Today In Silver

The media is reporting that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may turn into one of the worst man-made ecological disasters with thousands of miles of Gulf shore being threatened by potentially tens or even hundreds of millions of gallons of leaking oil. In a worst case scenario, the Gulf spill will make Exxon Valdez look like a stage adaptation of “There Will Be Blood” by kindergardners. On the other hand, the leak might be sealed off in a few days by some miraculous and desperate application of modern technology or it might even shut down by itself.

Either way, several things are certain. One, BP and the rest of the oil industry are not going to live this down for a long time especially if the allegations prove true that no contingency plans had been made to deal with oil spills at BP deepwater rigs (and if that is the case for BP rigs we can pretty much assume it is the industry standard). There are also reports that BP may have decided not to install, due to cost saving considerations, a five hundred thousand dollar remote shutoff valve that might have stopped the leak before it got this bad. If true, I bet nobody would have thought that Goldman Sachs could be dethroned so quickly from being the world’s most hated corporation!

Two, offshore oil drilling in the United States is effectively dead on arrival ironically just one month after President Obama disappointed some of his supporters by including “responsible” offshore oil and gas exploration as a necessary component of America’s future energy policy. It seems the definition of responsible has just made a quantum leap in the direction of  impossible while the mantra of “Drill, baby, drill!” has been discredited as the shortsighted bit of careless idiocy that it has always been. Not because offshore oil exploration itself is a bad idea but because the very soul of the drill-now-and-drill-everywhere crowd is infected by a callous, reckless, cavalier and yes, even maverick, disregard for sound science and business practices. Lest you mistake us for some tree-hugging-Earth-hippie hypocrite, we’d also like to point out that any American who is dead set against offshore oil exploration yet consumes a single drop of oil either directly or indirectly is an A-hole of the first order, the reason being simply that we Americans consume plenty of oil produced off the shores of other countries. Worse than people who don’t care about polluting their own shores are people who are willing to pollute somebody else’s shores in the pursuit of selfish liberty and happiness.

Three, being the greedy and egotistical bastards that we are, we find ourselves smugly content at this particular moment for not being the “Oil Augmentor” or the dreaded “Gas Augmentor” (though that last title sounds like something that would help people with bowel issues, which would be a very worthwhile cause). In fact, at The Metal Augmentor it is our job to find the positive in disasters like historic oil spills so that we can make a bunch of money in fine capitalistic fashion, often as a result of the suffering of others. Unfortunately sometimes it is our readers who suffer greatly as they try to wade through our bloviating expositions in a desperate search for some useful nuggets of information. The worst part is that we do it purely for entertainment value! Yet even we aren’t totally sadistic so let’s get to the point of this drivel already.

It has been stated by observers — both professional and amateur — during the past several days that the Gulf oil spill will, or at least should, generate a major and immediate shift in U.S. energy policy and perhaps even global energy policy. If so, there is only one practical direction toward which such policy can shift and it has nothing to do with the sun or wind. You see, the big secret of the solar panel and wind turbine manufacturing industries (perhaps bigger than the oil industry’s secret of no spill contingencies that was literally just blown and leaked) is the amount of energy input required to manufacture so-called renewable power generation components. Sun and wind can provide us with virtually unlimited energy, if only we could figure out how to harness that energy without building expensive and increasingly complicated gizmos. No, we are talking instead about the cleanest yet dirtiest source of fuel known to man, uranium and its fissionable friends.

Please don’t get us wrong, we aren’t naive enough to believe that the Sierra Club will fall in love with uranium next week or that the public in general is ready to embrace a nuclear power plant in every neighborhood, but we sense an inevitable tide of sentiment flowing slowly but surely toward the only source of energy that can save civilized society from literally collapsing in a few decades, if not a few years (that is if the banks don’t get us first). Being optimists, we believe humankind in general has a strong will to survive. Being pragmatists, we believe uranium will be permitted to show the way.

And don’t even get us started on global warming. [Seriously, please don't.] We don’t have the scientific training to properly debate the subject and neither do you. What we do have, however, is the ability to assign probabilities to events. In that regard, it is completely irrelevant what you or we might believe. What matters is sequence, scenario and outcome. Simply put, eight billion is the number we need to focus on. That is how many Earthlings will soon populate this rocky and wet planet. Probably enough bodies to generate some serious greenhouse gases simply from uncontrolled flatulence. Another reason why “Gas Augmentor” would be a bad idea after all, but now we are getting really sidetracked so let’s get back on point again. The point being that human population has impacted the climate in the past, is impacting the climate today, and will impact the climate in the future. It is a matter of degrees in at least two literal senses of that word. Global warming isn’t a matter of if but of when.

If we are right about the above, and yes we are, that means we need to start seriously taking a look at how we can make some money here. It is said — usually by boorish people who are not very funny or particularly intelligent — that when life gives you lemons, you should make some lemonade. We say when a huge oil spill happens and global warming threatens, you should invest in uranium stocks. We admit it is simple and obvious, perhaps even stupidly so. Our defense is that implementation of the idea, not the idea itself, is key. To that end we have already identified two of the best uranium exploration stocks in the world and have been following them religiously on behalf of Metal Augmentor subscribers for just over a year. No happy ending to report yet but this particular investment thesis requires patience. Patience that we strongly believe will be amply rewarded down the road. To us therefore, this latest ecological disaster represents a sign post declaring that our destination is somewhere dead ahead.

More importantly, we are in the process of evaluating other uranium exploration and mining companies while waiting for the right time to pounce on the exclusive list of uranium stocks that have already passed our rigorous selection process with flying colors. Sure there are other people out there doing the same thing, and some of them have more experience than we do, but the nice thing about our approach is that we don’t favor companies because we have friends running them (we don’t) or because we participated in a private placement (we haven’t) or even because we received warrants or some other type of undisclosed tit-for-tat compensation (we won’t).

Not only that, but our subscriber platform is easy to access and we are able to provide commentary in nearly-real-time. No monthly newsletter showing up in your mailbox to tell you what happened a month ago and how you could have made a bunch of money had you bought or sold then. Instead, you get to control how and when you receive our premium content. If you really want an answer now, you can just ask us and we’ll tell you straight up, right then and there.

We’d love to say more about our wonderful investment research service but this is Crazy Market Thoughts not Narcissistic Market Thoughts and besides that it is also the end. Not before we point out, however, that perhaps the most important thing that anybody might have ever done for the environment, on purpose or otherwise, is to decide against installing a cheap failsafe device on a deepwater oil rig in order to save a few bucks. Way to go BP, to the rescue!

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