Free Republic

Growth of the world’s future oil supply will be unprecedented. Iraq will become the production leader, followed by the US, according to a study by a research fellow with the Geopolitics of Energy Project. A surge in production is expected to push global oil output up by approximately 17 MMb/d to 110 MMb/d by 2020, with Iraq, the US, Canada, Brazil, and Venezuela leading the way. The increase could be the largest jump in a single decade since the 1980s. That is according to the study, called “Oil: The Next Revolution. The Unprecedented Upsurge of Oil Production Capacity and What...

The Bakken shale is a huge expanse of oil-bearing rock that lies underneath Northern Dakota and Montana. Oil production in the Bakken has grown from just 60,000 barrels per day (BPD) five years ago, to 500,000 bpd now. It is predicted that the formation holds more than 24 billion barrels of oil, and that given enough rigs it could produce more than a million bpd by 2020 and continue that level of production for half a century. The Bakken shale play is one of the biggest in the US, but is absolutely dwarfed by a shale play in Russia. The...

Two headline-grabbing oil prospecting failures in the past week offer a fresh reminder of the high-stakes gamble that is offshore drilling. First, an exploration well drilled at Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s Spartacus project in the Gulf of Mexico turned up dry. The company admitted the defeat on May 23, after reportedly sinking about $20 million into the project. Then, Spanish oil firm Repsol said it would be leaving Cuban waters after its first attempt to find oil off the northern coast of the island nation was a bust. Repsol first acknowledged the dry hole on May 18, after spending plenty of...

The game-changing development of shale oil and gas in the United States has motivated countries around the world to tap potentially massive resources. Shale will alter the energy security picture for major end-use markets, limiting individual producer petro-power and creating a more competitive marketplace for LNG and potentially enabling further market liberalization in Europe and elsewhere, said Amy Myers Jaffe. “What has changed is that now we have this huge potential of resources that are exactly where the demand centers are,” explained Jaffe, director, Energy Forum at the Baker Institute, Rice University. “That changes not only the geopolitics of oil...

USGS next recoverable oil estimate expected to double to 8 billion barrels Ray Tyson Petroleum News Bakken Editor The U.S. Geological Survey, in a highly anticipated report to be released next year, is expected to at least double the amount of oil reserves that can be recovered from the U.S. portion of the massive Bakken play in North Dakota and Montana. This is the consensus of company executives and industry consultants interviewed by Petroleum News on the sidelines of the 2nd Annual Bakken Investor Conference held April 2-4 in Minot, North Dakota. April 2008 was the last time the USGS...

China has poured billions of dollars into Venezuela's oil sector to expand its claim over the country's massive oil reserves. But Beijing is getting relatively little for its investments, and Chinese officials are increasingly frustrated with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, according to energy analysts and former managers of the state oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela, commonly known as PDVSA. Mr. Chavez, who is battling a life-threatening recurrence of cancer, said his goal is to send 1 million barrels of oil a day to China, which has given Venezuela more than $30 billion in loans and promised billions of dollars more...

The United States holds only 2% of the planet’s proven oil reserves,” President Barack Obama According to President Obama, the United States contains only 2 percent of the planet’s proven oil reserves, Of course, he’s right — to a point. In classic fashion, he’s using a technicality to skirt the facts and keep the myth of energy scarcity alive. The reality is that the U.S. has enough recoverable oil for the next 200 years, despite only having 2 percent of the world’s current proven oil reserves. Proven oil reserves are not all of our oil resources—not even close. In fact,...

Our offshore energy resources should be a real strategic petroleum reserves. But less than 3 percent of offshore area are currently leased for for energy production. As gas prices continues to climb, the Obama administration claims its hands are tied and there’s no immediate relief for Americans. Yet behind closed doors, Obama is considering a political band-aid with a release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). This is not strategic and would represent an abuse of the SPR for political gain, as was the case this past summer when Obama pointed blame at Libya for the limp economy and released...

<p>DALLAS — The Permian Basin of West Texas is experiencing an oil boom, leading some of the region’s top oilmen to predict that Texas oil production will double within five to seven years.</p> <p>Oil drillers over the last eight years have found that the dense oil rock of the basin surrounding Midland and Odessa responds well to hydraulic fracturing, releasing lush yields. Total oil production last year in Texas averaged more than 1 million barrels per day for the first time since 2001.</p>

My wife and two other couples hit the movies today here in Wilmington, NC to see Act of Valor. We're lucky to have a great modern Regal Theater to go to here. The place was packed for the 4:00PM show and I would expect the shows this evening and the rest of the weekend to be sold out, this is "military country" (Marines). The show is great, 5 stars. Plenty of action and the real SEALS do an outstanding job. I hope Act of Valor is the top grossing film of the year, just to show America's support for our...

The lead story in last Sunday’s New York Times blared: High Gas Prices Give G.O.P. Issue to Attack Obama. With gasoline prices nearing $4 per gallon, double that when Obama took office, another negative economic issue is at the President’s doorstep. Crude oil prices north of $100 per barrel explain the jump in pump prices, and political tension such as Iran’s threat to disrupt Middle Eastern oil flows partly explains the surge in crude prices. Still, the Obama’s Administration’s ideological opposition to fossil fuels, including the mainstay petroleum in the transportation market, leaves the President nowhere to hide. Too many...

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing used in 30-year-old, waterflooded oil fields has boosted production per well from 25 to 300 barrels per day. The new frontier for the unconventional gas technology is in old oil fields. This is a huge opportunity for using long laterals, multiple-stage fracs and smaller, high-tech fractures, said George King, global technology consultant, at the NAPE Business Conference on Feb. 22 in Houston. “Right now, we have two big oil plays -- the Bakken and Eagle Ford. What if you take the name shale off of it? There are three or four more big plays coming...

In the 1970s and 1980s, the proponents of wind power claimed that renewables would be cost-competitive in a few years if they just received some subsidies for a few years. But thirty years later, renewables proponents are still clamoring for subsidies from U.S. taxpayers. Despite a trillion dollar deficit, President Obama is once again responding to the renewable promoters and asking Congress to approve his budget with billions of dollars in energy subsidies. The President’s proposed budget would renew and extend a number of renewable subsidies including the 1603 program which pays for as much as much as 30 percent...

Marine Corps Times – Level Zero Heroes, page 30 By Gina Cavallaro Michael Golembesky is poised to publish the first book detailing experiences of Marine special operators in Afghanistan. And unlike career writers who drop into an outpost for a quick embed, Golembesky was there as a member of Marine Special Operations Team 8222 during one of its hardest deployments. He plans to tell the team’s story through the words of the operators on the ground. The 22-man team spent seven months, from October 2009 to June 2010, in Bala Morghab, a village in remote western Afghanistan’s Badghis province, a...

Harry Reid says..... “If we want to wean ourselves from foreign oil, why would we allow a pipeline to be built for 1,700 miles to manufacture petroleum products to be shipped overseas?” Reid told reporters after the weekly Senate Democratic policy lunch. “That’s the purpose of this.”[i] What Harry Reid seems to be referring to is that in 2011, for the first time in 62 years, the United States was a net exporter of petroleum products[ii], exporting about 15 percent of the petroleum products the U.S. produced. Unfortunately, his statements show that he understands little about the U.S. petroleum industry...

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is committed to free-market policy solutions for America’s energy needs. IER has repeatedly argued that reducing the federal government’s intervention in the energy sector would reduce prices for consumers and, especially in our current recession, would create thousands of good jobs for unemployed workers. In this context, a recent opinion piece on FoxNews by Steve Lockard—CEO of a company making wind turbines and a board member of the American Wind Energy Association—was quite ironic. Lockard was trying to appeal to conservative readers by claiming that the Congress was threatening to destroy American jobs through...

Energy companies plan to spend a record $598 billion on exploration and production of oil and natural gas worldwide in 2012, growing 10 percent over this year, according to a forecast released Monday by Barclays Capital analysts. In a survey of about 350 energy companies, the investment bank found that oil and gas exploration and production will continue to expand rapidly in 2012. At nearly $600 billion, the energy industry’s global E&P spending is about equal to the annual gross domestic product of crude oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia. ExxonMobil remains the biggest spender at more than $30 billion, expanding 5...

I've got a conceal Carry choice between CZ 2075 40 cal or Sig Sauer P 250 40 cal. Both are sub compacts and the size,weight and price differences are within reason. I have not shot either gun but have been going through any reviews I can find. (the reason for the 40 cal is because I presently have a Glock 22 and want to go small) Both gun makers get rave reviews but the Sig is a fairly new model and a number of reviews indicated various issues. I'd like to shoot both guns before I buy one but I...

On 30 May, in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would close all of its 18 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022, which produce about 28 percent of the country's electricity. Eight have now been taken offline, and with the winter coming on Berlin is scrambling to make up the energy shortfall lest the country suffer blackouts combined with the need to import massive amounts of electricity. Despite Germany's Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (German Development Bank) being set to underwrite renewable energy and energy efficiency investments in Germany worth $137.3 billion over...

If anyone is interested in seeing an annimation of a gas well being drilled from the spudding to the fracking copy and paste the site below. A lot of good information that we discuss around here all the time. http://www.oerb.com/Default.aspx?tabid=242