Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Fact Checking]

It is impossible to build any big infrastructure without creating at least some losers in the process. The losers inevitably feel justified in protesting and of course they have the right to protest, just not to engage in illegal activity to obstruct progress. If we are going to build a new generation of infrastructure we are going to have to do it in the face of protests. All progress can't stop because every individual landowner/etc feels their spot is special and must remain unchanged.

Actually there is a way to transport oil without the Keystone pipeline: the method they've been using previously: ships and trains.

The Kochs wanted the Keystone XL pipeline not because it's necessary, but because the Canadian Tar Pits are expensive to extract and rail/ship expenses ate into the profits of their incredibly dirty and exploitative operations:

​

The Tar Pits have other negative externalities as well, like carcinogens:

Oil Sands Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level
​

Or air pollution:

Pollution From Canadian Oil Sands Vapor Is Substantial, Study Finds​

The tar sands are also incredibly carbon intensive, the extraction of every ton on oil sand crude requires the burning of another ton of oil-equivalent energy:

Also note that the Kochs didn't actually rent that land, sharing the profits with landowners - they effectively stole it via eminent domain, corrupt local state buerocrats and packed courts.

Finally, they could also have bored tunnels to transport that oil - much safer. Oh, but it's too expensive? Their problem - they should have invested into the Boring Company.

In short there is nothing to like about the Keystone XL Pipeline: it was created in a corrupt process, stealing other people's property and other rights not for some public good, but to increase the private profits of Koch Industries and to burn more fossil fuel.

It's like a private highway through your land that regularly spills oil on your land and poisons your water and air, and if you dare to protest the injustice you risk up to 25 years on jail.

It's as parasitic as it gets.

 

[Navin]

Honest question - what good does estimating, crowdsourcing quarterly production estimates do for the greater good of TSLA stock price? Whatever gets polled , usually a high number - the Wall Street consensus just rises the bar towards report day and makes it impossible for tsla to look good. Guys like Troy don’t really add much value to increasing share value - just nonsense and noise to spin people’s wheels on. This is just my opinion of course and I’d love to understand and would appreciate hearing why I’m wrong here.

 

[KarenRei]

Actually there is a way to transport oil without the Keystone pipeline: the method they've been using previously: ships and trains.

The Kochs wanted the Keystone XL pipeline not because it's necessary, but because the Canadian Tar Pits are expensive to extract and rail/ship expenses ate into the profits of their incredibly dirty and exploitative operations:

​

The Tar Pits have other negative externalities as well, like carcinogens:

Oil Sands Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level
​

Or air pollution:

Pollution From Canadian Oil Sands Vapor Is Substantial, Study Finds​

Also note that the Kochs didn't actually rent that land, sharing the profits with landowners - they effectively stole it via eminent domain and corrupt local state buerocrats.

Finally, they could also have bored tunnels to transport that oil - much safer. Oh, but it's too expensive? Their problem - they should have invested into the Boring Company.

In short there is nothing to like about the Keystone Pipeline: it was created in a corrupt process, stealing other people's property and rights not for some public good, but to increase the private profits of Koch Industries and to burn more fossil fuel.

It's like a private highway through your land that regularly spills oil on your land and poisons your water, and if you dare to protest the injustice you risk up to 25 years on jail.

It's as parasitic as it gets.

This is correct, but it's also the reason why pipeline protests are only local-pollution protests, and not climate-protests: without a pipeline, they just transport oil by road or rail. Which even from a pollution perspective are arguable, as they can have accidents, too. And even if you shut down Albertan production somehow (which pipeline protests won't do), it would just rise up somewhere else; oil is fungible.

The only way to kill oil, as a fuel source, is to kill consumption. And the only realistic way to do so is to electrify everything you can.

(BTW, it shouldn't surprise anyone that there's carcinogens involved in bitumen ("tar sands") mining. "Tar" (bitumen / asphalt) is carcinogenic. It's just normally relatively inert because it's cool, so nothing can readily volatilize or seep into water. It's not mobile. But pretty much by definition, if you want to extract it, you have to mobilize it (heat, solvents).

 

[EVNow]

There are almost invariably at least some people that get pissed off about the construction of almost any infrastructure. People protest roads, rail lines, subways, pipelines, wind farms, solar farms, mines, you name it... if every project was held hostage to the demands of the extreme fringe almost nothing would get built.

The pipeline protest is not the same as "extreme fringe protesting any infrastructure". It was dangerous, polluting stuff passing native lands above very important water aquafer.

BTW, it is very common for the police to target POC when it comes to demanding the harshest punishment for civil disobedience. Currently coal miners have held up a coal train in W Virginia. Police are letting them stay. But yesterday in Portland in the large climate relate protests, the police sought out just 3 black teens to arrest among a sea of protesters.

sav on Twitter

Portland police shoving their way through a group of peaceful young protesters to get to the only black teens in sight #ClimateStrike​

 

[KarenRei]

Old but good:

"The exact cause of the phenomenon is unknown, but it's thought to be linked to atmospheric refraction and you getting a really cool car."

 

[Fact Checking]

And even if you shut down Albertan production somehow (which pipeline protests won't do), it would just rise up somewhere else; oil is fungible.

That would be true if all oil was equally carbon intensive to extract, but they aren't:

The tar sands are also incredibly carbon intensive, the extraction of every ton on oil sand crude requires the burning of another ton of oil-equivalent energy:

While removing all oil consumption is the proper goal, making tar sands uneconomic would remove an incredible amount of emissions too.

 

[AlMc]

Honest question - what good does estimating, crowdsourcing quarterly production estimates do for the greater good of TSLA stock price? Whatever gets polled , usually a high number - the Wall Street consensus just rises the bar towards report day and makes it impossible for tsla to look good. Guys like Troy don’t really add much value to increasing share value - just nonsense and noise to spin people’s wheels on. This is just my opinion of course and I’d love to understand and would appreciate hearing why I’m wrong here.

I tire also of the 'run up' of quarterly expectations by bulls/bears/analysts. (Note the bears do this to extract maximum drop in the SP) It sets us up for disappointment even though Tesla moves forward.

With the SP at roughly $240 now what direction does the SP go if deliveries are a more realistic low to mid 90s K versus some of the numbers I am seeing some plan on...over 100K?

 

[SOULPEDL]

So my brother just told me he pulled the trigger on a M3.

He should get it in a week.

Same with my brother... this is how it works. And who better to trust than Family. Beats any ad.

 

[Navin]

I tire also of the 'run up' of quarterly expectations by bulls/bears/analysts. (Note the bears do this to extract maximum drop in the SP) It sets us up for disappointment even though Tesla moves forward.

With the SP at roughly $240 now what direction does the SP go if deliveries are a more realistic low to mid 90s K versus some of the numbers I am seeing some plan on...over 100K?

Well said. The same nonsense happens quarter after quarter. Basically the punchline is don’t feed the bears/shorts, etc. it gives them strength

 

[Artful Dodger]

Solution: said protestors should just hijack those trucks at gunpoint and drive them off a cliff. If they get caught, it’s still less prison time than for protesting.

True, but said "less time" will be served at Gitmo, upon rendition. Choices.

 

[Prunesquallor]

...​

The Tar Pits have other negative externalities as well, like carcinogens:

Oil Sands Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level
​

Or air pollution:

Pollution From Canadian Oil Sands Vapor Is Substantial, Study Finds​

...

It's like a private highway through your land that regularly spills oil on your land and poisons your water and air, and if you dare to protest the injustice you risk up to 25 years on jail.

It's as parasitic as it gets.

"Frodo and Sam gazed out in mingled loathing and wonder on this hateful land. Between them and the smoking mountain, and about it north and south, all seemed ruinous and dead, a desert burned and choked. They wondered how the Lord of this realm maintained and fed his slaves and his armies."

 

[KarenRei]

That would be true if all oil was equally carbon intensive to extract, but they aren't:



While removing all oil consumption is the proper goal, making tar sands uneconomic would remove an incredible amount of emissions too.

I don't know, what low-impact marginal oil are you picturing? Deepwater? Ultra-heavy? Shale? Sour? Tight? Arctic? Syncrude?

It's not like there's a lot of untapped shallow, thick light sweet crude reservoirs in temperate non-protected areas just sitting around waiting to be tapped. All marginal oil is pretty terrible, in one way or another. :Þ Which is the very reason why they're not being produced at present. If you kick out one terrible source, you get a different terrible source (terrible for one reason or another) in its place.

 

[DRAW]

Conquering Greenland would finally be a war the Donald might be able to win!

Please send him over, the Inuit needs their harpoon practice.

 

[Artful Dodger]

It goes like this: A market maker wants the price to be much lower.

I've read that in order to be listed on the NASDAQ an equity must have at least 3 market makers. So for TSLA:

• who are the market makers?
• are they separate entities from brokers?
  
• is there public disclosure of their trading activity?
• do FTDs (fail-to-deliver) reports cover only market makers?

Thanks, and Cheers!

 

[KarenRei]

View attachment 457448
"Frodo and Sam gazed out in mingled loathing and wonder on this hateful land. Between them and the smoking mountain, and about it north and south, all seemed ruinous and dead, a desert burned and choked. They wondered how the Lord of this realm maintained and fed his slaves and his armies."

To be fair, they are required to return the land to its original state at the end of operations. It doesn't have to be exactly the same (e.g. every tree, pond, hill, etc), but has to represent the same sort of ecosystem that was present beforehand, and not contain unacceptable levels of toxic compounds. When making such a mine, after removing trees, the top ~50cm of soil are first stripped and set aside into its own pile, followed by the rest of the overburden into a separate pile. Afterwards, it's put back in reverse order, and then trees replanted. It doesn't look like that sort of moonscape afterwards. Depending on what is "representative" of the local ecosystem, they generally leave behind either forests or fens (peat bogs).

The biggest remediation challenge is the clays in the tailings water from processing the bitumen-covered sands, as well as the (toxic) compounds released by the aforementioned heating and solvent processing of the bitumen. This is done with bioremediation ponds. While they look all pristine, it can take several decades before all of the clays are settled out / sequestered into the lake bottom and bacteria have had a chance to break down all the napthalene compounds and other toxins that were found in the bitumen. Another issue that they have in general is that the soil is salty to begin with, and the water of ponds and the soil of the forests and fens ends up even saltier than it began. They start out sodium-excessive, but are predicted to evolve to calcium-excessive with time. So the species used have to be chosen carefully.

The real problem isn't how much they look like moonscapes, or even the restoration difficulties, or the pollution side-effects of the mining when it's in process. They're the vast amount of carbon released by people burning what used to be sequestered in the form of bitumen. The amount recovered as forests and fens regrow doesn't even remotely resemble the amount of carbon released by extracting and burning the bitumen beneth them.

Until we get all of our resources from space, we're going to be mining the Earth, and everyone's consumption bears responsibility for the need to do that. I'm sitting here in jeans with copper rivets, typing on a computer full of copper wiring - I bear responsibility for copper production. I'm on a couch with an alumium frame sitting next to alumium-framed windows - I bear responsibility for alumium production. Etc. So the concept of "ecologically responsible mining" - e.g. containing and remediating toxins and restoring the landscape afterwards - is something that should be supported, rather than being generally hostile to all mining. But bitumen is something that does not need to be done. By and large, we're not making things with it - we're just burning it up into the air, as a (dirty) energy source. That needs to stop.

And the way we stop it is with electrification. We don't want some other terrible source of oil to replace it. We just want it all stopped.

 

[Rammstein]

Actually there is a way to transport oil without the Keystone pipeline: the method they've been using previously: ships and trains.

The Kochs wanted the Keystone XL pipeline not because it's necessary, but because the Canadian Tar Pits are expensive to extract and rail/ship expenses ate into the profits of their incredibly dirty and exploitative operations:

​

I know it’s a mess now but it all gets reclaimed after the oil is extracted.​

 

[Artful Dodger]

If true

its not

 

[HG Wells]

I know it’s a mess now but it all gets reclaimed after the oil is extracted.​

As long as the company doesn't go bankrupt first.

 

[KarenRei]

As long as the company doesn't go bankrupt first.

That's not how the MFSP (Mine Financial Security Program) works. Mines start by paying a base deposit ($30-60M), and then additionally pay in based on how much will need to be remediated ($75k/ha) vs. how much they've disturbed, as an insurance policy against bankruptcy (with the bankruptcy risk of the company taken into account - 3x more assets than liabilities (incl. remediation liabilities) = nothing more than the deposit required). The deposits that they need to have decreases as land becomes reclaimed, which incentivizes progressive reclamation rather than procrastination. The deposit requirements increase, by contrast, as the reserves for a project nears exhaustion. There's also triggers for things that can increase the deposit requirements, like excessive rates of tailings growth.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Guys like Troy don’t really add much value to increasing share value - just nonsense and noise to spin people’s wheels on.

Not sure how fair that is to Troy. His production estimates are updated monthly during the quarter (always too low to begin with SP getting hammered).

But his estimates always converge near to Tesla's actual numbers, usually 2-4 days after Tesla releases them.

Usually accompanied by some stats showing how the AVERAGE of of high and low estimates was excellent.