Free Republic

Federal overreach isn’t just a catchy talking point. It has real consequences that I see and experience every day in Alaska. Alaska has been the victim of countless actions by the Obama Administration to unilaterally close off areas in Alaska to energy development. In the past two months, President Obama has used his executive authority to close areas in Bristol Bay, the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea from energy leasing – all without congressional oversight or thorough consultation with Alaskan officials. Then, on a Sunday morning last month we awoke to the news the president would attempt to permanently...

One might think that the mood at the International Petroleum Week annual convention would be sour, considering the plunge in crude oil prices over the past six months. But quite the contrary . . . for oil traders, at least. They’re ecstatic, celebrating their best market since the 2008 oil price crash. That’s because there’s contango in the oil market – the price of oil for future delivery months is higher than the current spot market price. Storing Oil = Easy Money With the contango, traders can make huge profits simply by storing millions of barrels of oil for sale...

STAGE one of Saudi Arabia’s plan—or perhaps hope—to restructure the oil market is taking longer than expected. By refusing to rein in production while prices fell, the Saudis permitted a big surplus to grow and served notice on higher-cost rivals (Russia, Venezuela, American shale-oil producers) that they would not prop up other people’s profit margins at the expense of their own market share. That signal has been weakened by the growing amount of oil in storage, which is absorbing most of the glut. World oil stocks rose about 265m barrels last year and Société Générale, a French bank, reckons they...

It's a painful time to be in the oil business. With the price of crude oil about half what it was six months ago, companies large and small are being pressured to cut costs. On the front lines are oil services companies that do everything from drilling to providing electrical power at well sites. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are threatened as companies try to adjust. Gary Evans, CEO of the oil and gas company Magnum Hunter Resources, has a tough message for the people who provide critical services to companies like his: "We've got to lower our cost," he...

Energy: Three million gallons of Bakken crude burning in rural West Virginia after an oil train derails in a snowstorm ought to underscore the environmental safety of replacing rail cars with the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the reasons President Obama says he'll veto the Keystone pipeline bill that, as a result of last November's GOP electoral gusher, has found its way to his desk is that it will only carry Canadian crude to foreign markets and is not worth jeopardizing the environment. Two things are wrong with that argument. The first is that Keystone XL will also bring Bakken...

Twenty-one senators on Wednesday urged the Obama administration to swiftly authorize an exchange of heavy Mexican crude with light U.S. oil. At issue is a Pemex affiliate’s request to export 100,000 barrels per day of light U.S. oil and condensates in exchange for heavy Mexican crude — a transaction that can be approved by U.S. regulators on a case-by-case basis under existing trade laws. “We encourage the Department of Commerce to approve any such applications it has received or may receive from adjacent foreign states such as Mexico,” the senators said in a letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. “These...

Arrogant oil refiners concerned more about profits than the safety and workplace concerns of thousands of USW-represented oil workers forced the union to call an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike.The industry, represented by Royal Dutch Shell, gave the USW no other option when it refused to bargain in good faith over a national contract even though the union was prepared to continue talking beyond the midnight deadline.“Shell refused to provide us with a counter-offer and left the bargaining table,” International President Leo W. Gerard said. “We had no choice but to give notice of a work stoppage.”The negotiations for a...

Companies across all sectors of the oil, gas and chemicals industry will need to better plan and manage projects to ensure their survival during the recent downturn in oil prices, according to a recent study by global business advisory firms AlixPartners. Oil and gas companies not only need to improve their ability to plan and manage projects, but create a “cost culture” inside of their companies. Only 30 percent of respondents in a study of 250 high-level industry executives across the world said their companies had explicit return-on-capital targets for projects before the oil price collapse. Perhaps most surprising is...

Abstract The United States is now the world’s leader in both natural gas and oil production— centuries’ worth of oil, natural gas, and coal resources lie beneath private property as well as under lands owned by state governments. While federally owned lands are also full of energy potential, a bureaucratic regulatory regime has mismanaged land use for decades. The tremendous economic benefits of open energy markets and the proven track record of the individual states’ regulatory structures dictate a re-examination of the way the federal government manages resources on federal lands. The Federal Lands Freedom Act gives states the...

Mesa County commissioners on Tuesday directed Mesa County Attorney Patrick Coleman to draft a notice of intent to sue the federal government over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s listing of the Gunnison sage-grouse as a threatened species. Gunnison County filed its own notice of intent in December to bring civil action against the Fish and Wildlife Service for, the county believes, improperly listing the bird as a threatened species and naming Gunnison County and acreage in a handful of other Colorado and Utah counties, including Mesa, as critical habitat for the sage-grouse. Mesa County decided to follow with its...

The project involves three years of exploration for conventional oil, north of Nahal El Al near Moshav Natur, a former kibbutz on the southern Golan Heights. Drilling was set to begin at a Golan Heights oil exploration site in the late night hours of Monday, the company announced that evening. The project, which is being implemented by Afek Oil and Gas, involves three years of exploration for conventional oil using up to 10 wells. The company chose site No. 5 out of 10 to start with, located north of Nahal El Al near Moshav Natur, a former kibbutz on the...

Yesterday, a train derailed in West Virginia — and exploded. It was carrying more than 100 tons of crude oil, and it burst into flames after going off the rails outside of Charleston. Miraculously, no one was killed, though hundreds were evacuated and one man was hospitalized. Social media users were understandably alarmed by the magnitude of the fire, and photos of the incident quickly spread — looking more like a scene from an action film than anything else. The crash, which could contaminate the entire local water supply, is more than just a West Virginia-specific disaster: It's a reminder...

It may be difficult to look beyond the current pricing environment for oil, but the depletion of low-cost reserves and the increasing inability to find major new discoveries ensures a future of expensive oil. While analyzing the short-term trajectory of oil prices is certainly important, it obscures the fact that over the long-term, oil exploration companies may struggle to bring new sources of supply online. Ed Crooks over at the FT persuasively summarizes the predicament. Crooks says that 2014 is shaping up to be the worst year in the last six decades in terms of new oil discoveries (based on...

3:00 p.m., UPDATE: Water intakes in Montgomery and Cedar Grove have been closed because of the train accident along the Kanawha River. That is according to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Bureau for Public Health. It is confirmed that the train was carrying crude oil, some of which spilled into the Kanawha River. While the intakes are closed, customers are urged to conserve water. The Montgomery Water System is part of West Virginia American Water Co. The West Virginia State Police expanded the evacuation order for the area at around 3:15 p.m. to include anyone with...

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision Friday that it said will open the way for the first oil and gas production from federal lands in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The decision is a shift from the alternative that BLM had earlier selected as its preferred option. But it aligns with the alternative chosen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. BLM-Alaska spokeswoman Lesli Ellis-Wouters said BLM had indicated it would take into account the Corps’ decision in making its final determination. If the two agencies were not on the same page, ConocoPhillips Alaska would not have...

A train carrying crude oil and operated by Canadian National Railway Co. derailed near the town of Timmins in northern Ontario just before midnight on Saturday, causing a fire but no reported injuries. The train derailed in a remote wooded area, according to a spokesman for Montreal-based CN, Canada’s largest railroad company. He said the railway company had deployed firefighting and environmental crews to the scene. The cause of the incident wasn’t yet known, he said. “Our emergency crews continue to conduct a full site assessment to determine the number of rail cars derailed and involved in the fire, and...

Undaunted by the long battle over Keystone XL and current low oil prices, TransCanada Corp. is planning to build another border-crossing pipeline that would ferry North Dakota crude to refineries in Eastern Canada. TransCanada executives confirmed Friday they have signed contracts with shippers for enough capacity on the proposed 285-mile Upland pipeline to go forward with the project. It would move as many as 70,000 barrels a day of oil away from North Dakota’s Williston Basin, giving producers another alternative to shipping that crude by rail. “There is no question that production is up in North America, across the board,”...

Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. In...

I had been wanting to go to Williston, North Dakota for quite a while. Having heard so much about the boom going on there, I couldn’t wait to see it for myself – up close and personal! The biggest obstacle in planning the trip however was finding a place to stay. Like so many, I had heard the stories of $2,000 and $3,000 a month rent – if you could find a place to rent at all! So, I turned to Facebook... I posted on Facebook that I was interested in coming to Williston to visit some rigs and sell...

The oil price plunge and global economic uncertainty have forced engineering giant Rolls-Royce to cut its profit forecasts again. Last year, the company issued two profit warnings. The company reported Friday that its underlying revenue fell in 2014 for the first time in a decade, as customers, oil and gas companies, cut back on spending amid the price plunge. The world's second-largest aero-engine company pledged to take concrete actions to restore credibility as it reported an 8% fall in underlying pre-tax profits for 2014- the first such decline in over a decade. The company said that the plunge in oil...