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Running with the whole thing, there was a passage that seemed odd. Something saying a Jupiter mass object would disrupt nothing gravitationally.

That’s a hmmm. Back when there was talk of planetary alignment and earthquakes, it was popular to have someone stand next to someone and say “I have more gravitational influence on you than Jupiter”. 1/R^2 and all.

But if this thing passes through at some speed slow enough some stable systems should become not stable. Or wrong word. Should become different. Stable in a new config.

Cool drawing, but that 31 Atlas guy is on the ecliptic and as another just noted, this is really surprising.

The planets are on it because of how they formed, the sun’s rotation is on it (precessed what, 7 degs? for the billions of years) and the planets orbit direction is all the same and in the same direction as the sun’s rotation.

For that Atlas guy to be on the ecliptic we would have to presume it formed with the same mechanism as the planets and their orbits, but it’s coming from outside and so . . . not?

Big statistical unusual for it to be entering on the ecliptic.

The people above saying there’s no information in the article are mostly right.

A word. Ecliptic. Visualize a piece of paper with the sun in the middle of it. With one exception, the planets orbit in that plane . . . on that piece of paper.

But it’s all 3 dimensional. No reason planets could not be orbiting at right angles to that piece of paper, or 45 degrees to it up/down. But they don’t, and my recall is that one exception is only off plane about 20 degs.

There is no mention of this new object’s angle to the ecliptic. The 31/Atlas object is entering the solar system from interstellar space (supposedly) but oddly is doing so on the ecliptic. That’s surprising.

Ya, I was peripheral. Not commenting on price in Calif.

Gasoline prices get decided by lots of things, but I wasn’t talking about them. Just what’s underground in Cali.

Pricing is nearly arbitrary, except for the taxes part.

Numbers.

California consumes about 1.8 million barrels per day. It’s within state oil production is about 500,000 barrels per day last I glanced at that.

And no don’t blame government policy. The decline in California oil production has been relentless for many decades including those with Republican dominance.

Empty is empty.

There is a shale in California called Monterey. The Rock layers underground are contorted and twisted and curved because of the millions of years of earthquakes. The sale is there, it has some oil in it but it’s probably inaccessible. It was a big deal too add horizontal drilling to vertical drilling. But trying to follow curved Rock patterns to stay within some portion with high oil porosity sounds like it’s well beyond instead of the art of directional drilling.

I recall is USGS said pretty much that. They like to tease with a parameter called TRR. Technically recoverable resource. When shale hit the radar screen about 15 years ago I think some folks tossed out a number like a few billion barrels embedded in that shell. But USGS revisited their TRR number and said they were not going to depart from their reserves number all that aggressively because of the profound doubts about the word Technically.

Technically recoverable resource is a parameter that is used to try to declare that there is oil there even if it’s not economical to get it. USGS backed away from making that declaration because they couldn’t see any technical way to have such intricate shapes of the horizontal well.

Oh and btw, Russian refinery capacity is 5.6 mbpd.

Russian domestic consumption of oil is 3.6 mbpd. That’s rather a lot of cushion, yes?

Did you have an estimate for how long 22% is accurate. A 300K bpd refinery is due online in about 10 days, after damage about 8 days ago.

The 22% I see talked about is cumulative since . . . the first time a drone hit a refinery with its 5 lbs of explosives and set a fire. Just how long do people think it takes to turn a valve off, replace a crude tank and relight the natural gas burners under the tank.

This is a task of a few weeks, and when it comes back online, that % calculation has to reverse.

In a general sense, it is fundamentally wise to ignore and not post articles that depend on Kyiv Independent or the Institute for the Study of War.

As for Putin’s successor the list starts with Medvedev and maybe, just maybe, ends with Igor Sechin.

Neither has any interest at all in any measures not designed to propel Russia to inevitable dominance.

Seems unlikely.

India just landed near the pole. China has a landing on the far side.

The US effort had disasters and kept going. It will take about 1 disaster to shut down a program now.

As should be clear to all at this point, with 10 million barrels/day, no one has the power to make Russia do anything.

The world is powerless to compel their behavior. Historically, countries are only compelled by total military defeat. That is how Japan got Taiwan in 1898ish. That is how Mao got China.

The Arab countries tried to compel the behavior of the US towards Israel with an oil embargo. Didn’t work. The US tried to compel Japan behavior, also with an oil embargo. The result was war. Didn’t work.

People have to approach this problem from that fundamental starting point. Russia is too powerful to compel.

AI says the reason for the decision is so that young men can obtain training and education elsewhere that is not available to them in Ukraine during the war. The expectation is those trained/educated young men will return to Ukraine eventually. This also lessens the concern of families about these young men re obvious military risk if mobilization ever extended to that age.

Zelensky has a daughter of military age.

Wait a minute. What will be the costs of this disabled child for its entire life? Give the child 75 years of perpetual care of whatever sort, and special requirements when university years arrive, and special this and that.

Might the child be in ICU all the time? Don’t know.

But the price tag is going to explode over 75 years.

Accidents happen. The jury did not think this was an accident. From that point onward, the number has to align to these costs just mentioned.

Odessa? Landlocked?

There are plenty of landlocked countries in the world. Not all that novel.

Well, there’s no hole. You can just resume buying Russian oil. The world consumed about 1 million barrels per day more than it produced last year in the raw data. Some of that gets explained away by the measurement of what is enroute on tankers and some by virtue of a difference in density of the liquid that will define itself in two different sort of volumes. A barrel is a measure of volume.

If the world needed 5 million barrels per day more right now where could it go get it? The question has to be more clear. Most of the developed world has strategic petroleum reserves. They are designed to provide that countries consumption for a number of months, and I think it’s usually three. So the whole world could drain their spr’s and probably come up with 5 million barrels per day, but 90 days later you’re right back where you were.

Most talk about capacity and how that capacity is above current production relies on surging output by tapping storage not just below ground but above ground. This is been the traditional way that the Saudis have quoted capacity that was above their current production. They just drained there above ground storage, and that runs out in a matter of weeks.

So that’s the clarification in question. If you need 5 million barrels per day more than you can get now how long do you need it. If it’s forever . . . Probably no.

The oil desperation scenario has always included shutting off all capitalism and acknowledging the desperation and sending troops to force oil workers to places they don’t want to go like the Arctic. Profitability not an issue. If you have to have the oil, and you do have to have the oil, whether or not you can pay for it is irrelevant.

No telling how long that lasts.

Domestic oil production 900K bpd. They just don’t have any. It ain’t some ecological regulation stopping them. There is very little there.

Domestic oil consumption about 5.8 million bpd. That was up 5% last year.

They have to have oil. If you want them to not buy it from Russia, then shut off US consumption by 4 mbpd and ship it over there at Russian prices (which means at a loss for expensive shale oil).

And of course shale oil doesn’t have the same diesel yield as Russian Urals, which you need to have if you’re building stuff as part of that 6% GDP increase and have to power heavy equipment.

This is a fail for sanctions.

You did well to laugh.

India’s surplus with the US is $41B/yr. That’s the combination of India exports and India imports.

Of that $41B, $8B is pharmaceuticals and $2B is electronics.

Exempting those means that only $31B of surplus is in play here to be tariffed.

Well, here’s the bad news. India’s GDP is $3.78T. It’s growth last year was 6%. Q1 2025 it was 7%.

If the entire remaining $31B of surplus got erased, it would be about < 1% of GDP. Nobody’s bones are going to break when doing 7% growth and having 1% yanked.

You’re at least half right. The whole sensor fusion concept got added to AMRAAM for later variants, but it was largely too late because the enemy was pursuing lower radar cross section by then. Range to the AWACS would be X8 or so the range to the launching fighter. Signal return from the enemy — to the AWACS — would be far weaker than to the fighter, and maybe too weak to justify mid course guidance of AMRAAM.

The idea was pretty solid vs Gen III or III+, but the enemy is stealthier now. Launch and leave? Nope.

It does. Semi active terminal guidance radar.

Remember, these are potentially stealth targets. You can’t rely on the weak transmitter of a missile’s radar.

Indian officials have cautioned that the new duties could render shipments to the US commercially unviable, leading to job losses and a slowdown in economic growth.
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India had 6% GDP growth last year and the US surplus is $45 billion out of a GDP of $3.78 Trillion. This is small potatoes. India will do as it pleases. The US doesn’t have much influence.

Primary stat leaned on was this new number I had not seen before, that 17% of Russian refinery capacity was erased.

I have noticed the text in the media, whenever there is an announcement that a refinery was hit, with a little stream of smoke upwards in the distance from what is said to be a refinery, I look it up and the refining throughput in barrels/day is quoted to be 100% ended from that refinery. No partial shutdowns. 100%. They look up the refinery throughput and declare it all wiped out.

Forever. And I say forever because this new 17% number is the sum of all such reports going back . . . at least 6 months, maybe all 3 yrs. There is never any presumption the silly thing just gets repaired, and they are not difficult to repair. It’s a tank of crude over a natgas burner to boil the crude.

If you hit the tank, and it catches fire, you twist a valve and shut off the crude input, put out the fire, and replace the tank.

These are drones. They have no significant payload. If they had significant payload, they would have no range.

Bottom line, the video is based on 17% and that’s somewhat absurd. Just checked an AI for time of repair. Lukoil’s Volgograd refinery that has 300K bpd throughput was hit Aug 19 and planned to be back online Mid Sept. Today they moved that date up a week.

The weapons are not 500 lb Mk82s. They don’t do big damage.