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and with the Mexican government stepping away from restrictions of foreign investment in their oil fields will technology like this ever take off or need too?

and with the Mexican government stepping away from restrictions of foreign investment in their oil fields will technology like this ever take off or need too? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/north-america-to-drown-in-oil-as-mexico-ends-monopoly.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/north-america-to-dr...

VLM 13y ago
LOL no Mexicos Hubbert peak was about a decade ago. Cantarell is bouncing along empty, Chicontepec is useless, economically unviable for geological reasons. And they don't have much else worth mentioning. (edited to add, duh I'm obviously talking about geological petroleum reserves not some kind of racial/cultural commentary) Its kind of like guano "production" from a century ago... Once its removed and shipped out, its gone, and all the money in the world isn't going to make shippable product appear out of thin air. You're talking about two different scales. MX will never pump more oil than they did at peak a long time ago. That doesn't mean fat stacks of cash can't be made on the downslope or political intrigue can't be useful. For example, petroleum revenue declines are already causing a financial / political crisis in MX so transferring the blame from PEMEX to "vague groups of rich foreigners" is a wise political move as its always better for a local to blame the foreigners than the other locals. So the Cantarell tank is almost empty, almost entirely pumped out; better to blame Exxon than the CEO of PEMEX, at least if you're the leader of MX, at least on paper (the actual guys running MX are the drug gang leaders, which is a whole nother topic... take away petroleum revenues and legalize weed in the USA at the same time and MX would make Somalia look rich which is a crisis not just for MX but their neighbor to the north, which as a real political issue is why the USA will never legalize weed until long after the oil downslope is all resolved in MX... intentionally collapsing a neighboring country with a completely permeable land border is almost as dumb as the idea of the war on some drugs)
- maxerickson 13y ago
  What's the case for marijuana being more than 5% of Mexico's economy? (I read a little bit that suggests that is a reasonable estimate of the maximum size of the U.S. market; the numbers are wishy-washy because use is not especially well characterized. U.S. tobacco consumption is ~7% of the Mexican economy, for the sake of establishing some sort of scale.)
  - VLM 13y ago
    One problem with weed and mexico and percentages, is are you talking about dollar figures, which doesn't mean much, or land area indirectly under cartel control, which given news reports is more like 95% than 5%, which has indirect economic effects (every beheading results in $X lower tourism revenue, etc). In comparison, 5% of the american economy would be bigger than waste services but smaller than non-durable manufacturing aka toilet paper and the like. Needless to say those guys in the USA don't control significant territory or intentionally behead people other than crazy industrial accidents. If the drug biz is 5% in MX it certainly has more impact than most other 5%-sized biz sectors.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      So you think lower marijuana revenues would exacerbate drug violence and help consolidate cartel power? Because you said the impact of marijuana legalization on Mexico makes it politically untenable, and I don't see the case for that when I look at the relative size of those revenues and make some arrogant guesses as to how they are distributed. The 5% figure is a ballpark estimate for marijuana, not drugs in general.

VLM 13y ago

LOL no Mexicos Hubbert peak was about a decade ago. Cantarell is bouncing along empty, Chicontepec is useless, economically unviable for geological reasons. And they don't have much else worth mentioning. (edited to add, duh I'm obviously talking about geological petroleum reserves not some kind of racial/cultural commentary) Its kind of like guano "production" from a century ago... Once its removed and shipped out, its gone, and all the money in the world isn't going to make shippable product appear out of thin air. You're talking about two different scales. MX will never pump more oil than they did at peak a long time ago. That doesn't mean fat stacks of cash can't be made on the downslope or political intrigue can't be useful. For example, petroleum revenue declines are already causing a financial / political crisis in MX so transferring the blame from PEMEX to "vague groups of rich foreigners" is a wise political move as its always better for a local to blame the foreigners than the other locals. So the Cantarell tank is almost empty, almost entirely pumped out; better to blame Exxon than the CEO of PEMEX, at least if you're the leader of MX, at least on paper (the actual guys running MX are the drug gang leaders, which is a whole nother topic... take away petroleum revenues and legalize weed in the USA at the same time and MX would make Somalia look rich which is a crisis not just for MX but their neighbor to the north, which as a real political issue is why the USA will never legalize weed until long after the oil downslope is all resolved in MX... intentionally collapsing a neighboring country with a completely permeable land border is almost as dumb as the idea of the war on some drugs)

maxerickson 13y ago
What's the case for marijuana being more than 5% of Mexico's economy? (I read a little bit that suggests that is a reasonable estimate of the maximum size of the U.S. market; the numbers are wishy-washy because use is not especially well characterized. U.S. tobacco consumption is ~7% of the Mexican economy, for the sake of establishing some sort of scale.)
- VLM 13y ago
  One problem with weed and mexico and percentages, is are you talking about dollar figures, which doesn't mean much, or land area indirectly under cartel control, which given news reports is more like 95% than 5%, which has indirect economic effects (every beheading results in $X lower tourism revenue, etc). In comparison, 5% of the american economy would be bigger than waste services but smaller than non-durable manufacturing aka toilet paper and the like. Needless to say those guys in the USA don't control significant territory or intentionally behead people other than crazy industrial accidents. If the drug biz is 5% in MX it certainly has more impact than most other 5%-sized biz sectors.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    So you think lower marijuana revenues would exacerbate drug violence and help consolidate cartel power? Because you said the impact of marijuana legalization on Mexico makes it politically untenable, and I don't see the case for that when I look at the relative size of those revenues and make some arrogant guesses as to how they are distributed. The 5% figure is a ballpark estimate for marijuana, not drugs in general.