Posted on 02/21/2010 5:11:42 PM PST by BfloGuy
A new technique being used to drill through a type of rock known as shale has led to a surge in domestic natural gas production over the last three years and enabled the United States to overtake Russia recently as the world's No. 1 producer of natural gas.
As a result, we are seeing a remarkable turnabout in energy geopolitics: as U.S. natural gas reserves have soared thanks to advanced drilling methods, Russia's goal of establishing a world gas cartel patterned on OPEC has collapsed.
How big of a development is this?
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
I’m gettting as much as I can into natgas stocks. Two to watch: KMP and OKS for nice returns, 8-10% like clockwork. You tell me a business that has cash flow like that and I’ll buy it.
That phuking Kenyan Poseur will nationalize natural gas and then use it to create wind to run turbines.
“One encouraging trend is the creation of tens of thousands of U.S. jobs in shale-gas production and the generation of revenue for local, state and federal governments.”
First this moron of a president will claim the new jobs as his creation...then when that news (lies that will be pimped by the media) fades away he will tax the industry even more....I’m just sayin.
Don’t give him any ideas!
And the elephant in the room...
http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=334301&t=01008652451087582637
As announced, the largest oil company in the world, Exxon (NYSE: XOM) has made a massive investment in the U.S. through the purchase of XTO Energy, a natural gas producer. This is a clear and direct signal that natural gas is going to be a major factor in the U.S. Energy complex for many years to come.
Ironically, Obama, Reid and Pelosi have done everything in their power to ignore this fact and pretend like there is no elephant in the room. Presidents, Senators, and Speakers of the house come and go, but elephants like XOM live forever and make it a point to insure their investments are protected and prosper.
Right you are....
Environmental groups are lobbying Congress to shift regulation of hydraulic fracturing from state governments to the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming that the process poses a risk to groundwater supplies.
and for good measure...
The White House also wants to add $37 billion in taxes on U.S. oil and natural gas companies, rehashing a proposal to Congress that failed the first time around. History shows that once drilling costs jump due to higher taxes, investment starts to dry up.
I’m just waiting for an organization to come out of the woodwork, called FOS.
Friends of Shale.
“Don’t let them hurt our shale!”
Doubtless he'd love to. But it won't happen.
"Problem" is (thank God) that it's not just nameless "Big Gas" companies that are making money on this. It's ordinary property owners -- often simple middle class home owners -- who are getting paid directly by the companies which horizontal drill under their homes, farms, businesses, etc.
These shale formations cover vast regions, and on top of them are, I don't know what the numbers is, 10's of thousands?, 100's of thousands?, millions?, of property owners with consequently valuable mineral rights.
For a family with a half acre, the checks may not be huge, but they keep coming. Let Obama try to take them away.
Heck, I know properly religious property owners here in Texas (on the Burgess Shale) who would tell the real Messiah, Jesus H. Christ himself, to go pound sand if He tried to take their gas checks.
Several European countries including Poland and France are now using the new technology to exploit shale gas.
Boy, those Russians sure shot themselves in the foot when they cut off the taps in Europe and the Ukraine. Europe will not want to continue to be dependent on Russian good will.
This is what the Obamadinejad admin is trying to do to the O&G Industry, to tax it into oblivion for windy and sunny dreams.
Excerpted from a proprietary publication
Failed, Status Quo Washington Energy Policies Continue to Harm US Economy
Administration’s massive oil, gas tax hikes “not punishing fossil fuel producers as much as American consumers”
WASHINGTON – This week, a study commissioned by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), and sponsored in part by IPAA, determined that the “U.S. economy will lose $2.4 trillion over the next two decades” if current federal policies continue to keep billions of barrels of domestic oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas reserves off-limits. Conducted by independent experts from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and the Gas Technology Institute, the study also determined that the U.S. “is expected to pay the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) $607 billion for an extra 4.1 billion barrels of crude.”
Here are key findings from the study:
· Domestic crude oil production is projected to decrease by 9.9 billion barrels – an average annual decrease of nearly 15 percent in production.
· Imports from OPEC for oil are projected to increase by 4.1 billion barrels, an average annual increase of nearly 19 percent, resulting in increased cumulative payments to OPEC of $607 billion.
· Domestic natural gas production is projected to decrease by 46 Tcf – an average annual decrease of nearly 9 percent in production.
· Total net natural gas imports (LNG and pipeline) are projected to increase by nearly 15.7 Tcf – an average annual increase of almost 75 percent.
· Employment in energy intensive industries is projected to decrease by nearly 13 million jobs – an average annual decrease of 0.36 percent.
· Housing starts are projected to decrease by nearly 200,000 – a 0.46 percent average annual reduction.
News outlets and congressional leaders from coast-to-coast have weighed-in on this study and the need to expand access to job-creating, American oil and gas reserves that are currently off-limits as a result of misguided federal policies.
The (LA) Advocate reports this today in a story entitled “Report says US must drill”:
· U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, lauded the study and called for President Barack Obama, who this week expanded nuclear energy programs, to do the same with drilling on federal lands and in offshore waters. Cassidy charged the Obama administration with installing a de facto ban on such drilling.
Under the headline “Drilling Ban To Cost Trillions,” Investor’s Business Daily editorializes this about the study’s findings:
· A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit.
· The net effect of our energy inaction will be a reduction in gross domestic product by $2.36 trillion cumulatively through 2029 ... We’d also be forgoing hundreds of thousands of high-paying energy and construction sector jobs here in the U.S. as well as missing a golden opportunity to sharply cut our trade deficit.
· We back an all-of-the-above approach and so, apparently, do the American people. Comments on a Bush-era rule to expand domestic drilling, held up by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, ran 2-to-1 in favor of drilling here and now.
· So just why are we leaving this job-creating economic windfall in the ground?
And in an editorial this week, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes:
· America must maximize its abundant, cost-efficient domestic energy resources — among this nation’s greatest strengths — not cast them off. … It will be years — if ever — before alternative energy sources are sufficiently productive and cost-effective to count on. In the meantime, America must make the most of its own conventional sources and the technology that makes those sources ever more clean.
Accessing, safely producing and delivering homegrown oil and gas reserves to the American economy and the families that rely on these resources in the form of affordable energy has never been more important.
This study confirms that if the status quo policies that have increased our dependence on unstable and unfriendly regions of the world to keep our economy moving remain in place, we will continue to hemorrhage billions of dollars to nations overseas, which will weaken our national security.
And speaking of national security: Earlier this week, Mackubin T. Owens – professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College – writes this in a column that appeared in both the New York Daily News and the Boston Herald under the headlines “Stop the war on oil and gas” and “Obama budget plan pulls plug on energy,” respectively:
· While calling for an end to oil and gas “subsidies,” the White House in reality would raise taxes on oil and gas by $36.5 billion … Fossil-fuel producers are not exactly under-taxed. In 2008 alone, they paid $95.6 billion in total income taxes … Oil and natural gas producers also paid $12.5 billion in U.S. production taxes.
· [This tax hike] would reduce investment in the fossil-fuel industry by 20 percent to 40 percent and cause domestic jobs to be lost to foreign countries.
· Another proposal in the budget would eliminate the “expensing” of intangible drilling costs, which make up about 70 percent of all drilling costs. These include the cost of labor, supplies, contractors and fuel. Oil companies now can write off these costs against other income in the year those expenses are incurred, rather than depreciating them over time.
· In proposing to eliminate the manufacturing tax deduction for oil and gas companies and repeal expensing of drilling costs, the Obama administration is not abolishing a tax subsidy, but is instead imposing a tax penalty. In so doing, it is not punishing fossil fuel producers as much as American consumers.
**********************************EXCERPT**************************************
A national group of utility regulators claims restrictions on federal oil and gas reserves could cost the United States $2.36 trillion over the next two decades.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners this week released a study of how much moratoria on drilling for oil and gas on federal lands and in federal waters could cost the nation, if active leasing doesn’t follow the 2008 lifting of presidential and congressional restrictions in Outer Continental Shelf waters.
Without the new domestic exploration through 2030, the group said:
David Dismukes, associate executive director of the LSU Center for Energy Studies, helped advise the utility commissioners in organizing the research.
The work began the winter after Hurricane Katrina, Dismukes said, when many state regulatory commissions saw the impact of high natural gas prices in utility bills.
“They (the commissioners) wanted to do a study to see what the implications were on supply availability and prices as a result of these moratoria areas,” Dismukes said.
This was also around the time Congress was discussing whether to end the bans on drilling in some offshore areas, Dismukes said. The regulators wanted to figure out what the resource base was in the areas where drilling was banned.
Superb addition to the thread.
Well...thank you...
you pinged me...I just looked around.
Obama budget plan pulls plug on energy
**************************EXCERPT****************************
By Mackubin Thomas Owens
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 -
With the release of its proposed budget for the next fiscal year, the Obama administration continues its assault on the U.S. economy in general and the domestic oil and gas industry in particular. While calling for an end to oil and gas “subsidies,” the White House in reality would raise taxes on oil and gas by $36.5 billion over 10 years.
But current tax preferences for oil and gas producers are hardly subsidies. They are instead methods that allow private companies to keep more of the money they earn while providing low-cost energy to the American consumer.
Fossil-fuel producers are not exactly under-taxed. In 2008 alone, they paid $95.6 billion in total income taxes ($23.2 billion to U.S. governments at all levels, the rest to foreign governments). Oil and natural gas producers also paid $12.5 billion in U.S. production taxes.
The biggest “subsidy” that the new budget seeks to repeal is the Section 199 manufacturing tax deduction for domestic oil and natural gas companies.
It is important to understand that this tax deduction was not created as a “loophole” exclusively for the benefit of energy companies but was part of legislation - the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 - intended to create jobs and stem the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. This act applied to all domestic manufacturers. The White House does not propose repeal of the “loophole” in its entirety. It would merely deny it to oil and gas companies.
Doing so would hit an industry that employs 9 million workers, but has a rate of return on investment significantly lower than that of other industries. Energy representatives contend that denying the manufacturing tax deduction to oil and gas would reduce investment in the fossil-fuel industry by 20 percent to 40 percent and cause domestic jobs to be lost to foreign countries.
Great thread!
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