massachusetts, since October to turn MAGE into a manufacturable machine, Wang said. The prototype is now going through the validation stage. Within a few months, the team and venture investors may license rights to technology from Harvard, and create a company that would work with clients, Isaacs said.

Church was drawn into biology at a young age. Playing around with insects and pond muck as an 8-year-old was one of his “earliest thrills,” he said. Computers grabbed his attention as well, and by ninth grade he was programming simple video games.

The global market for synthetic biology totaled $233.8 million in 2008 and may increase to $2.4 billion in 2013, according to a June report from BCC Research, a research company in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Applications in chemicals and energy produced sales of $80.6 million in 2008, the report said. Those in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals came to $80.3 million.

Church’s project is funded by Harvard’s Boston-based Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, founded in January 2009 after Hansjörg Wyss, chairman of Switzerland’s Synthes Inc., donated $125 million to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Terror and Profit
Church and his peers said they can’t predict what kind of organisms they could create by manipulating DNA in living cells. The U.S. should draw up regulations to monitor or prevent research that might create virulent new viruses or other pathogens, Church said at a government bioethics hearing in Washington in July. In the wrong hands, synthetic biology could be a tool for bioterrorism, he said.

“The potential benefits are enormous; at the same time, the risks are real,” said Kristala Prather, an assistant professor of genomics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. She spoke at the hearing, part of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. “There’s an information gap between what we understand about synthetic biology and what our capabilities are.”

President Barack Obama created the commission to “reap the rewards” of the science as much as to monitor potential dangers, said Amy Gutmann, who chaired the meetings.

 

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWxrVlejdq7Q&pos=6


M&A Losers in $10 Trillion Deal Binge Led by McClatchy, Sprint
By Zachary R. Mider

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- More than half of the 100 biggest takeovers made during the last mergers-and-acquisitions boom have something in common: By one measure, they never should have happened.

The stocks of 53 companies that made the biggest purchases from 2005 to 2008 lagged behind industry peers two years later, according to data compiled by Bloomberg’s ranking group. Among the worst performers were McClatchy Co., Boston Scientific Corp., and Sprint Nextel Corp., all three of which are now valued at less than the price they paid for their acquisitions.

Companies struck $10 trillion of deals during the last merger binge, even after more than a decade of research showing deals often don’t pay off for the buyers. The average stock price of all the top acquirers trailed benchmark indexes by an average of about 3 percentage points.

“As a CEO, you are forced to think about growth, think about outperforming others, building the biggest and most dominant corporation in your sector, and you will do deals,” said Alexander Roos, a partner at Boston Consulting Group. “Everyone is always very convinced of being the first to know how to do it right.”

Worse at Peak
Deals executed during a financial boom tend to turn out worse than those done in a slump, according to research by Roos. Even so, a lack of access to cash and credit can lead companies to shelve purchases at the most opportune time. The global economic slowdown that began at the end of 2007 coincided with a collapse in the M&A market, with annual takeover volume falling by more than half from the peak, to $1.8 trillion last year.

“If you can get things at low prices, you’re going to make money,” said Donna Hitscherich, a senior lecturer in finance at Columbia University and a former M&A banker. “But you have to have the courage of your convictions.”

Warren Buffett had one of the top-performing deals in the Bloomberg ranking after his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. bought PacifiCorp for $5.1 billion in 2006. Berkshire’s stock outperformed a benchmark index by 35 percentage points, making PacifiCorp the ninth-best deal in the ranking.

That doesn’t mean the billionaire investor hasn’t had deals turn sour. In 2008, Buffett applied the lyrics of a country music song by Bobby Bare to missteps in M&A: “I’ve never gone to bed with an ugly woman, but I’ve sure woke up with a few.”

Best, Worst
Suez SA, the best-performing acquirer in Bloomberg’s ranking, was boosted when it also became a takeover target. Paris-based Suez purchased shares in Belgium’s Electrabel SA that it didn’t already own for about 12.6 billion euros ($16.2 billion). Suez was itself later bought by Gaz de France SA, helping the shares beat a benchmark index by 83 percentage points.

McClatchy’s purchase of the Knight Ridder Inc. newspaper chain, for $4.1 billion in 2006, ranked the worst of the 100 on Bloomberg’s list, with McClatchy shares underperforming the Bloomberg Advertising Age AdMarket 50 Index by 93 percentage points. Sacramento, California-based McClatchy borrowed cash to buy the chain as newspaper real-estate advertising plunged. Elaine Lintecum, McClatchy’s treasurer, declined to comment.

Boston Scientific outbid Johnson & Johnson to buy Guidant Corp. for $27.5 billion in 2006. The takeover diversified Boston Scientific’s product line while leaving it to deal with tens of thousands of safety recalls linked to Guidant defibrillators. The stock traded 64 percentage points below the Standard & Poor’s 500 Health Care Equipment Index two years after the purchase. Paul Donovan, a spokesman for Boston Scientific, declined to comment.

Sprint Nextel
Sprint’s $36 billion combination with Nextel in 2005 led hundreds of thousands of customers to defect to competitors and pushed the stock 47 percentage points lower than industry peers. The company is now valued at about $30 billion including debt.

Sprint has made “great strides” in the past 2 1/2 years in improving its customer experience, strengthening its brand and generating cash, said Scott Sloat, a spokesman for the Overland Park, Kansas-based company, in an e-mail. The combination with Nextel also allowed Sprint to bring the first fourth-generation mobile-broadband network to customers, he said.

Shareholders of buyers may be growing less tolerant. The biggest transaction announced this year, Prudential Plc’s $35.5 billion offer for an Asian insurance unit owned by American International Group Inc., fell apart when Prudential’s investors refused to support it, calling the price too rich.

Among smaller purchases, stockholders of Charles River Laboratories International Inc. last month scuttled a planned $1.6 billion acquisition of WuXi PharmaTech (Cayman) Inc.

During the past decade, large institutional investors have grown more willing to speak out against an acquisition, a strategy the activist hedge funds pioneered, said Christopher Young, head of takeover defense at Credit Suisse Group AG.

That “rambunctiousness,” Young said, has only grown since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008. “Shareholders are saying capital is a scarce asset, you should use it wisely.”

 

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601090&sid=a2dEKua62H6Y

Expulsions of Roma Get Public Nod in Sarkozy’s France
By Gregory Viscusi

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Marka, who lives in a wooden shack with her husband in a camp holding about 300 Roma built next to a rail yard on the outskirts of Paris, says she feels every day could be their last one there.

The 17-year-old, who earns about 10 euros ($12.9) a day doing skits for Paris tourists, is among gypsies targeted by the French government for expulsion. President Nicolas Sarkozy, responding to a spate of violent crimes, last month ordered that 300 illegal Roma camps be dismantled and residents expelled.

For Sarkozy, who faces re-election in 2012, the evictions are among a series of steps -- including stripping naturalized citizens of their French citizenship if they commit serious crimes and jailing parents of juvenile delinquents -- to show he’s tough on crime. Politically, the moves are paying off as polls show the French support the measures, giving Sarkozy a bump up from record-low approval ratings.

“Sarkozy is surfing a radicalization of public opinion on the question of security and immigration,” said Laurent Dubois, a professor at Paris’s Institute of Political Studies. “Sarkozy’s declarations are a series of landmines that he’s slipped in under the summer sand. It helps remobilize the right, while at the same time creating divisions on the left.”

Police today evacuated 1,000 people in 274 caravans in Anglet, in southwestern France, LCI Television said. Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said yesterday that more than 40 camps have been dismantled in the last 15 days and 700 people are being sent back to Bulgaria and Romania on chartered flights.

Public Support
The president’s popularity ratings are recovering, according to a CSA poll published in Le Parisien on Aug. 7. People who said they have confidence in Sarkozy rose to 34 percent in August from a record low of 32 percent in July. The poll questioned 1,002 people. No margin of error was given.

An Ifop poll published Aug. 6 in pro-government newspaper Le Figaro said 79 percent were in favor of dismantling gypsy camps. Between 70 and 80 percent favor taking citizenship away from foreign-born criminals. The poll questioned 1,003 people between Aug. 3 and 5. No margin of error was given.

In a poll by CSA for Communist Party newspaper Humanite, 62 percent said dismantling the camps is “necessary” and 57 percent said the same for taking away citizenship. The poll questioned 1,011 people Aug. 4-5. No margin of error was given.

The opposition Socialist Party is struggling to come up with a response.

‘Ill at Ease’
“Among voters, security is an issue where there is a lot of common ground across the political spectrum,” said Jean- Daniel Levy, head of the political department at CSA. “Many of the voters on the left don’t think the Socialist leadership is adequately tough on questions of security.”

Martine Aubry, the head of the Socialist Party, the country’s main opposition, issued a communiqué Aug. 1 that denounced Sarkozy for “sliding into anti-republican ideas that hurt France and its values.” She didn’t directly mention the proposals, and hasn’t spoken publicly.

“It’s a subject that Socialists are ill at ease about,” Pierre Moscovici, a former Socialist minister and a member of parliament, said in an Aug. 10 interview with RTL radio. “We have to get back to talking about social issues, about pensions, jobs, taxes, and not fall for this bait.”

Sarkozy’s measures came after itinerant workers in central France burned cars and a police station July 17 following the death in a police shooting of one of them -- a 22-year-old who didn’t stop his car during a night-time identity check.

Pantin Camp
The rioters belonged to a 400,000-strong community of French citizens without fixed addresses who do itinerant work. In contrast, the Roma number about 15,000 in France and are recent arrivals from Bulgaria and Romania. Aid groups criticized Sarkozy for lumping together the two unconnected communities.

While Romania joined the European Union in 2007, Romanians need permits to live and work in France until 2014. There’s no etymological link between Roma, or the people known as gypsies, and Romania, the country.

Sarkozy’s proposals were criticized yesterday at a session of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva. The French foreign ministry said in a statement that it distinguishes between itinerant workers and gypsies, and that the Roma can reside in France as long as they respect local laws.

At the rail yard camp in the Paris suburb of Pantin, Marka lives in fear of expulsion. Marka, who wouldn’t give her last name, is a Romanian citizen who’s been in France “off and on” for 10 years. Most of the inhabitants of her camp arrived from Romania in the past six months and don’t speak French, she said.

‘Want to Stay’
Two rows of trailers and shacks face each other, with trash piled up at the entrance. There’s no running water, although the town of Pantin has installed eight chemical toilets. The men try to make money by collecting scrap metal, while the women beg. Most of the children don’t go to school.

The Pantin camp is illegal and is slated for destruction because the rail yard is due to be developed, said Philippe Navarro, chief of staff at the Pantin mayor’s office.

Inhabitants of the camp say they can make more money and are treated better in France than they would be in Romania. They say they won’t obey orders to leave the country.

In the neighboring Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, residents of a 10-year-old gypsy camp were evacuated by the police last month. This week, they were offered four empty lots by the Communist Party mayor.

On a recent day, men were building shacks there, using wood they’d found. Most of them speak French, and kids at the camp go to school, says Miahai Stefan, 30, a scrap-metal collector.

“We want to stay here,” he said. “We want a place to live, to work, and to send our kids to school.”

 

[trysail]

http://www.bls.gov/cpi/
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

Consumer Price Index
( Not Seasonally Adjusted )​

​

​

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/US_Consumer_Price_Index_Graph.svg/1000px-US_Consumer_Price_Index_Graph.svg.png
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&chart_type=line&graph_id=30395&category_id=0&recession_bars=On&width=630&height=378&bgcolor=%23B3CDE7&graph_bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&txtcolor=%23000000&ts=8&preserve_ratio=false&fo=ve&id=CPIAUCSL&transformation=lin&scale=Left&range=Max&cosd=1947-01-01&coed=2010-08-01&line_color=%230000FF&link_values=&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&line_style=Solid&lw=1&vintage_date=2010-10-14&revision_date=2010-10-14&mma=0&nd=&ost=&oet=&fml=a​

Twelve Month Percentage Change of Consumer Price Index
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&chart_type=line&graph_id=30397&category_id=0&recession_bars=Off&width=630&height=378&bgcolor=%23B3CDE7&graph_bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&txtcolor=%23000000&ts=8&preserve_ratio=false&fo=ve&id=CPIAUCSL&transformation=ch1&scale=Left&range=Max&cosd=1954-07-01&coed=2010-08-01&line_color=%230000FF&link_values=&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&line_style=Solid&lw=1&vintage_date=2010-10-14&revision_date=2010-10-14&mma=0&nd=&ost=&oet=&fml=a​

 

[Peregrinator]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aEEncZzuHi90

Harvard Speeds Up Evolution, Shops Secret to DuPont
By Arielle Fridson

I linked this story to Glo33, who is professionally involved with such stuff. I thought you might like her response (reposted from email with permission):

i will need to read a more specific paper on this to undertsand how it exactly works.
it seems that as of now we can introduce a *known* number of mainly point mutations into the cell genome by mutagenesis, but this process will scatter the mutations randomly, so even if you can approximately control a range number of mutations you want to create by playing with both the length of the mutagenesis process and the type and intensity of chemical you want to use, you just cant target specific gene(s)...you will have to screen a lot of mutants to find the advantageous mutations you are looking for.

it seems that with this MAGE machine you are able to target specic loci/genes at the same time in one single step.
it is interesting.
i am not surprised Dupont is all over it. they do need a scientific breakthrough to come out swinging from a bad (or at least not so great) financial year.

 

[trysail]

I linked this story to Glo33, who is professionally involved with such stuff. I thought you might like her response (reposted from email with permission):

i will need to read a more specific paper on this to undertsand how it exactly works.
it seems that as of now we can introduce a *known* number of mainly point mutations into the cell genome by mutagenesis, but this process will scatter the mutations randomly, so even if you can approximately control a range number of mutations you want to create by playing with both the length of the mutagenesis process and the type and intensity of chemical you want to use, you just cant target specific gene(s)...you will have to screen a lot of mutants to find the advantageous mutations you are looking for.

it seems that with this MAGE machine you are able to target specic loci/genes at the same time in one single step.
it is interesting.
i am not surprised Dupont is all over it. they do need a scientific breakthrough to come out swinging from a bad (or at least not so great) financial year.

I hope I don't have to tell you that— even in academia— there are a fair number of promoters in the field. There are several "repeat offenders" who have been guilty of hyping stuff for the sake of drumming up interest and dough. Some of the academic entrepreneurs put perpetual hypsters like Goldman Sachs to shame. Both are perfectly happy to roll the dice as long as it's being done with "other people's money."


As you know, it's immensely complex stuff; notwithstanding the presence of household names there is absolutely no guarantee of success.


My lifelong friendship with a fellow who grew up to be a geneticist/microbiologist gave me a bit of a window on the field going all the way back to Genentech's founding. I've seen many more flops than home runs.


Its amazing to see how much of what was done by hand thirty years ago is now fully automated— that permits the employment of "brute force" methodology to novel concepts.

 

[trysail]

The purpose of the investment { management } business is to extract money from its customers and to ensure that honest and competent persons are excluded from employment in the field.

 

[trysail]

WIND ENERGY
THE CASE OF DENMARK​

http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf

 

[trysail]

There you have it: the world's largest owner of natural gas reserves, Russia.
It is the "Saudi Arabia" of gas.

http://www.gazprom.com/preview/f/posts/15/301731/w500_russia_transmission-eng.jpg​

The above image shows Gazprom's trunkline pipeline system.

Gazprom holds hydrocarbon reserves that, on a BTU-equivalent basis, are 4× those of ExxonMobil. As you undoubtedly observe, Eastern Siberia is largely untouched.

 

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=af56kknMTkZw



Kosmos Ends $4 Billion Sale of Ghana Fields to Exxon
By Eduard Gismatullin

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Kosmos Energy LLC, the U.S.-based oil explorer focusing on West Africa, ended its plans for a $4 billion sale of fields in Ghana to Exxon Mobil Corp. after government opposition to the deal.

The company will focus on further exploration of Ghana’s deposits and together with partners plans to start pumping oil from the offshore Jubilee field in the fourth quarter, Dallas- based Kosmos said today in a statement. The field, operated by Tullow Oil Plc, will reach 120,000 barrels a day of production next year.

The decision highlights the risk of oil and gas investment in Africa, analysts said. In October, the explorer agreed to an exclusive sale of its 23 percent stake in Jubilee to Exxon, in a deal valued at $4 billion. The same month, Ghana National Petroleum Corp. said it would buy the stake from Kosmos after the government declined to approve the agreement.

“It’s bad news for Ghana, because it’s going to put off some potential investors,” said Dougie Youngson, an analyst at Arbuthnot Securities Ltd. in London.

Emma Heywood, a spokeswoman at Exxon in the U.K., declined to comment.

Strategy Diversion
Kosmos, backed by Blackstone Group LP and Warburg Pincus LLC, will become an oil producer with the Jubilee start-up, diverging from its strategy focusing on exploration.

“We are very encouraged by our recent exploration results, other discoveries we are appraising, and additional developments being planned,” Kosmos Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxted said in the statement.

Tullow, the U.K. explorer with the most licenses in Africa, in July said that together with partners including Kosmos it discovered a “major new oil field” offshore Ghana after drilling the Owo-1 well. The explorers had been targeting a 1.4 billion-barrel find of oil equivalent in the Owo-Tweneboa-Ntomme area, according to Tullow’s July presentation.

With potential resources of 1.8 billion barrels, the Jubilee field, discovered in 2007, has attracted attention from Chinese producers as well as BP Plc. It will be the first field to pump oil and gas off Ghana’s coast.

Tullow is lead operator of the $3.1 billion Jubilee project, where it holds 34.7 percent. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. controls 23.49 percent; Sabre Oil & Gas has 2.81 percent and EO Group 1.75 percent. GNPC holds 13.75 percent.

 

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601090&sid=aURysyJqsoXQ

Collapsing Marsh
By Ken Wells

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Claude Luke throttles down his 21- foot aluminum work boat. Off to the left, the snout of an alligator disappears near the mouth of a watery gash in the Louisiana marshland.

The 51-year-old Cajun crab fishermen is touring the epicenter of an unfolding environmental disaster that dwarfs the BP Plc spill and predates it by decades, according to state scientists and environmentalists. If unchecked, the destruction threatens to undermine the world’s seventh largest estuary and one of the most important U.S. energy corridors.

His boat idles near a canal dredged more than two decades ago for a petroleum pipeline. Back then it was about 15 feet (4 1/2 meters) wide. Now it sprawls 100 feet wide, opening this once-protected upland marsh to toxic salt water. Not far away, Luke nods toward a water tower visible across about 2 miles (3 kilometers) of almost open water.

“You used to be able to walk there from here,” says Luke, who moonlights as a warden on the private Harry Bourg Corp. preserve deep in Louisiana’s delta. “Before the oil companies came, this was good, solid marsh.”

More than half the 17,000 acres (6,600 hectares) of marshland purchased about 80 years ago by Bourg, a barely literate muskrat trapper, have been lost to erosion and subsidence, according to engineering surveys. The inheritance of Bourg’s descendants is vanishing under a profusion of these runaway canals. They were dug to lay pipelines or float in equipment for the drilling of 90 oil and gas wells that made Bourg one of the wealthiest men in South Louisiana before he died in 1963.

Coastal Crisis
Long before BP’s blowout menaced the Gulf of Mexico, an oil industry-related coastal crisis of another kind began unfolding all over the Mississippi River coastal delta. Dredging for navigation, oil and gas drilling and pipeline construction has ripped apart the estuary’s fragile system of fresh and saltwater marshes.

Between 1901, when drilling began in Louisiana, and the 1980s, the oil and gas industry laid tens of thousands of miles of pipelines and dredged 9,300 miles of canals in an industrial invasion of a wetland that once covered 3.2 million acres. Since the 1930s, more than a third of it has vanished, an area the size of Delaware. Each year, 15,300 acres more disappear, according to Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast.

Seafood Industry
Not all this can be laid to oil and gas drilling; the industry rejects the notion that it is chiefly responsible. Whatever the case, the destruction of marshland reverberates far beyond Louisiana. The state’s waters and wetlands underpin a commercial seafood industry that generates about $2.4 billion a year in wages and sales and provides almost a quarter of the catch in the contiguous U.S., according to the Louisiana Seafood Marketing Board. They serve as wildlife breeding grounds, sheltering and feeding 5 million migratory birds a year, according to state data.

The wetlands also absorb and filter out pollutants and help slow storm surges. Marsh losses in the past 40 years alone could raise the height of a Category 3 storm surge by as much as 10 feet under certain conditions; marsh loss and the presence of a badly eroded navigation channel called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet may have magnified Hurricane Katrina’s surge in 2005 and helped turn the storm into a $150 billion catastrophe for the New Orleans region, according to computer modeling by Louisiana State University scientists.

‘Calamity Unequaled’
Coastal Louisiana accounts for 27 percent of U.S. energy production while an 83,000-mile infrastructure of pipelines and transfer stations transports 40 percent of its energy needs, counting petroleum from imports and offshore wells, according to data from the state’s Department of Natural Resources and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association.

The collapse of Louisiana’s coastal marshes is “an international economic and ecological calamity unequaled in history,” jeopardizing more than “$100 billion in energy infrastructure,” said America’s Wetland Foundation, a Louisiana coastal preservation group partly underwritten by the oil industry, in a 2008 report. Much of the pipeline network is buried beneath marshes. Erosion has already exposed high- pressure pipelines to storms and marine traffic, causing oil spills and accidents.

Mechanism of Destruction
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 damaged 457 pipelines, destroyed 113 oil and gas platforms and caused more than 44 spills totaling 9 million gallons of oil, according to post- Katrina reports by the Coast Guard and the federal Minerals Management Service. The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska amounted to 11 million gallons.

The state has floated an ambitious marsh and barrier-island rebuilding program that since Katrina it has tied to hurricane protection. The cost may come to $50 billion over time, according to the plan. To compensate victims for its spill, BP set up a $20 billion escrow fund.

Several factors are at play in the state’s coastal decimation. Coastal deltas naturally expand and contract over time. Since the U.S. built levees along the Mississippi following devastating floods in 1927, silt that once built land as the river meandered through the marshes has been falling into the deep waters of the Gulf. Starved of sediment, wetlands become waterlogged, sink and die. This is compounded by rising seas and the natural settling of subsea geological structures, scientists say.

Oil Industry’s Share
That doesn’t fully explain why a delta built over eight to 10 millennia has shrunk so much in the past eight decades, the scientists say. Dredging to locate drilling rigs and construction of navigation channels have disrupted the delicate interface between upland marshes and saltwater wetlands, says Kerry St. Pe, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, a marsh-preservation group headquartered in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Salt water poisons freshwater marshes and swamps, he says. Currents, tides, boats and storms hasten the erosion, especially along the unstable banks of dredged canals.

St. Pe also points to the billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas that have been sucked from beneath the state’s coastal zone by oil and gas development. “We’re not just eroding, we’re sinking,” he says. “The oil and gas extraction has set off a collapse in our coast.”

Economic Benefits
A consensus of coastal scientists puts wetland losses attributable to oil and gas activities at 36 percent, says Douglas Meffert, a deputy director of Tulane University’s Center of Bioenvironmental Research. The Gulf Restoration Network estimates the share as high as 60 percent, says Aaron Viles, the group’s campaign director.

“The idea that we’re mostly to blame is crap,” says Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association, a 1,100-member trade group based in Baton Rouge. He cites a U.S. Department of Energy estimate that the industry accounted for no more than 15 percent of coastal loss.

Economic gains to the state from oil and gas -- in jobs, taxes and growth over the decades -- far outweigh the damage, according to the association. Oil and gas extraction and refining contribute about $70 billion annually to Louisiana’s economy and supports 320,000 jobs. State oil and gas taxes last year topped $570 million.

Paradoxical Relationship
The state’s view is that much of the damage from dredging is attributable to canals dug before 1980, when the state created its Coastal Resources Program and began to clamp down on oil and gas access canals, says Karl Morgan, administrator of the Permits and Mitigation Division for Louisiana’s Office of Coastal Management. Between 1980 and 1989, the lengths of permitted access canals shrank from 1,300 feet on average to just over 400 feet, he says.

These days, permits are seldom granted except to deepen existing canals, Morgan says. Backfilling is rare because many access canals still serve active wells or production units. The exceptions are canals or trenches dredged for laying pipelines. Before 1980, these canals “were not backfilled in many cases,” says Morgan. Since the advent of the Coastal Resources Program, the state “has always required backfilling,” he says.

In the history of Harry Bourg’s muskrat marsh, about 75 miles southwest of New Orleans, lies a parable of Louisiana’s paradoxical relationship with the oil industry. Bourg and four generations of descendants have reaped untold millions of dollars in royalties over more than seven decades. In 1938, the year oil was discovered under his marshes, Bourg was raking in as much as $100,000 a month in royalties, according to a newspaper report at the time.

Unlikely Millionaire
Yet his heirs have also had “the heartbreak of watching the beautiful marshland that Harry truly loved be damaged perhaps beyond repair,” says James M. Funderburk, the Harry Bourg Corp. attorney.

“If my grandpa knew what was coming,” says Bourg’s grandson, Cyrus Theriot Jr., 68, one of 50 shareholders in the family run corporation and its president, “I think he would have done things differently.”

A portrait of Bourg emerges from a 1938 article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a short biography by Bourg’s former accountant and interviews with Bourg relatives and Funderburk.

Bourg was an unlikely candidate to become a multimillionaire. He was born in 1888 in the hamlet of Dulac, Louisiana, one of eight children in a farming and fishing family. Harry’s people descended from the French Canadians who were kicked off their lands in Canada’s Acadian provinces by the British in 1755.

35-Cent Fortune
The survivors became known as Cajuns and eventually settled up and down the Louisiana coast and wove themselves into it, fishing, hunting, trapping and farming the high ground, leaving only a small footprint. Education was sparse, family was central, food was the second religion behind Catholicism. Their cooking, music and joie de vivre took roots from this land.

Harry grew up with a fitful grade-school education. When he married at age 20, his entire fortune was the 35 cents in his pocket, a small house he’d built with his own hands and the shrimp boat his father, a fisherman and farmer, had given him. His wife had to teach him how to speak English, not to mention how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Pennies an Acre
Bourg did have a prodigious work ethic, a knack for invention and, despite his lack of formal education, a keen eye for business. Most shrimpers pulled seines by hand or dragged trawls with sail-powered boats. Harry adapted a new-fangled invention, the gasoline-powered outboard motor, and crafted special rigging to go with it.

The shrimp piled up in his nets. In 1908, his first season as a commercial fishermen, he made $300 -- equivalent to about $31,000 in wages today.

In 1929, Bourg embarked on a mystifying real estate journey. He began buying up marshland at estate sales and tax auctions, amassing his 17,000 acres by 1933.

Though he sometimes paid just pennies an acre, people thought Harry was crazy. Conventional wisdom said marshland was valuable only if you could drain it to farm or build on. The marsh grew two things in profusion -- mosquitoes and muskrats. Mosquitoes gave you malaria.

Muskrats were valuable for their pelts, but trapping a few hundred every season was backbreaking work in the boggy marsh. Undaunted, Bourg gave up shrimping for muskrat trapping. He became an entrepreneur, bringing in a dozen or so other trappers each winter. They’d live in his cabins, trap his lands and hand him a share of their profits.

‘Gasoline Distillate’
According to one family story, Bourg hired a surveyor and over time walked all 17,000 of his acres. One day he carried the surveyor on his back when the exhausted man couldn’t manage the boggy terrain. Bourg invented a small dredging contraption and ringed the entire boundary with a channel -- called a “trainasse” in Cajun -- just wide enough to accommodate a trapper in a pirogue, the Cajun equivalent of a canoe.

In 1938, Big Oil came calling. Representatives of Standard Oil Co. of California, a Texas oil baron named J.P. Fohs and a New Orleans investor, O.P. Montagnet, stood at Bourg’s farmhouse door. Pools of oil and gas were being discovered up and down the Gulf Coast. The oil men said they had a hunch about his land.

He signed a mineral lease and struck a mother lode of crude. It was so light and sweet the wildcatters called it “gasoline distillate.”

Uncashed Royalty Checks
Sudden wealth didn’t change the way he lived, dressed and carried on. Harry still liked his trapper’s boots, his dungarees, his floppy hats. He spoke English with a Cajun accent so thick some uplanders found it incomprehensible. He stayed in his small farm house on the banks of Bayou Grand Caillou in Dulac, trading up later to a modest brick ranch house.

Although Bourg helped start a bank in Houma, he mistrusted money men. His oil royalty checks often sat uncashed in a desk drawer in the office where he ran his muskrat trading business. Unconvinced that the oil men had calculated his royalties properly, he would summon them to his office and demand that they show him the math amid the stink of drying muskrat hides.

Bourg’s first oil strike, the Standard Oil well, was a technological marvel at the time, says Funderburk. The oil men brought in a dredge and dug a six-mile-long canal through Bourg’s marsh just wide enough to float in a rig on a barge.

“This is a well smack in the middle of Harry’s marsh,” says Funderburk. “How they figured the location, given the technology back then, is mystifying.”

Under Water
At a depth of 13,300 feet, the well was also the deepest in the U.S. at the time.

“That was the beginning,” says Funderburk. “More leases, and more canals, more laterals off of those canals. I’m sure Harry had no idea at the beginning what they were going to do to him over time.”

Today, where the marsh remains intact, egrets still fly, bull alligators still prowl, and redfish and shrimp still school in a tableau as old as the marsh itself. In other sectors, 80 percent of Bourg’s marshes have turned to open water, according to an engineering survey commissioned by the Bourg estate. About 55 percent of the entire 17,000-acre tract is under water, the survey found.

“We’re just trying to hold on to what we have left,” says Theriot, the grandson.

Chronic Erosion
By the time he died, Bourg was no longer ignorant of the effects of all the dredging. In the late 1950s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pushed for construction of a 36.5-mile channel called the Houma Navigation Canal. Its sole purpose was to speed workers and equipment from the nearby port of Houma to rigs multiplying offshore in the Gulf.

The proposed channel boundary brushed Bourg’s property. Bourg fought it at public hearings and was the last holdout to grant a right-of-way. He predicted -- correctly it turned out -- that the channel would become a salt water siphon and poison upland marshes, including his.

Since the channel opened in 1962, its banks have been plagued by chronic erosion. Plans are afoot to build a lock as part of program to prevent saltwater flooding in Houma during storms. The Corps itself said in a report last year that saltwater intrusion from the canal threatens to destroy the 7,400-acre Falgout Canal Marsh Management Area, popular for fishing and hunting, unless rock dikes are placed along the channel’s banks.

One Well Left
These days only one of the 90 wells on the Harry Bourg property is pumping oil, Theriot says. The corporation supplements its income by selling fishing and hunting permits to local sportsmen. It still has a large alligator population that generates revenue from an annual hunt.

In 2004 the Bourg Corp. settled a lawsuit it filed against Exxon Mobil Corp. and several other oil companies to clean up pits full of toxic chemicals and residues. Theriot will say only that the property was restored at oil-company expense. Exxon Mobil declined to comment.

As for suing oil companies to redress damage from the runaway canals, the state supreme court erected a barrier in 2005, says Funderburk, the corporation’s lawyer. In a 4-3 decision in case known as Terrebonne Parish School Board vs. Castex Energy, the court found that companies can’t be required to refill eroded canals or pay damages unless a mineral lease specifically contains language compelling them to do so.

Who Will Pay
Who will pay to rebuild Louisiana’s wetlands has been under debate for years. Environmental scientists and lawyers argue that the oil industry should help foot the bill. The state says the federal government should pay because its flood-control projects helped cut off the river’s delta-building and its navigation channels fueled erosion.

“I don’t think anyone in the state is denying that oil and gas plays a role, but the overwhelming majority of our problems come from the federal interference in the natural waterways,” says Chris Macaluso, a spokesman for the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

“The industry, in a way, is already paying,” Macaluso says, as Louisiana spends some of its oil and gas royalties on restoration projects. The state is also pinning some of its plans on an additional $500 million a year in shared federal royalties from offshore drilling starting in 2017, he says.

“The oil industry damage to the Louisiana coast via oil and gas exploration over the past 80 years dwarfs the BP spill and all other spills past, present and future,” says Oliver Houck, director of Tulane University’s environmental law program in New Orleans. “The exploration has torn us to shreds, and for this damage the industry has yet to pay a penny. Nor has the state asked. Such is our subservience to the industry.”

Only Good News
Other industry critics say oil and gas operators shouldn’t be treated any differently from strip miners that have been required to restore lands.

The state’s reticence, says Camilo Salas, a New Orleans lawyer who has made a study of Louisiana’s wetlands and its oil politics, reflects Louisiana’s “coal-mining town mentality toward oil and gas.”

“That the state won’t even put the oil industry in the conversation about who is responsible for coastal erosion and who ought to pay for it is laughable,” he says.

At Harry Bourg’s muskrat marsh, the only good news lately is that oil from the BP spill hasn’t encroached on it. The value of the estate had dwindled to $3 million by 1990, according to a district court filing that was part of a lawsuit by two Bourg heirs against the corporation over money lent to a fish-farming enterprise.

Into the Marsh
That was after a $3 million payout to shareholders, the documents disclosed. Theriot declines to discuss corporation assets or finances except to say that it continues to pay dividends as cash reserves permit.

Though he worked 31 years in a white-collar job for Texaco Inc., now part of Chevron Corp., Theriot rejects the argument that jobs and taxes were a fair tradeoff for damage to Louisiana wetlands.

“Some of these oil companies could come back and step up to the plate and try to help fix the devastation they caused,” Theriot says. “But I guess not. You don’t see too many stepping up. Have you seen any of them trying to help BP?”

Claude Luke, the part-time Bourg Corp. warden, still frets that oil left over from the BP spill will wash into the marsh, even though the well has been capped. Fishing grounds near barrier islands to the south remain closed. “If the oil comes here,” Luke says, “we’re doomed.”

 

[Peregrinator]

I hope I don't have to tell you that— even in academia— there are a fair number of promoters in the field. There are several "repeat offenders" who have been guilty of hyping stuff for the sake of drumming up interest and dough. Some of the academic entrepreneurs put perpetual hypsters like Goldman Sachs to shame. Both are perfectly happy to roll the dice as long as it's being done with "other people's money."


As you know, it's immensely complex stuff; notwithstanding the presence of household names there is absolutely no guarantee of success.


My lifelong friendship with a fellow who grew up to be a geneticist/microbiologist gave me a bit of a window on the field going all the way back to Genentech's founding. I've seen many more flops than home runs.


Its amazing to see how much of what was done by hand thirty years ago is now fully automated— that permits the employment of "brute force" methodology to novel concepts.

Nope, I'm aware.

Incredibly complex, yes, and that's what makes the field interesting. They keep trying, don't they? Science is more fun when you can watch it happen.

I couldn't believe it when we sequenced our own DNA in Biology 101 or whatever. The intro bio course for science majors.