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While millions of college grads look forlornly into the worst U.S. job market in decades, Emily Woner pretty much guaranteed herself one of America's best-paid post-graduate jobs before she ever set foot on campus. Spurred by an early interest in following her father's footsteps into the oil sector, Woner secured a post-high school internship with Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp. After summers spent riding seismic trucks in the Barnett shale, designing water pipelines in east Texas and helping model oil reservoirs in Wyoming, she's now a 22-year-old senior at the University of Tulsa waiting to take a job in one...

Energy Policy: Deep-water drilling will resume in the Florida Strait when a giant, semi-submersible oil rig en route from Singapore arrives later this fall. The bad news is it will not be American. While U.S. oil and energy prices "necessarily skyrocket," as President Obama once said they would under energy policies that have imposed a de facto ban on offshore drilling, a massive Chinese-built semi-submersible oil rig is on its way from Singapore to a drilling position off northwest Cuba perhaps as little as 50 miles from Key West, Fla. The long-predicted move could come as early as November, as...

President Obama is reviving his battle to kill oil-and-gas industry tax breaks and seeking billions of dollars in other energy-related revenues as part of his wider deficit-cutting and jobs proposals . The White House on Monday sent Congress a plan to pay for Obama’s $447 billion “American Jobs Act” and also cut the deficit by over $3 trillion in 10 years. Several of Obama’s energy tax proposals have sputtered in the past amid resistance from Republicans and oil-state Democrats. But they are part of a White House effort to sharpen the contrast between the president and Republicans over raising...

In what can only be described in the most astounding of terms, the Kremlin is reporting that the world’s largest corporation, American-based Exxon Mobil, has signed a deal with Russia allowing it to flee the United States in exchange for trading its vast oil and gas reserves in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico and gaining for itself exclusive drilling rights in the vast untapped regions of the Russian Arctic. According to these reports, Prime Minister Putin and Exxon Mobil Chairman, President and CEO Rex Tillerson oversaw the signing of this historic agreement brokered by Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft....

Many retailers and schools are advocating waste-free options for back-to-school shoppers this year, especially when it comes to lunch. School lists call for Tupperware instead of Ziplocs, neoprene lunch bags instead of brown paper ones, and aluminum water bottles, not the throwaway plastic versions. Sales of environmentally friendly back-to-school products are up just about everywhere. At the Container Store, the increase is 30 percent over last year for some items, said Mona Williams, the company’s vice president of buying. “We have seen a huge resurgence,” she said. The trend makes the schools happy (much less garbage). It makes the stores...

Fort McMurray, Alberta—Standing on the edge of the immense and spectacular pit of an oil sands mine for the first time last week, I was surprised by a sense of exhilaration. Later, seven stories up, equipped with earplugs, and clad in bright blue overalls, I marveled at the cascades of black bitumen froth bubbling over the sides of a separation cell like a giant witch’s cauldron. The scale of the enterprise and the sheer ingenuity involved in wresting value and sustenance from the hands of a stingy Mother Nature provoked in me a feeling close to glory. Yet as I...

That’s what the Obama campaign’s top political strategist told me this morning when I asked him about the latest 2012 candidate, Rick Perry. The Texas Governor made it clear his campaign will focus on his state’s record of job growth – Texas created more jobs than any other state since the recession. “When you examine the entire record what’s happened to education in that state, what’s happened to health care in that state, it’s a record of decimation not of progress,” David Axelrod told me. “I don’t think the picture of Texas is what people want for the country when...

John Felmy is chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute (API), responsible for overseeing the organization’s economic, statistical, and policy analysis. He has over 25 years’ experience in energy, economic, and environmental analysis. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland. John is a member of several professional associations, including the American Economics Association and the International Association for Energy Economics. He was interviewed at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., by William F. Jasper, senior editor of The New American.The New...

BY TIM JOHNSONtjohnson@herald.com A Venezuelan army soldier directs traffic at the entrance to a gas station in Caracas on Thursday, the 32nd day of a nationwide strike. Chavez and his opposition traded allegations Thursday on the state of Venezuela's oil industry, saying that oil production would return to its normal level of 3 million barrels a day within 45 days. ANDRES LEIGHTON/AP WASHINGTON - President Hugo Chávez pledged Thursday to return oil production to normal within 45 days in strike-crippled Venezuela, but U.S. analysts dismissed his claim and fretted over a sharp decline in U.S. crude imports.The Energy Department...

Demands that the Shell Bakersfield Refinery remain open intensified Friday, as Sen. Barbara Boxer joined a chorus of calls to the Federal Trade Commission and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer to prevent the closure. "The plant must remain open until a buyer is found and a sale is completed. Otherwise, consumers will pay the prices," Boxer wrote in a letter to FTC Chairman Timothy Muris. Boxer's letter caps a week that has seen a wide array of critics of the proposed closure emerge. Also this week, the FTC announced it is evaluating the situation, and the state Attorney General's office...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Just two Arab countries have supplied almost 50 percent of California's imported oil over the past five years, a dependence that leaves the state more vulnerable than the rest of the country to disruptions in the world oil markets. The finding, based on an analysis of state and federal crude oil import statistics, underscores the challenges confronting both California -- the biggest gas-consuming state in the U.S. -- and the country as a whole as lawmakers grapple with consumer outrage over high prices at the pump and a U.S. deficit that has widened on the back...

HOBBS -- Sen. Pete Domenici will be featured speaker at a national energy policy conference May 27 at the Lea County Event Center titled "The Making of Energy Policy: Where Are We Going?" The conference is sponsored by New Mexico Tech, the Economic Development Corporation of Lea County, and the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy. Co-sponsors are the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. NMCEP, operated by New Mexico Tech, is organizing the conference, the group said in a news release. Registration will begin at 10 a.m., followed at 11:30 a.m. by a welcome and...

Chief among the pessimists is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, a group of European scientists who estimate that maximum oil production around the globe will peak in 2008 as demand rises from developing economies such as China... Others believe, like Maugeri, that the number of glasses is virtually limitless. John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, argues that peak oil- production estimates are so far off that for all practical purposes we might as well act as if oil will flow forever. "Ever since oil was first harvested in the 1800s, people have said...

WASHINGTON - High oil prices, which have been a factor in virtually all U.S. recessions over the past three decades, are surging again this year. And the higher crude oil prices climb, the more risk energy costs pose to what, until recently, many expected to be a banner year for the U.S. economy. Some economists are even beginning to worry about an outright recession if oil prices, already at record levels, go much higher. And concerns are rising about the threat of "stagflation," a dreaded economic malady of stagnant growth coupled with rising prices that had the United States in...

The economic impact of the 1995 Deep Water Royalty Relief Act is huge as are the consequences that would result from its modification or repeal by Congress.

Strong worldwide oil demand and lack of supply are to blame for steadily rising gasoline prices in the United States, an oil industry group said Friday. The American Petroleum Institute made no specific price forecast for 2011, but didn't seem to see a drop anytime soon. "Unless we see increases in supply, it's hard not to see a tighter market," John Felmy, the institute's chief economist, said in a conference call with reporters. Felmy said worldwide oil demand in 2010 hit a record of more than 87 million barrels a day, driven largely by strong growth in India, China and...

BUCKHORN, Ontario – Candy Penny and her husband have owned their novelty shop here just long enough to not know what it was like when American tourists flooded this small Peterborough County town in Canada’s “cottage country.” “I understand that, before the recession, every other license plate in town was from a different (American) state,” said Penny, a Michigan native who moved here when she married a Canadian. “Between that and the spike of gas prices in 2008 and again this summer, and the required passports to cross the border, our main business is Canadian.” Her shop is in a...

CENTRAL OHIO - As gasoline prices continue to climb, the oil industry said this week that by 2012, we could be paying not $4 per gallon, but $5. "It scares me," said Sharri Carroll, who was filling up her car in Hilliard Wednesday. "How are you going to afford to fill up your tank every week to get to work?" NBC4 took the concerns Wednesday to John Felmy, a Ph.D. a top official with the American Petroleum Institute. Felmy is one of the country's leading experts on gasoline prices who just happened to be in Columbus Wednesday

(CNSNews.com) -- Armed with a Power Point presentation to illustrate the state of American energy, John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute (API), said the majority of “big oil” and natural gas ownership is in good hands – the hands of the American people.According to a report published in 2007 by Sonecon, an economic advisory firm that analyses U.S. markets and public policy, corporate management owns only 1.5 percent of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.The rest is owned by tens of millions of Americans through retirement accounts (14 percent) and pension funds (26 percent).  Mutual funds...

HOBBS -- Sen. Pete Domenici will be featured speaker at a national energy policy conference May 27 at the Lea County Event Center titled "The Making of Energy Policy: Where Are We Going?" The conference is sponsored by New Mexico Tech, the Economic Development Corporation of Lea County, and the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy. Co-sponsors are the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. NMCEP, operated by New Mexico Tech, is organizing the conference, the group said in a news release. Registration will begin at 10 a.m., followed at 11:30 a.m. by a welcome and...

CALLICOON, New York (AFP) – After a lifetime struggling to make money from the land, New York farmer Bill Graby has discovered he's sitting on treasure -- possibly the biggest natural gas deposit in America. "It's like winning the lottery," says the 6.6-foot (two-meter) dairy farmer from the picturesque town of Callicoon in the Catskills hills. The deposit, called the Marcellus shale, stretches all the way from New York to Tennessee, containing 168 to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation. That dwarfs the previous big daddy, the Barnett shale in...

To stop climate change, the nation must "stop coal," a top environmental architect urged during a speech at Ramapo College's conference on climate change. Edward Mazria, who has led efforts nationwide to build more-energy-efficient buildings, said the only way to control global warming is "an immediate moratorium on all new coal-fired power plants in the United States" and a phaseout of older coal plants. "Climate change is the greatest challenge we have ever faced," he told an audience of more than 400 at the conference. "Either we get it under control or we face very dramatic consequences." Mazria is the...

ExxonMobil’s earnings are from operations in more than 100 countries around the world. During the first quarter, more than three-quarters of our operating earnings came from outside of the United States. The part of ExxonMobil’s business that refines and sells gasoline, diesel and other products in the United States represents less than 6 percent – or 6 cents on the dollar – of our earnings. Why so little? Because we actually buy more crude oil to refine into gasoline and diesel in the U.S. than we produce ourselves. And these purchases are made on the open market at the prevailing...

It’s official: TNT is bringing back Dallas, and with original series stars Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray. The 1980s hit will get a modern makeover on the cable network, which just gave its new version of Dallas a 10-episode series order (full official description below). But you don’t have to wait until next summer, when the series debuts, to get a look at the show: TNT will give viewers a preview of the pilot on Monday night during the season premieres of The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles. “TNT has explored the possibility of an updated version of...

ExxonMobil has long been Alaska’s most enduring villain, thanks to the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident that spilled at least 11 million gallons of oil, not to mention the years Exxon spent fighting devastated fishermen and others in court to avoid and delay paying damages. Former Gov. Sarah Palin's emails show how much state officials shared in the general outrage over Exxon’s legal tactics. Having already held the case up in the courts for nearly two decades, winning reversal of billions of dollars in punitive damages by the U.S. Supreme Court, ExxonMobil lawyers in 2008 filed pleadings to avoid paying...

Big Oil. We love, LOVE, to hate Big Oil. As we’re paying more and more at the pump, and as we continue to flounder in this post recession economy, it’s hard to look at the Big Oil companies , their profits and think anything other than greed. But is that fair? Let’s check. Recently, the big oil companies announced their profits for the first quarter of 2011. And they are impressive numbers to be sure: ■Exxon Mobile – $10.7 billion ■Chevron – $6.2 billion ■ConocoPhilips – $3.0 billion THAT is a lot of billions. A LOT! But is it really...

(CNSNews.com) - Senate Democrats are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate possible price-fixing of gasoline by U.S. refineries because “recent reports,” according to the senators, suggest the refiners are trimming supply to keep prices high. But a federal report from November shows that refinery stockpiles started to decline in 2008, if not earlier. At a press conference on Tuesday, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that they had sent a letter that day to the FTC, “to request the Commission begin an investigation into potential price fixing of gasoline by U.S. refiners.” “Recent...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate blocked a bill Tuesday that would repeal about $2 billion a year in tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies, a Democratic response to $4-a-gallon gasoline that might fare better when Congress and the White House negotiate a deal later this year to increase the government's ability to borrow.

Energy: As the House passes a bill to open up offshore drilling, the Senate holds another show trial of oil executives showing why people blame them, not the administration, for high gas prices. Last week they fought back. Summoned for what Sen. Orrin Hatch labeled a dog-and-pony show, executives of Exxon Mobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP America and Chevron appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday and, in often-heated exchanges, indicated their days as whipping boys are over. The hearing was called ostensibly to support the Democrats' Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, a bill with no chance of passage....

A top executive at ConocoPhillips today accused backers of proposals to eliminate certain tax benefits for major U.S. oil companies as distorting the facts and unfairly penalizing a few companies that already are heavily taxed. “We think there’s a real mischaracterization of the whole debate,” ConocoPhillips’ Chief Financial Officer Jeff Sheets told reporters this morning before the Houston oil company’s annual shareholder meeting. The tax breaks and deductions the industry receives are not special subsidies for the oil industry, as critics say, but are widely available to other U.S. companies. Eliminating them would amount to putting “unique taxes” on the...

Sarah Palin in an interview with Bret Baier was asked if she would remove the oil subsidies to oil companies and the short of her answer was probably not. She says that the four billion that Obama is wanting to strip from the oil companies may not have that much impact on the large oil companies, but would affect the smaller independent explorers who Palin says we want out there with their resources extracting for oil: You have to remember that President Obama – and I’m going to say this with all due respect to the office of the Presidency...

House Speaker John Boehner says he’s open to calls from the White House to curb some of the $4 billion in oil and gas subsidies and tax incentives, as Washington continues to feel the heat over high gas prices. Oil and gas producers are “gonna pay their fair share in taxes and they should,” Boehner told ABC News. Continue Reading Text Size -+reset Listen VIDEO: Boehner on oil subsidies POLITICO 44 Latest on POLITICO Blago trial may be moved for Oprah VIDEO: POLITICO Playback Clyburn urges 'compassion' Playbook: 'An insurgent campaign' Brewer: Birther fight is destructive Poll: Gas prices costing...

Oil industry leaders delivered a stinging rebuke of the production tax that became a hallmark of Gov. Sarah Palin's administration, telling a legislative committee Wednesday that it has discouraged investment and made Alaska a less attractive place to do business. Representatives of BP Alaska, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Pioneer Natural Resources said the tax cut and expanded tax credits proposed by Palin's successor, Gov. Sean Parnell, is a positive step toward encouraging greater activity and boosting oil production.

First, you must understand that Boehner is a GobGop: a Good Old Boy of the Grand Old Party. The GobGops' goal is to keep the present system funded by the Bigs: Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Banking. If you do not understand this, then you are as naive as a Democrat who thinks Obama speaks for The Common Man.Boehner shilled for Hank Paulson and Goldman Sachs by begging the Republicans to vote for the $750+ billion Big Bank Bailout in 2008. Watch his emotional performance here. "We just have to do it!" No, they didn't. Ron Paul...

Recovery: While states like Nevada wallow in recession, tiny North Dakota becomes the first state rated as expanding by a leading service. Could it be the state's burgeoning energy industry? The recession — induced by Democrats and activists meddling in the housing market through the Community Reinvestment Act and then whistling past the bad-loan graveyard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — officially ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. For much of the country, mired in a jobless recovery with job losses so great and prospects so bleak that it will take decades just...

Segment 1: ANWR: A National Security Need? Governor and Todd Palin take Greta on a tour of ANWR, Prudhoe Bay, make a case for drill, baby, drill: Segment 2: A Story of Survival Sole resident in camp outside ANWR tells Greta how she lives on alternative fuel: Segment 3: 'On the Record' in Valdez Greta and the Governor look on their visit to the pipeline in Valdez:

Iran's Oil Mafia April 16, 2007 Frontpagemagazine.com Hassan Daioleslam Robert William (Bob) Ney is a current federal prisoner and a former Ohio Congressman from 1995 until November 3, 2006. Ney pled guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Jack Abramoff lobbying and bribery scandal. Ney reportedly received bribes from Abramoff, other lobbyists, and two foreign businessmen - a felon and an arms dealer - in exchange for using his position to advance their interests. Conspicuously missing from this dossier of disservice to the country was Ney’s assistance in the creation of a Washington-based lobbying...

Energy: A new analysis of the effects of the offshore drilling moratorium shows more to worry about than beaches and tourism. Massive job loss and economic hardship lie ahead, and we're doing it on purpose. It's been 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon disaster cast a pall over America's energy future while endangering the environment onshore and off. Whether it was due to negligence or the inherent dangers of deep-water drilling, it pales in comparison to the self-inflicted wound of increased energy regulation and taxes and the Obama administration's moratorium. President Obama has succeeded in turning a crisis into an...

May 29, 2008 By Andrew Walden (Hawai'i Free Press) Nadhmi Auchi, seen here with the Governor of Illinois, Rob Blagojevich (middle) at a 2004 Chicago dinner in Auchi's honor arranged by Antonin Rezko (potentially, right)[1]. All three men have been convicted of corruption related charges (Auchi 2003, Rezko 2008, Blagojevich 2009).[2] “A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser (dual US-Syrian citizen Tony Rezko) just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses. The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi,...

Energy Policy: Our interior secretary plans to reinstate the offshore drilling moratorium struck down by a federal judge. But if deep-water drilling is so unsafe, why are we helping Brazil drill nearly three times as deep? Maybe Secretary Ken Salazar can explain why Britain and others can safely drill in the North Sea and no other nation has suspended its offshore drilling. Yet there he was Tuesday saying he'll reissue a reworded moratorium that will make it clear to dunces like U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman why offshore drilling is unsafe. As with health care reform and other issues, the...

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...

Leadership: The president says he went to the Gulf to find out whose derriere to kick. After he gets his foot out of his own mouth, perhaps he can talk to us about that Coast Guard memo. Scapegoating has become a hallmark of this administration. Certainly BP was responsible for the safe operation and maintenance of Deepwater Horizon. But after an accident in federal waters the federal government, which has a plan to save the entire planet from greenhouse gases, had no plan to save the Gulf from a single gushing well, with the possible exception of finger-pointing. In this...

The Economy: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a six-month ban on deep-water drilling. When President Obama visited Louisiana on May 1, he talked about the possibility that the oil gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well could "jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home." Now the administration's response could jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands more. In a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the president's decision to suspend deepwater drilling...

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

Editor's note: Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee, a nationally syndicated columnist and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She was the campaign manager for the Al Gore-Joe Lieberman ticket in 2000 and wrote "Cooking With Grease." (CNN) -- In 1947, when AT&T was America's only phone company, a woman called the company's chief operator to protest a long-distance charge on her bill. She proved her house had been shuttered when the call was made, but the operator refused to reverse the charge. "This isn't the end of...

Energy: An administration never enthusiastic about offshore drilling is using the Gulf oil spill as an excuse to suspend Arctic exploration. Who could've seen that coming? Now we'll be more dependent on foreign oil. Suspicions in some quarters that the administration was being deliberately lax in its response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in order to pursue a larger, anti-domestic energy agenda were met with derision. But if not deliberate, the effect is the same as the administration prepares to shut down our search for new oil. President Obama on Thursday announced a suspension...

Accountability: Democrats have finally gotten around to blaming the Bush administration for the Gulf oil disaster. We wonder when this administration will take responsibility for anything. Asked on the "Imus in the Morning" program Tuesday on Fox Business Network if the Obama administration is to blame for the damaging fallout of the spill, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., actually said, "Well, you know, they come into office a year ago with all of this. And so, after the last eight years ... " before being interrupted by a perplexed Imus. We too are perplexed. George W. Bush was blamed for the...

As his administration comes under increasing criticism for its handling of the spreading environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama will hold a White House news conference Thursday, his first since February, in an attempt to retake command of the message. He'll do so as the crisis reaches yet another moment of high risk, both in the Gulf and in Washington. At the scene of the oil spill, the oil firm BP -- attempting the latest of inventive but thus far ineffective maneuvers to stop the gusher that has been spewing from the gulf floor for five weeks...

Emergencies: As frustration with the federal response grows, Louisiana's governor lashes out at the feds for doing little except blame BP for the Gulf oil spill. Meanwhile, Congress sees a chance to raise your gas taxes. While the Obama administration continues on its quest to fundamentally transform America, the largely unabated Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to fundamentally transform the ecosystems and economy of Louisiana and the Gulf region. The federal government's response so far has consisted largely of scapegoating BP and ignoring its own responsibilities and lack of preparation, railing against Big Oil, while Congress...

It’s not Obama’s fault. It’s not British Petroleum’s fault. It was just an accident. And everyone is doing everything they can to stop the leak and clean up the mess. That’s the truth, and fair-minded people ought to be willing to acknowledge it. But few are. Instead, the explosion of an oilrig in the Gulf of Mexico is being seen through exclusively political eyes as factions jockey to play the mishap to their political and philosophical advantage. The Marxists in the administration and the Democratic Party crucify BP as the representative of the capitalism they hate. Republicans crucify Barack Obama...