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A US Oil Boom--Unless Greens Abort It. USA is on the Verge of a Golden Era in Oil Production.
American Enterprise Institute ^ | 07/14/2011 | Arthur Herman

Posted on 07/15/2011 7:15:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Just a year after the BP oil spill, America is on the verge of a new golden era of oil exploration and production -- unless President Obama and his environmentalist friends get their way.

This surge in domestic production would leave Iran, Kuwait and the Arab emirates combined in the rear-view mirror.

The US drilling boom rests on a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to open shale-oil reserves. It's why wells are springing up in places like North Dakota, California and Pennsylvania, with thousands of new jobs in their wake.

Fracking has also opened up supplies of natural gas, sending prices plummeting. Now, even New York's regulators have recommended lifting the state's ban on the fossil-fuel gold rush that's pushed North Dakota's unemployment rate to 3.2 percent -- the lowest in the nation.

The irony is that Obama had hoped higher oil prices would make us all drive electric cars and install backyard windmills. Instead, they're making it profitable for US companies to expand the hunt for new reserves and to use fracking to reopen old ones.

Just last month, Exxon-Mobil announced the discovery of a vast field in the Gulf of Mexico, with as many as 700 million barrels waiting to be tapped. Other companies are using fracking to return to the Texas basin, the center of US oil production in the 1930s -- which will mean millions in investment and thousands of jobs for that state. Montana and North Dakota are sitting on a shale-oil formation that could yield nearly 4 billion barrels.

Not many Americans realize we are already the world's No. 3 oil producer, at 7.5 million barrels a day. The coming boom should add another 1.5 million by 2015. That's closing in on Saudi Arabia's daily total.

And oil-shale rich Canada could surpass Iran's barrel-per-day output in a few years -- so we're looking at a major shift in the geopolitics of oil.

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: energy; environmentalism; greens; oil
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1 posted on 07/15/2011 7:16:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

We use 22 million bbls of oil a day.


2 posted on 07/15/2011 7:17:53 AM PDT by kabar
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To: SeekAndFind

BIGGEST IMPEDIMENT TO ENERGY SELF-SUFFICIENCY -— BARACK OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS.

1) Obama has had the oil industry’s two most important tax incentives — the percentage-depletion allowance and the deduction for intangible-drilling costs — in his cross hairs for a long time. Both help oil and drilling companies recoup the heavy capital investment they need to look for oil, even when they turn up nothing.

2) Reid and Pelosi argue that we must end both “tax breaks for Big Oil” to close the budget deficit.

The notion that scrapping tax abatements that have been around since the 1920s will put a dent in a deficit of $1.4 trillion is laughable — and dangerous.


3 posted on 07/15/2011 7:18:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind (u)
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To: SeekAndFind

This is so true. And this article doesn’t even go into the South Texas stuff.

Unemployment in ND is like 3% because of this oil renaissance.

My hope is that that this is simply too large and moving too fast for the Eurofagsocialistenviromentalists to stop it.

This is our lifeline to the future, America!!!! In so many ways!!!


4 posted on 07/15/2011 7:20:19 AM PDT by ConservativeDude
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To: SeekAndFind

Good things come in threes.

Drilling, mining and logging are wealth multipliers.


5 posted on 07/15/2011 7:22:48 AM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: sergeantdave

Drilling, mining and logging are wealth multipliers.”

Hear, hear!!!!


6 posted on 07/15/2011 7:24:00 AM PDT by ConservativeDude
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To: SeekAndFind

The politicians (on both sides) will prevent it.


7 posted on 07/15/2011 7:25:07 AM PDT by airborne (Paratroopers! Good to the last drop!)
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To: SeekAndFind

FRACK BABY FRACK


8 posted on 07/15/2011 7:27:04 AM PDT by almcbean
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To: SeekAndFind

It is unbelievable all the money that is being made in South Texas with fracking....it is huge.


9 posted on 07/15/2011 7:27:04 AM PDT by shield (Rev 2:9 "Woe unto those who say they are Judah and are not, but are of the synaGOGue of Satan.")
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To: airborne

RE: The politicians (on both sides) will prevent it.

BOTH SIDES? Which influential GOP leader is going to prevent it?


10 posted on 07/15/2011 7:27:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind (u)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks SeekAndFind. Every barrel not sourced from OPEC is money not handed over to mortal enemies.


11 posted on 07/15/2011 7:30:54 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Yes, as a matter of fact, it is that time again -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SeekAndFind

Is Exxon-Mobil working behind the scenes to unseat Barky, or do they like him because he creates high oil prices? I never hear a peep out of them, but that’s probably by design. The pharmaceutical industry used to mostly give to Republicans until the ‘crats shook them down mafia-style. Corporations have to keep a low profile politically, act in stealth mode, unless they are socialists like the media or fascists like GE. Republican politicians should learn from the Democrats and give leftist corporations a few “deals they can’t refuse”.


12 posted on 07/15/2011 7:31:44 AM PDT by Reeses (It's a safety net, not a hammock!)
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To: shield

I got “fracking” mixed up with “witching.” Had to look it up.


13 posted on 07/15/2011 7:32:34 AM PDT by madison10
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To: All

This is largely absurd silliness in this article.

The US produced 8.9 million barrels per day of oil in 1985, and that was proper crude oil, NOT ALL LIQUIDS. (All oil is not created equal. Crude oil has 5.8 million BTUs/barrel in it. All Liquids is Crude plus lighter fractions and those have only 3.7 million BTUs/barrel in it, meaning much more of them have to pour into a refinery to get a gallon of gasoline out).

NGLs (these lighter fractions, like propane, butane etc) are now being added to the crude numbers to frankly make the numbers look better. US crude oil production . . . of the proper crude sort, is now 5.5 million barrels per day.

Most of this “shale oil” is NGLs. It’s bogus. It creates jobs, yes, but it’s not The Golden Age of Oil Production. This person doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The US is well past its peak of oil production.


14 posted on 07/15/2011 7:33:57 AM PDT by Owen
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To: SeekAndFind
Natural gas as well. I encourage all FReepers to write to their congressmen and ask them to lift the great lakes directional drilling ban.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Canada drills under the lakes and hasn't killed them, we can do the same.
15 posted on 07/15/2011 7:34:54 AM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: cripplecreek

That map must drive the environmental left to distraction. It’s a map of their worst nightmare.


16 posted on 07/15/2011 7:46:01 AM PDT by Steely Tom (Obama goes on long after the thrill of Obama is gone)
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To: SeekAndFind

The Left wants to strangle the golden goose. Fry it up and throw it away.

Then they would like to follow in the footsteps of their glorious hero Stalin and have a few million of us starve to death. Not that they’d admit it, or even think that far ahead to come up with that conclusion, but their green ways will certainly lead us to economic ruin and shortages of every kind.


17 posted on 07/15/2011 7:54:10 AM PDT by PATRIOT1876 (The only crimes that are 100% preventable are crimes committed by illegal aliens)
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To: Steely Tom

Prosperity is under our feet.


18 posted on 07/15/2011 7:54:47 AM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: SeekAndFind

Practically speaking, with conservatives of the Tea Party variety in congress, the goal should be unleaded gasoline at $1.20/gal, with 20 cents of that going solely to highway maintenance.

Years ago, corruption in those companies that provide highway maintenance came to the fore, when the Phillips Petroleum corporation invented a road bed liner much like Kevlar. It was expensive, but when a road had such a liner, it would be very low maintenance, and would last four or five times longer than a typical road.

The highway maintenance companies refused to use it, with both the companies themselves and their unions lobbying fiercely against it, as they had an unlimited spigot of federal money otherwise, to produce shoddy roads that would need annual repair.

Thus America got crappy roads, and these companies and their unions made windfall profits from making and fixing them.


19 posted on 07/15/2011 7:56:03 AM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: PATRIOT1876

“Then they would like to follow in the footsteps of their glorious hero Stalin and have a few million of us starve to death. Not that they’d admit it...”

They do admit it, PATRIOT, but you need to hang out at the “deep ecology” sites to read it. There’s a fellow who infiltrated the eco-fascists and wrote a book. Can’t think of his name now. But eco-fascists do indeed want to murder you and your children. They are all philosophical descendants of Hitler’s Eizengruppen but without the guts to act on their hate-filled rhetoric. One day, we may need to hunt down these Nazi cretins and kill them.


20 posted on 07/15/2011 8:09:08 AM PDT by sergeantdave
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