Free Republic

Fifteen state representatives wrote Gov. Sean Parnell on Friday to say they were "troubled by the mounting evidence that (Alaska's 2007 oil tax increase) may wind up doing more harm than good to future oil development." The representatives, including state House Speaker Mike Chenault and other top leaders of the Republican-led majority, said recent developments have them worried. They cited the recent announcement by Conoco Phillips that it would not drill an exploration well on the North Slope next year for the first time in 45 years, and will instead pursue offshore development that doesn't result in state tax dollars....

British oil giant BP PLC has begun cleaning up a second pipeline leak at its Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska this week, after fluid spilled from a flow line Wednesday. The incident did not impact oil production in Prudhoe Bay, the largest U.S. oilfield complex, a BP spokesman said Friday. The leak in the six-inch (15-centimetre) diameter flow line, which was discovered Wednesday, spilled about 27,030 litres of a watery mixture known as produced water into an operational building and an outdoor gravel area, Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation said in a situation report late Thursday. The spill was the...

The world continues to thirst for oil with in an ever increasing fervor, yet simultaneously struggles to fully grasp and appreciate the obstacles encountered by those who bring that oil to their local pumps. There has always been a necessary trade-off when it comes to technology and industrial advancement, as in order to experience the many benefits modern society offers us, we have to agree to give up some portion of nature and accept a certain amount of environmental damage. But recently the oil industry has been seeking ways in which they can continue to bring us the oil that...

Forget about running out of oil. A Deutsche Bank analyst wrote: "The world will never run out of oil." You are probably wondering why the analyst was able to make this prediction. The foremost reason is that we are becoming more efficient. This should keep prices in check at about $65.00 per barrel, down from this year's $80.00 per barrel. The next question is how do you know that the world is becoming more efficient. The Energy Information Administration uses a metric called: "energy intensity." Energy intensity measures the amount of oil used in relation to the size of the...

Interesting piece on Crude oil – it’s actually quite a complex substance: Some people arbitrarily speak about oil as if it is a single, indistinguishably homogenous substance without any unique differentiation, but this is actually not the case at all! In fact, there are many different kinds of oil. In its natural, unrefined state, crude oil ranges in density and consistency, from very thin, light weight and volatile fluidity to an extremely thick, semi-solid heavy weight oil. There is also a tremendous gradation in the color that the oil extracted from the ground exhibits, ranging all the way from a...

Cleanup efforts continued Tuesday on a three-quarter-acre area of tundra affected by a spill of oil and water near BP's Lisburne Processing Center on the North Slope. More than half of the affected area was coated by a sprayed mist from an 18-inch flow line, a pipeline that carries raw oil, water and gas to the center for separation… Late Tuesday it remained unclear how much oil had spilled or why the pipeline leaked. … The new spill was discovered Sunday afternoon. Cleanup of contaminated snow began late Monday, with 12 workers removing 40 cubic yards of contaminated snow with...

Oil tankers are the floating goldmines of the ocean and it is of little wonder that pirates see them as attractive, if not imposing, targets. But with oil supplies supposedly running low, the last thing we need is for our precious barrels of liquid gold to fall into the wrong hands. Yesterday, Somali pirates seized a tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States in the increasingly dangerous waters off East Africa, in an attack that could pose a huge environmental and security threat to the region. The Greek-owned Maran Centaurus was about 1,300km off Somalia when...

Will 2010 be a 1930 or, comparable to 1937? Is it different this time? When one nation state of a formerly high productive stature destroys itself with inflation, the untouched others can soften the blow and in time bail out the fallen one. This was Germany’s fate in the 1920’s. In our current instance, most all of the world’s economies are on their knees with some hurting worse than others. Who can help with recovery this time? There is no one. It will not be China as some suppose as China shall suffer the same systemic collapse as the U.S,...

Somali Pirates Seize U.S.-Bound Tanker JEFFREY GETTLEMAN November 30, 2009 NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali pirates have struck again, seizing an oil tanker loaded with $20 million in crude that was headed from Saudi Arabia to the United States, naval authorities said Monday. According to European naval reports, nine pirates hijacked the tanker and its crew of about 30 about 800 miles offshore and headed back toward pirate havens along the coast of central Somalia. The Somali pirate business appears to be back in full swing after a brief lull this summer that some attributed to increased naval patrols but which...

NAIROBI, Kenya - Somali pirates seized a tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States in the increasingly dangerous waters off East Africa, an official said Monday, an attack that could pose a huge environmental or security threat to the region. The Greece-flagged Maran Centaurus was hijacked Sunday about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) off the coast of Somalia, said Cmdr. John Harbour, a spokesman for the EU Naval Force. Harbour said it originated from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and was destined for the United States. The ship has 28 crew members on board, he said. The shipping intelligence...

If you had something you needed in your home, would you go to the store to buy it anyway? Of course not! Strangely, however, some members of Congress seem determined to push the country toward making this counterproductive choice.   The Congressional Research Service released a report at the end of October, “U.S. Fossil Fuel Resources: Terminology, Reporting, and Summary,” which clearly showed that the U.S. has a considerable amount of oil, coal, and natural gas at its disposal—but most of it hasn't been accessed. According to the report, “the resource pyramid indicates that many of the high quality, easy to...

Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. ... Cassini has mapped about 20 percent of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than...

Authorities say an oil spill near Prudhoe Bay contaminated about 8,400 square feet of snow-covered tundra. Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman Weld Royal said oil cleanup crews rushed to the scene about 1 1/2 miles from a production center on the North Slope around 3 a.m. Sunday. She told The Associated Press that it still isn't clear how much spilled or what caused it, but the petroleum did not reach the bay. The spill occurred around an 18-inch pipeline that carried a mixture of crude oil, produced water, and natural gas, but the line was not in operation at...

<p>NAIROBI, Kenya — The EU's anti-piracy force says Somali pirates have seized a super tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States.</p>

The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organizations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health. Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint. The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”. It believes health professionals are ideally placed to promote change because “we have ethical responsibility…..as well as the capacity to influence people and our...

United States crude oil production for 2009 is on target to have its biggest one-year jump since 1970, according to a Platts analysis of industry data. With U.S. oil production averaging 5.268 million barrels per day (b/d) through October, the gain in U.S. output will be the most since the country produced 9.637-million b/d in 1970, which turned out to be the peak year of U.S. crude output, according to Platts' analysis of data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). If that 5.268 million b/d figure holds through December, this year would show a 6.4% boost from the...

Russia plans to invest up to $625 billion over the next two decades to raise oil production by about 10 per cent and a further $590 billion to add at least 33 per cent to its gas output, the Energy Ministry said on Thursday. The oil and gas investment, part of a $2-trillion-plus plan to develop the Russian energy sector by 2030, also envisages Asian markets taking a much larger share of Russia's exports as the country develops resource fields in Siberia and the Far East. "This will allow the Russian energy sector to lower its risk of being dependent...

NEW YORK, Nov. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Platts - United States crude oil production for 2009 is on target to have its biggest one-year jump since 1970, according to a Platts analysis of industry data. With U.S. oil production averaging 5.268 million barrels per day (b/d) through October, the gain in U.S. output will be the most since the country produced 9.637-million b/d in 1970, which turned out to be the peak year of U.S. crude output, according to Platts' analysis of data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). If that 5.268 million b/d figure holds through December, this...

Two years ago, Congress ordered the nation’s gasoline refiners to do something that is turning out to be mathematically impossible. To please the farm lobby and to help wean the nation off oil, Congress mandated that refiners blend a rising volume of ethanol and other biofuels into gasoline. They are supposed to use at least 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012, up from less than seven billion gallons in 2007. But nobody at the time counted on fuel demand falling in the United States, which is what has happened during the recession. And that decline could well continue, as...

As an American living in Canada and a do-it-yourself (DIY) investor, I've decided to short the US dollar and to keep the majority of my holdings in Canada resource companies (oil and gas, gold mining). This is a play that has worked well so far. When the resource-heavy Canadian stock market felt serious pressure during the credit crisis I was able to pick up some bargains. I am far from alone in this strategy. PetroChina's purchase of a $1.9 billion stake in Alberta's Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. and Korean National Oil Corp.'s plan to acquire outright Harvest Energy Trust for...

A detailed look at the largest Oil Companies, how they operate and who the major players in the field are. The Oil Companies take a lot of Flak, but are they as bad as you think? Companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell now produce only 10% of the world's oil and gas and hold a mere 3% of its reserves. Big Oil’s primary “Movers & Shakers” according to “The Financial Times,” are: Aramco of Saudi Arabia, CNPC of China, Gazprom of Russia, NIOC of Iran, PDVSA of Venezuela, , Petrobras of Brazil, as well as Petronas of...

In another example of how liberals get their panties in a wad when they are challenged for the decisions they make, Ken Salazar resorted to name-calling and innuendo as he tried to defend the Obama Administration's extremist energy policies. Ken Salazar, criticized the oil and gas industry for accusing the Obama Administration of stifling energy development in the West and offshore. He also left little doubt that he felt that the industry is nothing less than an arm of the Republican party. I always find it amusing when liberals resort to this type of attack. No facts to counter the...

Can New technology divert a potential Oil Crisis? We take a look at the latest technology and techniques being used by Oil Companies in the field of Oil Drilling. With our dwindling supply of fossil fuels, oil drillers are finding themselves in great demand and as their techniques become more sophisticated Oil Fields are lasting longer and producing more of the black stuff. I suppose the first order of business would be to mention the continual fine tuning and innovative advances that are taking place almost daily within the technology of “Three Dimensional Seismic Imaging. For those with their head...

After years of over promising and under delivering, the solar Industry is finally starting to show some interesting developments which have the potential to make solar power as cheap as fossil fuel on a cost-per-watt basis within five years. Getting us to that state, called grid parity, would require solar companies to produce power for around $1 a watt. Is it possible anytime soon? Many analysts think so and the target date being touted around is 2015. The reason for this fresh optimism is a mixture of technological development and simple economics. Traditional conductive materials make up 40% to 50%...

More than 50 oil tankers are anchored off Britain - pieces in a game in which the only winners are market speculators. The losers are the millions of British motorists paying over the odds for their petrol and diesel. After yesterday's report in the Daily Mail on how several so-called 'oil shark' tankers were moored near the Devon coast, dozens more vessels were revealed to be loitering off-shore. Some are carrying aircraft fuel or fuel for homes. Others are empty, waiting to be restocked before setting off around the globe. But according to industry experts, a significant number are 'oil...

Growing world oil use will likely outpace the rate of new supplies in 2010, eroding the huge stockpiles of crude which have mounted around the world since the start of the global economic crisis. According to a Reuters poll of ten top oil-tracking analysts and organizations, oil demand is predicted to rise by 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) next year to 85.9 million bpd. At the same time, the rise in production from outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and output of natural gas liquids (NGLs) from OPEC members is seen growing by just 800,000 bpd in...

Delivering an update on Shell's two flagship gas projects in Qatar, which are costing the group $21bn (£12.6bn), Mr Voser admitted that one – a liquiefied natural gas (LNG) plant – would overrun by about 10 months. However, he said construction was on track for Pearl, the other development, to start producing in 2011. It will be the world's largest gas-to-liquids facility when completed, having spiralled in cost from $5bn to $19bn since 2003. Both projects will lift Shell's output by 10pc – or 350,000 barrels per day - and contribute $4bn per year in revenues. "Qatar is key to...

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar blasted big oil trade groups Tuesday, accusing them of barring the way to a balanced US energy system that would create thousands of jobs. The oil and gas leasing program put in place by President Barack Obama's administration is "robust" and "focuses on development in the right way, in the right places and with a fair return to the American taxpayer," Salazar said as he announced plans to auction 38 oil and gas leases next year.

As scientists, Governments and Industry look for viable replacements to our quickly dwindling supply of fossil fuels, attention has again turned to biofuels and the potential they offer. You’ve all no doubt heard of Ethanol, rapeseed and other popular bio-diesel crops, but it is now possible to turn our quickly growing garbage mountains into biofuels. Scientists have now discovered some amazingly effective, mutually beneficial, symbiotic processes that could single-handedly solve both imminent problems with the creation of “bio-fuels” and “synthetic fuels” derived directly from our trash and garbage. Full article is: http://www.oilprice.com/article-biofuel-of-the-future-turning-our-garbage-into-energy.html

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted key oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers rarely come forward to advance their careers), a slow-burning thermonuclear explosion on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves have the potential to throw governments’ long-term planning into chaos. Whatever the reality, rising long term global demands seem certain to outstrip production in the next decade, especially given the high...

About half of the oil in the ocean bubbles up naturally from the seafloor, with Earth giving it up freely like it was of no value. Likewise, NASA satellites collect thousands of images every year, but some of them get passed over because no one thinks there is a use for them. Scientists recently found black gold bubbling up from an otherwise undistinguished mass of ocean imagery. Chuanmin Hu, an optical oceanographer at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, and colleagues from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth (UMass), found that they could...

BP and ConocoPhillips have reduced their capital spending and developmental budgets for Alaska in 2010 because of higher costs to produce mature fields, disappointing exploratory results and the state's new tax regime, the companies said. London-based BP's 2010 capital spending will be $850 million, or down 15% from more than $1 billion this year, John Minge, president of BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. said Wednesday during a conference. One-third of next year's budget will be spent on infrastructure renewal, one-third in drilling and one-third in growth projects, he added. BP's Alaska budget includes projects such as the development of heavy oil...

U.S. refiners are expected to keep output at historic lows through the beginning of 2010 as they wait for the economy to recover enough to revive demand for gasoline and other fuels. Refiners are keeping runs below 80 per cent of capacity by extending the scope and length of planned seasonal maintenance. They are even shutting plants in hopes of whittling down brimming diesel and gasoline stocks to keep profit margins in the black. Valero Energy Corp., America's biggest refiner, hammered home the extent of the industry's weakness on Friday when it said it will close its 210,000-barrel-a-day refinery in...

WASHINGTON -- What city contributed most to the making of the modern world? The Paris of the Enlightenment and then of Napoleon, pioneer of mass armies and nationalist statism? London, seat of parliamentary democracy and center of finance? Or perhaps Titusville, Pa. Oil seeping from the ground there was collected for medicinal purposes -- until Edwin Drake drilled and 150 years ago -- Aug. 27, 1859 -- found the basis of our world, 69 feet below the surface of Pennsylvania, which oil historian Daniel Yergin calls "the Saudi Arabia of 19th-century oil." For many years, most oil was used for...

Oil-refinery workers on the Delaware River yesterday received their second big blow in six weeks, when Valero Energy Corp. said it would close its operation in Delaware City, Del., casting 550 out of work. When workers heard the news, "it was like a time bomb went off," said Matt Edler, who has worked for 10 years at the refinery that rises out of the lowlands near the Delaware River in southern New Castle County. "My grandfather worked there, my father, and I worked there," said Edler, who yesterday afternoon joined other shocked refinery workers at Red Lion Inn in Bear,...

Most foreign investors have been focused on Central Asia’s vast hydrocarbon resources and the extractive industries of energy and Minerals. But water is an issue of rising concern throughout the region as after years of soviet mismanagement geopolitical tensions are running high. These regional problems present outside companies willing to think outside the box with an incredible opportunity and a guaranteed red carpet welcome. Simply put, the region’s scarce water resources were misused to satisfy the autarchic needs of the entire USSR, whose breakup in 1991 completely disrupted inter-republic trade patterns, leaving the Stans with the remnants of a centrally...

Where can you spend almost $US150,000 per square metre on a piece of land? Not the Champs-Elysees in Paris, or Broadway or New York. But Mecca! This film shows the transformation of the holiest place in the Islamic world into a real estate business for religious tourism … More than 3-million Muslims from around the world now attend the world’s largest pilgrimage, the Hajj. Following the pilgrims’ journey, this film features a rare interview with the Bin Laden Group behind much of the monumental development of Mecca, potentially Saudi Arabia’s new ‘gold’.

Here’s an interesting (and very likely) prognostication: Some time in the very near future Iran will be in possession of a nuclear weapon and Israel’s hand will be forced. Strike preemptively or be struck. Either way, the result will be a conflagration in the Middle East that will stop access to oil not just from Iran, but also from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The result will be a worldwide shortage of oil from which nations like Russia, Mexico and Venezuela will benefit, while the rest of the world finds itself in a catastrophic social and...

I've been in recent contact with an old high school classmate discussing several issues and the most recent was global warming. She then brought up the issue of "Peak Oil" which I researched and gave her my reply. She then stated that she gets her information from the website called TheOilDrum.com I checked it out and there does appear to be many biased articles against the oil companies and their attempts to expand domestic drilling. So my question to all of you is, are there any sites that have dealt specifically with the information being thrown out by The Oil...

CARACAS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday the South American oil producer's economic slide was largely due to its compliance with OPEC-mandated production cuts. GDP shrank 4.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009, a second consecutive three-month contraction that by most economists' definition puts Venezuela in recession. Though Venezuela is still heading for a smaller economic decline this year than plenty of other nations, Chavez critics have leapt on this week's data as evidence of the failure of his decade-long socialist drive.

Dorgan, who chairs the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, announced a $457,000 federal Energy Department grant to study the feasibility of a new oil refinery in North Dakota. What I’ve never understood is why the Rural Electric Co-Op is getting an earmark to study an oil refinery. And on top of that, why are we spending almost a half a million of our grandchildren’s as-yet-unearned tax dollars on studying the feasibility of an oil refinery in the state ? Plus, we already have one refinery in the state and there’s another one in the works... Other than the fact...

The Great Geopolitical Battle Over Energy Transit Routes As we all live in the present, it is very hard to fully assess the future implications of decisions supported or made by political and business leaders. An extraordinary game of geo-strategy is under way to lock in long-term agreements, notably in the energy sector. At a global level, the transit routes of future oil & gas pipelines become the object of a power struggle involving not only the suppliers and end-users but also the transit countries. Intensive courtships are under way where a ménage à trois, or more, may be the...

The U.S. dollar slid to 15-month lows on Monday, boosting world stocks and commodity prices, even after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank was monitoring the value of the greenback "closely." U.S. crude oil futures jumped more than 3 percent as the weaker dollar prompted investors to buy higher-yielding assets such as commodities and stocks. The greenback weakened on better-than-expected U.S. retail sales data, which stoked risk appetite, and after Asian and U.S. leaders failed to agree on exchange rates at a summit in Singapore. The dollar briefly pared its losses after Bernanke said the Fed...

We Alaskans have a very special relationship to our environment. The land is our back yard. We use it for recreation and subsistence. The land has provided our livelihood, for the people and for the state. Alaska is a land of amazing natural beauty, and the resources that underlie that beauty are what sustains our economy. Responsible development, sustainable yield, and resource stewardship were written into the constitution and statutes when Alaska became a state 50 years ago, and have been part of how we have developed our natural resources ever since. When Alaska Statehood was being debated, a major...

In 1968 the discovery of the giant Prudhoe Bay field, the first field to be discovered on Alaska’s North Slope and among the 20 largest oil fields ever discovered worldwide, triggered a northern Alaska oil industry that now includes 19 producing oil fields, all feeding oil into the trans-Alaska oil pipeline for transportation to the Valdez Marine Terminal 800 miles to the south. In fact, the totality of northern Alaska consists of five distinct geologic regions: the Brooks Range, the Brooks Range foothills (also known as the Arctic foothills), the North Slope (also known as the Arctic coastal plain), the...

The Resource Development Council (RDC) has been at the forefront of efforts to convince the Obama administration to provide for a seamless transition to new oil and gas leasing programs in the future that will expand access to the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). RDC strongly supports access to the OCS, especially in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, and the North Aleutian Basin. The responsible development of potentially immense oil and gas deposits in Alaska would significantly boost the state’s economy, extend the life of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, improve the economic viability of the proposed natural gas pipeline from...

Yesterday the New York Times reported the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv’s revelations that Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat and advisor to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from Iraqi oil revenues. Galbraith’s profits would result from his cashing in on his links to the Kurdish regional leadership, and his role in drafting Iraq’s Constitution, shortly after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In 2004, Galbraith helped the Kurds arrange deals with Norwegian oil firm DNO and prepare for negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution, including controversial provisions on...

Has this been a trying decade for the average American, or what? It's bad enough that we've have had to cope with stagnant wages and tax increases at just about every level. But in the months ahead, we may have to deal with yet another nightmare: surging gasoline prices. Factors are lining up that could end up pushing gas prices back over $4 per gallon sometime next year. If you're already exasperated about prices at the pump, you're not the only one. Gasoline demand in 2009 has been comparatively low -- take 7.6 million Americans out of the workforce through...

Submitted by Phil at Phil's Stock World $2.5 Trillion - That’s the size of of the global oil scam. It’s a number so large that, to put it in perspective, we will now begin measuring the damage done to the global economy in "Madoff Units" ($50Bn rip-offs). That’s right - $2.5Tn is 50 TIMES the amount of money that Bernie Madoff scammed from investors in his lifetime, yet it is also LESS than the MONTHLY EXCESS price the global population is being manipulated into paying for a barrel of oil. Where is the outrage? Where are the investigations? Goldman Sachs,...

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that the recent rise in the price of oil "risks derailing the recovery" if it continues. The IEA says that oil demand itself will also rebound much more slowly if price rises continue in 2010. The price of oil has risen by 77% this year and is now trading at about $79 dollars a barrel. The IEA also warned that signs of renewed economic growth remained "tentative". 'Risk' In its monthly report, the agency said China was driving demand and revised upwards its forecasts. In 2010, it predicts a 1.6% increase in demand...