The United States has plenty of oil
... and natural gas.
Oil Fields Gushing
in the U.S.. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is likely to raise by a substantial amount
its existing estimate that U.S. oil production will grow by 550,000 barrels per day by 2020, to just over six
million barrels daily.
Fracking:
The Radical Left's Latest Weapon of Fear. A Congressional Research Service report to Congress in
late 2009 indicated that America's combined supply of recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal exceeds every other
nation on earth; even far greater than Saudi Arabia, China, and Canada combined! The CRS report was independently
confirmed last month by the Institute for Energy Research with the release of the North American Energy Inventory.
The IER study says the U.S. has more than 1.4 trillion barrels of recoverable oil reserves; 1.7 trillion
barrels when combined with Canada and Mexico. That's enough for 250 years of U.S. consumption according
to the IER, and more than the entire world has used in the previous 150 years. Additionally, the North
American continent has 4.2 quadrillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas reserves — enough
to last the next 175 years at current rates of consumption according to IER.
Wake Up and
Smell the Energy. In terms of oil, the proven reserves of 1.79 trillion barrels available in
North America is more than will likely ever flow through the Strait of Hormuz and in fact twice that of all
the OPEC nations combined. That's enough to fill the tank of every passenger car in the United States
for the next 30 years. Our natural gas future is even brighter. An estimated 4.244 quadrillion
cubic feet of recoverable resources could keep every home well-heated for the next 575 winters at current
usage rates.
The environmentalists are now going after
the production of frac sand in Wisconsin. Sand
mining boom in Midwest emerges in fracking debate. Largely overlooked in the national debate over
fracking is the emerging fight in the U.S. heartland over mining "frac sand," which has grains of ideal size,
shape, strength and purity.
EPA
is Binge Gambling with US Economy. In recent history, we've collectively bet on "sure things" and
lost. We once believed there was an energy shortage — but modern technology and resource expansion
have created a global oil glut, and natural gas is so plentiful that it is currently priced at a two-year low.
America is now a net exporter of fuel.
The
Hype Surrounding Renewable Energy. [Scroll down] America is blessed with vast amounts of
coal (providing nearly half of our electricity), and natural gas (about 23% of power). We also have huge
land and offshore oil reserves vital for transportation fuel, including enormous amounts contained along with
gas in oil shale deposits amounting to hundreds of years of supply.
Oil and Gas Bubble
Up All Over. You'll know the U.S. energy industry is really on the rebound when North Dakota's
newfangled Bakken oil field starts pumping more crude than Alaska's stalwart Prudhoe Bay. Energy experts
expect it to happen in 2012.
Informative animated graphic: Bakken formation oil and gas drilling activity
mirrors development in the Barnett. Oil production growth in the Bakken shale play mirrors somewhat
the growth in natural gas production in the Barnett play. Like the Barnett, the Bakken drilling and production
animation above shows that drilling activity built up gradually and eventually led to rapid growth, particularly
from 2006 to 2010. Production grew because of increased use of horizontal drilling and the addition of
hydraulic fracturing, coupled with elevated prices for crude oil and other natural gas liquids.
Unlimited Domestic
Energy... Right Now. The National Petroleum Council estimates that by 2035 — if the
regulators will just stop endlessly excreting new hurdles — the U.S. will hit 3 million bpd of
shale oil alone. There are about 14 to 16 new American shale oil fields just starting to be
exploited. This has led the federal Energy Information Administration to raise its estimates for total
American liquid fuel output by nearly 40% — for next year alone!
In a first, gas and other
fuels are top US export. Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline,
diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990.
Ohio set to see oil boom thanks to
fracking. Ohio hasn't been an oil powerhouse for nearly 100 years. But thanks to
controversial new drilling technology, the state that once produced a third of the nation's crude and was the
birthplace of John D. Rockefeller's mighty Standard Oil could once again be a significant source of
domestic supply.
How
we became a net petroleum exporter again. This one will probably come as a surprise to many of
you. Despite the best (read: worst) efforts of the Obama administration and the counter-intuitive nature
of what you're paying for gas and heating bills this winter, the United States is on track to be a net exporter
of petroleum products for the first time in more than half a century.
The Volt Administration.
The United States is an energy colossus. Just this week, the state of North Dakota announced that it had
produced 488,068 barrels of oil per day in October, up 100,000 barrels from June of this year. State officials
predict that by 2013 to 2014, North Dakota will be producing 900,000 barrels a day, putting it ahead of California
and Alaska and behind only Texas (at 1.2 million barrels per day) in domestic oil production.
Climate talks, then
climate tax. Beneath our feet lies a treasure trove of affordable energy resources that warmist
adherents, who include President Obama, have placed off-limits. The United States possesses 1.4 trillion
barrels of recoverable oil, more than the oil the entire world has consumed during the past 150 years,
according to an Institute for Energy Research report released last week. Add in an estimated 2.7 quadrillion
cubic feet of recoverable natural gas and 486.1 billion short tons of recoverable coal, and our energy reserves
exceed those of any other nation on Earth.
America's Vast
Energy Resources. For a long time, the Left has gotten away with underselling America's energy
resources. The old chestnut that the U.S. uses 25% of the world's oil but only has 2% to 3% of
the world's oil reserves has been repeated endlessly by Barack Obama and many others. This claim fooled
millions of people who didn't understand that in the U.S., "reserves" means petroleum that is 1) legally
available for development, and 2) profitably extracted at current prices. So if Democrats would
stop preventing drilling, we could vastly increase our "reserves," as legally defined, overnight.
Oil-Rich America?
There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street
protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United
States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling. Current
prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable.
Gasoline: The new big U.S.
export. The United States is awash in gasoline. So much so, in fact, that the country is
exporting a record amount of it. The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it
imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Green
Energy Skepticism. Although our energy needs have been increasing rapidly, the U.S. didn't build
a new refinery between 1998 and 2008, even then over the strong objections of liberal progressives. ... Saying
that the U.S. is rich in energy resources is an understatement. At today's consumption levels, we have
enough coal to meet our needs for the next 500 years. We have 22,450,000,000 barrels of proven oil
reserves, and we are finding new oil reserves all the time. The U.S. has 250 trillion cubic feet of
proven natural gas reserves. We are finding new gas reserves daily, and we are discovering new ways to
tap into hard-to-get gas deposits.
The
Oil Industry Can Save America — If Washington Lets It. Have we drained the "natural
wealth" of America dry? Hardly. Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm sees the big picture of
American wealth. As head of the 14th-largest oil company in the nation, he knows how much fossil fuel
America possesses. He observes that if America had the right energy policies, it could be "completely
energy independent by the end of the decade. We can become the Saudi Arabia of oil and gas in the
21st century. President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy." Hamm adds that so-called
"green energy," despite billions in taxpayer subsidies, will not work.
Greens
Flummoxed By Cheap, Clean U.S. Gas. Green groups have a major new concern: fracking, the
process of extracting natural gas from shale deposits far underground. What they don't have is much hard
evidence that fracking is a danger. Fracking already is producing a bonanza in the U.S. Theoretically
it could provide enough to replace all coal-powered electricity with cleaner-burning natural gas.
A Disastrous Presidency.
The gulf lost 40,000 jobs when the president decided it was best to shut down all oil production after the BP oil
spill. The approval for Keystone XL Pipeline sits on his desk, awaiting his signature. It would
connect Canadian oil from the tar sands of Alberta with refineries in Cushing, Oklahoma and Nederland, Texas,
while providing 20,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs. With recent discoveries and improvements in
drilling techniques, some have called America the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. America also has the
largest oil reserves in the world; the Bakken Formation alone is said to contain more than 11 billion
barrels.
Warren
Buffett, the Keystone Pipeline, and Crony Capitalism. A decades-long crusade by the environmental
left to convince us that oil is evil, unsustainable, and destroying our planet has yet to accomplish its goal
of eliminating oil as a fuel, but it has succeeded in making oil [very] expensive. However, new technologies
for the extraction and transport of previously unrecoverable oil promise to reverse that trend. One such
project is the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport bitumen from the oil sands of Alberta to
the refineries and ports along the Gulf coast.
Activists
Move to Prevent Canada from Supplying U.S. with Oil. Canada is eager to provide the United States
with valuable oil from a friendly nation, but environmental activists are urging the Obama administration to block
construction of an oil pipeline that would deliver the oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas.
At issue is a long-delayed, $7 billion, 1,700-mile expansion of a pipeline that would make possible the
sending of crude oil from Alberta's oil sands to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas.
Science, Lies, and
Videotape. [Scroll down] As the world economy weakens and it turns out that we are
sitting on enormous quantities of natural gas and oil, it grows more likely that this childish
nonsense — which, probably not coincidentally, has proven a financial boon for Democrat-backers,
too — shall pass. But faster, please, so we can get back to being the world's powerhouse.
How North Dakota
Became Saudi Arabia. Harold Hamm ... came to Washington last month to spread a needed message
of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be
"completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and
natural gas in the 21st century."
Report:
North American oil output will hit all-time record by 2016. U.S. oil production in areas like the
Permian Basin, the Eagle Ford, Bakken and others will rise by a little over 2 million barrels per day
between 2010 and 2016, according to data compiled by Bentek Energy, a Colorado firm that tracks energy
infrastructure and production projects. It's a reversal of the steady downward production trend that
started around 1970, when U.S. oil production peaked at around 9.5 million barrels per day.
America Can Be An Energy
Superpower. America could have enough oil resources to meet today's oil demand levels in the
future for decades without importing from unfriendly foreign countries. That is the conclusion of a
new report from the National Petroleum Council. The report also finds that America has huge volumes
of natural gas that can meet decades of demand.
Chevron
makes potentially big oil find in Gulf's Moccasin play. Chevron has made a new oil
discovery in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico. ... Chevron started drilling the well in March 2010
but had to stop in June 2010 when the U.S. government imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling
in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon accident. In March 2011 it became the
first wildcat well in the Gulf to resume drilling after the accident.
USGS boosts
Marcellus gas estimates. A new assessment of the Marcellus Shale says the Northeastern U.S.
formation may contain 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, recoverable natural gas, far more than
believed less than a decade ago.
Blueprint
for Western Energy Prosperity. The West is projected to generate 1.3 million barrels of
domestic oil and condensate production a day by the year 2020, an amount that exceeds the current daily oil
imports from Russia, Iraq and Kuwait combined. The West has the potential to produce 6.2 trillion
cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas annually by 2020, an additional one Tcf from 2010 levels. Combined,
western oil and natural gas is projected to produce more energy on a daily basis than the total U.S. imports
from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Venezuela, Colombia, Algeria, Nigeria, and Russia.
Exxon
makes major oil discovery in Gulf. Exxon Mobil said Wednesday [6/8/2011] it has discovered an
estimated 700 million barrels of oil equivalent at a deepwater well off the Louisiana coast, a major find
that a top House Republican argued should push the administration to speed up offshore permitting. "This
is one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico in the last decade," Exxon Mobil Exploration Company
President Steve Greenlee said in a statement.
Drill
here Drill now works -- because it already has!. Once again the fraudulent message from the
environmental activists in the EPA is being echoed by a willing media, claiming drill here drill now won't
have an effect on gas prices when there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Where is the proof you
ask? Currently there is one commodity that has not adjusted with inflation, is not tied to the
devaluation of the Dollar, nor follows the rise in Gold and Oil. America's Natural Gas is trading at
2003 rates and when adjusted for inflation is closer to 2000 rates. Why? Because multitudes of
Americans are developing this vast resource not a handful of multinational concerns. They are bringing
an abundant supply of American energy to the market; in New York State alone we have over 3000 gas wells.
The Big Energy Lie.
Geologists and engineers make estimates of petroleum resources, the total potential future recoverable
quantity of oil and/or gas. Right now, the U.S. has considerable potential resources in places
like the Outer Continental Shelf, ANWR and the Colorado Oil Shale. Reserves, on the other hand, is the
term applied to that subset of resources that have been proven to exist by drilling and can be
recovered with existing technology.
The truth behind all that 'The U.S. has only 2% of the world's oil reserves' malarkey. The Big Energy Lie,
Revisited. In 1986, we produced 8.7 million barrels a day, or an annual total of 3.2 billion
barrels. The ratio of reserves to production is 8.5 years — often incorrectly reported in the
press with alarm: "We have only 8.5 years of reserves left! We're running out of oil!"
If this were true, we'd have run slap out of oil in 1995. The dashed line on the graph [in this article]
shows the cumulative amount of oil produced since 1986. Sure enough, by 1995 we had produced over
27 billion barrels, and we still had reserves in the ground of over 22 billion barrels.
Fast forward to 2010: we're still producing 2 billion barrels a year, and we still have over
20 billion barrels in the ground. In fact, we've produced 58 billion barrels since 1986,
over twice the 1986 reserve total.
Don't
let the Watermelons kill the Shale Gas Revolution. Imagine if we were to discover a new form of cheap,
clean energy so abundant that it will provide our needs at least for the next two centuries, freeing us from the pervasive
early 21st century neurosis of having to worry about "peak oil" or "conserving scarce resources", causing a worldwide
economic boom and with the added side-benefit of creating more fertiliser so that we can not only heat our homes more
cheaply than ever before but also eat more cheaply than ever before. Imagine how Environmentalists would react if
such a miracle came into being. Actually we don't need to imagine for the miracle is already here.
The
incoherence of Obama's energy policies: As Americans watch skyrocketing gasoline prices (up an
average of nearly 80 cents a gallon from this time last year) frustrate their hopes for economic recovery,
they should be outraged by a new report on America's energy resources from the Congressional Research Service.
The report shows that the United States is sitting on the largest batch of energy resources on the planet.
In fact, these vital fuel sources add up to more than the resources of energy-rich Saudi Arabia, China and Canada
combined.
Natural
gas: fuel of the future. [Scroll down] As if on cue, a couple of weeks ago the US Energy
Information Agency released an assessment of 48 shale gas basins in 32 countries. The
numbers are staggering: over a six-fold increase in the 1,001 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of
natural gas that was previously known to be "proven" reserves. According to the EIA report, over
6,600 Tcf of shale gas resources are estimated to be technically recoverable.
Straw
Man Environmental Alarmism 101, California Style. How many times must it be proved that the
world is not close to "exhausting its supply of petroleum" before environmentalists stop making the claim?
And as Americans are realizing in greater and greater numbers, there is no objective support for the shrill
claim that "greenhouse gas emissions… threaten the planet we call home."
Oil Without
Apologies. It's the day after President Obama delivered his most recent vision of America's
energy future, and I'm sitting in the sunny corporate offices of Chevron, the country's second-largest oil
company. Let's just say John Watson has a different view. The Chevron CEO is a rare breed these
days: an unapologetic oil man.
Morons Who Hate Oil: According to
the US Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Service at the Department of Interior that regulates America's
on- and off-shore oil reserves, they estimate that America holds more than 21 billion barrels of "proven"
conventional oil reserves. Add to this the estimated 100 billion barrels of oil reserves in the postage
stamp-sized proposed drilling area of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. According to the Congressional
Research Service, America's combined energy resources, oil, coal, and natural gas, are the largest on Earth!
Drill, Baby, Drill
(Again). It may come as a shock to many that rather than having a mere 2 percent of
global reserves, this country is energy-rich, with known reserves far exceeding those of any other
nation. Many Americans already know that our proven coal reserves will hold out for another
400 years — and probably much longer. Less well known is that in recent years there has been a quiet
natural-gas revolution in this country. In 2008, estimated natural-gas reserves in the U.S. were
177 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). Since then, we have produced 165 Tcf and have 245 Tcf
left. This bounty is the result of new drilling techniques that have massively added to our
reserves. Currently, we have approximately a century of proven gas reserves, a number sure
to grow over time. Even less well known is that the U.S. sits on at least three times as
much recoverable oil as the entire Middle East. The techniques used to uncover vast new
sources of natural gas, are now being transferred to the shale-oil deposits in the Midwest,
where they are unlocking trillions of barrels of oil.
Energy Secretary:
I'm Not Going To Talk About Drilling In ANWR. After testifying before the House
Energy and Water Development Subcommittee about his department's FY2012 budget, CNSNews.com
asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu if — given the high price of gasoline —
he supports increasing offshore drilling and opening up ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] to domestic
drilling? Chu responded, "I'm not going to talk about ANWR, but I think there's many areas in the
arctic that are potential exploration sites.
U.S. Has Earth's Largest Energy
Resources. America's combined energy resources are, according to a new report from
the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia
(3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined — and that's without including America's
shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.
The energy facts in the CRS report should be making front page news all over America.
Mostly it isn't.
Solving US Energy Problems:
The big problem is the Democratic agenda to destroy US oil. Currently, this agenda is well
illustrated in the Gulf of Mexico. BP's Macondo Prospect well, which blew out in the Gulf of
Mexico last year, was reported by the federal government to be producing 62,000 barrels of oil per
day. At the present oil price, that is $2.2 Billion a year. This well may have been
the largest oil well in the history of the world. Yet, it was plugged and abandoned, and the federal
government would not allow the development of the large oil reservoir it was in, which may have created
thousands of new jobs. No other nation on earth would do that to an oil well which may have been
the largest oil well in world history.
Green Goons. It's getting so people
are afraid to drive more than 150 miles for fear that they won't be able to afford the gas to get home
again. Still, President Obama refuses to allow oil development either on government-owned land or just
off our coasts. We have enough petroleum in the ground right here in the United States to last us
centuries but Obama, the Democrats and their green goons won't let us get at it for fear there might be a
spill and a sea gull might get oil on its wings. It's all right though to send $1,000,000,000 a day to
Muslim countries who use much of it to finance jihad against us in their radical quest to destroy western
civilization. Our liberal Democrat rulers want fossil-fuel energy prices to go up in hopes that
Americans will turn to solar panels, windmills and Chevy Volts.
The Green Dream Is an
Economic Nightmare. A rush of recent reports on energy has much to say about the fundamental
foolishness of the green vision of energy production — the vision long regnant in academia and
the one that informs the Obama regime. ... The first report is the happy news that the number of new American
oil wells is increasing at a pace not seen in over three decades. According to the major oil drilling company
Baker Hughes, the number of new oil rigs it has installed is over 800 last year — over twice last
year's total, and a tenfold increase over the yearly average during the late 1990s.
Deliberately
making Americans poorer. The Obama administration's policies are causing Americans to pay far
more for gasoline and other fuels than necessary. America is awash in fossil-fuel energy sources with
almost 30 percent of the world's coal and 80 percent of the world's oil shale — which
contains an estimated three times the recoverable oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Canada, with its
oil sands, has the world's third-highest oil reserves, after the United States and Saudi Arabia. New
technologies that enable low-cost natural gas production from shale mean that many countries, including the
United States, will have gas for centuries at current production rates.
Canada's
Oil Sands Are a Jobs Gusher. For all its soaring rhetoric, President Obama's "jobs
speech" last week didn't demonstrate a lick of insight into why economies grow or how wealth is
created. It was merely trademark Obamanomics: using government diktat to move money
that's over here, over there. Having spent an hour the day before with Ron Liepert, the
energy minister from the Canadian province of Alberta, I found it especially disturbing to
hear nothing in the speech about reversing the administration's anti-fossil-fuels agenda.
Murkowski
uses rising gas prices to call for opening Alaska's oil fields. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska),
citing rising gas prices, called on the administration Thursday [3/10/2011] to open up Alaska's oil reserves
for further exploration. "We are the only country that has identified a huge resource base and then
absolutely refused to use it," said Murkowski, referring to her state's massive oil reserves that remain
untapped because of their designation as a wildlife refuge. "We need to develop a coherent national
energy policy."
Eagle
Ford seen fueling fast growth. The Eagle Ford shale, a vast oil and gas play in South Texas,
will become one of the state's fastest-growing areas for new business and job creation over the next decade,
a group of experts said Wednesday [2/23/2011]. That's if they can get the oil out. Pipelines
already are full, and companies are having to truck it out or ship it by rail.
Wind
Power: Questionable Benefits, Concealed Impacts. America (and the world) are tapping vast,
previously undreamed-of energy riches — as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and
tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. ... The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas
passé: the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines
of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens' Plan and forests of wind turbines.
A
Shale Of A Difference. On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Obama
administration is going to take a "fresh look" at oil shale leasing rules put forward in 2008 by President
George W. Bush to develop oil-rich land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. ... The Bush rules would have
opened up about 2 million acres of federal land in what is known as the Green River Formation to the
possible commercial-scale development of oil shale and tar sands. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates
the region, dubbed the "Persia of the West," may hold more than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, six times
the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, and enough to meet U.S. oil needs for the next two centuries.
Is America's Energy Policy Perverse?
The U.S. is the only country in the world that, as a matter of policy, does not develop its own energy
reserves. It is hard to see a rational basis for that policy.
The Bakken factor. The
news may not rate with a No. 1 ranking in the college football polls, but residents of North Dakota have
reason — make that 11 billion reasons — to have their own celebration in this new year. Eleven
billion barrels is the latest estimate of reserves in the state's share of the Bakken Formation, which extends
for some 25,000 square miles from Canada down into Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas. Increasingly, the
Bakken is being viewed as a major oil resource in the United States.
2011 may be a gusher in South Texas.
Though still facing uncertainty on many fronts as 2011 begins, the oil and gas industry knows one thing:
It likes what it sees in South Texas. That's the site of the Eagle Ford shale formation, a vast
underground network of dense rock layers, discovered only recently and now thought to be one of the nation's
biggest oil and gas fields.
Energy
independence is close at hand. Washington's political class often seems impervious to changing facts.
Case in point is the nation's current and probable future access to essential energy resources, especially fossil fuels
like oil, natural gas and coal. This trio of carbon-based fuels accounts for the vast majority of the nation's
electrical and other forms of power, and will continue to do so through at least 2030, according to the U.S. Department
of Energy. The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but is also the world's most productive
economy, so demand here for energy resources is going to continue to grow for the foreseeable future.
A
Few Questions for President Obama. [Scroll down] America is not running out of oil.
It is running out of places the government allows us to drill. ... Companies have been drilling in deep
waters, because most onshore and shallow water areas are off limits.
Obama
jumps on natural gas bandwagon. A remark by President Obama at his postelection news conference
Wednesday should send Iowa's wind energy advocates into full alert. When asked about environmental issues,
the President suddenly started talking up natural gas, saying there are "terrific natural gas resources" in the
United States.
The U.S. has an abundance
of fossil fuels. Most Americans are surprised to find out that the two largest suppliers of oil to
the United States are Canada and Mexico. Each nation draws billions of dollars in economic activity from the
United States to provide these vast supplies. Is it not logical to conclude that the United States, lodged
between these two massive suppliers, has resources of its own that remain untapped? Of the three major fossil
fuels, the United States is in the top ten of two of the fossil fuels' proven reserves globally. The U.S. has
the largest proven reserves of coal and the fifth-largest proven reserves of natural gas.
Firms announce big oil find
beneath shallow Gulf waters. McMoRan Exploration Co. today announced what it said could be one
of the largest oil and natural gas discoveries in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico in decades. The
discovery was made at the Davy Jones ultra-deep prospect located on South Marsh Island Block 230 in
about 20 feet of water and 10 miles off the Louisiana coast, the New Orleans company and Energy XXI,
one of its Houston partners in the project, said in statements this morning.
Full of (Natural)
Gas. [Scroll down] America has over a 100-year supply of natural gas. We have
more natural gas reserves in North America than the Saudis have oil. How much more? According
to the CIA's Factbook, Saudi Arabia has 264 billion barrels of oil. We have seven hundred
billion barrels of oil equivalent in our natural gas reserves — about 2.5 times more.
Natural gas under Gulf may
be too much of a good thing. The prospect of yet another new frontier for U.S. natural gas
development, this time in super-deep wells beneath the Gulf of Mexico's shallow waters, is not all good
news for Houston's energy sector. ... [It could] boost already swollen U.S. gas supplies, weaken prices
and keep producers on the sidelines.
The Editor says...
Since when is cheap and plentiful energy a bad thing? That's what all sensible people have
wanted for at least a century.
Governor announces
1.9 billion barrels in Three Forks. The Three Forks Formation could yield nearly 2 billion barrels
of petroleum, according to a geologic study released today [4/29/2010] by the North Dakota Geological Survey and
Department of Mineral Resources. Results of the study essentially double the estimated recoverable amount
of oil in the Bakken and Three Forks formations. Current estimates now put the amount of recoverable oil from the
Bakken Formation at 2.1 billion barrels and the Three Forks Formation at 1.9 billion.
Beneath the Gulf, drillers uncover
bounty. Despite a tough economy that forced cuts elsewhere, oil and gas producers in 2009 continued
their push into the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, and many of their efforts were rewarded. So far this year,
there have been 12 discoveries in at least 1,000 feet of water, representing some 1.35 billion
barrels of oil equivalent, the most found there in a single year since 2002, according to an analysis by Wood
Mackenzie, an energy industry consulting firm.
NYS:
drill, baby, drill!. The Paterson administration has finally given a green light to proposed drilling
in the Marcellus Shale, considered by many to be the nation's largest natural-gas reservoir. Covering several
states and extending more than 600 miles, the basin may contain as much as six decades' worth of US natural-gas
needs.
Natural gas supplements petroleum. Gas could be the answer in
global warming fight. An unlikely source of energy has emerged to meet international demands
that the United States do more to fight global warming: It's cleaner than coal, cheaper than oil
and a 90-year supply is under our feet.
Power To Spare.
As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy
reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything?
America's Natural
Gas Revolution. The biggest energy innovation of the decade is natural gas?more specifically
what is called "unconventional" natural gas. Some call it a revolution. Yet the natural gas revolution
has unfolded with no great fanfare, no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up.
It's a Gas. [Scroll down]
To sum up very briefly, the risk-taking private sector — driven by the potential of huge future
profits (anti-capitalists take note!) — has developed the technology to recover natural gas that
was previously thought to be unreachable. This technology has only come of age in the last two years,
but already the amount of natural gas we're producing is on its way to transforming the U.S. into the leading
gas-producing nation in the world.
Alaska Can Meet
U.S. Energy Needs. The United States is now facing a decision on how to meet its future energy
needs. In the coming months, the U.S. Department of the Interior will weigh whether to allow oil and
gas exploration on Alaska's Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to be expanded. Such exploration could set
the country on a clear and sustainable energy path for decades to come.
Freedom From Foreign Oil.
In the last few years natural gas has been found in abundance in the United States. In fact, we have
2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, mostly in Appalachia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and
Texas — more than twice the amount of Saudi oil, enough to last us 100 years. Recent
innovations make it cleaner to burn and cheaper to use. It is the only fuel that can replace diesel in
semis and other heavy-duty vehicles. Battery power will not work on these behemoths, nor will ethanol.
New
North Dakota Oil Find Could Be a Gusher. Dozens of very productive new wells near North Dakota's
Bakken oil field have state officials believing another massive new oil find may be at hand. A newly
discovered oil field in the Three Forks-Sanish formation is producing high yields, and some analysts believe it
may surpass production in the huge Bakken oil field just above it. The Bakken oil is sandwiched between
shale above and below, while the Three Forks-Sanish oil sits in porous rock and sand directly beneath the
Bakken shale.
Oxy oil discovery could
spark new interest in California's energy potential. The Westwood company revealed in July that
it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil and natural gas in an
undisclosed part of Kern County using techniques that the oil company's executives would rather not talk
about. It was California's biggest find in 35 years. Some experts say it could herald a
period of new exploration in California and the U.S.
Oxy Petroleum's oil and gas
discovery may be California's largest in 35 years. Occidental Petroleum Corp. said it had
discovered oil and natural gas in a Kern County field that might represent the biggest find in California in
more than 35 years. The nation's fourth-biggest oil company said Wednesday [7/22/2009] that it had
found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil, adding that two-thirds of the new
source was believed to be natural gas.
Peak Government, Not Oil. Science
magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey says the Chukchi Sea off Alaska holds more than anyone thought —
1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply, and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered
oil, 4% of the global conventional resources. The Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and
Wyoming, has been called the "Persia of the West." This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the
world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.
Cap-and-Trade Bill: Villainy on a Grand Scale.
It is no accident that his Secretary of the Interior unilaterally cancelled 77 oil and gas leases or that, on
March 25, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 that adds
two million more acres of wilderness to the 107 million acres already "protected" by the federal
government. It is estimated that 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas lie beneath these "protected" acres. The government owns 607 million acres of land in a
nation founded on the belief in the sanctity and power of private property, the keystone of capitalism.
The Bias Against Oil and Gas. Contrary to popular wisdom, the
United States still has huge oil and natural-gas resources. The outer continental shelf (OCS), including parts that
have been off limits to drilling since the early 1980s, may contain much natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil,
about four times today's "proven" U.S. reserves. The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated that the Bakken
Formation in North Dakota and Montana may hold 3.65 billion barrels, about 22 times a 1995 estimate. And
then there's upwards of 2 trillion barrels of oil shale, concentrated in Colorado. If 800 billion barrels
were recoverable, that's triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.
Environmental Policy Constrains
U.S. Oil Supply. Consider the volumes of U.S. oil resources. The most conservative measure
is "proven reserves." To be proven, it must be reasonably certain that the crude oil can be produced using
current technology at current prices, current commercial terms, and with government consent. The U.S.
Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates the U.S. has 21.8 billion barrels of oil (bbo) in "proven
reserves." At today's consumption rates, proven reserves would last 50 years. Yet the amount
of proven reserves might jump to more than 50 billion barrels if the government "consented" to
development of areas now off-limits. And "recoverable reserves" — known oil resources
capable of recovery, but with more cost and technical difficulty than proven reserves — hold
several thousand times more.
Drill,
Drill, Drill. Onshore and offshore drilling restrictions for oil and natural gas have to be
removed. Deregulate the energy sector. Open the door to nuclear power. Drill the shale regions
for natural gas. Exploration has dried up in the new Obama environment, which is so very anti-fossil-fuel
and anti-nuke. If we are going to power our way to economic growth, fossil fuels and nuclear energy have
to play key roles. Alternative-fuel technologies may grow up, but that's gonna take several decades.
Right now they're about 2 percent of our power. That's all.
Seeing Chukchi. Back
in July [2008], ... it was thought that Chukchi's waters northwest of Alaska's landmass held 30 billion cubic feet
of natural gas. Today, Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey now finds it holds more than anyone
thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply and 83 billion
barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources. That's enough U.S. energy to achieve
self-sufficiency and never worry about it as a national security question again. The only thing left to
do is drill.
Discovered: 200
trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Good news for America undermines the green energy agenda.
The Wall Street Journal reports a huge new discovery of natural gas — a fossil fuel so clean even
liberals can stand it. ... Good news, right? It's good for consumers, it's good for the country and the economy,
and it's good for the world's resources. ... But it's bad for the Fear Industry ... it's bad for our media
airheads, who have to think of whole new scare headlines ... it's bad for the Green Doom Brigade.
Start Drilling.
It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia
and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits.
These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government
estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion
barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with
about 200 tcf of proven reserves).
A crude October
surprise? In 2006, the Interior Department estimated about 85.9 billion barrels of
"undiscovered technically recoverable" oil sit offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf within U.S.
territory. In 2007, the Energy Department's "Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels" reported
that: "America's oil shale resource exceeds 2 trillion barrels, including about 1.5 trillion
barrels of oil equivalent in high quality shales concentrated in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah
and Wyoming. ..."
Only
Action Can Put America Back in Drive. First, we must increase production and open up access to explore for
American-made energy. For too long our own precious resources have been off limits, and competing nations are gaining
from our neglect. Right now, China, Venezuela, and others are working with Cuba to extract oil near our waters.
Yet American companies are not able to extract our own resources to provide for American consumers. This is
outrageous. How can we honestly demand OPEC nations pump more oil when we will not even utilize our own resources?
Dakota Oil Fields of
Saudi-Sized Reserves Make Farmers Drillers. Unlike the tar from Canada's oil sands, Bakken crude
needs little refining. Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin, honey-colored film along
the sides. It's light — almost like gasoline — and sweet, meaning it's low in
sulfur. Best of all, the Bakken could be huge. The U.S. Geological Survey's Leigh Price, a Denver
geochemist who died of a heart attack in 2000, estimated that the Bakken might hold a whopping 413 billion
barrels. If so, it would dwarf Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the world's biggest field, which has produced about
55 billion barrels.
U.S. Policies Put Most U.S.
Oil Off-Limits to Drilling. Huge basins of untapped oil can be found on federal lands throughout the United
States, according to a new report from the federal government. But much of it cannot — and may never
be — recovered, because it lies under national parks and national monuments, or it is subject to environmental
laws and restrictions that make drilling prohibitive. … If you add in the 85.9 billion barrels of oil that lie
offshore, as determined by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, there are 117 billion barrels
of oil on lands owned or managed by the U.S. government.
Who was in the White House when those "national monument" land grabs took place? Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Cult of Gaia (1999):
[Scroll down] Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, who is recognized as the driving force behind
the administration's environmental agenda, the American people have witnessed rather extraordinary actions designed
to stop economic development. … [President Clinton] designated 1.7 million acres of land in southwest Utah
as a national monument, placing it off limits to development. This area reportedly contains billions of barrels
of oil, minerals and tens of billions of tons of low sulfur clean-burning coal. It could have produced thousands
of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue for the state and federal governments.
Montana
Governor is Sitting on an Oil Mine. Here's some very good news about oil that the manipulators
on Wall Street don't want you to know: there could be as much as 40 billion barrels of crude lying
untouched in eastern Montana.
North Dakota town sitting on oil
jackpot. In this tiny reservation town about two hours from the Canadian border, a Southern
twang is sometimes heard over the din at the local diner and there's talk of Texas tea beneath the streets.
Roughnecks from Texas and Oklahoma have travelled here on hopes that they now share with the town's 1,000 or
so inhabitants — that there is oil in Parshall.
Drivers Say
U.S. Should Drill for Oil on Federal Lands. A recent Department of Interior report, requested by
Congress, estimates there are 139 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the United States, onshore and
off-shore combined — more than the known oil reserves of Iran, Iraq or Russia. But most of
that oil cannot be tapped because of environmental regulations.
Who Will Pay For Promises Of
Politicians? Congress, doing the bidding of environmental extremists, created our energy supply
problem. Oil and gas exploration in a tiny portion of the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge would, according to a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey's estimate, increase our proven domestic oil
reserves by approximately 50%. The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and eastern Gulf of Mexico offshore areas
have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas. These energy sources of oil have also been placed off-limits
by Congress. Because of onerous regulations, it has been 30-plus years since a new refinery has been
built. Similar regulations also explain why the U.S. nuclear energy production is a fraction of
what it might be.
Is oil's price run-up a problem?
Maybe. Is oil in short supply? No. In fact, the world's ability to produce more oil
than it needs is better now than it was after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, which spotlighted how tight
global oil production had become. Then why are prices going up?
Environmental
Alarmists Have It Backwards. President Bush chides us for our "addiction to oil." But
under current conditions, using oil makes perfect sense. Someday, if we let the free market operate,
someone will find an energy source that works better than oil. Then richer future generations won't need
oil. So why deprive ourselves and make ourselves poorer with needless regulation now? Anyway,
it's not as if we're running out of oil.
State of the Union 2007: A
Counterproductive Energy Policy. Recent Department of the Interior studies, conducted pursuant
to the 2005 energy bill, confirm that the United States has substantial oil and natural gas deposits.
These studies also show that much of these onshore and offshore resources are off-limits due to legal and
regulatory constraints. In fact, America remains the only nation on earth that has restricted access
to a substantial portion of its domestic energy potential. Removing the federal impediments on domestic
exploration and drilling will allow for greater domestic supplies and potentially lower prices in the years
ahead.
Energy Answers Await At Our
Doorstep. As gasoline prices continue to soar, few Americans realize that a key element for
strengthening our energy security is right next door. Nearly 50% of our energy imports come from our
neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Canada is our single-largest energy supplier, providing 17% of
U.S. oil imports.
Abundant Domestic Supplies are
Off-Limits. The Bureau of Land Management recently published [a report which] concludes that
onshore federal lands are "estimated to contain 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 21 billion
barrels of oil, which represents 76 percent of onshore Federal oil and gas resources." That
187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to supply all of America's households for 39 years, and
21 billion barrels of oil represents over 30 years' worth of current imports from Saudi Arabia.
Abundant energy supplies
off-limits. Good news: The more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the
more we find. That might even be great news — if so much of the energy wasn't out of
reach. According to a new Interior Department report, there are substantial onshore energy deposits on
federal lands. A companion study of offshore energy reserves released earlier this year reached the
same conclusion. But both reports found much of this energy is either explicitly off-limits or
hampered by regulatory constraints that effectively make it so.
A Big Dose of Energy Reality.
Representative Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Committee on Resources, will tell anyone who will listen
that "for the foreseeable future, America has no shortage of oil or other traditional energy resources.
Washington, D.C., has a shortage of the political will required to let American workers go get it." For
example, "The United States has enough non-park federal resources to supply natural gas to 100 million
homes for 157 years. But, despite that massive supply, we cannot deliver even one year of
affordable natural gas to Americans right now."
Late Word from the Oil Patch: When
people tell me that America is too dependent on foreign oil imports, I keep telling them we have lots of oil,
but thanks to the environmentalists, our own government has made it either too costly to get at it or access
has been restricted because the bulk of our undeveloped energy resources is found on federal lands or federally
controlled areas offshore. This is what happens when the federal government owns nearly half the landmass
of the nation.
Don't
ignore America's oil reserves. Driving through Sistersville, W.Va., a little town alongside the
Ohio River, you would never know that 110 years ago it was the center of an oil boom. But in the
first decade of the 20th century, if you were in the oil business, it was the place to be.
Pipeline, Not Pipe
Dream: Credit Palin. It must be sweet vindication for Alaska's governor. Against
critics who said her 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline project would never get off the ground, who should the
project bag but the "big gorilla" of American energy — Exxon Mobil. In a major surprise,
Exxon announced Thursday [6/11/2009] that it had forged a partnership with TransCanada, the Canadian pipeline
company that holds the state license for Palin's $126 billion Alaska Gasoline Inducement Act project.
Natural Gas, America's
Best Bet. There is little question why natural gas is considered the best energy investment due to
its growing demand, environmental advantages, and supply breakthrough that has radically changed the outlook
for cleaner energy. Arguably, shale gas, slated to account for 17 percent of total US natural gas
supply, is the largest story in the energy business in the last 20 years.
Alaska is floating on oil
ANWR — Is President Obama Serious
About Domestic Oil Production? President Obama admitted in the State of the Union that energy
production creates jobs, so why isn't he opening up new areas like the North Slope of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas production? As we have noted numerous times, the federal government leases a
mere 3 percent of federal lands for energy production. The United States is already the world's third
largest oil producer, but we could produce a lot more oil if the federal government would let the American people
explore for oil on more federal lands.
[Italics in original.]
First
permit OK'd for oil drilling in Alaska reserve. After rejecting the project nearly two years ago,
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today [12/19/2011] issued ConocoPhillips a permit to begin work on the first
commercial oil well in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, according to news reports.
Congressman warns Alaska pipeline could be dismantled within 10 years.
The Obama administration is setting the stage for the dismantling of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and poses the
greatest threat to its existence today, according to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings.
The 800-mile pipeline cost $8 billion to construct in the 1970s, and has moved more than 18 billion
barrels of crude oil. Three oil companies constructed it, in the face of significant opposition from
environmentalists, in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo.
Our elected leaders are the problem. Drill
in ANWR! A 1998 United States Geological Survey (USGS) study indicates that there are a minimum
of 4.3 billion and possibly (though unlikely) as many as 11.8 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). But ANWR, for all the press it has received, is only the tip of the oil
iceberg. John K. Carlisle, of the National Center for Public Policy Research, claims that the US
likely has more than 110 billion barrels total of recoverable oil (which is five times the estimated
current supply). But we are not drilling for this oil. Why?
Don't Let
the Alaska Oil Pipeline Shut Down. 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.
Drill, Dems, Drill.
That an Alaskan senator-elect wants to drill in ANWR is not a surprise. That he's a Democrat is. Were
high oil prices what helped push Detroit over the edge?
GOP staking out
offshore drilling as major issue. Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate has served to
underscore the significance Republicans are putting on opening new areas to energy exploration. As governor of
Alaska, Palin championed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling — something even McCain
has opposed.
Alaska's Real Bridge. A recent
study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found that alternative energy will at best supply 16% of global electric and
transport needs — by 2030. In reality, drilling ANWR is critical, as [Alaska's] two senators urge. "We almost
passed it in 2001," Stevens said. "Some said that if we had acted then, we would have had (the oil) to market right
now." Yes, getting oil into production would take time. But [Sen. Lisa] Murkowski thinks the very act of passing
the bill would damp price speculation.
Feds grim on gas
line. Prospects for an Alaska natural gas pipeline "are more remote than a year ago," and the
holdup is political indecision in Alaska, says a new report from federal energy regulators. … The seven-page
report says the federal government stands ready to move the megaproject forward, but the "main obstacle" is
the state's "failure to resolve" tax or other issues that major oil companies have said must be settled
before they can commit to building the multibillion-dollar pipeline project.
Trans Alaska pipeline could do job for 30 more
years. When engineers first turned the spigot on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1977, they thought it
would run for about 30 years. Accountants were a bit more generous, saying it would be 34 years before the
800-mile, $8 billion asset could be written off the books. But with its 31st anniversary approaching in June, the
pipeline, known as TAPS, is primed for another 30 years.
Alaska governor
wants to tap oil resources. Speaking to a group of Hillsdale College supporters, the governor said,
"Alaska has so many resources to tap into, so that this state can be a contributor, not a recipient of the federal
government." The governor announced that another $30 billion to $40 billion pipeline for natural
gas has just been made possible through the efforts of an independent company for moving natural gas to the lower
48 states and is about to begin construction.
To Drill, or Not to
Drill. Republican presidential candidate John McCain says that he's taking another look at the
possibility of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and as part of that assessment
McCain says that he plans to talk to the nation's most prominent advocate of drilling in ANWR, Alaska governor
Sarah Palin.
Zapped
crude oil flows faster through pipes. Zapping thick crude oil with a magnetic or electric field
could make it flow more smoothly through pipes. The technique, which reduces the viscosity of the liquid,
could make transporting crude through cold underwater pipes easier and cheaper, researchers claim.
Why might Alaskans favor Arctic drilling? A
$2,000 check. This year's Permanent Fund dividend check — what Alaskans receive each
year from the state's oil-revenue investment fund — is likely to be more than $2,000, the first
time since the state began making the payments in 1982 that the dividend has topped two grand. The
biggest previous dividend was $1963.86 in 2000. Last year's was $1,654. The dividend spins off
the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state's $37 billion oil wealth savings account.
Open ANWR. Many votes against
drilling [in Alaska] come from California, Northeastern and Midwestern legislators who have made a career of
railing against high energy prices, "obscene" oil company profits, unemployment and balance of trade
deficits — while simultaneously doing everything possible to constrict supplies, increase demand
and drive up prices. For instance, air quality rules — coupled with a virtual prohibition
on building new nuclear plants — mean that most new electrical generating plants are
gas-fired. So demand for natural gas continues to climb, while domestic supplies continue
to decrease.
Oil Prices
and the Media: Don't Believe the Hype. With regard to folks blocking drilling for oil in
ANWR due to environmental concerns, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) offered the following analogy: If ANWR
was the size of a basketball court, the proposed area for drilling would be the size of a dollar bill. He
also said that if President Clinton had not vetoed ANWR drilling in 1995, the U.S. domestic oil supply be
20 percent higher today.
ANWR and Our Nation's
Energy Future. Many of the same people that are now complaining about our dependence on
foreign oil consistently oppose opening Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to production. This
is not some radical idea. The 1980 law that doubled the size of ANWR to 19 million acres explicitly
called for Congress to develop a process through which exploration and production could be conducted on
the 2000 acre Coastal Plain. Yet, across the past 24 years, anti-development forces in Congress
have ignored America's energy needs and, through the use of filibusters, prevented oil and gas
development. This inaction is irresponsible.
Alaska senators make another push for oil
drilling in ANWR. Hoping to capitalize on consumer concern about gasoline prices, Alaska's two
Republican senators introduced legislation Thursday that would allow oil drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge if the price of oil hits $125 a barrel. With oil hovering near $110 a barrel and
gasoline expected to reach $4 a gallon, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens said that they hoped the
continuing price spiral would spark consumer clamor and overcome opposition to opening the wildlife refuge
to drilling.
The Editor says...
Why wait for $125 a barrel? This issue should have come up when oil hit $40 a barrel.
Green
movement also behind gas hike. What if we had our own Iraq-sized supply that we haven't even
touched yet? We do. According to the U.S. Geological Survey and American Petroleum Institute, we
have at least 112 billion barrels of undrilled oil — "enough to produce gasoline for
60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years." By comparison, Iraq has
115 billion barrels and Venezuela 80 billion. At least 16 billion barrels of our oil is
in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling would only touch 8 percent of 17 million
acres — but environmentalists say it's off-limits.
And not only oil... Study: Tap
natural gas from Alaska's frozen areas. Today's technology could extract enough untapped natural
gas, frozen in Alaska's North Slope, to heat millions of homes for years, federal officials announced
Wednesday [11/12/2008]. An estimated 85.4 trillion cubic feet of "undiscovered, technically
recoverable gas" is frozen in the state's North Slope region, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study
released by the Interior Department. The deposits could heat more than 100 million homes for a
decade, the study says.
Thawing Fuel For Palin's
Pipeline. A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey shows that 85.4 trillion cubic feet of
frozen natural gas crystals lie buried beneath Alaska's icy North Slope, a region where the crude production
peaked in 1988 and had to be replaced by imported oil. The frozen gas, known as gas hydrate, is a new
Made-In-U.S.A. energy source that's nearly three times the 30 trillion cubic feet of estimated U.S.
reserves from conventional gas sources; it had not even been counted in current estimates of domestic
energy reserves.
The world is not running out of oil
US
Firm: 3-9 Trillion Cubic Feet of Gas Off Cyprus. A top official with United States firm Noble
Energy says a field it is conducting undersea exploratory drilling in off the coast of Cyprus may contain
between 3 to 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Has Petroleum Production
Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil? Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North
Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only
just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil
plateau — roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day — since at least
2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26.
The Editor says...
Oil production has never been easy. Therefore, any prediction of the end of "easy oil" is misleading
at best.
Peak Oil Scam is Based Upon Ideological,
Fact-Blind Liberalism. While it cannot come as a surprise after so many liberal hoaxes, it's
still shocking to find we've been duped again — this time by the "Peak Oil" myth. Peak Oil is
the theory the world is on the verge of a catastrophic decline in global petroleum reserves that will result
in major energy crises causing chaos across the world. This notion has now been proved demonstrably
false — yet, how was it accepted in the first place?
There
Will Be Oil. Since the beginning of the 21st century, a fear has come to pervade
the prospects for oil, fueling anxieties about the stability of global energy supplies. ... The
date of the predicted peak has moved over the years. It was once supposed to arrive by
Thanksgiving 2005. Then the "unbridgeable supply demand gap" was expected "after 2007."
Then it was to arrive in 2011. Now "there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020."
But there is another way to visualize the future availability of oil: as a "plateau."
Hubbert's Peak or Yergin's
Plateau? Peak Oil's fundamental assumption is that the supply of oil is finite and fixed.
The peak of the oil production curve is reached when half of the total resource base has been produced, so
rate vs time exhibits a symmetric bell-shaped curve. Post peak, rate declines rapidly. Hubbert
demonstrated a peak for oil production in Texas, and he extended his theory to correctly predict the time (but
not the rate) of the peak for the U.S. World oil production is supposed to have peaked in the last five years
or so. But Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a Pulitzer
Prize-winning author, argues...
Controversy
Over Oil Sands Pipeline Project Approval. A 4-by-8-mile pit deep in the wilderness of northwest
Canada is taking center stage in America's energy debate. The Athabasca tar sands in Alberta Province is
the largest mine in what is the second largest oil reserve in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia. The
United States gets 20 percent of its imported oil from Canada, about half of it coming from the vast
Athabasca tar sands. And now there are plans to more than double the oil sands production and pipe nearly
all of the oil through a new pipeline that would take it to refineries in Texas.
Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil?
The Peak Oil Theory was largely the invention of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, with his prediction "that the
fossil fuel era would be of very short duration." He originally published a world production curve on the
theory in 1956, using the prediction that the world oil production would peak in 1970. That prediction
of course proved to be quite untrue, but that does not stop those who want to shut down our oil production.
Peak renewables.
The "peak oil" scare has long been used as an excuse for alternative-energy providers to demand government
subsidies. We are told that oil production will reach a zenith and the wells will run dry any day now,
so failure to provide billions in handouts to the providers of other fuels would be irresponsible. Forget
peak oil — the world may be on the verge of peak renewables. The much-hyped intermittent energy
sources such as solar and wind have proved so expensive to maintain that other developed nations are trimming
subsidies.
Energy Independence:
Are You Serious? At last, some promising energy news. A new discovery of oil and gas in an
unexplored region is leading to hope for potentially more energy than that possessed by the oil-rich nation of
Libya. Enough energy to make every man, woman, and child an instant millionaire. Americans can only
dream about this happy news, because the new discovery is not in the U.S. It is off the west coast of Greenland.
Rockhopper
shares jump after raising Falklands oil estimate. Rockhopper, the Falklands oil exploration
company, ... announced today [4/4/2011] that it believes there are at least 155m barrels of oil extractable
from the Sea Lion well, which is some 80 miles north of the Falkland Islands. Rockhopper estimated
in June that there would be a minimum of 57m barrels recoverable from the site.
Global warming and
the 'settled science' baloney. [Scroll down] Indeed, most big scientific questions are
unsettled, from galaxy formation to the origins of the moon. Closer to home, even 150 years after
the first commercial extraction of oil in western Pennsylvania, the mechanism of hydrocarbon formation is
still a hotly contested issue. While most petroleum geologists believe that oil and natural gas
resulted from the slow anaerobic decomposition of biomass over eons, many others believe that hydrocarbons
are an abiotic product of simple chemical reactions in the deep earth crust. The relative numbers of
scientists in the two camps do not speak to which explanation is correct. Scientific truth is not
decided by polls.
Deep oil: a
giant discovery. BP has announced a "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, drilled to
a total depth of 35,055 feet. Drilling began at a depth of 4,132 feet below the surface of the
water. No further details of the magnitude of the discovery are being released. But this is
further evidence that deep oil and gas deposits may dwarf the resources discovered at shallower depths.
BP's oil find is big, but miles
out and down. A major new oil discovery by BP in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the potential
of a highly touted deep-water area where other oil companies also scored big in recent years, but the task of
producing the crude has just begun.
BP Finds
'Giant' Oil Source Deep Under Gulf of Mexico. BP said Wednesday [9/2/2009] that it made a
"giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts said that the find deep below the sea floor
raised hopes that further exploration in the region could help sustain U.S. offshore oil production.
The discovery, known as Tiber, was made 250 miles southeast of Houston and was "in the same league" as
other big fields BP has discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said.
Canada's Oil Bonanza.
Canada has the oil the American economy desperately needs — and then some. So why do we
treat this and other energy allies like pariahs?
The
Problem's Not Peak Oil, It's Politics. Some "peak oil" cassandras warn that global energy
production will soon fall into permanent decline. But a more immediate danger to world oil supplies
may be the tempestuous politics of many producing countries.
Morons Who Hate Oil: Are we
running out of oil? No. Let me repeat. No. There is no such thing as "peak oil" because
every time someone has made the prediction that we are using up all the oil, we find some more. This not
to say the Obama administration will let oil companies drill for it in America. Not only do we pay less for
domestic oil as opposed to importing it, but we have so much domestic oil we wouldn't have to import it.
The World
Has Plenty of Oil. The world is not running out of oil anytime soon. A gradual transitioning
on the global scale away from a fossil-based energy system may in fact happen during the 21st century. The
root causes, however, will most likely have less to do with lack of supplies and far more with superior
alternatives. The overused observation that "the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones" may in
fact find its match.
Environmentalists Still Can't Get
It Right. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of
oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In
1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.
In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned
nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had
only a 10-year supply of natural gas.
Peak Oil: An Idea Whose
Time Is Up. Some analysts believe that investors who have swallowed the peak oil theory are
pricing oil higher because they fear the world is running out of crude and permanent shortages are nigh.
They shouldn't believe it.
Have
we underestimated total oil reserves? Black gold might not be as scarce as we thought. This
week oil prices escalated to a record $139 per barrel, but that may partly be because the amount of available
oil in known reserves has been significantly underestimated. So says Richard Pike, a former oil-industry
adviser and chief executive of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry, who blames flawed statistical calculations.
World has enough oil
supplies for 'many decades': Nuaimi. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said on Sunday [6/22/2008]
the world has enough crude to last for "many decades" and that his country will invest massively to be able to
produce 15 million barrels a day. "The world has enough petroleum reserves, both conventional and
non-conventional, to meet oil demand for many, many decades to come," Nuaimi told a summit in Jeddah of top
consumers and producers.
Kuwait oil lifespan 115 years.
The lifespan of Kuwait's oil fields could prolong to 115 years if state-of-the-art technologies are tapped,
according to a new book released by Kuwait Oil Company (KOC). Kuwait's confirmed oil reserves are
101.5 billion barrels, the book said, citing British Petroleum (BP) figures in 2005. Now that
Kuwait's daily oil output is 2.415 million barrels according to February 2007 statistics, the lifespan
of oil fields is 42,029 days or 115 years, the book said.
Why So High? According to [the American
Petroleum Institute], "The U.S. government estimates that deepwater regions of the Gulf of Mexico may
contain 71 billion barrels of oil." API estimates that there are 10.5 billion barrels off the
shores of California and the Pacific Northwest, 3.8 billion barrels off the Atlantic coastline, and
18 billion barrels onshore and 26.6 billion barrels off the Alaska coast and in the Alaska
National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). This adds up to 138.1 billion barrels of oil, enough to power
over 60 million automobiles for 60 years according to government estimates. (These same
reservoirs could supply 656 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, sufficient to heat 60 million
homes for the next 160 years.)
Peak Oil Is a Waste of Energy.
Remember "peak oil"? It's the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for
global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic
catastrophe. Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put
an end to such talk, ...
The IEA Puts a Date on Peak Oil Production.
Faith Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), believes that if no big new
discoveries are made, "the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a
business-as-usual basis."
At this point, it's anybody's gas! (That's a pun.) How much oil lies beneath the Earth's
crust? The only thing we know for sure is that history is littered with estimates so far off the
mark — usually below the mark — that they border on the comical. In the 1920s, for
instance, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (now BP) refused to take a stake in Saudi Arabia, thinking that the country
didn't hold a single drop of oil. In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that the United States
would run out of oil in nine years. Yet by the time nine years had passed, huge discoveries, topped by
the Black Giant field in Texas, had created a massive oil glut that almost destroyed the industry.
World oil supplies are set to run out
faster than expected, warn scientists. Scientists have criticised a major review of the world's
remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are
prepared to admit. BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that
the world still has enough "proven" reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates.
The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the
world will run dry.
Running out of
oil? "Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are
estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels. That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel
the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for the Italian energy
company ENI. … There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves.
Mr. Maugeri says these oil reserves will probably meet the "proven" standard in a few years as
technological improvement and increased sub-soil knowledge come online.
We Are Not Running
Out of Oil. Every time oil prices rise for an extended period, the news media issue
dire warnings that a crisis is upon us — it's not! Many factors are contributing
to the currently high gas prices: limited refining capacity, political restrictions on development
of new domestic sources of oil, reduced supply from several oil exporting countries due to political
conflicts, limited supplies due to the actions of the oil cartel, OPEC, and finally, increased demand
for oil in China. Dwindling supplies of oil is not a factor in the current price at the pump.
Geologist: Earth has lots and
lots of oil. A University of Washington economic geologist says there is lots of crude oil left
for human use. Eric Cheney said Friday in a news release that changing economics, technological advances
and efforts such as recycling and substitution make the world's mineral resources virtually infinite.
The Peak Oil Myth: The U.S.
had 321 refineries in 1981; the U.S. has 149 oil refineries today. Many plants operate 24 hours a
day (with no down-time for maintenance) to supply the growing demand for fuel, and to comply
with EPA regulations that require refineries to formulate different types of gasoline in
different regions of the country at different times of the year.
Plenty of oil left in
the global tank. [Scroll down] The most important reason for rejecting the "peak oil is here"
argument, however, is that current production reflects investment decisions taken years ago, when prices were
much lower. It was only just over three years ago that oil rose above $40 a barrel. A few years
earlier it was $10-$11. Higher prices will bring more output on stream.
Oil is Not a fossil fuel. [In the
1940s] Stalin's team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a 'fossil fuel' but is a natural
product of planet earth — the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium
carbonate and iron oxide — two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth's crust. This
continuous reaction occurs at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000
atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until
the 'death' of planet earth in millions of years' time.
IEA Sees No Twilight for Saudi Oil.
Mark Twain's old line about the reports of his death being greatly exaggerated might apply to the Saudis.
If this year's oil production results and the 2008 predictions are to be believed, then the Saudis are going
to continue to dominate the global oil business.
Aramco Chief Debunks Peak Oil.
"We have grossly underestimated mankind's ability to find new reserves of petroleum, as well as our capacity
to raise recovery rates and tap fields once thought inaccessible or impossible to produce." So said
Abdallah S. Jum'ah, Saudi Aramco's president and CEO, during his address at the 11th Congress of the
World's Energy Council in Rome last November. With the mass media focused on soaring oil prices and
publishing a rash of peak oil stories, Jum'ah's latest contribution to the peak oil debate has gone
largely unreported.
Oil Prices: Cause and
Effect. The price of crude didn't rise from $12 in early 1999 to nearly $60 because
the world suddenly ran out of oil. On the contrary, the world supply of petroleum has risen
10 percent since then, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 65.8 million
barrels a day in 1999 to 72.5 million in 2004.
Natural Gas Needs No Dinosaurs to
Form. Credible scientists have now demonstrated that methane, the main ingredient of
natural gas, can form inorganically, as a result of natural processes that involve no biological
material whatsoever — no dead dinosaurs, no rotting ancient forests, not even any little
plankton trapped in the soil.
Endless
oil. Do dead dinosaurs fuel our cars? The assumption that they do, along with other dead
matter thought to have formed what are known as fossil fuels, has been an article of faith for centuries. ... Sooner
or later, we will run out of liquefied dinosaurs and be forced to turn to either nuclear or renewable fuels,
virtually everyone believes. Except in Russia and Ukraine. What is to us a matter of scientific
certainty is by no means accepted there. Many Russians and Ukrainians — no slouches in the
hard sciences — have since the 1950s held that oil does not come exclusively, or even partly, from
dinosaurs but is formed below the Earth's 25-mile deep crust.
Obama and the Alternative Energy Fiasco:
[Scroll down] All of these things are happening at a time when natural gas is abundant and cheap. ... Many
cars could run on natural gas, much like many buses do already. ... New technologies continually revive old oil
and gas fields and make new ones economically viable. So it's little more than socialist Malthusianism to
argue that the world is running out of cheap energy.
Peak Government, Not Oil. The
chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil. We've been told that
for the last 150 years. The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.
Peak Oil: A Theory Running
Out Of Gas. One year ago, Congress responded to the chorus of Americans calling for more
American energy by lifting the ban on offshore drilling. For the first time in a quarter-century, it
became legal to drill for more oil and natural gas reserves offshore. This anniversary allows us to look
back on how far we have come since 2008. The sad reality is we have barely moved.
Petrobras: Oil
field may have 380 million barrels. Brazil's state-run oil company says it has found a new offshore oil
reserve that could hold nearly 400 million barrels of oil equivalent. Petroleo Brasileiro SA says in a statement
that the pre-salt reservoir was discovered 14,633 feet (4,460 meters) below the ocean floor off the coast of
Rio de Janeiro.
Giant oil pipeline in the works
from Alberta to the Gulf. In the coming weeks, the Obama administration will decide if it wants to
significantly increase the amount of oil the country imports from Canada's controversial Alberta oil sands. The
State Department is set to issue what could be a final ruling to allow a massive new pipeline expansion from central
Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. A decision is expected early in the new year.
There Is No Gas Shortage.
Gasoline reserves on hand are at the highest levels since the early 1990s, which is remarkable considering the
nation's refineries have been cutting back on the production of gasoline because their margins have declined.
In fact, average gasoline reserves on hand have risen since this past October [2007], while oil reserves in this
country have gone up virtually every week this year — and only fog in the Houston Ship Channel that kept oil
tankers from unloading their crude one week kept it from being every week.
Oil Is Not A Fossil Fuel. To begin with,
oil is not a fossil fuel. This is a theory put forth by 18th century scientists. Within 50 years,
Germany and France's scientists had attacked the theory of petroleum's biological roots. In fact, oil is
abiotic, not the product of long decayed biological matter. And oil, for better or for worse, is not a
non-renewable resource. It, like coal, and natural gas, replenishes from sources within the mantle of
earth. This is the real and true science of oil. Read all about it.
The Myth Of Peak Oil: Peak
oil is a scam designed to create artificial scarcity and jack up prices while giving the state an excuse to
invade our lives and order us to sacrifice our hard-earned living standards. ... The analysis of the oil now
being produced at Eugene Island shows that its age is geologically different from the oil produced there after
the refinery first opened. Suggesting strongly that it is now emerging from a different, unexplained
source. The last estimates of probable reserves shot up from 60 million barrels to 400 million
barrels. Both the scientists and geologists from the big oil companies have seen the evidence and
admitted that the Eugene Island oil field is refilling itself. This completely contradicts peak oil
theory and with technology improving at an accelerating pace it seems obvious that there are more Eugene
Islands out there waiting to be discovered.
Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil? The Peak Oil Theory was
largely the invention of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, with his prediction "that the fossil fuel era would
be of very short duration." He originally published a world production curve on the theory in 1956, using
the prediction that the world oil production would peak in 1970. That prediction of course proved to be
quite untrue, but that does not stop those who want to shut down our oil production. They just revise it
when facts force them to, and continue with the theory and their efforts to shut down our oil production as
much as possible.
Peak Oil,
Entirely Nonsense: As is Peak Gas. One of the things that really rather annoys me about the peak oil
(and in the UK, there's a similar one about peak gas) argument is that it entirely ignores the impact of changing
technology. ... Now that we've developed fracking, to do what geology hasn't done in the far more numerous shales,
there just really isn't any long term, long term meaning century or more, shortage of oil and or gas.
Fracking:
The Radical Left's Latest Weapon of Fear. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter warned Americans of a
pending "national catastrophe" in a prime time nationally televised speech. "The Oil and natural gas we
rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out." Resources were being depleted so fast that
the world "could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade,"
Carter said. Rather obviously, Carter's end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it prediction didn't happen. ... Instead
of running out of oil and gas as Carter predicted, the inventory of America's recoverable domestic reserves has
increased dramatically.
