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Oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays look like they’ve peaked and other shale plays may not be far behind. Oil production from seven major U.S. shale plays is expected to fall by a total of 86,000 barrels a day in June, according to a monthly report from the Energy Information Administration released Monday. The previous report released a month ago also showed a forecast for a fall of 57,000 barrels a day in May. Oil output at the Eagle Ford shale play in South Texas is forecast to see the biggest decline, down 47,000 barrels a...

American Eagle Energy became the fourth U.S. energy producer to file for bankruptcy protection in the aftermath of the big drop in crude oil prices. The Colorado-based company that buys and develops oil wells in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota and Montana filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday in Denver’s bankruptcy court. American Eagle Energy, which recently missed an interest payment on its debt, listed assets of $222 million and liabilities of $215 million. Shares of American Eagle Energy traded for as much as $7.05 less than a year ago, reflecting the stunningly fast collapse of...

#1 It is being projected that the U.S. oil rig count will decline by 15 percent in the first quarter of 2015 alone. And when there are less rigs operating, less workers are needed so people get fired. #2 Last week, 55 more oil rigs shut down. That was the largest single week decline in the United States in 24 years. #3 Oilfield services provider Baker Hughes has announced that it plans to lay off 7,000 workers. #4 Schlumberger, a big player in the energy industry, has announced plans to get rid of 9,000 workers. #5 Suncor Energy is eliminating...

Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events - or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries. Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign. Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at...

The Obama administration will release 5 million barrels of sour crude from the United States’ emergency stockpile in what officials described as a “test” of the nation’s ability to respond to oil supply disruptions around the globe.

In spite of the Obama Administration's hostility to carbon-rich energy, private actors with private capital deployed on private (and state) land have launched a game-changing revolution in domestic oil and natural gas production. A scarcely reported milestone conveys the magnitude of this turnaround in the global energy landscape. The U.S. passed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest petroleum producer in November 2012, according to recently released data of the federal Energy Information Administration. Over the last five years, domestic oil output has risen 40% and continually outpaces projections. Last year, domestic output increased by 800,000 barrels per day. This is...

My top 5 oil industry facts: 1) Oil is important. Shockingly, sometimes horrifically important. The world economy has been developing with oil as its lifeblood for over a hundred years. Oil is directly responsible for about 2.5% of world GDP [1], but accounts for 1/3rd of humanity's primary energy supply (>5 terawatts out of 15 terawatts total) [2]. It's over half if you include natural gas. World Energy Consumption by Source, in Terawatts World energy consumption Oil/gas powers 100% of all transportation, within a few significant figures of rounding error. Transportation, in turn, directly accounted for 1/6th of world GDP...

Most probably, on December 1st, Mr. Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN), the presidential candidate of PRI party, will become the new Mexican president for a six year term. The PRI was the dominant political party in Mexico from 1929 to 2000 although with different names. The resurgence of the PRI comes after a 12 year interregnum of the PAN, a center-right party whose merit was to evict the “hegemonic” PRI from Los Pinos, Mexico’s presidential house. The question on everyone’s minds is: Will the return of the PRI spell a reversal of energy policies pursued by PAN during the past 12...

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits. The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit. The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100...

With the current brouhaha over the national debt and projected trillion dollar budget deficits, one side wants to cut spending to solve the problem, the other wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and on businesses. The tax raisers talk about cutting spending, and make a token effort to cut a little bit, but mostly they’re just talking. They don’t do spending cuts; they only want to raise taxes. Like many liberal solutions this one sounds good in the abstract. After all, when you want money, where better to get it than from those that have it? The notorious bank...

It might, if the US Fish and Wildlife Service puts the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard on the endangered-species list. USFWS has an open period for public comment at the moment on the proposal, which if adopted could force oil companies in West Texas and New Mexico to close up shop. The industry argues that USFWS is relying on bad data and faulty methodology: A three-inch lizard that thrives in desert conditions could shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and in West Texas, including the state’s top two oil producing counties.Called the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, it...

While President Obama promotes offshore drilling in Brazil, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar now promises to revitalize America's oil and gas industry. It's like Jack "Dr. Death" Kevorkian promoting himself as a lifesaving CPR specialist. This week, Salazar announced that the administration has just approved the first deepwater-oil- and gas-exploration plan since last spring's BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Mind you: This is not a granting of permits, but a green light for Shell Offshore to seek drilling permits for three new exploratory wells off the Louisiana coast. Shell first submitted and received approval for its original exploration plan in 1985. Salazar's...

Today's gasolines include up to 10 percent ethanol. Automakers are opposing a move to boost the ethanol content to 15 percent. Automakers are seeking to head off an EPA ruling that would allow gasoline to contain 15 percent ethanol, up from 10 percent now, and they've won some bipartisan congressional support. The two main automaker industry lobbies have argued that the U.S. Department of Energy has done insufficient testing to assure that gasoline containing up to 15 percent ethanol won't harm vehicles. Increased ethanol composition could affect engine durability, emissions, driveability and on-board diagnostics systems, the Association of International Automobile...

Authorities confirmed today that a pipe bomb sent to the home of a local oil executive was meant for his wife and not the executive. Vennie Wolf, 58, was injured Friday evening when she opened a shoebox-sized package that shot out shrapnel and nails. As they continued to chase down leads, officials today said they believed the incident in northwest Houston was an isolated one. But they refused to discuss the investigation’s progress or why Wolf may have been targeted by the bomb. "It’s an ongoing investigation," said Rob Elder, assistant special agent in charge at the Houston office of...

In a poll released yesterday and reported Thursday evening on the Fox News' Bill O'Reilly program, 59% of Americans now disapprove of Obama's handling of the Gulf oil spill. The results of the poll were reported in a segment with radio commentator Laura Ingraham. Video Here. As Obama and the Administration come under increasing fire for their lackadaisical approach to the mounting problems created by the spill, which is moving closer to large stretches of beaches along the Gulf shoreline, the mainstream media has generally failed to report the widespread public dissatisfaction with Obama. Instead, the media has chosen to...

Why he’d have to nationalize the entire industry to deal with the BP leak is unclear to me, but all men have their fantasies, my friends. Doubtless most of our male readers were thinking about Miss USA for much of the afternoon; Tingles, bless his heart, was thinking about this. We should get him and Woody Allen together, see where the discussion leads. That’d be a “Hardball” for the ages, wouldn’t it?I think The One’s more of a commission kind of guy than an “emergency seizure” kind of guy. Which is fortunate, because from what I can tell, Matthews’s idea...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Energy: A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit. From trying to stimulate jobs in nonexistent ZIP codes at great expense to worshiping the false gods of climate change, our biggest deficit these days may be in the area of common sense. A new study shows that many of our wounds are self-inflicted as we forgo the wealth and jobs to be found in our waters and under our feet. The study by Science Applications International Corp....

Government workers in oil industry sex and drug scandal Thu Sep 11, 2008 9:19am EDT By Tom Doggett WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Department employees who oversaw oil drilling on federal lands had sex and used illegal drugs with workers at energy companies where they were conducting official business, an internal government report said on Wednesday. Employees at the department's Minerals Management Service "socialized with, and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from, oil and gas companies," according to the department's inspector general, Earl Devaney. "When confronted by our investigators, none of the employees involved displayed remorse," Devaney...

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling. Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.