digyobrrr
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This is correct. Iran can’t simply turn off its oil production due to issues of water encroaching its wells. From Claude: This is a well-known technical challenge in petroleum engineering. If Iran were to deliberately curtail or shut in production across its major fields, water infiltration (also called water influx or water encroachment) would be a serious and potentially irreversible problem. Here’s why: The Core Mechanics Most of Iran’s giant fields — Ahvaz, Gachsaran, Marun, Aghajari — are carbonate reservoirs under natural water drive. Aquifers underlying or flanking the reservoir rock are under pressure, and they push water upward into the pore space as oil is produced. When you stop producing oil, you remove the pressure sink that was keeping water at bay. The aquifer doesn’t stop — it keeps pushing. Specific Technical Problems 1. Water Coning and Cresting In vertical and horizontal wells respectively, shutting in production removes the drawdown that was managing the water-oil contact. When production resumes, the water-oil interface may have moved upward significantly, meaning wells that were previously clean producers now produce predominantly water. 2. Irreversible Aquifer Encroachment Carbonate reservoirs like Iran’s have highly heterogeneous permeability — fractures, vugs, and matrix. Water preferentially invades high-permeability channels (fractures) during a shut-in, bypassing oil in the matrix. This oil becomes residually trapped and is extremely difficult to recover later. The damage is often permanent. 3. Wellbore Flooding In wells that are shut in rather than properly killed, water can migrate up the wellbore itself, particularly in older or poorly-cemented completions. Resuming production from a water-filled wellbore requires costly workover operations and risks formation damage. 4. Pressure Redistribution and Cross-Flow In multi-zone completions (common in Iran’s stacked carbonate pays), shutting in causes pressure to equilibrate between zones. Water from a water-bearing zone can cross-flow into an oil-bearing zone downhole, contaminating it without any surface signal. 5. Reservoir Pressure Maintenance Complications Iran has been injecting water into many of its fields (e.g., via the NIOC EOR programs) specifically to maintain pressure and slow natural aquifer encroachment. A sudden shut-in disrupts the carefully managed injection/production balance, potentially causing localized pressure spikes or collapses that further destabilize the water-oil contact geometry. The Scale Problem Iran’s fields are among the largest and most complex carbonate systems in the world, some with very active aquifers. The Asmari and Bangestan formations have notoriously high natural water drive energy. Unlike sandstone reservoirs where water movement is relatively slow and predictable, fractured carbonates can see very rapid water breakthrough once the equilibrium is disturbed. Practical Consequence A prolonged shut-in — even of a few months — across major Iranian fields could permanently impair ultimate recovery factors, potentially stranding hundreds of millions of barrels of recoverable oil. This is why, even during sanctions regimes, Iran has tried to maintain at least minimum production levels rather than fully shutting fields in. The engineering cost of a cold shut-in followed by restart is enormous, and the reservoir damage may not become fully apparent until years later when water cuts rise to uneconomic levels. It’s a meaningful deterrent to any strategy that contemplates a clean “off switch” for Iranian production.
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Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com
Littoral combat ship USS Canberra (LCS 30) patrols the Arabian Sea during the U.S. blockade. Since commencement of the blockade, 23 ships have complied with direction from U.S. forces to turn around. American forces are enforcing a maritime blockade against ships entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas.
Instagram removed our page with almost 150k followers with no way to appeal the takedown. Tens of millions of people who viewed our content every month have been cut off from one of the few alternative media outlets with reporters and sources in Palestine, Lebanon, China, Cuba, and beyond. This is not an isolated incident. We see it as part of an escalating pattern of information warfare by big tech monopolies, deeply intertwined with the ruling elite — and a concerning rise in censorship targeting alternative media, directed by Washington and Brussels. We are working hard to restore access to our millions of monthly viewers. In the meantime, tell your friends and comrades to join us on Telegram @comrawire.
Well, as @policytensor, and I think nobody else, has said, the blockade opens the US up to direct confrontation with China. If nothing else, the US achieves escalation.