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Environmental groups cringe as some trade unions support oil and gas drilling, pipelines PITTSBURGH (AP) -- After early complaints that out-of-state firms got the most jobs, some local construction trade workers and union members in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia say they're now benefiting in a big way from the Marcellus and Utica Shale oil and gas boom.That vocal support from blue-collar workers complicates efforts by environmentalists to limit the drilling process known as fracking."The shale became a lifesaver and a lifeline for a lot of working families," said Dennis Martire, the mid-Atlantic regional manager for the Laborers' International Union,...

SHAFTER, Calif. — A bustling city is sprouting on five acres here, carved out of a vast almond grove. Tanker trucks and heavy equipment come and go, a row of office trailers runs the length of the site and an imposing 150-foot drilling rig illuminated by football-field-like lights rises over the trees. It's all been hustled into service to solve a tantalizing riddle: how to tap into the largest oil shale reservoir in the United States. Across the southern San Joaquin Valley, oil exploration sites have popped up in agricultural fields and on government land, driven by the hope that...

Truth001 wrote: Putin has got to be laughing his rear end off because the US is the only place where the people eat their own. He is got to be saying I can do know wrong I'm a hero to those US media conservative outlets and its checkmate to the US left and its western allies. Oh by the way John post another picture of this guy next time or at least one with a shirt. If you want to look at this guy without a shirt do it in private. --Putin, Not Obama, is the Messiah Dear Comrade Pravda,...

Exxon Mobil bearish on shale drilling abroad

Pioneer Flourishes in U.S. Shale Fields Where Shell Floundered By Joe Carroll Mar 10, 2014 7:00 AM ET Pioneer Natural Resources Co. (PXD), the top energy stock in the S&P 500 last year, is tripling drilling in shale fields as international energy explorers five times its size recoil from losses on the U.S. oil renaissance.Pioneer is expanding its fleet of drilling rigs in the northern part of Texas’ Spraberry field to 16 from five this quarter after striking reservoirs so rich that some wells are expected to pump as much as 1 million barrels of crude during their lifespans. Pioneer’s...

Must-know: US oil rig counts reached a new 2014 high of 1,423 By Ingrid Pan, CFA - Disclosure • Feb 21, 2014 2:05 pm EST • EOG • OAS • PXD • XLE • XOM Continued from Part 1: Why rig counts show a stable oil and gas drilling environmentOil rig counts increased last week to 1,423, the highest level since 2014 beganLast week, the Baker Hughes oil rig count increased from 1,416 to 1,423, the highest level since 2014 began. Oil rig counts have risen by 45 (or 3%) since the beginning of 2014, with a large part of...

Royal Dutch Shell Plc., Europe’s biggest oil company, said crude prices would on average probably remain at current levels or rise steadily for the next two decades, with periods of volatility.

In Europe, where fracking is heavily regulated or prohibited altogether, consumers pay more than twice for natural gas than what they do in America (currently $11.59 per mBtu vs $4.78). As consumers, businesses, and electric utilities pay more, the result is a stalled economy and lower standard of living. Thanks in part to its large investment in solar energy, Spain's per capita GDP in current U.S. dollars has dropped from $31,679 in 2010 to $28,624 in 2012. Based on his recent words and actions, Obama wants the same for the U.S. Over half the homes in America heat with natural...

Energy Boom Helps Narrow Trade Gap

The Year in Energy: 10 Big Energy Stories of 2013                 As 2013 comes to a close, it's time to look back at the big energy stories of the year. Here's my top 10 stories from 2013...1. Japan taps methane hydrates with explosive implications for the future of global energy supplies.The Japanese Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry announced in March that a team aboard a drilling ship pearched above the Eastern Nankai Trough had extracted methane gas from hydrates trapped 1,000 feet below the sea floor surface. Methane hydrates, also known as clathrates or...

Shocking Prediction: The 'Second Phase' Of The Oil Boom Could Eclipse The First By Jody Chudley December 31, 2013 Shocking Prediction: The 'Second Phase' Of The Oil Boom Could Eclipse The First Five years ago the idea of an oil boom happening in the North America was not much more than a dream. Today, the U.S. is on pace to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer by the end of the decade. It isn't as though the oil industry didn't always know that formations such as the Bakken in North Dakota and Eagle Ford in Texas contained...

Israel's New Conflict: Battle Over Sustained Energy Policy By David Kashi on October 22 2013 10:32 AM The Levant Basin has an untapped natural gas reserve of 122 trillion cubic feet. The U.S. Energy Information Agency With new discoveries of natural gas off Israel's shores, the Middle Eastern country that had always been an energy importer now faces major policy decisions for safeguarding and capitalizing on its new resource. Thanks to Houston-based Noble Energy Inc.'s (NYSE:NBL) major deep-water discovery, the country is now able to tap into huge natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, called the Levant...

Four Decades After The Arab Oil Embargo, The US Outperforms Saudi Arabia; How The 1973 Crisis Changed US Energy Policy And Habits By David Kashi on October 18 2013 6:26 PM   Cars lined up at a New York City gas station during the Arab oil embargo in 1973. Marty Lederhandler/Associated Press In the fall of 1973, Buick offered “the man with a family” his choice of a new Century Regal coupe or four-door sedan, either of which, it would later be noted, guzzled gas like there was no tomorrow. The ad, which ran in the Oct. 22, 1973,...

News from globeandmail.com U.S. energy boom firing on all cylinders for 2014 Tuesday, December 24, 2013 DAVID BERMAN dberman@globeandmail.comDavid Berman writes for Inside the Market (tgam.ca/inside-the-market), which offers up-to-the-minute analysis of stock trends and market-moving news throughout the trading day.It is amazing how fast U.S. energy production has gained traction in our imaginations. One minute, the country is talking up a need to move toward energy independence; the next, it is on the verge of becoming the world's largest oil producer, according to the International Energy Agency.James Hamilton at Econbrowser highlights the transition this way: Just eight months ago, the...

The US Energy Boom: More than Just an Oil Story December 23, 2013 by Frank Holmes Leave a Comment As we come to the end of 2013, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the biggest resources stories of the year. One that immediately comes to mind is the U.S. energy resurgence and its tremendous effect on oil and gas.Only a few years ago, we were contemplating the supply constraints facing the petroleum industry, as many major oil fields around the world were declining in production. Now, with the disruptive technology in shale oil and gas, we may...

Written by Tom Vulcan  |December 27, 2013 Innovation Behind Drilling Efficiency & Well Productivity Fueling America’s Energy Boom Fewer rigs but more wells per rig proving powerful combination, among other new tricks of the trade. In the world of fracking, the last few months have been significant on a number of counts. Two, in particular, were indicative of just how important fracking really has become in the U.S.First, at the end of October, the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration commenced publication of its new “Drilling Productivity Report” (DPR). Initially covering six production basins (which, in 2011-2012, accounted for nearly all...

The developed world is slowly emerging from the Great Recession, but a question lingers: How fast and how far will the recovery go? One big source of pessimism has been the idea that we are running out of investment opportunities – and have been since before the 2008 crash. But is that true? The last big surge of innovation was the Internet revolution, whose products came onstream in the 1990s. Following the dot-com collapse of the early 2000s, speculation in real estate and financial assets – enabled by cheap money – kept Western economies going. The post-2008 slump merely exposed...

Continental basks in shale glory The company leads production of the Bakken shale of North Dakota and Montana The US shale revolution is “the best thing going on in the world since the computer chip”, says Harold Hamm, chairman and chief executive of Continental Resources. “Look at what’s going on today, how the world’s changing. It’s the best thing for America, in my opinion, in 40 years. It’s completely transformative.” No one embodies that transformation better than Hamm. Continental, which has its origins in a company he founded back in 1967, is now the leading producer in the Bakken shale...

The last big surge of innovation was the Internet revolution, whose products came onstream in the 1990’s. Following the dot-com collapse of the early 2000’s, speculation in real estate and financial assets – enabled by cheap money – kept Western economies going. The post-2008 slump merely exposed the unsoundness of the preceding boom; the mediocrity of the recovery reflects the mediocrity of previous prospects, coolly considered. The risk now is that a debt-fueled asset spike merely perpetuates the boom-bust cycle. The economist Larry Summers has reintroduced the term “secular stagnation” to describe what awaits us. By the mid-2000’s, Summers argued...

West Texas Oil Flood Texas Crude Profits   l By Keith KohlFriday, December 20th, 2013At around 6 o'clock on the morning of May 28, 1923, an oil well named after the patron saint of the impossible blew. The well sprayed oil over the top of the derrick and covered a 250-yard area around the site.This is the infamous picture of it:On that morning, the oil boom in West Texas was born. The name of the well was Santa Rita No. 1.For the next 50 years, oil from West Texas flooded the world. Wildcatters, ranchers, and residents of sleepy cowtowns became...