This is tragic, and my heart goes out to all those impacted by these disasters. I was watching the tsunami in Japan on television and the footage was remarkable. The tsunami was a result of an earthquake and it has pummeled Japan. There is a tsunami warning for Hawaii, other Pacific islands, and the entire West Coast in the US. To follow this stuff, definitely track the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and your local news to get updates.
A couple of things that come to mind on this. This event, along with what is going on in Libya and potentially in Saudi Arabia, are all combining to make a Blackswan Event. Events that were not predicted, and change the dynamic dramatically. What I mean by that, is that the shock waves from both disasters, could have drastic consequence. The price of oil will rise, and all the business and economies that depend upon the stability of Japan will be negatively impacted. If Hawaii and the West Coast of the US are hit, that could have consequence as well. I will further update this post as events unfold and we will see how it goes…. –Matt
Update: 03/12/2011- Now the latest deal is the Nuclear Facilities in Japan are in dire straights. If they melt down, the fallout is of concern. In the comments section, I have put up an article that discusses the fallout potential, and especially how it would impact North America via the Pacific Jet Stream.
Major Earthquake, Tsunami Hit Japan
Saudi police open fire at protest
Oil Rises in New York as Libyan Violence Intensifies, Refinery is Bombed
Major Earthquake, Tsunami Hit Japan
March 11, 2011
A massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake has struck off Japan’s northeastern coast, triggering a four meter tsunami that washed away cars along parts of the coastline.Video from national broadcaster NHK showed dozens of cars, large ferries and some buildings being swept out to sea in the port city of Kamaishi in the province of Iwate.The Japanese Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warming for the entire Pacific coast of Japan following the quake that struck about 125 kilometers off the eastern coast, at a depth of 10 kilometers. Residents in the coastal areas have been urged to immediately evacuate to higher ground.The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in the U.S. state of Hawaii said a tsunami warning was also in effect for Russia, Marcus Island and the Northern Marianas. It said a tsunami watch was issued for Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Hawaii.
Friday’s massive quake was felt in Tokyo, where it shook buildings and caused several fires. The Tokyo metro system says all train and subway traffic in the city has been stopped.Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has convened an emergency meeting of the Cabinet to assess the situation.Story here.
——————————————————————
Saudi police open fire at protest
By Michael BirnbaumThursday, March 10, 2011
Three people were injured when police opened fire during a protest in eastern Saudi Arabia on Thursday, according to a witness and a Saudi official.
The witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by authorities, said police at first fired over protesters’ heads but then began shooting directly at them during a march in central Qatif, a predominantly Shiite town in oil-rich Eastern Province.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said police fired over the heads of protesters after demonstrators attacked them, the Reuters news agency reported. He did not say how the injuries were caused but said one of those hurt was a policeman.
At the time of the shooting, “the police were maybe 50 meters away” from the protesters, who were calling for the release of prisoners, the witness said. It was not immediately clear whether the bullets were live or rubber.
“The guy, he goes talking only, and directly the police shot at him by gun, and all the people started running,” the witness said.
The witness said he later visited two of the victims in the hospital. An 18-year-old man was shot in the hand. A 24-year-old man was shot in the leg. A nurse told the witness that the third man had been shot in the abdomen.
Larger protests are planned for Friday across Saudi Arabia. Demonstrators are seeking reforms that include a say in government, better economic opportunities and, in the Shiite-heavy eastern area, an end to what protesters call systematic discrimination by the Sunni monarchy.
Shiites are a minority in Saudi Arabia, making up 10 to 15 percent of the population.
The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said at a news conference in Jiddah on Wednesday that the country would not tolerate protests and called for dialogue instead. Earlier in the week, the country’s council of senior clerics said public protests were un-Islamic.
That has not dissuaded protest organizers, who plan protests in Riyadh, Qatif and elsewhere Friday, a day of prayer and the largest planned day of protests in the region over the past two months of unrest.
Small protests have been taking place for weeks in Qatif and in nearby Shiite towns. Such demonstrations are highly unusual in the strictly run country.
Officials have been watching with nervousness the unrest in Bahrain, a small island nation that is just a 16-mile drive over a causeway from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, home to much of the country’s oil reserves.
In Bahrain, the Shiite majority has risen up in protest against the Sunni monarchy. Analysts say that the Saudi government worries that the same thing could happen with its own Shiite minority and that it also fears the influence of predominantly Shiite Iran if Bahrain were to be taken over by Shiite leaders.
In Washington, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters that U.S. officials had told the Saudi government and others that the United States supported “a set of universal values” in the region. “And that includes the right to peaceful assembly, to peaceful protest, to peaceful speech,” he said.
Story here.
——————————————————————
Oil Rises in New York as Libyan Violence Intensifies, Refinery is Bombed
By Ben Sharples and Christian Schmollinger
Mar 9, 2011
Oil climbed in New York for the first time in three days as escalating violence in Libya, Africa’s third-largest producer, renewed concern that supply disruptions may spread to the Middle East.
Futures rose as much as 0.6 percent as fighting shut Libya’s biggest oil refinery. Violence has cut exports by two- thirds, according to the International Energy Agency. Brent futures in London advanced for a second day as forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi attacked oil facilities. In Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest exporter, websites have called for a “Day of Rage” tomorrow, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
“Reports are showing the fighting in Libya is escalating,” Serene Lim, an energy and commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore, said by telephone today. “Every threat of further unrest will definitely support prices.”
Crude for April delivery gained as much as 59 cents to $104.97 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $104.79 at 2:27 p.m. Singapore time. Yesterday, the contract dropped 64 cents to $104.38. Prices are 28 percent higher than a year earlier.
Brent crude for April settlement added as much as 61 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $116.55 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Yesterday, it advanced $2.88, or 2.6 percent, to $115.94, after Bank of America Merrill Lynch said prices could surge above $140 in the second quarter.
Brent Premium
Brent’s gains widened the European benchmark’s premium to New York-traded West Texas Intermediate to $11.47 a barrel today, from $8.04 on March 8, according to Bloomberg data. The gap averaged 76 cents last year. April futures in London exceeded WTI for the same period by a record $17.11 on Feb. 15 as rising supplies depressed U.S. prices relative to Brent.
Oil in New York declined yesterday after stockpiles surged to the highest level since 2004 at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI. The Energy Department said Cushing supplies increased 1.69 million barrels to 40.3 million last week, the highest since it began gathering data at the hub.
U.S. crude stockpiles rose 2.52 million barrels to 348.9 million, the Energy Department report showed yesterday. A 1 million-barrel increase was projected, according to the median of 15 analyst responses in a Bloomberg News survey.
Gasoline inventories fell 5.49 million barrels to 229.2 million, the biggest volume decline since September 2008, according to the department. Stockpiles were forecast to drop 1.5 million barrels. Supplies of distillate fuel, a category that includes heating oil and diesel, declined 3.98 million barrels to 155.2 million, the lowest level since June.
Libya Violence
The violence has cut output in Libya by as much as 1 million barrels a day, according to the IEA. The North African country pumped 1.39 million barrels a day in February, down from 1.59 million the previous month, based on Bloomberg estimates.
Warplanes sent from Qaddafi’s home region of Sirte struck the Ras Lanuf refinery, the country’s largest crude-processing plant, Al Jazeera television said. The nation’s biggest oil terminal, at the port of Sidra, was hit and part was in flames, Al Jazeera said.
Demonstrations have toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, and protests have erupted in energy-exporting countries including Iran, Oman and Yemen. Oil surged to a record $147.27 a barrel on July 11, 2008, before plunging 78 percent in the next five months to a low of $32.40 as the financial crisis unfolded.
Product Prices
Fighting in Libya has also inflated the cost of refined oil products. Gasoline for April delivery advanced as much as 2.1 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $3.0482 a gallon today.
A pipeline carrying oil to Turkey from Iraq has been damaged by an explosion, according to an official, knocking out as much as a quarter of crude exports. The explosion was an act of sabotage and has cut shipments by up to 590,000 barrels a day, Emad al-Baqer, North Oil Co. head of production, said in an interview from Kirkuk.
Saudi Arabia is capable of providing additional oil output if needed to counter supply disruptions caused by the unrest in the Middle East, James Smith, U.S. ambassador to the kingdom, said in an Bloomberg Television interview on “InBusiness with Margaret Brennan.” The kingdom has increased oil production by 1 million barrels a day and has the capacity to pump another 3.5 million, Smith said.
Story here.
More problems….
————-
Fears Mount that Japanese Nuclear Plant is Near Meltdown
Mar 12, 2011
A day after Japan’s devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, core meltdown is underway the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant and, at this point, appears to be unstoppable. A mid-afternoon blast on Saturday demolished the structure housing an overheated and leaking reactor, raising the probability of a full-scale nuclear disaster, which could release radiation across the U.S. and even parts of Europe.
Just past noon in Japan, the Industrial Nuclear Safety Agency reported that the radioactive isotopes cesium and iodine had been detected by a monitoring station near the Fukushima plant. The facility has six reactors, three of them operating at the time of the earthquake. Two of these are overheating and Reactor 1 is leaking radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
The presence of these isotopes in air samples is a sure indicator of an uncontrolled chain reaction. Japanese nuclear engineers are explaining that overheated uranium rods seared through their metal casings, triggering the start of nuclear fission. The regulatory agency’s statement contradicts the earlier claim of the plant’s operator, TEPCO, that all uranium rods were intact.
The afternoon explosion, which injured four workers, is hampering efforts by emergency workers to pump cold water into the reactor and release steam through safety valves. The internal steam pressure inside the reactor vessel is more than twice the approved level of the original design.
Truck-mounted generators have restored electrical power. The government has been frantically trying to locate robots to reopen the control room, which is now 1,000 times more radioactive than safe levels for humans. The cooling water is being provided by a common fire engine.
If temperatures and internal pressure cannot be significantly lowered soon, the likelihood of a fractured reactor barrier is increased. If the reactor shell cracks, the internal water will vaporize, creating conditions for uncontrolled fission and massive radioactive releases into the atmosphere.
Over the past 24 hours, the evacuation area for local residents has been widened from a diameter of three kilometers to 20 kilometers (12.4 miles). Over the same time period, outdoor radiation levels have risen from eight times higher than normal to 20 times higher, according to the monitoring station near Fukushima No.1.
Coming In Hot: Impact on North America
Panic is uncalled for, since cesium contamination poses a long-term rather than short-term threat, which can be reduced with timely countermeasures.
1. Pacific Jet Stream: In the spring season, the jet stream moves eastward from Japan toward the United States. Heated isotopes, riding on a cushion of steam and oceanic updrafts, will rise to the west-east jet stream at altitude 20,000 feet or higher. Areas of radioactive fallout are difficult to predict since these depend on local wind currents, temperatures, rainfall and other factors. The jet stream will cross the following states: California, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and possibly further depending on surface winds. Cesium can be expected to fall unevenly, so monitoring is vital to determine the long-term threat level.
2. Cesium Fallout: Dispersal in the jet stream will greatly dilute the concentration of radiation, but the long half-life of cesium will constitute a health threat to humans and animals. Following the Chernobyl disaster, much of Western Europe was cesium-contaminated. Populations were given dosages of iodine, a neutron blocker. A notable rise in cancer was reported. Some countries banned the feeding of infants with breast milk, due to the concentration of radiation in human organs.
3. Cloud-seeding: Precipitation and atmospheric low pressure can force down airborne particles into the ocean. To be effective, a cloud-seeding program would have to be steadily maintained and conducted over a large area of the northwestern Pacific (just east of Japanese waters). The effort is daunting enough to require a multinational commitment of U.S., Russian, Japanese and Canadian air forces to detect radiation and spread pellets of cloud-seeding compounds. Once radioactive particles enter the fast-flowing jet stream, it will be well nigh impossible to contain the flow. Rainfall, natural or artificial, is unlikely to stop all radiation from crossing the Pacific but can lower the total volume.
4. Reactor Entombment: In event of a full-on core meltdown, entombment of a cracked reactor is necessary, as was done in Chernobyl. An out-of-control reactor will have to be encased by tons of concrete mixed with a neutron absorber like titanium dioxide. The process is slow and difficult requiring helicopter drops and high-pressure concrete pumps.
5. Herd Slaughter and Burial: Dispersed cesium is collected in the bodies of grazing animals and then concentrated in their milk and organs. In more affected areas of North America, a mass slaughter and burial of herding animals and wildlife will have to be methodically organized, as was done across Northern Europe following the Chernobyl disaster. Grain-fed animals must also be monitored for herd destruction if the grain crops were grown in contaminated soils.
Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, has covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, participated in the rescue operation immediately after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and led the field research for an architectural report on structural design flaws that led to the tsunami death toll in Thailand.
http://newamericamedia.org/2011/03/japan-tsunami-…
Comment by Feral Jundi — Saturday, March 12, 2011 @ 5:40 AM