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Franklin Mountains
El Paso, Texas
Every year around late February and early March, El Pasoans look forward to the return of poppy flowers to the eastern slopes of the Franklin Mountains. Depending on rainfall during the preceding months, the poppy blooms can range anywhere from extensive to almost nonexistent. 2020 has turned out to be an above-average bloom. By mid- to late-March the poppies will fade away with the coming of warmer weather, not to be seen again until the next year.
I had just walked a few km with my friend and her dog in biting-cold weather (happy Easter!). We had brought two vehicles to the trail head, and I was about to find out why. As I followed my friend's pickup out of the parking area - imagine a dirt road, a grove of trees, endless rolling prairie hills ahead and a great valley behind, with no other vehicles, people, fences, houses, or sign of habitation - I happened to glance to my left. An owl was watching me from a bare cottonwood tree!
I stopped, waited a few minutes. Snapped a few shots from the car, but the bird was half obscured. Got out. Owl watching. Casually walked a zig-zag path down an embankment, through a sparse hedge. Owl still there. Got better shots. Owl flew to a different perch. I changed course. Owl continued watching. I feigned interest in nonexistent wildflowers. Gradually moved to an opening among the trees. Owl stayed put. Finally raised my hand held lens again (checked that VR setting was on) and there it was! Click-click-click (burst mode); adjust exposure, click-click-click; adjust again, click-click-click. Even shooting RAW, I bracket when possible because results are always better if you nail the exposure.
This is the final frame of the set. By this time the owl had enough of me and flew off to a higher perch in a different tree, and I called out a thank-you, gave a little bow, and left him or her in peace. The Great Horned Owl is a feared predator; its talons are reputed to have the most powerful grip of all North American raptors. But it is a shy bird that needs some privacy. This is why I love Grasslands and the surrounding area, and why I decided to move here nearly a decade ago. The wildlife photo ops are plentiful and pressure from humans on the animals is minimal. I can spend a few minutes with an amazing critter and know that I am probably the only human it will have to deal with this week, this month, perhaps all year. It makes a cold, rainy Easter weekend sunnier and warmer.
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2017 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
310/365 Work with textures
I took the original image on October 31st/2009 @ Palm Beach Zoo
West Palm Beach, Florida, USA.
Nikon D5000
It was fun to see that decadent image and you find inside the most clean and confortable restroom.
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Reflections: Bathroom etiquette
by EJ Young
Ms. Manners may not have written the official version of urinal etiquette, but the need for such a publication exists. It is an excellent idea to stay informed on the latest trends in proper procedures regarding all types of toilet use. Whether in the workplace, in a public restroom and or at a friend's home, there will be times when a person must make hard decisions about acceptable etiquette practices. The gender of the toilet user also matters when establishing such rules of conduct.
Urinal Etiquette Rule #1 (applies to the function of going #1 or #2) in a multiple unit facility
1. No talking rule.
No talking once a person is inside the door of the stall. Absolutely no talking once the occupant has taken a seat. Talking at this delicate time tends to feel awkward and may impede the primary objective.
There is no flexibility of this rule for males. Males should efficiently stroll into the facility, continue to the urinal or stall (depending on type of elimination planned) complete the task, flush, wash hands and leave. Quickly. Attempts at conversations tend to make some males suspicious of others or paranoid as to the intent. A slight nod of the head or a type of a grunt/one-syllable unrecognizable greeting is okay (no eye contact allowed).
For females, however, it is acceptable to carry on superficial girl talk at the sink area when one is washing hands, primping hair and/or reapplying make-up. In the case of etiquette and equity regarding toilet rules, the rules are different due to the fact that males and females perform toilet functions in different ways. Therefore, a double standard does not exist.
Extra tip: The no talking rule also applies to cell phone use. It is considered in extremely poor taste for a person to talk on a cell phone while on the toilet. Texting, of course, is okay. The user is then presented with other potential problems.
2. Leave no trace.
In the event the toilet bowl becomes too full or the odiferous impact is above the norm, a courtesy flush is considered good manners. If a person's release of fluids travels beyond the the bowl, that person is responsible for maintenance. Each user should return the toilet to the same stage of cleanliness as it was prior to usage. When a fan is nonexistent, multiple flushes serve as a partial solution. One might also consider carrying a travel size deodorizer. Some brands of such sprays add the bonus of an anti-bacterial feature which is convenient if clean-up requires considerable scrubbing.
Regarding excessive noise levels, once again, the multi-flush will aid in muffling some sounds. Rolling the paper dispenser, coughing loudly, fake sneezing, blowing one's nose or such cover-ups may prove effective. Of course, a more direct approach of simply stating, "Excuse me," or "Sorry about that," or "I'll never drink hot sauce again," or even a simple warning of "Get out of the room if you have a weak stomach," if stated in a factual tone, would be preferred to the alternative of raised eyebrows, watery eyes or the occasional vomit.
Lastly, if one cannot get the contents of the commode to flush, that person is responsible for reporting malfunction to the proper authorities. That same person also needs to supply an "out of order" sign to post on the door of the non-flushing unit. It is considered common courtesy to leave a note of brief explanation of the entry to the restroom area as well. Then, one may choose whether he/she must opt to contend with the given circumstances or if it is possible to find another facility or wait until one gets home.
3. General Toilet Etiquette regarding a private home
Guests should make sure to use the fan as well as spray provided by the host. One should always wash hands thoroughly with soap. Caution: Peruse the area prior to use. Is there a towel laid out for guests? Under no circumstances is it considered proper to take part in hand-me-down towel use. If the host or hostess has apparently initiated a towel (smell, feel, look) it is not your choice to rub or pat your wet hands on that towel. If there is not a towel available, you will need to choose between toilet paper or a dispensable article of your own apparel. Maybe your outfit would be more stylish with a no socks look with those loafers. Maybe the party isn't formal and no one would notice if your tie went missing.
Guests should also know exactly what personal hygiene items are available for guest use and what products are exclusively for use by the owners. For example, you may notice your favorite shampoo brand or bubble bath with a thick towel folded beside the soaking tub. That is not necessarily a personal invitation for you to bathe while using the powder room at your boss' office party. If a perfume brand you've been longing to try stares back at you from inside the medicine cabinet, it probably belongs to the hostess.
Important tip: It is not okay to 'borrow' prescription drugs even if you've had a doctor's order for a similar drug. You should always ask the host permission before borrowing any item.
Obviously, this advice only skims the proverbial surface of etiquette in excreting human waste. Future articles will examine these complex questions: Should you tell a woman her skirt is tucked into her underwear or is she doing it on purpose? Should your boss wait in line for the next available toilet like everyone else or does he/she have toilet privileges? In addition, never before released facts about the ever-curious phenomenon of group toileting for females. The world will finally know the reason why females cannot travel to the lavoratory without a female companion.
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Textures with my gratitude to SkeletalMess: Bore2Death Thank you very much Jerry!!
Back to grabbing a few more photos from my archives. If I wrote a description under a previously posted image taken on the same trip/outing, I will add it under today's photos. These five images were all taken on 20 March 2017, during a trip to Trinidad and Tobago with friends.
"Agoutis have five front and three hind toes; the first toe is very small. The tail is very short or nonexistent and hairless. Agoutis may grow to be up to 60 cm (24 in) in length and 4 kg (8.8 lb) in weight. Most species are brown on their backs and whitish or buff on their bellies; the fur may have a glossy appearance and then glimmers in an orange colour. Reports differ as to whether they are diurnal or nocturnal animals.... They can live for as long as 20 years, a remarkably long time for a rodent
In the wild, they are shy animals and flee from humans, while in captivity they may become trusting. In Trinidad, they are renowned for being very fast runners, able to keep hunting dogs occupied with chasing them for hours." From Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_agouti
"This photo was taken on 20 March 2017, but I also saw and photographed these rather strange animals every day that we were staying at the Asa Wright Nature Centre on the island of Trinidad. They like to hang around the Asa Wright building, finding food, and then they seem to disappear into the forest for most of the day. Many of my photos of them came out blurry for some reason, but this one worked OK.
This adventure was only the second holiday (or was it actually my third?) of any kind, anywhere, that I have had in something like 30 or 35 years! The other holiday was a wonderful, one-week trip with my great friends from England, Linda and Tony, when we went down south to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons in September 2012. I have had maybe half a dozen weekends away, including to Waterton National Park, which have helped keep me going.
Six birding/photographer friends and I decided that we would take this exciting trip together (from 12-21 March 2017), spending the first two or three days on the island of Tobago and then the rest of the time at the Asa Wright Nature Centre on the nearby, much larger island of Trinidad. We decided to take a complete package, so everything was included - flights (we were so very lucky to get Black Friday prices, which were 50% off!), accommodation at both places, all our food, and the various walks and day trips that we could chose from. Two of my friends, Anne B. and Brenda, saw to all the planning of flights and accommodations, which was so very much appreciated by the rest of us. I could never have done all this myself!
What a time we had, seeing so many beautiful and interesting things - and, of course, everything was a lifer for me. Some of these friends had visited Costa Rica before, so were familiar with some of the birds. There was a lot more to see on Trinidad, so we were glad that we chose Tobago to visit first and then spend a longer time at Asa Wright. It was wonderful to be right by the sea, though, at the Blue Waters Inn on the island of Tobago. Just gorgeous.
The Asa Wright Nature Centre, on Trinidad, is such an amazing place! We stayed in cabins up or down hill from the main building. Really, one doesn't need to travel away from the Centre for birding, as so many different species visit the Hummingbird feeders that are right by the huge, open veranda, and the trees of the rain forest high up a mountainous road. The drive up and down this narrow, twisting, pot-holed road was an adventure in itself! Never would I ever do this drive myself - we had a guide who drove us everywhere in a van/small bus. I had read many accounts of this road, lol! There was just enough room for two vehicles to squeeze past each other, and the honking of horns was almost continuous - either to warn any vehicle that might be coming fast around the next bend or as a sign that drivers knew each other. The drive along this road, from the coast to Asa Wright, took just over an hour each way.
I still miss the great food that was provided every single day at Asa Wright and the Rum Punch that appeared each evening. I never drink at all, so I wasn't sure if I would even try the Punch - glad I did, though, as it was delicious and refreshing. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all served buffet-style, with a great variety of dishes from which to choose. To me, pure luxury. So very, very grateful to have been invited to be part of this amazing adventure."
SHS Omadhaun, the second ship in the Amarok-Class, in standard livery circa June 1941 during training exercises.
Some of the least-damaged ships in the Súþfolcstede harbour, Amarok and her sisters were among the first hulks to be re-floated, repaired, and re-armed as they were some of the least damaged. Patrolling the seaways around Sjælleneard from Oyashimese incursion and Ordenric Reclamation fleets (nonexistent), they would be one of the earliest large naval vessels operated by the Sæþrymm of the Hléowiegan Sweordbroþors.
The Order's harbour-town of Súþfolcstede is of great age. It is unknown when the Order first learned of the Southern Passages into the Ælfeneard, but the first permanent settlements within it are known to have occurred during the mid-1700s. Súþfolcstede was the major resupply route unto it until the discovery of the Wearpport in Bistralis in 1841, a much safer and year-round route into the Ælfeneard. An earthquake would hit Bistralis in 1908 however, detonating the magazines in the fort-city of Wearpburg. The force of this explosion ruptured the delicate matrix of magic and ritual maintaining the Wearpport, promptly destroying both itself and the entire central area of the Bistralian continent. A single voyage through the Southern Passages was attempted by way of Súþfolcstede to link back with the Ælfeneard in 1919, but was unsuccessful. The vast majority of the ships sailed back with skeleton crews, their men speaking of hellish demons and frightful spectres in the now Wearp-infested passages into the Ælfeneard, all heavy with damage from the ice in that cold abyss. Few were able to be repaired in time for the Great Stupid War of 1924, and afterwards the rapidly declining social and economic structure of the Ordenric homelands could not warrant enough resources to make a second attempt at entering the Ælfeneard by way of the Southern Passages. The economy was in shambles from the massive war-debts the Stupid War had incurred, and the feudalist society of the Ordenric was beginning to wane and crumble under the massive weight of the recent industrializations and war. From 1927 on, Súþfolcstede would be on its own.
In 1887, a small Gúteic tropical fishing settlement and trading post was started near the rich Ordenric port-city. Soon it would grow into a relatively rich series of plantations held as a private colony of the Gúteic knightly order of the Order of Swordbrothers of Sanct Magnhild. However, with the disbanding of the Order of Swordbrothers of Sanct Magnhild after the 2nd Schlassbeck War for heresy (where Gútemark was incorporated into the Holy Seladællian Confederation), she would largely remain forgotten...
I went out with Matty to shoot some photos for an interview. We wanted to do something different, so we tried to incorporate Matty's love of the outdoors and his creativity into skating nonexistent "spots".
We rigged up this old washer and a plywood roll in on a bmx jump. The last part was rolling on the hard packed dirt.
So... This is it... This is our desert bloom this spring.
After what I believe has been the driest winter ever recorded in Arizona, our desert bloom has been nonexistent this year. In southern AZ, we have had something like a half inch of rainfall since the first week of December. So, the desert wildflowers never happened. There are a few cactus with some blooms. This ocotillo was looking really brilliant.
This was taken out in the Superstitions a few weeks ago.
Boulevard of ghosts presents a still from nonexistent drama "Gale Nights" featuring no one else but myself.
View large in lightbox.
The blue-winged grasshopper, Oedipoda caerulescens, is a grasshopper in the genus Oedipoda.
Oedipoda caerulescens frequents dry areas with low and open vegetation: dunes, heathlands, grasslands on sand and sunlit limestone rocks. Many stations correspond to land recently used for human activities, such as coal spoil heaps, quarries and pits, the ballast of railway tracks, etc. It is exclusively a terrestrial insect, and its cryptic coloration often matches its substrate. It presses itself to the ground and remains motionless, and jumps only at the very close approach of danger. A remarkable behavior is the "hook" landing which serves to confuse potential attackers. Thus, the grasshopper lands and swings round to face the direction it has come from. The sudden disappearance of the blue hind wings of the adult makes it difficult for predators to shift quickly enough to a different kind of search to relocate the prey. The female lays her eggs in bare, dry soil. In this species, acoustic emissions are virtually nonexistent. The diet consists mainly of grasses.
- The weight nonexistent .., the nonexistent world ...
- El inexistente peso.., del inexistente mundo...
It is not that often when I can capture all the colors of the rainbow and still be pleased with the result. Autumn in Shenandoah is that time of the year when, in the right weather, this is possible. Photographing this scene was not difficult. The predawn light was soft, the wind was almost nonexistent, and Thornton Hollow Overlook offered easy access to the scenery. I find it easier to frame vertical compositions, compared to horizontal ones, and this case was not an exception. The bright yellow foliage in the foreground, transitioning to the darker mix of green, red, and brown and culminating in the pastel blue shade of the Mount Marshall, was my primary element in the frame.
The signs of downsizing are evident as Amtrak train #40 departs the station at Lewistown. By the mid 80s, downsizing on the Middle Division was in full swing - towers were being closed, and the line going from three tracks to two. This is obvious here in this scene from 1985, where the right-most main is out of service and in the process of becoming nonexistent. While railfans on the western half of the Pittsburgh Line got their taste of this five years earlier, railfans out east held on a bit longer. Within a year, though, there wouldn't be much left of the Middle Division except two tracks and memories.
AMTK 313. Lewistown, PA.
August 19, 1985. Reuben S. Brouse photo.
Adam Klimchock collection.
Kaluk is a very paranoid Matoran, rarely leaving his hut or the observatory in fear of the various (and nonexistent) threats that are lurking in the outside world, but no matter what, he does his best to help his fellow Sah-toran.
So when his friend Krataz asked if he would help him with the next Kohlii game, he thought perhaps going out wouldn't be too bad.. right before being startled by Kului poking his leg.
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Explored: Highest Position: 66
Lake Manyara National Park is a national park in Arusha Region, Tanzania. The park consists of 330 km2 of arid land, forest, and a soda-lake which covers as much as 200 km2 of land during the wet season but is nearly nonexistent during the dry season.
Lake Manyara National Park is known for the flamingos that inhabit the lake. During the wet season they inhabit the edges of the lake in flocks of thousands but they are not so present during the dry season.
More than 400 species of birds inhabit the park and many remain throughout the year. Because of this Lake Manyara National Park is a good spot for bird watching. Visitors to the park can expect to see upwards of 100 different species of bird on any day.
Leopards, lions, elephants, blue monkeys, dik-dik, gazelle, hippo, giraffe, impala, and more inhabit the park and many can be seen throughout the year. There is a hippo pond at one end of the park where visitors can get out of their cars and observe from a safe distance. The leopards and lions are both known to lounge in the trees while not hunting for prey.
1958 BMW Isetta 300 on display at the Exotic Sports Car Show & Concours d'Elegance, Littleton, Colorado.
The Isetta was one of the most successful microcars produced in the post-WWII years—a time when cheap, short distance transportation was most needed. Although the design originated in Italy, it was built in a number of different countries, including Spain, Belgium, France, Brazil, Germany and Britain. Because of its egg shape and bubble-like windows, it became known as a bubble car—a name later given to other similar vehicles. Other countries had other nicknames: In Germany it was das rollende Ei (the rolling egg) or the Sargwagen (meaning something like "coffin car"; the name apparently came from the small (or rather nonexistent) distance between the passengers and oncoming traffic). In France it was the yogurt pot. In Brazil it was the bola de futebol de fenemê (football (soccer) ball of a truck), and in Chile it is still called the "huevito" (little egg). (Wikipedia)
Last nites sunsets were about to nonexistent because it was raining heavily where i was. I was even contemplating going home because it was rainy and no signs of colors in the sky. And the sun was just about beyond the horizon. Low and behold, persistence pays off again.
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Zen Mind
Zen mind is the "Natural" state of our beings: No self, no identity, no memes, no beliefs.
Any idea of "what is" takes us away from what is - to be in the moment, all ideas need to be gone. There's not even an "I" to have the ideas.
The natural being acts as an outcome of the movement of the universe, in the same way that an artist's brush is moved by its "universe".
All "teachings", "spiritual" paths or "sacred" practices actually take us away from the moment, because it needs an "I" to do them, with an agenda of some kind, something to gain. All of which removes our beingness from the identity-free moment.
The only way that "what is" can be experienced is to lose all traces of self, in which case the "what is" can't be experienced because there is no one there to experience it.
Any description of the state of the natural mind is false, including this one. "It" cannot be described. "It" is always "bigger" than the limiting description.
There is not even an "ultimate" state to gain, because the very idea that there is, takes us away from it.
All there is, is the operation of the universe in its all-ness. There's no such thing as "enlightened" or "unenlightened". These are just ideas of what is.
Even "bliss" or "transcendence" is a state of mind that needs an "I" to experience those feelings.
Thoughts are the glue of our belief structures. "I" is the creation of thoughts and beliefs.
What's happening, when we think we are functioning human beings, is the operating system of the brain, running sophisticated meme/belief structures that create the content of our identities and sense of self.
The only act awareness can "do" is to let go of "self" awareness. Awareness, to be fully there, needs to have no "I" attached to it.
Where there was self, there is now "active" emptiness.
Action, from this place, is an instantaneous, pure response to the call of the moment. It is the moment, the universe acting, not the person.
True peace is an absence of agitation, an absence of self-generated internal activity. So peace cannot be "done", or created - it's an absence of doing. This allows unadulterated "what-is" to be.
All action out of this state is completely harmonious and non-conflicting. There is nothing there to conflict with anything else.
A transcended being feels the world cleanly, whereas an "I", full of beliefs and ideas of self, overlays those unadulterated feelings with external content, imbuing them with emotional "charge". This charge is reactive to the world around it, continually creating conflict as it attempts to dissipate.
Whatever is actual or real can only be there when all ideas, all thoughts, all belief, all traces of identity are gone - when there is no "I" left to take us out of the moment. If the eternal now moment is all there is, this may be the only way to be in it.
Thought is only necessary, only of any use, when it is called for by the moment, for a particular task. To keep thinking beyond the particular call of the moment is the same as keeping your arm above your head all the time, or hopping on one leg all the time.
What comes out of the moment relates only to that moment. It's already past and nonexistent as it is experienced. To hold to anything experienced or said in that moment, is to live in the dead past.
If you can't touch it, show it, taste it, does it have any reality?
March 17, 2011.
No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky - Bob Dylan
Lately I've been extremely uninspired. This image is worse than yesterday's :/
It's been 100 days since I started my 365. 265 more days to go; 265 more days of dreams, wishes, magic, and hope; 265 more days of growing up.
A stranger who claims to have no memory of his past. Although some have tried, no one has been able to refute this claim - and none have been able to trace him from prior to his arrival on the beaches of Erkelon, far south of Okoto, in a strange "canister". What little knowledge he does have of his nature comes from his recent experience - although he has been awake for but fifteen months - and a few strange "premonitions". He is not even sure of his own name - "Jetera", he says, is only a reconstruction.
Shortly after his arrival, Jetera was chosen to be the Master of Storms of the Toa Vihagu. However, Jetera's control over his electrical element was inconsistent and best, and nonexistent at worst - so he used deception and surprise as his chief tools. Despite his initally aloof and sometimes outright hostile to his teammates, his affinity for them has grown greatly, and the friendships he has with them have become his driving force - as he had no fixed morality or sense of purpose upon arrival.
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Explored: Highest Position: 41
Lake Manyara National Park is a national park in Arusha Region, Tanzania. The park consists of 330 km2 of arid land, forest, and a soda-lake which covers as much as 200 km2 of land during the wet season but is nearly nonexistent during the dry season.
Lake Manyara National Park is known for the flamingos that inhabit the lake. During the wet season they inhabit the edges of the lake in flocks of thousands but they are not so present during the dry season.
More than 400 species of birds inhabit the park and many remain throughout the year. Because of this Lake Manyara National Park is a good spot for bird watching. Visitors to the park can expect to see upwards of 100 different species of bird on any day.
Leopards, lions, elephants, blue monkeys, dik-dik, gazelle, hippo, giraffe, impala, and more inhabit the park and many can be seen throughout the year. There is a hippo pond at one end of the park where visitors can get out of their cars and observe from a safe distance. The leopards and lions are both known to lounge in the trees while not hunting for prey.
By the mid 1980’s, freight traffic on Santa Fe’s Raton line was sparse, but not virtually nonexistent as it is today. Some of those few trains could, however be heavy enough to require helpers over Raton Pass. Here a westbound train at Raton, New Mexico enters the small yard with a significant group of EMD’s cut in a few cars ahead of the caboose.
I exposed this properly, but my Xtol died! My negative came out nearly undeveloped. I could barely make out this image on the negative :-(
Shot at 1600iso, it was going to be beautiful! I should have used my D76 like I was going to. Thanks to the miracle of scanning technology, I didn't have to throw these negatives in the trash.
30 minutes at f8, 1600iso and a really bright moon.
The vertical lines are the film base I'm sure. The images are almost nonexistent.
Underdeveloped by about 5 stops.
Buttons are not my thing so up to the local opshop I went whose supply was almost nonexistent!!!!I found these bundles for $2.00. Cheap enough. HLCoF
Skrzyczne is a mountain in southern Poland, in the Silesian Voivodeship, close to the town of Szczyrk. It is the highest mountain of the Silesian Beskids[3] and the fifth most topographically prominent peak in Poland.[4][a]
Skrzyczne is one of the peaks which make up the Crown of Polish Mountains, or a list of the highest points in each of Poland's 28 mountain ranges.[5] The peak can be reached by hiking paths, and there is also a gondola lift which starts in Szczyrk and comes up to around 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) above sea level.[6] The slopes of the mountain are also known for the many blueberries which grow on them and which are frequently collected by hikers and other visitors.[7]
A mountain hut, PTTK Skrzyczne, is located very close to the peak of the mountain. The first hut, built in 1933, was destroyed in a fire.[8] A second hut was built in the late 1930s, and stands to this day.[9] There is likewise a tall (87 metres (285 ft)) radio and television tower atop Skrzyczne,[10] which makes it easy to recognise the peak from afar.
In addition to multiple hiking trails, the Skrzyczne area also hosts a ski resort with several pistes,[11] as well as mountain biking trails.[12] Several trail races also cross the peak, most notably Zamieć, a 24-hour race which takes place in the winter.[13]
Legend has it that Skrzyczne takes its name from the croaking of frogs (in Polish: skrzyczenie), which supposedly inhabited the (now nonexistent) ponds near the peak.[14]
+ a bunch in comments.
i have been pretty nonexistent lately... but on the plus side, i have been super busy doing client work. absolutely loving it! ive been doing a lot of things ive never done before, like male catalog modeling, and engagements! like this one. this shot is from lyuba and eugenes engagement session. i had a super amazing time and my couple is very pleased with the results, which is a great feeling!! looking forward to shooting their wedding next month. :)
p.s. a video with print winners is coming soon, i really promise!
Take One Step, Seas Life (Of Love(s Of) Life) - IMRAN™
Life is so full of ironies and visual wordplays. Take this photo of my current situation, for example. I'm standing in the cold waters of Tampa Bay on a warming afternoon, outside my blessed home.
I looked down and then up. Things were looking up and I was down with it. Engulfed by natural moistness from the Gulf, these are the thoughts that washed over me... intellectual and emotional waves of pleasure coming in and on a literal wet dreamscape... as I clicked the iPhone button to capture it all in one frame.
Everyone tells us to stay close to home, not venture too far from shore, to resist the call of the sea, to not cross the oceans. We are told to stay grounded, keep our feet firmly planted, not to rock the boat even if we are permitted to get on one.
But to the ones who were born to explore new horizons, travel the world and seven seas, cross every ocean, share the space-time continuum with kindred souls — soulmates and sail-mates, whose hearts, minds, bodies, and souls equally full of love, lust, desire, passion, adventure, and an insatiable hunger experience it all — to live lives even beyond the limits of imagination.
And it is with those distant unseen, maybe even nonexistent, ports of calling in mind, with hearts throbbing to have precious heartthrobs come along on the journey, that we venture out on the oceans of time. The irony of how even getting to the oceans calling our names sometimes means crossing rivers as obstacles along the way.
But the journey of a million lifetimes of love begins with a single step, with one look, with one kiss. Just as you start to get your feet wet, the sea of love itself rises to meet you, greet you, embrace you. And next thing you know you’re knee-deep in it. Hooked to the sea but unleashed in every sense.... nothing between where you are and where you want to be but Fate telling you the plot but you writing your Destiny.
Come, my beloveds, my sail-mates, let my words release the lines that tie you to the ordinary life, let my voice command you to your wildest dreams, let my eyes unwrap the sails draping you, let my fingers plot the poetry of our life’s journey mapped on the perfection of your body, as I penetrate the darkness of the night seas that scare you, together to open beautiful corridors like moist pink morning clouds, ready to be seen & seeded with an unbridled love of life... and an infinite life of love.
That is what I visualize from this photo. Can you see and feel it, my loves!
© 2020 IMRAN™
(I post my words from the iPhone screen as a stream of consciousness without any editing, so I often catch & fix typos or grammar issues later).
#Florida #TampaBay #ApolloBeach #love #life #lust #literature #prose #philosophy #sea #ocean #travel #lifecoach #IMRAN #gratitude #erotica #writing
This month’s challenge called I Smell A (Modern) Rat asks us what would rat rodding be like if we applied the same principles to modern cars. For this I chose a Dodge Magnum with a V-8 Hemi. Instead of a more predictable post-apoc Mad Max look, I went with a beach combing car with rugged tires, wood paneling, and a nonexistent roof and tailgate. Just enough rust and patina adds a bit of well loved character while a wooden deck and benches gives this “Magnum Opus” a boat-like appearance that’s suitable for fishing, surfing, or just soaking up some rays. Its the perfect modern rat rod for a hot summer day!
Once hushed
once dead
once nonexistent
But no the radio waves buzz
once more the radio demoness lives
telling a story one tune at at time.
Never again silent
never again faded.
Nothing new here ... Haven't done any Aurora photography for over a month. Admittedly, I got a little spoiled after the fantastic displays of mid-November and haven't been staying out all night agressively seeking them , like I normally do, but .... the Aurora has been weak to nonexistent hereabouts since that time.
Aurora tourism has gotten big here in recent years, so thousands of hopefuls have been streaming into the Yukon for months, and generally just NOT seeing anything. The relatively anemic solar activity of late has been a bit dismaying, given the fact that we're supposedly on the verge of a solar maximum. The nearly flatlined solar dynamics of recent years had led to expectations of an unusually poor solar max this time and it's now looking as if it may be even worse than predicted. There is already some (very discouraging) speculation in scientific circles that we may already be in the maximum portion of this solar cycle. One thing is for sure ... We are developing a greater awareness of previously unrecognized variability in our daystar's behavior. Hopefully, things will pick up as the new year progresses, but I, for one, am not expecting much until the usual mysterious uptick in Auroral activity which always occurs six weeks or so either side of the vernal equinox ...
Though difficult to reach due to harsh rainy seasons and, at times, nonexistent roads, the Omo Valley continually rewards its visitors with a unique and astonishing beauty. The entire region has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1980.
The Surma occupy an area near the Sudanese border. They practice scarification and beauty mutilation and are one of the last tribes in the world where the women wear large lip plates. Many of their warriors prefer to rest naked, occasionally putting on a simple plaid cloth for warmth. The traditional way of life is quickly changing since the arrival of military outposts and Presbyterian missions.
There was a short time after the NS takeover of the former D&H south end that decent power could still be found south of Schenectady. It’s currently nonexistent and boring.
This morning I headed out to watch the very first sunrise of 2015.
Unfortunately it was quite overcast so the actual sunrise was fairly nonexistent. Luckily though, I was there half an hour before sunrise, just in time to catch the blue hour. A few minutes later, the sky was a dull grey.
It appears calm but there was a thin layer of ice on the water and it was actually quite windy. Brrrr....
This photo is the very first one I took this morning. It was actually overexposed and the next couple that I took were the correct exposure but I figured that I would try editing this one to see how it would turn out. After taking down the exposure in post processing, I then had to play around with the colour to get the blue sky close to how it actually appeared in person (using the correctly exposed photos as a guide). After, to compare, I played around with editing one of the photos that was properly exposed in camera but I think that this one turned out better (I'm guessing maybe less noise in the lighter photo? Maybe?).
I'm fairly happy with this considering this isn't my usual type of photography, I just had a monopod with me and I am still very much an editing newbie. Always fun to try new things! :)
(My internet has been finicky the last few days and so Flickr has been and still is dreadfully slooooooow. Hopefully it improves so I can catch up on my commenting and faves.)
Thin to nonexistent sun on this day in May, 2014 as a Providence and Worcester ethanol extra hustles south on the Providence Main through a private crossing in Millbury MA. Although my notes on this train are sketchy at best (sadly true for most of my collection), I believe the consist was a pair of B39 (3902 and 3909) matched with a GP38 (2008). Of the 4 sets I have, this was easily the best light of the lot. With both 3902 and 3909 now in GW orange, I'm ok with that.
Millipedes have very poor – sometimes nonexistent – eyesight, and sense their way around using their short, segmented antennae, which continually tap the ground as they move along; millipedes are very clean creatures, spend a lot of time cleaning and polishing various parts of their body, and have a special brush-like group of hairs on the 2nd or 3rd pair of their legs which they use to clean their antennae
___________________________________________
American Giant Millipede – 2020SEP27 – Charlotte, NC
Look what I found! A Giant Millipede, Narceus americanus: it grows twice as large as any other North American millipede, a cylindrical millipede (distinguished from flat millipedes), dark reddish-brown or black, a red line on each segmente edge; like all millipedes, they have 2 pairs of legs on most segments, rather than 1 pair of legs on each segment (like a centipede).
Does it bite? No (uniike a centipede). What about cyanide? Although not this species, some secrete hydrogen cyanide, quite poisonous. Remember, millipedes are toxic – but as long as they are not eaten, hands washed after touching them, they're pretty harmless; however, many have a defensive secretion, benzoquinone, that can cause chemical burns on human skin, generally mild, but powerful enough to cause temporary skin discoloration, itching, and blisters – some millipedes’ secretions are much more powerful, though.
The division of an animal into repeating body parts is called segmentation, clearly seen in millipedes, the word meaning “one thousand foot;” despite that name, millipedes with the most legs come up shy of the 1,000-leg mark, only about 750.
Hope you enjoy the 10% of 99 captures I took here this day!
THEME: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAcDMHuC2E
Introducing my Self-MOC! This is actually the 12th version (12.4 to be exact) and a character reboot, though, and I have revamped the whole thing again since this version, too. I will post a picture showing some of the previous versions (I don't have pictures of pre-7th versions, except for the very first), just so you can get an idea of the evolution of the character.
---DESCRIPTION---
Nicknamed "Rahksha" due to her Makuta heritage, Nyctoria is somewhat of a Toa: the most accurate way to put it is, she's a protector...of sorts. She has a strong link with the Netherverse, enabling her to draw on its dark power to perform necromancy, as well as harvest souls and summon them as Netherwalkers (inhabitants of the Netherverse) with her scythe. She can also reanimate corpses to serve her by using seals on their Kanohi.
However, the power of the Netherverse always takes it toll, and the user's soul - and therefore body - will decay the more they use it. The only way to maintain oneself is to harvest the souls of others. Hence, Nyctoria hunts down villains to defeat and consume.
While Nyctoria does defend others from Makuta and other threats, she is not altrustic in her motives -- she will just as easily consume innocents if there is no other source available, and rarely helps others unless she perceives them or the target as useful in her quest for revenge against her "father", Teridax -- and by extension, her de facto creator, Mutran.
As an individual, Nyctoria is largely anti-social, apathetic and an on-off misanthrope - hardly surprising considering her origins. That being said, she is not without a sense of justice and empathy, although her concept of morality is nonexistent at worst and dubious at best.
---BIO---
NAME: Nyctoria
ALIASES: Rahksha, Daughter of Teridax, Destral's Shadowborne
SPECIES: Rahkshi/Toa (mutant; Kraata infused with energy from a Nui Stone)
GENDER: Female
KANOHI: N/A
ELEMENT: Shadow
WEAPON: Harvest Scythe - "Slayer's Slave"
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Lake Manyara National Park is a national park in Arusha Region, Tanzania. The park consists of 330 km2 of arid land, forest, and a soda-lake which covers as much as 200 km2 of land during the wet season but is nearly nonexistent during the dry season.
Lake Manyara National Park is known for the flamingos that inhabit the lake. During the wet season they inhabit the edges of the lake in flocks of thousands but they are not so present during the dry season.
More than 400 species of birds inhabit the park and many remain throughout the year. Because of this Lake Manyara National Park is a good spot for bird watching. Visitors to the park can expect to see upwards of 100 different species of bird on any day.
Leopards, lions, elephants, blue monkeys, dik-dik, gazelle, hippo, giraffe, impala, and more inhabit the park and many can be seen throughout the year. There is a hippo pond at one end of the park where visitors can get out of their cars and observe from a safe distance. The leopards and lions are both known to lounge in the trees while not hunting for prey.
Lake Manyara National Park is a national park in Arusha Region, Tanzania. The park consists of 330 km2 of arid land, forest, and a soda-lake which covers as much as 200 km2 of land during the wet season but is nearly nonexistent during the dry season.
Lake Manyara National Park is known for the flamingos that inhabit the lake. During the wet season they inhabit the edges of the lake in flocks of thousands but they are not so present during the dry season.
More than 400 species of birds inhabit the park and many remain throughout the year. Because of this Lake Manyara National Park is a good spot for bird watching. Visitors to the park can expect to see upwards of 100 different species of bird on any day.
Leopards, lions, elephants, blue monkeys, dik-dik, gazelle, hippo, giraffe, impala, and more inhabit the park and many can be seen throughout the year. There is a hippo pond at one end of the park where visitors can get out of their cars and observe from a safe distance. The leopards and lions are both known to lounge in the trees while not hunting for prey.
"..and as I walked the paths between the monolithic shards, I felt a cold wisp sweep through me. The Ghost of Man; the souls of millions of humans. All laying cold and dead for thousands of years - undisturbed."
Postcor 1//3
ATI Cosmonaut Mark V ‘HERA’ (High Energy Rail Accelerator)
The HERA is a compact high-grade energy weapon designed by Agroprom Technology Institute (ATI).
The first concepts for the weapon were fashioned in the late 2020s, for use by special insertion squads during the rise of energy weaponry. However, the concepts did not pass prototype stage after numerous cases of weapons melting or burning during use, and were soon buried. The prototypes and concepts were uncovered in the late 2050s as soon as demands for a space-based weapon rose, and the materials required for withstanding such high levels of heat became available for mass production. A new prototype was fashioned using the same initial designs, while adding design changes allowing for use by a human in a spacesuit. The internals were also modified to incorporate advances in material technologies. The weapon is manufactured and sold in small quantities due to its limited use in exoatmospheric conditions and high relative cost of the materials and techniques used in its manufacture.
The HERA platform is a linear accelerator which utilizes two electromagnetically charged rails (silver-lined molybdenum-steel alloy) to propel a ‘pulse’ of superheated ionized plasma towards the target by forming a powerful magnetic field along the length of the weapon’s acceleration chamber, expelling the projectile at high velocity. The design produces high velocity coherent projectiles capable of burning through spacesuits and disintegrating soft targets such as human flesh, while dissipating upon contact with solid assets such as spacecraft hulls, leaving them largely undamaged. The system has been noted to pose a slight risk of fire when used around ships with a high-oxygen internal environment.
The weapon is constructed of a lightweight heat-dissipating titanium alloy frame combined with a carbon-fiber reinforced thermoplastic shell. The frame is designed to effectively disperse the large amount of waste heat generated with each discharge. This passive design aspect is augmented by a liquid nitrogen based coolant system which runs parallel to the surface of the propulsion rails and laser-drive chamber, preventing overheating during sustained fire. Even with these design features, the weapon is still prone to overheating (automatically shutting down the weapon for five seconds, after approximately 30 discharge cycles at 900 RPM) through prolonged firing.
While there is very little recoil from the accelerator compared to contemporary solid projectile platforms there remains a low level of effective recoil force produced, which can cause an operator to lose control of their rotational velocity while firing the weapon. A series of synthetic viscoelastic urethane polymer shock dampening buffers are placed within the internal skeleton of the stock portion, used to absorb the remaining recoil impulse. Operators using the weapon are often required to rely entirely on visual feedback to know that their weapon has fired due to the near-complete dissipation of recoil energy. Some users note minor heat buildup in the weapon’s grip during extended operation, however when operating the system from within a spacesuit there is no tangible discomfort.
As a plasma accelerator, the HERA platform is inherently suited for operation in a vacuum, but has also shown extensive capacity for atmospheric use, though the weapon’s effective range in atmospheric conditions is significantly reduced due to air resistance and other factors.
While there are many better alternatives for the weapon on ground, it has a number of advantages in space combat.
Unlike a traditional weapon, which requires heavy, high-volume ammunition, the HERA utilizes compact plasma canisters - as the ammunition is fluid, it does not waste any space and takes the shape of it’s container.
Secondly, the HERA can fire continuously at 900 RPM until the magazine is exhausted with only 5 second intervals every 30 rounds for cooling.
Third, and most importantly, the projectile is extraordinarily fast, clocking in at 5100 meters per second muzzle velocity - around 5 times faster than a traditional automatic rifle. This feature is useful in outer space due to the vaster distances without cover.
Fourth, it cannot puncture holes through thick material such as walls, but easily burns through suits or clothing, making it safe for use aboard a space station. The use of traditional projectile weapons aboard spacecraft is highly dangerous, as stray projectiles could cause severe damage or decompression by penetrating exterior hull sections, endangering all individuals present.
Components:
Bobson Synthetics Group DPF Capsule
The condensed ionized plasma fired by the weapon is stored in capsules mounted to the sides of the platform’s body, providing high storage capacity. Each DPF capsule is a dual-purpose binary magazine containing a plasma fluid matrix and a nitrogen cooling chamber. When reloading the weapon an operator can remove only those capsules which have been fully depleted, increasing adaptability in combat situations.
Polyrhythm Corporation Laser-Drive Chamber
Located beneath the primary firing chamber of the weapon, the Polyrhythm L-DC is a small, highly heat resistant chamber connected to the weapon’s plasma delivery conduit directly prior to the primary firing chamber. The L-DC uses a high-energy laser diode to heat the channeled plasmoid to an incredibly high temperature, expanding it and forcing it into the primary firing chamber, where the plasmoid is accelerated.
A Polyrhythm Arcjet was placed into the earlier models of the weapon, rather than a laser diode. These are much bulkier as they also carry a large canister of hydrazine, but are known for possessing a longer lifespan due to the sturdier construction of the chamber.
Steinbek Compulsator
The Steinbek ‘Compensated Pulsed Alternator’ is a small device used for storing power for use by the railgun. It is basically a series of flywheel devices sealed in a tube constructed of a shock absorbing carbon-steel composite. The flywheel devices consist of a carbon-fiber composite rotor surrounded by magnetic bearings and a counterweight stabilizer. The Compulsator is designed to fire it’s energy in pulses rather than steadily, perfect for an energy intensive device such as a railgun.
Unlike a battery, the Compulsator can last ages longer than a battery, operates with equal efficiency in any environment and temperature, and suffers no chemical failure. The device can be fully recharged within minutes.
The earliest models of the weapon utilized a Steinbek RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) in place of a compulsator. These models are much more dangerous as what they use are essentially atomic batteries, utilizing Plutonium-238 - while shielding requirements are low or nonexistent, the systems can be unpredictable with the massively fluctuating energy levels of a railgun. However, with sufficient protection, these weapons are much more reliable and can take much more of a beating - but be careful. When you see the blinking red light on your HUD, throw your gun as far away from you as you can and float for your life - an RTG doesn’t fail often, but when one does, it fails with a moderately sized explosion.
Sony HRA445B Lithium-Polymer Batteries
Two mass manufactured Sony Lithium-Polymer batteries located in the stock power passive electronic systems such as sights, HUD, stabilization computer and temperature regulation and detection computer. These are recharged within seconds of being plugged into a station, but cannot power the railgun.
The optic is a sturdy Agroprom camera-sight.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Credit: Woitek for the trigger
Did some editing to add the SB on the compulsator and the large logo at the bottom
[Preface: In view of our 73 degree "heat event," our wonderfully inept power company in the northern half of this state has *threatened* - so that they don't get sued again for negligence - to turn off all power starting at midnight tonight and lasting oh, maybe five days until they can find the switch in the dark! I have made my calls to my nonexistent federal representatives and my state senator and even called the governor's office, but they were all out busily defending the indefensible. Oh, you want the point. Okay, you may not see any uploads or receive comments from me for 12 hours to five days and, since three of my prescriptions run out and my pharmacy is "digital," I may shed this mortal coil, and join Nikola Tesla in railing against bureaucracies in general. Google it.]
But, I am leaving you with one of my favorite shots of the summer. Light's good. Log has character. The Arroyo Bluet that is perched is sharp, and the Vivid Dancer is nicely blurred showing forward movement though he had been hovering and pestering the guy on the log. It also shows the relative sizes. The Bluet is 44mm and the Dancer is 39. There are two species even smaller, and I got one California Pond Dancer, an anomaly at about 19mm.
For the last 5,000 years, in cultures and folklore around the world, a red dragonfly is said to be one of two omens at polar opposites on the omen spectrum: eternal love and death. In one Asian folk tale, red dragonflies always show up when someone dies. My dragonflies are defective. I will reread the instruction manual and make sure that I've got the incantation right.
Nothing is mentioned about blue dragons or damsels. It probably meant masculinity, but the California schools deems that to be inappropriate and almost as unacceptable as the Swift Forktail.
See you ... tomorrow or Monday, pissants willing. (Google it.)
Hello! I've been gone for so long :O well it felt reaaaal long to me. I'm probably not back for good, just wanted to update you guys! I feel like no one will see this, but whatever (: so I had a good summer! Went on some trips, saw some friends, had some fun. I started highschool today :O I was nervous but I got there and realize I was being stupid, it wasn't bad at all, no one beat me up, I didn't get lost, I like all my classes, so I'm pretty happy :D well so back to my flickr life. It's been pretty nonexistent. I went on a couple times, to see what was up. I feel like I could never catch up D: with tags, and contact requests, and all that good stuff. I almost want to start fresh, but I feel kind of stupid doing that because I've been doing so good! So that's pretty much all I have to say! Oh wait! I'm taking photography this year :) so far, I'm not really feelin it, but that's dumb because I've gone once.... Anyways miss you all! I'm going to possibly try to catch up :P wish me luck (;
It's the Easter holidays and we've used this time to help our daughter learn to ride her bike on two wheels.
I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to practise my (pretty much nonexistent) panning skills - this is the best I got! My son going as fast as he could down the hill at Sandal Castle. His helmet's a bit loose in this picture but we've tightened it up now.
I went to Yellowstone during the last part of spring. The snow was still quite deep in the mountains, but in the Yellowstone valley is was relatively nonexistent except in the mountains. This is an image from the north end of Grand Prismatic Spring. The Grand Prismatic Spring gets its name from the many different colors that can be observed in the hot water which is caused by the bacteria living in microbial mats.
Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in the United States and is about 160 °F.
Photographs are © Copyright Galactic Dreams (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on blogs, websites, or in other media without advance written permission from Galactic Dreams.
I'm gobsmacked by several things here. First, the light was nonexistent. Yet the Sony A7RII performed extremely well at incredibly high ISO. Second, using knowledge developed around a digital Zone System, I knew precisely where I wanted the tonal values and was able to place them accordingly. Third, I am happy to confirm the dynamic range of the sensor extends usefully to below Zone 0 (Zone -2!), even at such high ISO settings. Fourth, 1950s German optics can do the trick. These images were made using a triplet wide angle. Who would design such a thing and make it work? Micro-contrast is something to be seen, otherwise you wouldn't believe it.
...the Universe in size of monitor by definition
endless as infinity composing undulated-D
entirely with all aspects in own-Self,
proportion & its size of moving artifacts
compressed by Light from distant Stars, &
Sunny rays as shower-meteors from
outer belt by its historical disturbance
atmosphere, plus price of currency,
stability & growth declining markets,
cattle raised, cat-rains-&-dogs, plus
eggs, & precious indeed, all natural
organic spoons&forks on hefty shelf
at lunar supermarket around corner,
immediate effect before my eyes
as yesterday & now to invite all stored
somewhere in the mind ideas, visions,
tangibility in sum of powerless & frosted
trees, & their individual scions & every
branch that's witnessed adoration, & vigor,
inspiration, & even memory of touch its
coarse, & spurring greens to life anew
directly known & familiar from keen of
pines, & ardent oaks from early Summer's
times each eager recognize my voice, &
naive gesture most cheerfully transgressed
with age forgotten in the depth of utter
silence, suppressed by weight of solitary
syllables relayed to nonexistent words,
but gradually whispering, or recital
reflecting littered visions resembled
step-by-step in oriole September
covered Autumn: Ideal of colored
world behind adjacent streets, & avenues
stretched in parade-alley of pack renewed
& modern stand-up of mannequins I missed
recording their shabby sickness & choking
screams by oldie camera, long since it lost
entire motivation due & because of matrix
self-restrain & illusory breath of freedom
in visual conflict between content & verbal
inconsistence on streets & lanes fulfilled by
echo, & emptiness Abyss erects behind its
walls, & decorated families
palazzos, curved garden's entourage,
ordeal & architectural phantasm observing
stream of merciless Eternity by smiles
of Sun through bridges far across Neva,
& Siena, or Danube, or else - in Alps
pedaling Light irradiated by unbearable
Sunsets direct to eyes: unbearable
by its attraction to blend with glass
& similarity appearance, Venetian's
canal, gondola, floating charm
amidst mass-satisfaction repeating
own-selves & its reflections lame
as ducks afloat mixed entertained
by dancing crowds, its metronome
& ritual of waltz in illusory light
of 20th Century, presumably all happy
dancing Vienna's waltz, as if before
in 1917, depicting yellowish estamps
a-sepia on walls, in studios,
in halls, in ballrooms, & even
right before my eyes in imaginary
& diluted by sentiments of dusk,
nostalgic recollection...
As usual - alas.
...just lonely Birds, but no more than singing
flock in depth off cage supporting tired from
Opera's soloist on squeaking love-seat ritual,
traditional deformity of fawns
& cupids with faces a-La theatrical Ideal
in slide & fly antique a-fresco,
Pompeian's ecstatic benefits again
before the mirror in Teatro-alla-Magia
around corner & rue forgotten
exactly and before Caffe Grande,
touristy dream from travel catalog,
however such exact location eliminates
enigma to depict espresso taste by sturdy bare
everywhere trunk, its speechless shaking tops,
its dried-off fallen leafs, invariably
separated & elapsed, on grounds, amidst
the snow vanished upon season, & fully melted...
August 21, 2005
The Breaking Point
By PETER MAASS
The largest oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura, is located on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf. From Ras Tanura's control tower, you can see the classic totems of oil's dominion -- supertankers coming and going, row upon row of storage tanks and miles and miles of pipes. Ras Tanura, which I visited in June, is the funnel through which nearly 10 percent of the world's daily supply of petroleum flows. Standing in the control tower, you are surrounded by more than 50 million barrels of oil, yet not a drop can be seen.
The oil is there, of course. In a technological sleight of hand, oil can be extracted from the deserts of Arabia, processed to get rid of water and gas, sent through pipelines to a terminal on the gulf, loaded onto a supertanker and shipped to a port thousands of miles away, then run through a refinery and poured into a tanker truck that delivers it to a suburban gas station, where it is pumped into an S.U.V. -- all without anyone's actually glimpsing the stuff. So long as there is enough oil to fuel the global economy, it is not only out of sight but also out of mind, at least for consumers.
I visited Ras Tanura because oil is no longer out of mind, thanks to record prices caused by refinery shortages and surging demand -- most notably in the United States and China -- which has strained the capacity of oil producers and especially Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of all. Unlike the 1973 crisis, when the embargo by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries created an artificial shortfall, today's shortage, or near-shortage, is real. If demand surges even more, or if a producer goes offline because of unrest or terrorism, there may suddenly not be enough oil to go around.
As Aref al-Ali, my escort from Saudi Aramco, the giant state-owned oil company, pointed out, ''One mistake at Ras Tanura today, and the price of oil will go up.'' This has turned the port into a fortress; its entrances have an array of gates and bomb barriers to prevent terrorists from cutting off the black oxygen that the modern world depends on. Yet the problem is far greater than the brief havoc that could be wrought by a speeding zealot with 50 pounds of TNT in the trunk of his car. Concerns are being voiced by some oil experts that Saudi Arabia and other producers may, in the near future, be unable to meet rising world demand. The producers are not running out of oil, not yet, but their decades-old reservoirs are not as full and geologically spry as they used to be, and they may be incapable of producing, on a daily basis, the increasing volumes of oil that the world requires. ''One thing is clear,'' warns Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, in a series of new advertisements, ''the era of easy oil is over.''
In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible. The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals -- which is to say, almost every product on the market. The impact on the American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar -- assuming, of course, that climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.
But will such a situation really come to pass? That depends on Saudi Arabia. To know the answer, you need to know whether the Saudis, who possess 22 percent of the world's oil reserves, can increase their country's output beyond its current limit of 10.5 million barrels a day, and even beyond the 12.5-million-barrel target it has set for 2009. (World consumption is about 84 million barrels a day.) Saudi Arabia is the sole oil superpower. No other producer possesses reserves close to its 263 billion barrels, which is almost twice as much as the runner-up, Iran, with 133 billion barrels. New fields in other countries are discovered now and then, but they tend to offer only small increments. For example, the much-contested and as-yet-unexploited reserves in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge are believed to amount to about 10 billion barrels, or just a fraction of what the Saudis possess.
But the truth about Saudi oil is hard to figure out. Oil reservoirs cannot be inventoried like wood in a wilderness: the oil is underground, unseen by geologists and engineers, who can, at best, make highly educated guesses about how much is underfoot and how much can be extracted in the future. And there is a further obstacle: the Saudis will not let outsiders audit their confidential data on reserves and production. Oil is an industry in which not only is the product hidden from sight but so is reliable information about it. And because we do not know when a supply-demand shortfall might arrive, we do not know when to begin preparing for it, so as to soften its impact; the economic blow may come as a sledgehammer from the darkness.
Of course the Saudis do have something to say about this prospect. Before journeying to the kingdom, I went to Washington to hear the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, speak at an energy conference in the mammoth Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, not far from the White House. Naimi was the star attraction at a gathering of the American petro-political nexus. Samuel Bodman, the U.S. energy secretary, was on the dais next to him. David O'Reilly, chairman and C.E.O. of Chevron, was waiting in the wings. The moderator was an éminence grise of the oil world, James Schlesinger, a former energy secretary, defense secretary and C.I.A. director.
''I want to assure you here today that Saudi Arabia's reserves are plentiful, and we stand ready to increase output as the market dictates,'' said Naimi, dressed in a gray business suit and speaking with only a slight Arabic accent. He addressed skeptics who contend that Saudi reservoirs cannot be tapped for larger amounts of oil. ''I am quite bullish on technology as the key to our energy future,'' he said. ''Technological innovation will allow us to find and extract more oil around the world.'' He described the task of increasing output as just ''a question of investment'' in new wells and pipelines, and he noted that consuming nations urgently need to build new refineries to process increased supplies of crude. ''There is absolutely no lack of resources worldwide,'' he repeated.
His assurances did not assure. A barrel of oil cost $55 at the time of his speech; less than three months later, the price had jumped by 20 percent. The truth of the matter -- whether the world will really have enough petroleum in the years ahead -- was as well concealed as the millions of barrels of oil I couldn't see at Ras Tanura.
For 31 years, Matthew Simmons has prospered as the head of his own firm, Simmons & Company International, which advises energy companies on mergers and acquisitions. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a graduate of the Harvard Business School and an unpaid adviser on energy policy to the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, he would be a card-carrying member of the global oil nomenclatura, if cards were issued for such things. Yet he is one of the principal reasons the oil world is beginning to ask hard questions of itself.
Two years ago, Simmons went to Saudi Arabia on a government tour for business executives. The group was presented with the usual dog-and-pony show, but instead of being impressed, as most visitors tend to be, with the size and expertise of the Saudi oil industry, Simmons became perplexed. As he recalls in his somewhat heretical new book, ''Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,'' a senior manager at Aramco told the visitors that ''fuzzy logic'' would be used to estimate the amount of oil that could be recovered. Simmons had never heard of fuzzy logic. What could be fuzzy about an oil reservoir? He suspected that Aramco, despite its promises of endless supplies, might in fact not know how much oil remained to be recovered.
Simmons returned home with an itch to scratch. Saudi Arabia was one of the charter members of OPEC, founded in 1960 in Baghdad to coordinate the policies of oil producers. Like every OPEC country, Saudi Arabia provides only general numbers about its output and reserves; it does not release details about how much oil is extracted from each reservoir and what methods are used to extract that oil, and it does not permit audits by outsiders. The condition of Saudi fields, and those of other OPEC nations, is a closely guarded secret. That's largely because OPEC quotas, which were first imposed in 1983 to limit the output of member countries, were based on overall reserves; the higher an OPEC member's reserves, the higher its quota. It is widely believed that most, if not all, OPEC members exaggerated the sizes of their reserves in order to have the largest possible quota -- and thus the largest possible revenue stream.
In the days of excess supply, bankers like Simmons did not know, or care, about the fudging; whether or not reserves were hyped, there was plenty of oil coming out of the ground. Through the 1970's, 80's and 90's, the capacity of OPEC and non-OPEC countries exceeded demand, and that's why OPEC imposed a quota system -- to keep some product off the market (although many OPEC members, seeking as much revenue as possible, quietly sold more oil than they were supposed to). Until quite recently, the only reason to fear a shortage was if a boycott, war or strike were to halt supplies. Few people imagined a time when supply would dry up because of demand alone. But a steady surge in demand in recent years -- led by China's emergence as a voracious importer of oil -- has changed that.
This demand-driven scarcity has prompted the emergence of a cottage industry of experts who predict an impending crisis that will dwarf anything seen before. Their point is not that we are running out of oil, per se; although as much as half of the world's recoverable reserves are estimated to have been consumed, about a trillion barrels remain underground. Rather, they are concerned with what is called ''capacity'' -- the amount of oil that can be pumped to the surface on a daily basis. These experts -- still a minority in the oil world -- contend that because of the peculiarities of geology and the limits of modern technology, it will soon be impossible for the world's reservoirs to surrender enough oil to meet daily demand.
One of the starkest warnings came in a February report commissioned by the United States Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory. ''Because oil prices have been relatively high for the past decade, oil companies have conducted extensive exploration over that period, but their results have been disappointing,'' stated the report, assembled by Science Applications International, a research company that works on security and energy issues. ''If recent trends hold, there is little reason to expect that exploration success will dramatically improve in the future. . . . The image is one of a world moving from a long period in which reserves additions were much greater than consumption to an era in which annual additions are falling increasingly short of annual consumption. This is but one of a number of trends that suggest the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking of conventional world oil production.''
The reference to ''peaking'' is not a haphazard word choice -- ''peaking'' is a term used in oil geology to define the critical point at which reservoirs can no longer produce increasing amounts of oil. (This tends to happen when reservoirs are about half-empty.) ''Peak oil'' is the point at which maximum production is reached; afterward, no matter how many wells are drilled in a country, production begins to decline. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members may have enough oil to last for generations, but that is no longer the issue. The eventual and painful shift to different sources of energy -- the start of the post-oil age -- does not begin when the last drop of oil is sucked from under the Arabian desert. It begins when producers are unable to continue increasing their output to meet rising demand. Crunch time comes long before the last drop.
''The world has never faced a problem like this,'' the report for the Energy Department concluded. ''Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.''
Most experts do not share Simmons's concerns about the imminence of peak oil. One of the industry's most prominent consultants, Daniel Yergin, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about petroleum, dismisses the doomsday visions. ''This is not the first time that the world has 'run out of oil,''' he wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion essay. ''It's more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry.'' Yergin says that a number of oil projects that are under construction will increase the supply by 20 percent in five years and that technological advances will increase the amount of oil that can be recovered from existing reservoirs. (Typically, with today's technology, only about 40 percent of a reservoir's oil can be pumped to the surface.)
Yergin's bullish view has something in common with the views of the pessimists -- it rests on unknowns. Will the new projects that are under way yield as much oil as their financial backers hope? Will new technologies increase recovery rates as much as he expects? These questions are next to impossible to answer because coaxing oil out of the ground is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. The popular notion of reservoirs as underground lakes, from which wells extract oil like straws sucking a milkshake from a glass, is incorrect. Oil exists in drops between and inside porous rocks. A new reservoir may contain sufficient pressure to make these drops of oil flow to the surface in a gusher, but after a while -- usually within a few years and often sooner than that -- natural pressure lets up and is no longer sufficient to push oil to the surface. At that point, ''secondary'' recovery efforts are begun, like pumping water or gas into the reservoirs to increase the pressure.
This process is unpredictable; reservoirs are extremely temperamental. If too much oil is extracted too quickly or if the wrong types or amounts of secondary efforts are employed, the amount of oil that can be recovered from a field can be greatly reduced; this is known in the oil world as ''damaging a reservoir.'' A widely cited example is Oman: in 2001, its daily production reached more than 960,000 barrels, but then suddenly declined, despite the use of advanced technologies. Today, Oman produces 785,000 barrels of oil a day. Herman Franssen, a consultant who worked in Oman for a decade, sees that country's experience as a possible lesson in the limits of technology for other producers that try to increase or maintain high levels of output. ''They reached a million barrels a day, and then a few years later production collapsed,'' Franssen said in a phone interview. ''They used all these new technologies, but they haven't been able to stop the decline yet.''
The vague production and reserve data that gets published does not begin to tell the whole story of an oil field's health, production potential or even its size. For a clear-as-possible picture of a country's oil situation, you need to know what is happening in each field -- how many wells it has, how much oil each well is producing, what recovery methods are being used and how long they've been used and the trend line since the field went into production. Data of that sort are typically not released by state-owned companies like Saudi Aramco.
As Matthew Simmons searched for clues to the truth of the Saudi situation, he immersed himself in the minutiae of oil geology. He realized that data about Saudi fields might be found in the files of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Oil engineers, like most professional groups, have regular conferences at which they discuss papers that delve into the work they do. The papers, which focus on particular wells that highlight a problem or a solution to a problem, are presented and debated at the conferences and published by the S.P.E. -- and then forgotten.
Before Simmons poked around, no one had taken the time to pull together the S.P.E. papers that involved Saudi oil fields and review them en masse. Simmons found more than 200 such papers and studied them carefully. Although the papers cover only a portion of the kingdom's wells and date back, in some cases, several decades, they constitute perhaps the best public data about the condition and prospects of Saudi reservoirs.
Ghawar is the treasure of the Saudi treasure chest. It is the largest oil field in the world and has produced, in the past 50 years, about 55 billion barrels of oil, which amounts to more than half of Saudi production in that period. The field currently produces more than five million barrels a day, which is about half of the kingdom's output. If Ghawar is facing problems, then so is Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the entire world.
Simmons found that the Saudis are using increasingly large amounts of water to force oil out of Ghawar. Most of the wells are concentrated in the northern portion of the 174-mile-long field. That might seem like good news -- when the north runs low, the Saudis need only to drill wells in the south. But in fact it is bad news, Simmons concluded, because the southern portions of Ghawar are geologically more difficult to draw oil from. ''Someday (and perhaps that day will be soon), the remarkably high well flow rates at Ghawar's northern end will fade, as reservoir pressures finally plummet,'' Simmons writes in his book. ''Then, Saudi Arabian oil output will clearly have peaked. The death of this great king'' -- meaning Ghawar -- ''leaves no field of vaguely comparable stature in the line of succession. Twilight at Ghawar is fast approaching.'' He goes on: ''The geological phenomena and natural driving forces that created the Saudi oil miracle are conspiring now in normal and predictable ways to bring it to its conclusion, in a time frame potentially far shorter than officialdom would have us believe.'' Simmons concludes, ''Saudi Arabia clearly seems to be nearing or at its peak output and cannot materially grow its oil production.''
Saudi officials belittle Simmons's work. Nansen Saleri, a senior Aramco official, has described Simmons as a banker ''trying to come across as a scientist.'' In a speech last year, Saleri wryly said, ''I can read 200 papers on neurology, but you wouldn't want me to operate on your relatives.'' I caught up with Simmons in June, during a trip he made to Manhattan to talk with a group of oil-shipping executives. The impression he gives is of an enthusiastic inventor sharing a discovery that took him by surprise. He has a certain wide-eyed wonder in his regard, as if a bit of mystery can be found in everything that catches his eye. And he has a rumpled aspect -- thinning hair slightly askew, shirt sleeves a fraction too long. Though he delivers a bracing message, his discourse can wander. He is a successful businessman, and it is clear that he did not achieve his position by being a man of impeccable convention. He certainly has not lost sight of the rule that people who shout ''the end is nigh'' do not tend to be favorably reviewed by historians, let alone by their peers. He notes in his book that way back in 1979, The New York Times published an investigative story by Seymour Hersh under the headline ''Saudi Oil Capacity Questioned.'' He knows that in past decades the Cassandras failed to foresee new technologies, like deep-water and horizontal drilling, that provided new sources of oil and raised the amount of oil that can be recovered from reservoirs.
But Simmons says that there are only so many rabbits technology can pull out of its petro-hat. He impishly notes that if the Saudis really wanted to, they could easily prove him wrong. ''If they want to satisfy people, they should issue field-by-field production reports and reserve data and have it audited,'' he told me. ''It would then take anybody less than a week to say, 'Gosh, Matt is totally wrong,' or 'Matt actually might be too optimistic.'''
Simmons has a lot riding on his campaign -- not only his name but also his business, which would not be rewarded if he is proved to be a fool. What, I asked, if the data show that the Saudis will be able to sustain production of not only 12.5 million barrels a day -- their target for 2009 -- but 15 million barrels, which global demand is expected to require of them in the not-too-distant future? ''The odds of them sustaining 12 million barrels a day is very low,'' Simmons replied. ''The odds of them getting to 15 million for 50 years -- there's a better chance of me having Bill Gates's net worth, and I wouldn't bet a dime on that forecast.''
The gathering of executives took place in a restaurant at Chelsea Piers; about 35 men sat around a set of tables as the host introduced Simmons. He rambled a bit but hit his talking points, and the executives listened raptly; at one point, the man on my right broke into a soft whistle, of the sort that means ''Holy cow.''
Simmons didn't let up. ''We're going to look back at history and say $55 a barrel was cheap,'' he said, recalling a TV interview in which he predicted that a barrel might hit triple digits.
He said that the anchor scoffed, in disbelief, ''A hundred dollars?''
Simmons replied, ''I wasn't talking about low triple digits.''
The onset of triple-digit prices might seem a blessing for the Saudis -- they would receive greater amounts of money for their increasingly scarce oil. But one popular misunderstanding about the Saudis -- and about OPEC in general -- is that high prices, no matter how high, are to their benefit.
Although oil costing more than $60 a barrel hasn't caused a global recession, that could still happen: it can take a while for high prices to have their ruinous impact. And the higher above $60 that prices rise, the more likely a recession will become. High oil prices are inflationary; they raise the cost of virtually everything -- from gasoline to jet fuel to plastics and fertilizers -- and that means people buy less and travel less, which means a drop-off in economic activity. So after a brief windfall for producers, oil prices would slide as recession sets in and once-voracious economies slow down, using less oil. Prices have collapsed before, and not so long ago: in 1998, oil fell to $10 a barrel after an untimely increase in OPEC production and a reduction in demand from Asia, which was suffering through a financial crash. Saudi Arabia and the other members of OPEC entered crisis mode back then; adjusted for inflation, oil was at its lowest price since the cartel's creation, threatening to feed unrest among the ranks of jobless citizens in OPEC states.
''The Saudis are very happy with oil at $55 per barrel, but they're also nervous,'' a Western diplomat in Riyadh told me in May, referring to the price that prevailed then. (Like all the diplomats I spoke to, he insisted on speaking anonymously because of the sensitivities of relations with Saudi Arabia.) ''They don't know where this magic line has moved to. Is it now $65? Is it $75? Is it $80? They don't want to find out, because if you did have oil move that far north . . . the chain reaction can come back to a price collapse again.''
High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers. When crude costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are prohibitively expensive. For example, Canada has vast amounts of tar sands that can be rendered into heavy oil, but the cost of doing so is quite high. Yet those tar sands and other alternatives, like bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and liquid fuel from natural gas or coal, become economically viable as the going rate for a barrel rises past, say, $40 or more, especially if consuming governments choose to offer their own incentives or subsidies. So even if high prices don't cause a recession, the Saudis risk losing market share to rivals into whose nonfundamentalist hands Americans would much prefer to channel their energy dollars. A concerted push for greater energy conservation in the United States, which consumes one-quarter of the world's oil (mostly to fuel our cars, as gasoline), would hurt producing nations, too. Basically, any significant reduction in the demand for oil would be ruinous for OPEC members, who have little to offer the world but oil; if a substitute can be found, their future is bleak. Another Western diplomat explained the problem facing the Saudis: ''You want to have the price as high as possible without sending the consuming nations into a recession and at the same time not have the price so high that it encourages alternative technologies.''
From the American standpoint, one argument in favor of conservation and a switch to alternative fuels is that by limiting oil imports, the United States and its Western allies would reduce their dependence on a potentially unstable region. (In fact, in an effort to offset the risks of relying on the Saudis, America's top oil suppliers are Canada and Mexico.) In addition, sending less money to Saudi Arabia would mean less money in the hands of a regime that has spent the past few decades doling out huge amounts of its oil revenue to mosques, madrassas and other institutions that have fanned the fires of Islamic radicalism. The oil money has been dispensed not just by the Saudi royal family but by private individuals who benefited from the oil boom -- like Osama bin Laden, whose ample funds, probably eroded now, came from his father, a construction magnate. Without its oil windfall, Saudi Arabia would have had a hard time financing radical Islamists across the globe.
For the Saudis, the political ramifications of reduced demand for its oil would not be negligible. The royal family has amassed vast personal wealth from the country's oil revenues. If, suddenly, Saudis became aware that the royal family had also failed to protect the value of the country's treasured resource, the response could be severe. The mere admission that Saudi reserves are not as impressively inexhaustible as the royal family has claimed could lead to hard questions about why the country, and the world, had been misled. With the death earlier this month of the long-ailing King Fahd, the royal family is undergoing another period of scrutiny; the new king, Abdullah, is in his 80's, and the crown prince, his half-brother Sultan, is in his 70's, so the issue of generational change remains to be settled. As long as the country is swimming in petro-dollars -- even as it is paying off debt accrued during its lean years -- everyone is relatively happy, but that can change. One diplomat I spoke to recalled a comment from Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the larger-than-life Saudi oil minister during the 1970's: ''The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.''
Until now, the Saudis had an excess of production capacity that allowed them, when necessary, to flood the market to drive prices down. They did that in 1990, when the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait eliminated not only Kuwait's supply of oil but also Iraq's. The Saudis functioned, as they always had, as the central bank of oil, releasing supply to the market when it was needed and withdrawing supply to keep prices from going lower than the cartel would have liked. In other words, they controlled not only the price of oil but their own destiny as well.
''That is what the world has called on them to do before -- turn on the taps to produce more and get prices down,'' a senior Western diplomat in Riyadh told me recently. ''Decreasing prices used to keep out alternative fuels. I don't see how they're able to do that anymore. This is a huge change, and it is a big step in the move to whatever is coming next. That's what's really happening.''
Without the ability to flood the markets with oil, the Saudis are resorting to flooding the market with promises; it is a sort of petro-jawboning. That's why Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister, told his Washington audience that Saudi Arabia has embarked on a crash program to raise its capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day by 2009 and even higher in the years after that. Naimi is not unlike a factory manager who needs to promise the moon to his valuable clients, for fear of losing or alarming them. He has no choice. The moment he says anything bracing, the touchy energy markets will probably panic, pushing prices even higher and thereby hastening the onset of recession, a switch to alternative fuels or new conservation efforts -- or all three. Just a few words of honest caution could move the markets; Naimi's speeches are followed nearly as closely in the financial world as those of Alan Greenspan.
I journeyed to Saudi Arabia to interview Naimi and other senior officials, to get as far beyond their prepared remarks as might be possible. Although I was allowed to see Ras Tanura, my interview requests were denied. I was invited to visit Aramco's oil museum in Dhahran, but that is something a Saudi schoolchild can do on a field trip. It was a ''show but don't tell'' policy. I was able to speak about production issues only with Ibrahim al-Muhanna, the oil ministry spokesman, who reluctantly met me over coffee in the lobby of my hotel in Riyadh. He defended Saudi Arabia's refusal to share more data, noting that the Saudis are no different from most oil producers.
''They will not tell you,'' he said. ''Nobody will. And that is not going to change.'' Referring to the fact that Saudi Arabia is often called the central bank of oil, he added: ''If an outsider goes to the Fed and asks, 'How much money do you have?' they will tell you. If you say, 'Can I come and count it?' they will not let you. This applies to oil companies and oil countries.'' I mentioned to Muhanna that many people think his government's ''trust us'' stance is not convincing in light of the cheating that has gone on within OPEC and in the industry as a whole; even Royal Dutch/Shell, a publicly listed oil company that undergoes regular audits, has admitted that it overstated its 2002 reserves by 23 percent.
''There is no reason for any country or company to lie,'' Muhanna replied. ''There is a lot of oil around.'' I didn't need to ask about Simmons and his peak-oil theory; when I met Muhanna at the conference in Washington, he nearly broke off our conversation at the mention of Simmons's name. ''He does not know anything,'' Muhanna said. ''The only thing he has is a big mouth. We should not pay attention to him. Either you believe us or you don't.''
So whom to believe? Before leaving New York for Saudi Arabia, I was advised by several oil experts to try to interview Sadad al-Husseini, who retired last year after serving as Aramco's top executive for exploration and production. I faxed him in Dhahran and received a surprisingly quick reply; he agreed to meet me. A week later, after I arrived in Riyadh, Husseini e-mailed me, asking when I would come to Dhahran; in a follow-up phone call, he offered to pick me up at the airport. He was, it seemed, eager to talk.
It can be argued that in a nation devoted to oil, Husseini knows more about it than anyone else. Born in Syria, Husseini was raised in Saudi Arabia, where his father was a government official whose family took on Saudi citizenship. Husseini earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences from Brown University in 1973 and went to work in Aramco's exploration department, eventually rising to the highest position. Until his retirement last year -- said to have been caused by a top-level dispute, the nature of which is the source of many rumors -- Husseini was a member of the company's board and its management committee. He is one of the most respected and accomplished oilmen in the world.
After meeting me at the cavernous airport that serves Dhahran, he drove me in his luxury sedan to the villa that houses his private office. As we entered, he pointed to an armoire that displayed a dozen or so vials of black liquid. ''These are samples from oil fields I discovered,'' he explained. Upstairs, there were even more vials, and he would have possessed more than that except, as he said, laughing, ''I didn't start collecting early enough.''
We spoke for several hours. The message he delivered was clear: the world is heading for an oil shortage. His warning is quite different from the calming speeches that Naimi and other Saudis, along with senior American officials, deliver on an almost daily basis. Husseini explained that the need to produce more oil is coming from two directions. Most obviously, demand is rising; in recent years, global demand has increased by two million barrels a day. (Current daily consumption, remember, is about 84 million barrels a day.) Less obviously, oil producers deplete their reserves every time they pump out a barrel of oil. This means that merely to maintain their reserve base, they have to replace the oil they extract from declining fields. It's the geological equivalent of running to stay in place. Husseini acknowledged that new fields are coming online, like offshore West Africa and the Caspian basin, but he said that their output isn't big enough to offset this growing need.
''You look at the globe and ask, 'Where are the big increments?' and there's hardly anything but Saudi Arabia,'' he said. ''The kingdom and Ghawar field are not the problem. That misses the whole point. The problem is that you go from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5 in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004. You're leaping by two million to three million a year, and if you have to cover declines, that's another four to five million.'' In other words, if demand and depletion patterns continue, every year the world will need to open enough fields or wells to pump an additional six to eight million barrels a day -- at least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising demand and at least four million to compensate for the declining production of existing fields. ''That's like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of years,'' Husseini said. ''It can't be done indefinitely. It's not sustainable.''
Husseini speaks patiently, like a teacher who hopes someone is listening. He is in the enviable position of knowing what he talks about while having the freedom to speak openly about it. He did not disclose precise information about Saudi reserves or production -- which remain the equivalent of state secrets -- but he felt free to speak in generalities that were forthright, even when they conflicted with the reassuring statements of current Aramco officials. When I asked why he was willing to be so frank, he said it was because he sees a shortage ahead and wants to do what he can to avert it. I assumed that he would not be particularly distressed if his rivals in the Saudi oil establishment were embarrassed by his frankness.
Although Matthew Simmons says it is unlikely that the Saudis will be able to produce 12.5 million barrels a day or sustain output at that level for a significant period of time, Husseini says the target is realistic; he says that Simmons is wrong to state that Saudi Arabia has reached its peak. But 12.5 million is just an interim marker, as far as consuming nations are concerned, on the way to 15 million barrels a day and beyond -- and that is the point at which Husseini says problems will arise.
At the conference in Washington in May, James Schlesinger, the moderator, conducted a question-and-answer session with Naimi at the conclusion of the minister's speech. One of the first questions involved peak oil: might it be true that Saudi Arabia, which has relied on the same reservoirs, and especially Ghawar, for more than five decades, is nearing the geological limit of its output?
Naimi wouldn't hear of it.
''I can assure you that we haven't peaked,'' he responded. ''If we peaked, we would not be going to 12.5 and we would not be visualizing a 15-million-barrel-per-day production capacity. . . . We can maintain 12.5 or 15 million for the next 30 to 50 years.''
Experts like Husseini are very concerned by the prospect of trying to produce 15 million barrels a day. Even if production can be ramped up that high, geology may not be forgiving. Fields that are overproduced can drop off, in terms of output, quite sharply and suddenly, leaving behind large amounts of oil that cannot be coaxed out with existing technology. This is called trapped oil, because the rocks or sediment around it prevent it from escaping to the surface. Unless new technologies are developed, that oil will never be extracted. In other words, the haste to recover oil can lead to less oil being recovered.
''You could go to 15, but that's when the questions of depletion rate, reservoir management and damaging the fields come into play,'' says Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi oil and security analyst who is regarded as being exceptionally well connected to key Saudi leaders. ''There is an understanding across the board within the kingdom, in the highest spheres, that if you're going to 15, you'll hit 15, but there will be considerable risks . . . of a steep decline curve that Aramco will not be able to do anything about.''
Even if the Saudis are willing to risk damaging their fields, or even if the risk is overstated, Husseini points out a practical problem. To produce and sustain 15 million barrels a day, Saudi Arabia will have to drill a lot more wells and build a lot more pipelines and processing facilities. Currently, the global oil industry suffers a deficit of qualified engineers to oversee such projects and the equipment and the raw materials -- for example, rigs and steel -- to build them. These things cannot be wished from thin air or developed quickly enough to meet the demand.
''If we had two dozen Texas A&M's producing a thousand new engineers a year and the industrial infrastructure in the kingdom, with the drilling rigs and power plants, we would have a better chance, but you cannot put that into place overnight,'' Husseini said. ''Capacity is not just a function of reserves. It is a function of reserves plus know-how plus a commercial economic system that is designed to increase the resource exploitation. For example, in the U.S. you have infrastructure -- there must be tens of thousands of miles of pipelines. If we, in Saudi Arabia, evolve to that level of commercial maturity, we could probably produce a heck of a lot more oil. But to get there is a very tedious, slow process.''
He worries that the rising global demand for oil will lead to the petroleum equivalent of running an engine at ever-increasing speeds without stopping to cool it down or change the oil. Husseini does not want to see the fragile and irreplaceable reservoirs of the Middle East become damaged through wanton overproduction.
''If you are ramping up production so fast and jump from high to higher to highest, and you're not having enough time to do what needs to be done, to understand what needs to be done, then you can damage reservoirs,'' he said. ''Systematic development is not just a matter of money. It's a matter of reservoir dynamics, understanding what's there, analyzing and understanding information. That's where people come in, experience comes in. These are not universally available resources.''
The most worrisome part of the crisis ahead revolves around a set of statistics from the Energy Information Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy. The E.I.A. forecast in 2004 that by 2020 Saudi Arabia would produce 18.2 million barrels of oil a day, and that by 2025 it would produce 22.5 million barrels a day. Those estimates were unusual, though. They were not based on secret information about Saudi capacity, but on the projected needs of energy consumers. The figures simply assumed that Saudi Arabia would be able to produce whatever the United States needed it to produce. Just last month, the E.I.A. suddenly revised those figures downward -- not because of startling new information about world demand or Saudi supply but because the figures had given so much ammunition to critics. Husseini, for example, described the 2004 forecast as unrealistic.
''That's not how you would manage a national, let alone an international, economy,'' he explained. ''That's the part that is scary. You draw some assumptions and then say, 'O.K., based on these assumptions, let's go forward and consume like hell and burn like hell.''' When I asked whether the kingdom could produce 20 million barrels a day -- about twice what it is producing today from fields that may be past their prime -- Husseini paused for a second or two. It wasn't clear if he was taking a moment to figure out the answer or if he needed a moment to decide if he should utter it. He finally replied with a single word: No.
''It's becoming unrealistic,'' he said. ''The expectations are beyond what is achievable. This is a global problem . . . that is not going to be solved by tinkering with the Saudi industry.''
It would be unfair to blame the Saudis alone for failing to warn of whatever shortages or catastrophes might lie ahead.
In the political and corporate realms of the oil world, there are few incentives to be forthright. Executives of major oil companies have been reluctant to raise alarms; the mere mention of scarce supplies could alienate the governments that hand out lucrative exploration contracts and also send a message to investors that oil companies, though wildly profitable at the moment, have a Malthusian long-term future. Fortunately, that attitude seems to be beginning to change. Chevron's ''easy oil is over'' advertising campaign is an indication that even the boosters of an oil-drenched future are not as bullish as they once were.
Politicians remain in the dark. During the 2004 presidential campaign, which occurred as gas prices were rising to record levels, the debate on energy policy was all but nonexistent. The Bush campaign produced an advertisement that concluded: ''Some people have wacky ideas. Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That's John Kerry.'' Although many environmentalists would have been delighted if Kerry had proposed that during the campaign, in fact the ad was referring to a 50-cents-a-gallon tax that Kerry supported 11 years ago as part of a package of measures to reduce the deficit. (The gas tax never made it to a vote in the Senate.) Kerry made no mention of taxing gasoline during the campaign; his proposal for doing something about high gas prices was to pressure OPEC to increase supplies.
Husseini, for one, doesn't buy that approach. ''Everybody is looking at the producers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, as if it's our job to fix everybody's problems,'' he told me. ''It's not our problem to tell a democratically elected government that you have to do something about your runaway consumers. If your government can't do the job, you can't expect other governments to do it for them.'' Back in the 70's, President Carter called for the moral equivalent of war to reduce our dependence on foreign oil; he was not re-elected. Since then, few politicians have spoken of an energy crisis or suggested that major policy changes are necessary to avert one. The energy bill signed earlier this month by President Bush did not even raise fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars. When a crisis comes -- whether in a year or 2 or 10 -- it will be all the more painful because we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it.
Peter Maass is a contributing writer. He is writing a book about oil.
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This sparrow took a slightly different approach to winning (nonexistent) seeds from my pocket. This one did a balance beam act for the ages. Too bad, birdie! I have no seeds for you! Energy: wasted!
North Park
Spark bring fire
Jaisini Gleitzeit Supermodernity Manifesto (Short version) Jaisini Gleitzeit Circa 1994
Gleitzeit style based on depiction of visual flexibility with theoretical flexibility.
A painting which purpose is to achieve composition of enclosure.
Art based on the depiction of a circle evolution of understanding and seeing.
A kind of art which draws upon imagery and seeks to reveal and abstract idea of the connection within.
It's flexible because it has multiple principles.
Paintings with a capacity to change visually by the artistic magic changing your subconscious mind.
It is a session of Hypnosis that controls you by a disorganized absolute harmony of everything expected from a "nonexistent" picture.
It depends upon the pattern of line as a primal creator of whatever associated or disassociated from the theme.
The artist's mind is the superior beginning of the line, but the line is free and emancipated.
Flexi is a new neo-pro-anti-post.
GIGroup International 2015 NEW YORK USA
Deep in the Archives, Tehutti and Mavrah have been sent to investigate an infestation of Fikou. Tehutti is keeping an eye out for the bugs while Mavrah puzzles over why some idiot put a rodent, bug, and turtle right next to each other. Neither notices the monster perfectly at home in the dark... Thankfully, it is only a level 1 Rahkshi, so its powers are practically nonexistent, but it still has formidable strength and sharp claws. Will the experienced Rahi wranglers prevail? Or will the son of Makuta claim another victim?