Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Bush administration did not properly study the environmental impact of expanding oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast and canceled a program to find new reserves. A three-judge panel in Washington found that the Bush-era Interior Department failed to consider the effect on the environment and marine life before it began the process in August 2005 to expand an oil and gas leasing program in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas. The appeals court ordered the department, now run by President Barack Obama's appointee Ken Salazar, to analyze...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazr, the Obama administration's energy architect, apparently thinks the answer to all our energy worries is blowing in the wind. Salazar has slammed the brakes on efforts to develop vast new gas and oil fields offshore and in his home state of Colorado. During the campaign, candidate Obama said he would drill to find oil offshore. But Salazar now says he needs six months to formulate a comprehensive offshore-energy plan and to have "an open and honest conversation" about it with the American people. Increasingly, Salazar sounds like a man bedeviled by the winds. In speeches he...

Months after making national headlines for supporting offshore oil drilling, the county famous for spawning the modern environmental movement reversed course Tuesday and voted to oppose the drilling. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, citing a need to preserve its coastline, voted 3-2 for a resolution to oppose oil exploration and extraction in the county.

Rohm Emanuel’s famous quote regarding the current financial crisis, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste...it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." was ignored last summer when oil prices reached $147 a barrel. The Obama administration has taken advantage of the financial crisis to ram through their socialist agenda which will add trillions to the National Debt. It will stimulate unions, bureaucrats, government employees, and defense contractors. It will do nothing to address the looming energy crisis which will sweep over the country shortly. Again, politicians and pundits will be shocked and astonished when oil soars....

Uh oh. Does this sound familiar? Someone in a leadership position wants to make sure that his constituents get their ‘fair share’ on the development of a natural resource. Surprisingly, it’s not Alberta premier Ed Stelmach but the U.S. Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar. Quick! Someone stop him before he makes the same mistakes that were made in Alberta 18 months ago. Salazar is drawn to the same flawed logic that lured Stelmach and his rural band of supporters into believing that the citizens of the province were losing out on $1.4 billion in lost revenues. The resulting loss of confidence...

The ban on offshore oil drilling that expired last September will be restored by “any means necessary,” Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who serves on both the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, told CNSNews.com on Friday. Inslee, who participated in a conference entitled "Planning for a Secure Energy Future” sponsored by the Washington Post, also recommended a ban on future drilling in the arctic, where he says there is a “gold rush” for oil uncovered by melting ice caps. But Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who serves on the House Select Committee on Energy...

This is off topic for all that is going on today but did you ever notice how quickly we forgot about this issue? It seems we've averted yet another oil crisis without drilling yet again. Boy am I relieved /sarcasm

As Mark Twain said, "History seldom repeats, but it often rhymes." That philosophy has led investors and analysts to track the progression of the current rig downturn against prior ones in an attempt to gauge just how far the rig count still might have to fall before hitting bottom. Many analysts suggested that the current decline would more likely mirror the rig downturns of 2001-2002 or 1998-1999. Those industry downturns are within the business memories of many of the Wall Street analysts and some company executives, but we have been suggesting that the correction might more closely resemble the debacle...

One of President Obama's chief campaign promises was that his administration would signal the beginning of the end to partisan sniping in Washington and embark on a new era of bipartisanship. Add this to the growing list of Obama's broken or nearly-broken promises. His stimulus bill was one of the most hyper-partisan packages ever put together, prompting CNN to note that Hillary Clinton was correct when she mocked Obama's rhetoric on bipartisanship. If Obama truly wants to provide solutions that would help America's economic situation and move Congress forward towards a greater spirit of non-partisan cooperation,he will support the No...

Alberta oil and gas producers say that mainly prices--and not provincial royalty breaks announced last week--will drive drilling plans this year. Small and mid-size producers -- at which the $1.5 billion in credits and other incentives are mostly aimed -- say they are still reviewing their spending plans for the year in light of the changes. But analysts don't expect the breaks to significantly boost drilling activity, which has slowed to its lowest level in a decade amid falling oil and gas prices and tight credit markets. Steve Sugianto, chief executive of Galleon Energy Inc., said Thursday the incentives could...

Republicans introduced in both the House and the Senate yesterday a bill entitled the No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009. This breathtakingly simple energy stimulus bill introduced by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) would accelerate offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and force the government to streamline the environmental and regulatory burdens that could otherwise block energy development for years. At a press conference yesterday, Vitter and Bishop explained that this bill would be a literal “threefer”: it creates tens of thousands of jobs, helps reduce dependency on foreign...

Sens. Hutchison, Murkowski, Bond Urge White House to Expedite Offshore Oil and Gas Development Domestic Sources will Relieve Stress on Americans, Reduce Dependence on Foreign Oil March 2, 2009 WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Texas’ senior Senator, along with Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Kit Bond (R-MO) today led a Republican effort, urging the White House to tap new domestic energy sources and expeditiously complete the Administration’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas development. Sens. Hutchison, Murkowski, and Bond were joined on the letter by 32 of their Republican colleagues in the U.S. Senate.            “American...

Murkowski introduces ANWR directional drilling legislation Friday, February 27, 2009 WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today introduced legislation that would allow the use of advanced directional drilling to tap the vast energy potential of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain without disturbing the unique characteristics of the area. The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, would allow access to the coastal plain’s oil and natural gas resources through the use of underground directional drilling from state-owned lands to the west of the refuge and state waters from the north.  “Everybody wins with this bill –...

The California budget deficit could go away easily if liberals removed some of its unnecessary environmental regulations. California holds deposits of many resources including oil and gas that could be leased to companies for over 50 billion dollars. Unfortunately, the elite are blocking those efforts with shrieks of global warming and the fear of more people using cars and depending less of public transit, not to mention fears of oil spills and all this mumbo jumbo about animal rights. (Which take precedent over the rights of human beings every time, especially if they are not yet born.) Rich liberals and...

GAS AND OIL PRODUCERS ARE GETTING A CASE OF INDIGESTION that no anti-acid can cure. They fear that President Obama will break his campaign promise to allow drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the outer continental shelf, arguably jeopardizing U.S. energy security. Few are prepared to call our president "Barack the Bamboozler." Most people still take him at his word, given in his acceptance speech in Denver last August, that offshore drilling, especially for natural gas, is an important part of his administration's overall plan for making the nation energy-independent. On Sept. 23, the truth will out. ... Last...

Interior Secretary says that we need bring sanity back into our energy policy. By "sanity" he means citing 30-year old estimates of reserves and doing nothing to develop our domestic natural resources.

David Corn seems to have had an allergic reaction to Gov. Sarah Palin's op-ed in favor of opening up a small portion of ANWR for drilling. Corn opines: This was his (sic) first stab at being a serious policy person since her unsuccessful vice-presidential bid. And it was swing and a big miss--for multiple reasons.The first "reason" Corn gives is that the governor's opinion piece was published, not by a newspaper from New York or D.C., but the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. To liberal elitists of Corn's ilk, nothing worthwhile can come from flyover country. He must believe that the issue and...

SALT LAKE CITY – In a high-profile reversal of the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday the government is scrapping the lease of 77 parcels of federal land for oil and gas drilling in Utah's redrock country. "In the last weeks in office, the Bush administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases near some of our nation's most precious landscapes in Utah," Salazar said from Washington in a teleconference call with reporters. He ordered the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, to not cash checks from winning bidders for parcels at...

If the United States took the time to exploit our resources in the Gulf of Mexico we would generate 63 BILLION Gallons of Oil, 186 TRILLION Cubic Feet of natural Gas, generate $1.4 TRILLION dollars of government income, reduce our reliance on foreign energy by 42% and add countless jobs and other tax revenue to the economy. Gee Whiz, talk about a stimulus plan that will generate long term jobs, and bolster the economy. And that's just the Gulf. If all of our resources were used we could add $1.7 TRILLION to the economy and reduce imports by 80%. Source....

“If you care about Mother Earth, you should support opening ANWR.” When you hear Democrats including my very own Congressman in New York, saying ANWR won't solve all of our oil problems. Let me say DUH-- no one answer will (until some genius scientist develops a synthetic oil or we can get Harry Reid to stop drinking the stuff). Until such time, we must take many proactive actions. ANWR, shale, coastal drilling etc. -- altogether these solutions will relieve us of the horrible dependence we have on jihad oil. Who the hell are the Dems working for? We elected them...

Iraq's South Oil seeks 400,000 bpd output boost Reuters, Wednesday January 21 2009 By Mohammed Abbas BASRA, Iraq, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Iraq's South Oil Company plans to raise output by up to 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2010 and is also working on boosting export facilities, the company's head said on Wednesday. Director General Kifah Numan told Reuters the company planned to raise production to 3.5 million bpd within three years, partly by drilling up to 400 new wells. That compares with total average Iraqi oil output during 2008 of 2.3-2.4 million bpd, according to...

In allowing the Department of Interior to proceed with its “Draft Proposed Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program 2010–2015,” the Obama Administration has moved a step in the right direction for American energy independence. Risks remain, however, that the Congressional majority will once again reinstate the bans on off-shore drilling and oil shale exploration—as did the House that just last year when it voted to seal off 80 percent of the outer-continental shelf. Already this year, in its just-passed lands bill, the Senate has voted to take more than 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and...

The federal agency that controls offshore drilling is planning for the opening of now-protected regions of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas exploration. With pressure mounting in Congress to increase domestic energy production, the U.S. Minerals Management Service wants to schedule lease sales for areas in the eastern and central Gulf that are now protected by a Congressional drilling ban. The schedule is laid out in a draft of the MMS' five-year plan for leasing in the Outer Continental Shelf, which the agency released on Friday. The document, which must be approved by President-elect Barack Obama, could govern...

How does $8-a-gallon gas sound? Few Americans would want to see that happen. Unfortunately, President-elect Barack Obama’s choices for the government’s two highest energy posts have expressed a surprising level of comfort with sky-high gas prices. As if that weren’t bad enough, the incoming Obama administration and new Congress have suggested that they might reverse the pro-domestic oil drilling measures enacted since last summer. It is starting to look as though the change coming to Washington will bring bad news at the pump in the years ahead. As gas prices topped $4 a gallon last July, President George W. Bush...

As oil prices fall to levels not seen since mid-2000s, costs are becoming more important for assessing the near term in Alaska Some say Alaska survived $40 oil in the past. Others say $40 ain’t what it used to be. Unveiling her fiscal year 2010 budget on Dec. 15, Gov. Sarah Palin said oil at $40 to $42 a barrel would have been considered “healthy” a couple of years ago, and even “relatively high, compared to some years.” She added that “compared to the $140 that we were blessed with many months ago, the $40-something a barrel looks relatively low.”...

Barely a month ago, Wall Street analysts became concerned about a drop in the U.S. rig count due to weakening commodity prices, and in particular natural gas prices, and the impact of the credit crisis on producer access to capital. The talk initially was about whether the rig count would fall by 100-200 rigs or experience a more severe correction of 300-400 rigs. As soon as investors began to focus on the impact of the larger drop, market conditions worsened with crude oil falling to the $50 a barrel level in response to weakening global oil demand. Falling oil prices...

Shell Oil has canceled its drilling and other exploration plans for next year in the Beaufort Sea while it focuses on court challenges to its offshore plan. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that federal regulators improperly granted Shell permission to drill in the Beaufort. The court ordered the Minerals Management Service to reconsider how exploratory drilling would affect wildlife and Inupiat Eskimo subsistence hunting and fishing. Shell said the agency completely analyzed the exploratory plan and correctly found that it would have minimal impact on marine mammals and subsistence activities. Shell...

US Drilling Activity Off Sharply by Ben Casselman Dow Jones Newswires Monday, December 15, 2008 NEW YORK (WALL STREET JOURNAL via Dow Jones Newswires), Dec. 15, 2008 As oil and gas prices fall, drilling activity in the U.S. is slowing more than expected, battering shares of drilling companies, hurting economies in energy-producing states and sowing the seeds for supply shortages when the economy recovers. In its weekly accounting, Baker Hughes Inc. reported Friday that the number of drilling rigs working in the U.S. had fallen to 1,790, down 12% from the September peak and down 2% from the same time...

Santa Fe County now has an ordinance aimed specifically at regulating the activities of the oil and gas industry. After more than a year of planning and countless public hearings, the County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to approve an ordinance that appears to have soothed county residents anxious about energy-development impacts and excited the ire of the regulation-phobic oil and gas industry. The draft approved Tuesday is a massive document that takes a multipronged approach to balancing the rights of oil and gas developers with environmental concerns and capital infrastructure needs. It requires potential oil and gas operators to submit...

President-elect Obama has talked about engaging terrorists sponsor nations like Syria and Iran. Governor Palin has a different suggestion "Engage" Canada. The former Vice Presidential candidate points to her recent agreement with Canada to build the Trans Canada pipeline, as an example of how the two countries can work together to make the US more energy independent. Read the interview below:

Advanced drilling techniques that blast millions of gallons of water into 400-million-year-old shale formations a mile underground are opening up "unconventional" gas fields touted as a key to the nation's energy future. The mother lode of these deposits, where natural gas is so tightly locked in deep rocks that it's costly and complicated to extract, is the Marcellus shale underlying the Appalachians. Geologists call the Marcellus a "super giant" gas field. Penn State geoscientist Terry Engelder believes it could supply the natural gas needs of the United States for 14 years. But as word spread over the past year that...

A video of fish swimming around underneath an oil rig. You can clearly see the piping and frameworks that comprises the underpinnings. You can see the rig in the background when they stand in their boats to show off the fish they caught. This video is useful for when the oil drilling debate comes back.

As the hunt for new sources of domestic fuel intensifies in the face of dwindling world supplies, the energy industry has been quietly lobbying the state to open hundreds of thousands of acres in Lake Pontchartrain to drilling. The lake has been off limits to fuel producers since 1991, when the State Mineral Board first voted to ban drilling amid concerns about the lake's fragile ecosystem. The board, which controls drilling on state property, renewed the ban periodically until passing a permanent moratorium in 2000. Although the energy industry opposed the measure from the start, the ban has not faced...

Where our line of sight hits the horizon is the distance from our boat to the horizon. A small boat first coming into view is assumed to be at that distance. In the picture above, the sailor cannot see the island's palm trees. If an object, such as a large ship or a palm tree on an island, sticks up well above the water, we can see it from a further distance. Here is how we can calculate how far we can see from a boat on the sea. First let's assume that we are sitting in the cockpit of...

Back in July Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was not about to let the United States drill or develop our domestic energy reserves. Pelosi said this about high gas prices: "Drilling is a hoax!" Here's the unbelievable video:

THIS summer's cry of "drill, baby, drill" quickly faded once gasoline prices tumbled. Now that the price is below $2 a gallon again, many people want to abandon offshore drilling again. That would be a mistake. Gasoline will top $4 a gallon again if the politicians in Washington retreat into their cocoons once more. America must prepare for the next energy crisis now by passing legislation to enable drilling when the need arises. Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito is calling for Congress to keep the options open for offshore drilling. "The price drop - of course that's a good thing," she...

Even though our attention for the last couple of months has been focused on the banking and auto industry crises, U.S. energy policy still looms as a critical issue. Everybody except the Democrats in Congress understands that while we are trying to develop a sensible and effective energy policy, we have to avail ourselves of domestic supplies of oil and natural gas and get the United States out from under dependence upon foreign supplies controlled by OPEC. Congressional Democrats have steadfastly refused to do the sensible thing, which is opening the offshore areas to drilling now and getting the development...

Oil and gas companies appeared to score an all-out victory over the summer when President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling and congressional Democrats let a moratorium expire soon after. But those who think nothing stands between oil rigs and the outer continental shelf are dead wrong. "Every lease that has been granted in the last several years has been immediately challenged in the lawsuits 100 percent," said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. When the ban was lifted, the federal government was permitted to sell drilling leases three miles off the nation's coastlines, free of state objections. The Interior...

Energy: Remember those 68 million acres House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the oil companies had to use or lose? According to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, they can't drill there either.When President Bush lifted the executive order banning oil and gas exploration in federally protected offshore areas, Speaker Pelosi called the action a giveaway of "more public resources to the very same oil companies that are sitting on 68 million acres of federal lands they've already leased." We thought it was nonsense to accuse the oil companies of sitting on profitable oil resources waiting for sky-high...

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska’s North Slope after finding that the Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company’s drilling permit. In a long-awaited ruling, the court said that the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency in charge of offshore leasing, had violated the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a “hard look” at the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope. The decision canceled Shell’s...

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Global oil reserves are plentiful and will last for many years to come, said Nansen Saleri, who until last year oversaw the world's largest reserves in top exporter Saudi Arabia. Some industry observers have argued that oil supplies were at, or near, their peak and have questioned whether big producers were sitting on as much oil as they claim. But Saleri, who headed reserve management at state oil giant Saudi Aramco from 1998-2007, told Reuters in an interview on Monday that the bigger challenge for the industry was not a shortage of reserves but increasing recovery...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — America's third-largest oil supplier has exported 17 percent less crude this year.Mexico's state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos company says daily production through October averaged 2.8 million barrels, down nearly 10 percent from the same period last year.  Pemex says production has dropped by a third this year at Mexico's main Cantarell oil field.  An energy reform package approved by Mexico's Congress last month aims to reverse declining production by giving Pemex more leeway to hire private companies and devote more revenue to explore for oil.

Energy: That an Alaskan senator-elect wants to drill in ANWR is not a surprise. That he's a Democrat is. Were high oil prices what helped push Detroit over the edge?There were many reasons for the collapse of the domestic auto industry. We have mentioned the high labor costs and bloated union contracts. Others have blamed the manufacture of cars and SUVs no one wanted to buy. We'd also point out that, thanks to OPEC and Congress, fewer people could afford to buy them even if they wanted to. Detroit didn't die just because corporate CEOs had a penchant for private...

Energy: New drilling techniques may open up a 14-year supply of natural gas trapped in porous rock in the Northeast. That is, if environmentalists in New York and elsewhere don't keep it trapped in the ground.Natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels, so clean that it is a key part of oilman T. Boone Pickens' plan to wean us off foreign sources of energy. Natural gas can fuel a new generation of automobiles that would help us achieve energy independence and at the same time contribute to a cleaner planet. In the northeastern U.S., there is a massive...

The Interior Department is seeking public comment on the possibility of selling oil and gas leases 50 miles or more from Virginia’s shore, an area that has been off limits along with most U.S. federal waters for more than 20 years. Randall Luthi, director of the Minerals Management Service, the agency that regulates offshore oil and gas activity, said today that the call for public comments as well as intent to submit statements on environmental impacts are the first steps in a “scoping process” for a lease sale tentatively scheduled for 2011. In July, President Bush lifted a presidential ban...

Still more than two months from his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama has started promoting his policies and naming some of his advisers. And according to one historian, he could be developing a plan to permanently block drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Douglas Brinkley, a noted presidential historian and professor at Rice University in Houston, told viewers of CNN’s Nov. 11 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” how Obama could change ANWR’s designation from a National Wildlife Refuge to a National Monument. That power was granted to presidents by the Antiquities Act of 1906, and would not require any approval from Congress....

Environmentalists on Monday applauded an announcement that U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama would consider curtailing oil and gas drilling in some areas, and expressed hope future energy policy decisions would contain more environmental protections. The co-chair of Obama's transition team, John Podesta, said on Sunday that Obama probably would reverse an executive order by President George W. Bush allowing drilling in fragile lands in Utah. Mike Daulton, legislative director of the National Audubon Society, said reversing the order would be a promising step away from the Bush administration's energy policy, which he called too slanted toward the oil industry. "The Bush...

Obama's Transition Focuses on Reassuring the Middle Class So far, Obama and aides have gone out of their way to maintain support from the key group By Kenneth T. Walsh Posted November 10, 2008 It's all about reassurance. John Podesta, cochair of Obama's transition organization, said the new administration is reviewing President Bush's executive orders on oil and gas drilling, stem cell research, and other issues for possible reversal. The new administration's moves are likely to please environmentalists, stem cell research advocates, and other groups that have been critical of George W. Bush's policies. Podesta told Fox News that Obama...

President-elect Barack Obama could move quickly once in office to halt oil and gas drilling near national parks in Utah, Obama's top transition adviser said Sunday. But it's unclear whether Obama would be able to reverse the Bush administration's decision to hand out leases to about 360,000 acres of federal land in Utah; the leases, some of which lie near Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument, are scheduled to go on sale a month before Obama is sworn in. John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama's transition team, said on Fox News Sunday that the president-elect is looking at...

"There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that," Podesta said. "I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set." Executive orders "have the power of law and they can cover just about anything," Tobias said in a telephone interview. On drilling, the federal Bureau of Land Management is opening about 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas drilling. Bush administration officials...