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Canada has given oil sands a dirty reputation, but a breakthrough, commercially viable technology has caught the eye of a former Exxon Mobil president who is putting it to use to clean up Utah’s billions of barrels of oil sands. Imagine extracting high-quality oil out of the estimated 32 billion barrels buried in Utah’s oil sands, without creating the toxic wastelands that have resulted from oil sands projects in Western Canada. And imagine doing it at a cost that can still turn a profit in today’s oil price slump. That would be highly enticing to some of the large operators...

The US shale boom has led some to predict that it will overtake Saudi Arabia as world’s largest oil and gas producer by 2020, thanks to the massive reserves found in plays such as the Bakken Shale of North Dakota, the Marcellus Shale in New York, and the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas; even the newly discovered Tuscaloosa Shale formation in Louisiana holds large potential. However there is a new shale formation that has been discovered in West Texas which could dwarf all others being drilled in the US at the moment. The play is known as the Cline Shale...

Troubles deepened for Lady Thatcher's disgraced son last night when a self-confessed coup plotter surfaced to accuse him of direct involvement in the attempt to overthrow the regime in Equatorial Guinea. Crause Steyl, the mercenary pilot who was to have been the star witness against Mark Thatcher had his trial in South Africa gone ahead, told Channel 4 News that Sir Mark's role had been kept secret, because "his mother was the previous prime minister of England". Mr Steyl described meeting Sir Mark to select a helicopter on which a gun could be mounted. He also alleged that the Spanish...

FINDLAY, Ohio, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Marathon Oil Corporation MRO announced today that it expects a mid-November 2005 completion of its Detroit Refinery's $300 million expansion and clean fuels project. Through the combined efforts of the City of Detroit, the State of Michigan and Marathon, a Renaissance Zone was created that enabled the Company to advance the expansion efforts and investment in the refinery."This is the culmination of several years of work by hundreds of Marathon employees and contractors. We are in the final phase of the project and are eager to complete this construction, which not only provides additional...

The story of Hurricane Katrina is first and foremost a tale of the wrath of Mother Nature and the resulting human misery: thousands of deaths, destroyed homes and businesses, family break-ups, psychological demoralization, and other hardships too painful to recount. But Katrina is also an economic story in terms of its impact on U.S. commerce, trade, energy, shipping, and overall growth. Here the doomsayers and pessimists are once again going to be proven wrong. This is not the 1970s. After more than twenty years of deregulation the U.S. economy is flexible and resilient -- even in the face of short-run...

http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/415877|top|07-19-2004::15:07|reuters.html Man Sought for Photographing Texas City Refineries Email this story Jul 19, 2:57 PM (ET) HOUSTON (Reuters) - Law enforcement officials said on Monday they are looking for a man seen taking pictures of two refineries in Texas City, Texas. Texas City, located on the Texas Gulf coast about 30 miles south of Houston, has three refineries including the largest U.S. plant operated by BP Plc., which is the third-largest U.S. refinery, processing 470,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The man, described as white with dark hair, was seen taking pictures outside the refineries, all located on the...

<p>Los Angeles, , May. 22 (UPI) -- A grand jury and congressional investigators are probing real estate purchases by U.S. oil companies that may have constituted bribes to an African dictator.</p> <p>The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday the two separate investigations involve high-priced land purchases made by the oil companies through a holding company beleived controlled by the president of Equatorial Guinea.</p>