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MIT - Saudi Arabia Trip

I took down some rough notes for my recent trip to Saudi Arabia. It is written in journal style - I apologize in advance for parts not understood. It was intended for me as a reference to the trip's happenings.

Saudi Sands

Friday, January 26 – Thursday, February 1

Day 1 (Friday)

-Discovered an exciting new feature on our flight from Boston to Amsterdam – Video on Demand! No longer forced to watch Top Gun for the 4th time.

-Discovered a dead bug in the bottom of an Amsterdam airport urinal. Interestingly, I found the same bug at another urinal in the same airport. A third call by nature revealed yet another bug… All these bugs were squashed in an identical pattern and located in an identical part of the urinal… hmm…

-Hurrah – I got 3 seats on which I slept and had a very relaxing flight from Amsterdam to Dammam, Saudi Arabia. It proved key to overcoming jet lag quickly.

Day 2

-Saudi Exhibit is amazing. We are first received in the classic Saudi tent-style room where we are served famous Arabian coffee and received by the Saudi delegation. I have seen few rooms so beautiful. It first exudes the Arabian-style of arranging themselves in a circular fashion facing each other around the room with the middle empty of furniture.

-Tour of Exhibit. This was a highlight. They walk through the exploration, production, refining and shipping of oil together with some history of Islam and Saudi Arabia. The exhibit is very modern and the usual first tour spot of all major international delegations. Significant moments: shaker room going down the well, showing the 5 grades of Saudi Oil and sound system of the tour guide. Midway we were interrupted by what we first thought was a call to prayer but in fact turned out to be a fire alarm.

-One great talk on international oil supply and demand by Ghassan Oshban. I intend to keep in contact with him.

-3D movie “Energy to the World.” It was quite busy with lights and I thought that if I don’t have a seizure now I never will

-Main admin building wall display blew us all away. It had five sections – shipping, refining, oil production, gas production and electricity distribution. Information for each section was displayed on the wall and the MITers bowed in reverence.

-E&P building impressed us with its computing power (using both online and offline data memory sources). One prof explained to me that they used ‘tape’ storage instead of disk storage since it was less $/GB. In fact, tape storage is conducive to the nature of off-grid data collection (in this case of seismic data). This is the 3rd time I caught this prof purporting suspicious facts and he is now in my to be skeptical about notebook. They also had a center where 12 geologists guided the last section of a horizontal drilling operation. Each geologist can run 4 rigs at a time from a remote location. Again, the MITers paid their respects.

-The day’s major theme was whether the Saudis optimism was a reflection of fact in terms of their total reserve numbers and ability to deliver increased demand (and excess supply capacity).

-Relevant dinner discussion was a basically explicit admission by Mohammed (who studied at MIT) that there is a balance between Saudi’s desire for unstable and stable perceptions of Saudi supply.

Day 3

-My alarm didn’t go off and so the bus left without me. I was only 5 minutes behind the crew since I was awoken when they left by a call. Good thing the RandD center was so close! Quite embarrassing.

-Lunch was great. They put us under a cool indoor tent and for the third time I ate part of some unlucky sea-born creature. The trend was alarming given my bad taste for ocean cuisine. Luckily, it was the last sea food we had.

-Unsolicited advise of our MIT elders (opps, I mean professors). They busted out all their cynical capcity in smashing down the naïve Saudi plan for building King Abudllah University. Seems to me that the culture and nature of the desired university are fundamentally immiscible. I could be wrong.

-Heritage Village evening dinner was in the classical Arabian style. Everyone sits on the floor while eating. I made a bit of scene by laying on the floor while eating. This is a hall that is visited by the major delegations and the royal family. I discussed things with our Italian professor who studies Nuclear Engineering.

Day 4

-Superb day at the Ras Tanura refining facility. Remember lots of security. We were given the option and we took it to go on an oil tanker. The tanker was full of UAE Naptha, filling with Saudi Kerosene, flying a Bahama flag for tax purposes, was manned by a Phillipeno crew, had a Polish captian, Yugoslavian Engineer, the ship was Japanese built and owned and was taking its load to the UK. Wow – globalization is upon us!

-We had lunch with the “God Father” – the manager of the refinery and shipping complex. He always had a cohort around him, spoke in deep tones and clearly is related somehow to the God father.

-In the evening we did some shopping. At one shop, I walked in on a guy praying. We went to a mall where we saw many Saudis, segregated as usual by gender. We ate at a Chinese restaurant (best dinner of the trip) and talked about favorite movies and told random stories.

Day 5

-Training center day. After some brutal morning presentations, we toured the women’s and men’s training for the younger pre-college students. The women’s section reminded me of the castle Anthrax on Monty Python. One funny comment was by a girl-student-guide who while telling us the selection process declared that they were the “crème –de-la-crème” Everyone had a jolly good laugh.

-I was quite sick this day with the runs. Good thing the washroom facilities were so close. Most Saudi toilets don’t have paper and use water jets instead which was a new experience.

-In the evening we went to Sunset beach. We smoked some Saudi traditional pipes which we were told were healthy (these guys are Muslims right?) which was fun. They had all these great facilities that we wanted to try but we were forced to stick together. I felt so herded! Started to feel that control feeling commonly felt during my Russian travels. At this point my longing for freedom begins to develop at a very small scale (if I was hear for any length of period it would take me right over). We caught the final part of the Arabian soccer tournament and UAE beat Oman 1-0. Our guide was Christian and he told me a little about life in Saudi Arabia.

Day 6

-We flew to Shaybah. This was an amazing experience. They have sand dunes the size of mountains. It is an isolated oil field in the middle of the desert. We checked out their complex which pumps 500K mbd of extra light crude.

-In the evening, we went up to an “Oasis” where we began by having races up to the top of the sand dunes. I won! Then we walked around on the dune ridges seeking the highest point and only about 6 of us went all the way to the highest point (out of about 20). At that point, we made an ‘MIT’ sign out of our bodies which was photographed. I listened to some music and watched the sunset. Then 4 of us had a race up and down 2 large dips to where the rest of the crew was. I was in last while we went down the second hill but on the way up I gained ground and with 20 steps to go we were all neck and neck. The 15 at the start were cheering us on and I kicked in the irrational Justin kill yourself to win mechanism. I did win but at the cost of feeling sick for the rest of the evening.

Day 7

-Today we went inland to Husain’s home village. My alarm clock was faulty again but this time I did not hold anyone up (we were waiting for others). Cursed alarm clock! 3 Saudi girls (who were studying in the pre-college system for the first time) (aged 18) went with us dressed in their usual black.

-First highlight was these erosion-carved out rocks which reminded me of drumheller. We went around inside for awhile and I climbed to the highest point and caught a great view of the area. Palm trees were everywhere.

-We had lunch/dinner at some hotel and I had an interesting talk with one of the Saudi girls at lunch. I am amazed that these people put up with all the oppression in this country against them. Most of the time I talked about Irina and my precious girls  and gave her advise about the importance of honesty in marriage. She seemed to slip out a confession that she looks forward to dating in the US (something impossible for them in Saudi Arabia)

-I rode a camel for the first time! What a groovy animal. You mount the beast when it is kneeled down on the ground. When it stands up, you have to hold on tight! It was funny how the students seemed so scared of falling off… tee he he. The deprived males were roaring like crazy – showing off their lovely teeth and lips. There was a baby camel which liked to suck my finger like a nipple. It felt cool except afterwords I got slobber all over my finger… ack.

-On the way back on the bus I had a great discussion with Assam who is the most open-minded Muslim I think I have ever spoken with. We talked about religion and politics and I opened up and talked all about my own Mormon history. He told me the history of Islam and I feel much more enlightened now!

-I made a record today. We had 1 hour from the time we arrived at the hotel to pack until the time to leave for the airport (7-8pm). I spent the first 30 minutes writing down a bunch of these point form trip reminders and reading some emails from home. I spent the second 30 minutes first jogging down to the dinning hall with my food passes and ordering a dinner to tie me over (I anticipated well since we had no more food), then I came back and showered and packed. Super huh! I was delighted while on the way to the airport to find out that I did not forget my camera. I later discovered that I had forgotten my freaking winter coat! Hope it is warm in Boston…

-The trip to the airport was great. Hussain was 38 minutes late and the other guys left about 30 minutes before us for the nearby country of Bharain, where the airport for our flight was located. Our driver zoomed through traffic at 140 km/hr and used “connections” to get us through the line-ups. He maneuvered between cars and made up the 30 minutes to catch up to the rest. These guys are contract drivers for Aramco – they want to show that they can do the job. Did he ever do the job! I took a picture of him and we had a great 2 hour-trip in the car together. I then found a nice little Valentine’s gift for my sweetheart in the country which now boasted more freedom before… Bharain felt quite different from the Saudi-always-watched society.

-In the airport, one of our girls couldn’t get through immigration as she didn’t receive a visa stamp into Bharain due to some mistake by the entry visa officer. She is Jewish and was freaking out that she would be stuck in these fundamentalist countries. It was strangely funny. Anyways, someone paid 20 reeyal and all was settled… At last we were off to Europe.


Random Things

“There is no God but Allah. Muhammed is his messenger” Koran is the constitution. No lawyers (Sharia law). King chooses ministers.

-Saudi television – holy smokes “The Palestinian should turn his weapon from his brother towards his oppressor. At the the women, children and fighters of the oppressor” Am I really listening to this ? Incredible.

-Religious policy makes sure shops close on time and make sure that men and women are properly segregated. Look out for the bearded men!

-Apparently (did I just write that!), we were carefully monitored (followed?) by the secret police while in Saudi Arabia. Maybe our main guide, Khalid, was the secret police ? That is my theory and I am sticking to it.

Saudi Arabia

I am leaving in haste for Saudi Arabia for a week's time. It is funny - we had a meeting a few days ago where the American-living-in-Saudi-Arabia warned us to avoid political discussions on our trip there and the "Saudi" representative encouraged us to discuss political things. My cognitive dissonance sensors started to agitate (conflicting evidence - how to decide ?)... "political discussion" sounds remarkably similar to both advisors but changes in internal translation. I think Genghis Khan and Winston Churchill would struggle to define what constitutes good political discussion...

Anyways, I'll try to drain myself of all pre-concieved western biases before the trip...

On the "religion" section of the VISA, I couldn't decide which was worse to put - agnostic or Christian. I decided that agnostic isn't a religion and I couldn't very well leave the item blank, so I put down Christian. Goes to show how important the question (and context) is in deciding the answer. Probably explains why some surveys suggest that 10% of the population is gay while others say 1%

Salaam!

Pick your Battles and Carbon Leakage

Two more additions to last week's discussion

Proponents of emissions controls often consider anyone who opposes them as lacking integrity. The thinking is: we have a global problem. Everyone who has integrity will want to help solve the global problem. Therefore, those who do not want to help solve the problem lack integrity. They picture themselves as the firemen putting out the fire and those who do join in are watching the building burn.

What if the building they are saving is an empty warehouse whereas just around the block a children's hospital is ablaze ? Increasing the firefighters at the warehouse decreases the number at the hospital.

The point is that any time public money is spent, it should maximize the public gain and minimize the public loss. Fighting global warming is not the default position for the person of integrity to take. Could the money better be spent on furthering technology efficiency ? Developing different fuels ? Other research ?

Ultimatley, there is no 'right' answer to this question - it is one of those major questions under uncertainty that we need to consider.

One other note is something that I am starting to study - carbon leakage. The basic problem is that if some countries limit carbon emissions while others do not, you could see major shifts of investment to the non-constrained countries. The result is that world-wide emissions wouldn't decrease very much and instead would just shift to those countries without the policy. This is an additional note to the previous point that emissions controls, if adopted, should be a global effort to have any effect.

Global Warming rhetoric and reality

I am happy to announce that I have a thesis topic - "Policy effects on Alberta Oil Sands development and the enviornment." I am quite pleased at the breadth of the topic.

It seems that fighting anthroprenic global warming in Canada is as orthydox a need for the country as fighting the Nazis was in 1944. At least this is what I can gather from our big brother, CBC. Canadians are putting "the environment" above all other needs in recent surveys. This is another testament to how great our society is when our environment, which is in the best condition it has been for decades, is at the top of our concern list. Personally, my #1 concern is Canada's complete acceptance of state-sponsored media.

This reminds me of an idea I had for structuring an un-biased media (or as unbiased as possible). The largest corporations (on their own accord of course) should all put money into a fund like a University does and run its operations on the proceeds. The board of the media firm could be elected as politicians are by the people. Reporters and other news people who have shown themselves to be deeply un-biased (regardless of their political views) ideally would be the candidates that the people would vote for. The board would run the day to day activities of the company. More on this later.

Coming back to global warming here are some issues that I will look further into and develop during the next few months.

1 - Uncertainty

Any honest scientist of climate change will tell you that the level of human influence on global warming is deeply uncertain. There are indeed signals which show that their may be a connection (but how important is the connection) and many of these things are currently under intense research. I am one researcher among hundreds in a well funded program whose sole purpose is to answer these questions.

Media hype has shotgunned impending global warming disaster to the forefront of everyone's mind and forced people to take often times completely irrational opinions on the matter (think Nuclear power).

Personally, I believe that the hype does have a good effect of raising capital for global warming research. We have to learn about how our earth works. This is vital for our long term success. Exploiting media fear-inducing may be the only way that we can encourage governments to spend on this research rather than other less ethical and much less useful items (like excessive social welfare programs).

While research is useful, my intitial thoughts (though this opinion may change while I research) are that it is premature for a carbon constraining policy FOR CANADA. The inherent uncertainty about how much human fossil fuel burning actually affects the climate is my first reason for this hesitation.

2 - Canada pro warming ?

Lets pretend that we know that humans are warming the planet significantly. It goes without saying that Canada is very cold nation with most of our population huddled by our southern border. If Canada was to warm by say 7 degrees on average (this is the worst-case scenerio put out by my own research group) then suddenly we would have the climate of Chicago, Illinois in Edmonton, Alberta. Our land would become more productive and land value would shoot up. My initial reaction is that such a warming would have more positive effects than negative ones for Canada.

3 - Need for a team effort

We'll continute to pretend that humans are warming the planet significantly. Lets also assume that we have determined that it is a bad event for mankind. What can Canada do about it ? Instead of pretending to play a lead role (Europe has long since beat us there) by instituting economy-damaging carbon policies, will we have any effect on warming ? No.

If it takes 100 cavemen to kill a wolly mammoth then setting out to hunt it with 10 cavemen is a useless excersise in retreat. Our policy should be to convince major emitters that it is in their best interest to join the hunt. Until we can get India, USA and China on board a global emissions program, than we are just wasting our money.

4 - Policy choices HURT Canada hard

Canada has an energy-dependant economy. Carbon policy would have an "unfair" impact on Canada given our energy economy. It is not in our interest to self mutilate.

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It seems that the media and ever-trusting Canadians are taking us down a path where a carbon policy will be the norm. For a political party to win a majority, they may have to promise the self-defeating policies called out for. It is too bad that cooler heads will not prevail - I guess we humans always need something to fight for... I'll be curious to see if the conservative party is burned at the stake by the priests of global warming. I won't be surprised.

Next week I want to consider the psycology of "cognitive dissonance" and how it plays into the global warming debate. "The debate is over" right ?

"Mean Spirited" Conservatism

I’ll be with family on Christmas eve and so post early this week

I am jolted by the rhetoric which is bombarded against fiscal conservatism. The NDP and pseudo-Liberals are condemning the latest Canadian budget as “mean spirited” etc, etc. The budget is “mean spirited” since it aims at widespread tax cuts to corporations and individuals.
What does this mean – this “mean spirited” attribution ? Can I venture to call it a label for someone who is not generous ? Can we attempt to objectively analyze just how “mean spirited” such economical liberating policies are and those who perpetrate them ? Yes we can.

The Fraser Institute recently released the latest “generosity index” which is measured, among other things, by means of such factors as how much people contribute to charities, what percentage of the population contributes to charities, etc.

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/files/Generosity.pdf

Interestingly, the representation of all things evil and “mean spirited”, the USA, annihilates Canada in quantifiable measures of generosity. What is more, Alberta, the flagrant outcast of the Canadian value system (big government, big spending, etc) was at the top of Canada for highest average charitable donation! Quebec, the bastion of culture, generosity and socialist thinking, was at the near bottom of every indicator! What is the deal here – why are the capitalist raging hordes the most generous ?

Answer: People ARE generous by nature and those empowered by economic freedoms will give in a manner that is less costly to society. The forcing hand of the government is unethical and ineffective since it spoils the wealth creating mechanisms which allow more abundance, and thus generosity, in a society.

What the socialists just don’t get when they call America and other “endowed” nations to remedy the world’s problems via socialist interventionist programs is the causes of America’s endowment. There is the key to your world-solving problems! They have no problem getting in an airplane why ? Because others do it, we can observe that it is an effective mode of transportation and so we climb aboard. Capitalism is tried, tested and it works better than anything else we've tried.

The year is 1917. America and Russia have similar populations, country size and resources (although Russia is actually larger with more resources). America sticks with and develops its capitalistic system. Russia adopts socialism. What is the result ? I won’t even attempt to quantify the aggregate of American charity vs Russian charity but I would not be surprised if it is 100 – 1000 times greater in the “mean-spirited” west. I bet socialist Russia would actually achieve negative charity given the attrocities.

Economic freedom has been the driver of technology and wealth which has put humanity in a more positive humanitarian position than ever before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

You want to help out the developing world ? Handouts will only make things worse my friend. Try this instead: Kiva

Merry Christmas!