Free Republic

Energy: While taking credit for increased oil and gas production on private and state lands, the president moves to put 12 million acres of the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off limits. OPEC and the Saudis are smiling. Whoever's in charge of presidential optics these days fits the classic definition of the blind leading the blind. It's bad enough that President Obama doesn't have time to get to Paris for a global protest against terrorism after the Charlie Hebdo attack but can meet and greet the San Antonio Spurs. But then he privately slams an invitation by Congress to Israeli...

After the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it didnt take long for environmentalists to cry gloom and doom and for the media to hype those claims. From caribou dying to earthquakes to all hell breaking loose, there was no shortage of catastrophic predictions though the Alaska pipeline now boasts great success roughly 30 years later.      Construction on the pipeline began in 1975, and oil first moved through it on June 20, 1977. Former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton summed up its success in 2003 that Today the pipeline produces 17 percent of our domestic petroleum. It...

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu contributed a statement to an announced breakthrough in research into tapping the vast fuel resource of methane hydrates that could eventually bolster already massive U.S. natural gas reserves.As Al Fin pointed out yesterday natural gas is priced to a barrel of oil equivalent at about $10-$11 per the estimable Geoffrey Styles view, something less than 10% of the cost of oil. For North Americans adding a viable and hopefully low cost means to make use of gas hydrates could be giant boost to low cost fuel sources and a massive kick to...

Energy: Lack of oil volume due to administration bans on new Alaskan drilling may force the shutdown of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, denying us even the tens of billions of barrels left in already developed fields. The Trans-Alaskan pipeline is dying, another casualty of the Obama administration's war on domestic fossil fuel energy and its deliberate effort to drive up energy prices to make so-called "green" energy alternatives more attractive. It was built to handle the oil produced on Alaska's North Slope at Prudhoe Bay and was a marvel of American engineering and exceptionalism. When oil exploration began in Prudhoe Bay,...

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

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...

Energy: With Ahab-like determination, environmentalists have once again blocked oil exploration in the American Arctic. They may just have succeeded in putting the American economy on ice.On Friday, a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals Court panel in Washington, D.C., struck down the Bush administration's five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing off Alaska's northern coast. The plan was vacated, the panel ruled, because of allegedly insufficient environmental review because its "environmental sensitivity rankings are irrational." What is irrational is that despite a more than three-decade long record of environmental sensitivity at Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere, and despite booming polar...

It has been 31 years since the Prudhoe Bay oil field began producing on the North Slope, and though the crude oil flowing from the big field today is less than a third of what it was during the peak years, Prudhoe is still the linchpin of North Slope production: Today it provides more than half the oil moving down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Most of the new oil will have to come from the Prudhoe field and a second large field, Kuparuk, which is also showing its age. New oil could be found through exploration as well, but not...

OCT. 16 7:05 P.M. ET Production has been nearly restored to the Prudhoe Bay oil field where high winds last week coated electrical insulators with dirt, temporarily shutting down the nation's largest oil field. Production stood at over 350,000 barrels Monday with electrical service restored to all the main oil production facilities and workers' camps at the BP PLC-operated field in extreme northern Alaska, said BP Alaska spokesman Steve Rinehart. Production was expected to increase to a near capacity of 400,000 barrels a day over the next few days as workers continue to clean off insulators. "There is some follow-up...

In a story that ran Aug. 11 about the partial shutdown of an oil field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, The Associated Press, relying on information from BP PLC, erroneously reported that the eastern pipeline had not undergone a high-tech "smart pig" inspection since 1992. On Saturday, Aug. 12, the company told the AP that some of its employees were misinformed, and that the eastern pipeline, which began operating in 1977, never had the smart pig inspection. Below is a corrected version of the story: --- PRUDHOE BAY, Alaska (AP) - Federal regulators ordered BP PLC to conduct more rigorous tests...

Excerpt - BP said Friday it would keep one side of the nation's largest oil field open as it replaces 16 miles of pipes. The decision will allow BP to keep funneling up to 200,000 barrels of oil and natural gas from Prudhoe Bay. BP, which operates the oil field, had previously said it would have to completely shut down the oil field after discovering leaks and severe corrosion on the eastern side of the pipeline nearly a week ago. ~ snip ~

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil prices hovered around the flat line Friday as traders weighed demand concerns linked to heightened terrorism fears against an uncertain supply outlook. Much of BP's Alaskan production remains halted, while continued tensions in the Middle East and more oil-related kidnappings in Nigeria also factor into energy traders' thinking. Crude for September delivery was last off 5 cents at $73.95 a barrel, after ending Thursday's New York Mercantile Exchange session at a near two-week low. The contract rose early in the session to touch a high of $74.81 in electronic trade. Gasoline futures bounced back, up...

Oil major BP Plc said on Friday it was pleased the U.S. government saw no need now to shut down the western portion of its giant Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska, and reiterated it would make a decision on whether to proceed with its full closure by early next week. BP, reacting to a Corrective Action Order (CAO) issued earlier by the Department of Transport (DOT), said it would not resume output from the closed eastern portion of the 400,000 barrel per day (bpd) field without prior approval of the government. "We are analyzing the CAO and determining the actions...

The governor of Alaska has questioned whether BP misled it over the condition of its pipelines, given the recent leak from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield. The shutdown at the site is expected to cost Alaska $6.4m (£3.4m) a day in tax revenues and this has prompted a government state-wide hiring freeze. The closure followed "numerous" satisfactory maintenance reports from BP, governor Frank Murkowski said. He said BP would be "held responsible" for its earlier management of the site. "BP must get the entire Prudhoe Bay field back up and running as soon as is safely possible," he said.

BP, officials seek ways to keep some Prudhoe oil flowing BP continued deactivating the mammoth Prudhoe Bay oil field on Tuesday, but signals began to emerge that the shutdown might be shorter and less extensive than first feared. A BP spokesman, Daren Beaudo, said company managers along with state and federal regulators were studying options to possibly keep the western half of the field running. By late Tuesday afternoon, workers had shut down the eastern half of the field, where severe corrosion was found inside a major pipeline that sprang a leak over the weekend. That brought Prudhoe's production down...

Print this story | Email it to an associate. Vol. 11, No. 20 Week of May 14, 2006 Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry BP: Learning from oil spill lessonsJohnson, Beaudo explain what they think happened in Prudhoe Bay’s largest spill and what the company is learning from the incidentAlan BaileyPetroleum NewsOn March 2 a BP well pad operator discovered a leak in the transit line that delivers oil to the trans-Alaska pipeline from Gathering Center 2 in the western operating area of the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s North Slope. The...

The U.S. government and oil giant BP Plc. have discussed scenarios where half of Alaska's huge Prudhoe Bay field could continue to pump oil for hungry U.S. refiners, U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Tuesday. The news, which Bodman delivered to reporters after speaking with BP America Chief Executive Bob Malone, could sooth worries that a shut-down of the 400,000 barrel per day Alaska field will exacerbate shortages in Nigeria, Iraq and elsewhere. BP on Sunday began shutting down the field after discovering a corroded pipeline and said it could be weeks or months before production resumed. Initially BP...

BP announced Monday it will replace miles of key pipelines across the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field, and executives admitted the company's program to find and prevent corrosion-caused leaks is seriously flawed. The announcements came a day after BP decided to shut down the nation's largest oil field, news that drove up crude oil and gasoline prices across the country and raised financial, supply and labor worries in Alaska. BP executives said the oil outage could last weeks or even months. One member of Congress, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., blasted BP for allowing sludge and corrosion to mount inside pipelines,...

BP began a complete shutdown of the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field Sunday after a leak onto the tundra raised new and troubling questions about dangerous corrosion of North Slope pipelines. The extraordinary shutdown will reduce the flow of all North Slope oil by 400,000 barrels a day -- nearly half the Slope's normal output -- and could rattle oil and gasoline markets. The shutdown also will crimp state tax and royalty revenue by millions of dollars a day. Shutting down the field and its roughly 1,000 wells will take days to complete, and BP executives said the field will...

ANCHORAGE/NEW YORK - Oil producer BP yesterday began shutting down the biggest oilfield in the US, Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, after discovering a damaged pipeline, sending oil prices nearly 2% higher and its shares sharply lower. BP, already part of a criminal probe into a much bigger Alaskan pipeline rupture in March, was unable to estimate when output might resume at the field, which pumps 400 000 barrels daily and accounts for 8% of US domestic production. BP shares slumped as much as 2% toay.