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Gasoline prices are on their way up again. So too is the ire of gasoline purchasers who skipped Econ 101 in school...

[Thirty] years after a vicious winter storm ripped across the Atlantic Ocean and helped sink the world's largest and most advanced oil rig, memories of the Ocean Ranger tragedy are still painful and fresh. All 84 crew members died when the Ocean Ranger toppled and then sank on the Grand Banks in the early hours of Feb. 15, 1982. "It's still — the way it happened, there's no closure. It doesn't feel like there's any," said Connie Foley, who was 19 when her father Ron and his colleagues died at sea...

A huge oil-drilling rig reportedly sank in a storm off the coast of Newfoundland Monday morning, and all 84 men aboard were said to be missing in 50-foot seas and feared dead... (Page A8.)

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, is losing about $1 billion a year from drilling delays in the Gulf of Mexico since the 2010 Macondo disaster. Shell’s production in the region will be curbed by about 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent this year, similar to 2011, Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said. The company expects to return to planned operations off the Gulf coast by 2014. “The cash flow implications are a billion dollars or more per year relative to where we want to be,” Henry said in London today. “We are catching up.” The company, which in...

A Chesapeake Energy drilling rig caught fire Thursday night outside of Sweetwater, Okla., according to a company spokesman and an online oil field drilling forum. The rig was drilling into a shallow gas pocket about four miles outside of Sweetwater when workers found an unexpectedly high pressure of natural gas at only 910 feet below the surface, Jim Gipson, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. The site was supposed to be drilled to more than 12,000 feet vertically before being drilled horizontally, Gipson said. Soon after workers experienced the high pressure, the rig caught fire, sending flames several feet...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — One of the government's top scientists says much more research is needed to determine the possible impacts of shale gas drilling on human health and the environment. "Studies should include all the ways people can be exposed, such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals," Dr. Christopher Portier wrote to The Associated Press in an email. Portier is director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The jobs are plentiful. They pay very well, $29 per hour entry-level and up. No college degree is required, not even always a high school diploma. Training is provided, beyond prerequisite basic drilling and first aid classes. Yet Canada expects limited growth in drilling next year, due to a severe shortage of rig workers. "The greatest limiting factor when examining overall utilization rates will be the shortage of skilled rig workers," said the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors (CAODC) in a November statement. "Industry suffered a great loss of skills and knowledge during the downturn of 2009 and it...

Election '12: A governor of an energy-rich state would use the "energy of the past" to create the jobs of the present rather than placing bets on solar panels and tilting at windmills. During the GOP presidential debates, Gov. Rick Perry was criticized for taking all the credit for Texas' job-creation record since he was not responsible for the oil and gas in the ground that created many of those jobs. True enough. But like Sarah Palin, the governor of another energy-rich state, he did foster a business-friendly climate as free from NIMBY regulations as possible, making the extraction of...

President Obama's United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing. "Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed," announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. "The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan." The study will...

BP won approval from the Interior Department to drill its first exploratory oil well in the Gulf of Mexico since the blowout of its Macondo well a year and a half ago touched off the country’s worst offshore environmental disaster. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said that BP met more stringent safety requirements devised by the federal government in the aftermath of the disaster. The company also planned to follow even tougher voluntary standards that exceeded the government’s rules. “This permit was approved only after thorough well design, blowout preventer, and containment capability reviews,” said bureau director Michael...

Good news, domestic energy fans! After extraordinary delays, it looks like there will finally be some energy production activity in the Gulf of Mexico once again. This time it’s in the fertile fields to the south and west of Florida, employing some brand spanking new deep-water drilling rigs with all the latest technical features. This is terrific, and I’m sure you’ll all join me in congratulating President Obama for moving forward with this much needed expansion of … What’s that? We’re not the ones doing the drilling? Then who is? “Before the end of the year, a Chinese-made drilling platform...

As state, local and federal officials brace for a major offshore drilling operation to begin between Cuba in Key West in December, another exploratory well may be drilled a year later in the Bahamas. The Bahamian and Cuban governments on Oct. 3 signed an agreement delimiting the two nations’ maritime borders after nearly 40 years of negotiations. The move cleared a major obstacle in the way of the Bahamas’ oil exploration goals since leases identified for their potential oil finds are near Cuban waters.

In campaign appearances, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Adam Hasner has repeatedly said he supports oil drilling off Florida's shores, and that he opposed then-Gov. Charlie Crist's attempt to impose an offshore drilling moratorium. In a speech before the Palm Beach County Tea Party's Boca Raton chapter on Oct. 4, Hasner adamantly asserted, "We rejected Charlie Crist's plan to block offshore drilling off of the coast of Florida." The implication in the statement, which you can watch Hasner make in the video posted below, is that he has always supported drilling off the coast of Florida, and that just isn't true.

The petroleum industry is amid a tremendous wave of hiring that's occurring in response to the gradual retirement of the so-called "baby boom" generation, which was spawned in the wake of World War II. Much of the hiring focuses on the very young—both blue collar labor and newly minted petroleum geoscience and engineering grads. Another important trend is on the re-training of mid-career professionals into more labor-tight technical and management positions. The American Petroleum Institute says that it has no statistics on how much hiring is directed toward the young and middle-aged, but other statistics are compelling on how badly...

Mr. Hamm was one of the pioneers of this method in the 1990s, and it has done for the oil industry what hydraulic fracturing has done for natural gas drilling in places like the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast. Both innovations have unlocked decades worth of new sources of domestic fossil fuels that previously couldn't be extracted at affordable cost. Mr. Hamm's rags to riches success is the quintessential "only in America" story. He was the last of 13 kids, growing up in rural Oklahoma "the son of sharecroppers who never owned land." He didn't have money to go to...

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...

For anyone who's played the game "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral," it might seem obvious that the Marcellus shale isn't alive and doesn't grow -- it's a rock layer in the ground, so it's a mineral. In the Pennsylvania courts, the answer is not so clear. A Susquehanna County Common Pleas court is headed for a hearing to determine whether the gas-rich Marcellus shale is a mineral, and therefore, included in mineral rights. The state Superior Court ruled this month that case law is unclear, leaving big questions over who legitimately controls drilling rights and the valuable natural gas in the mile-deep...

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. It has been stoked by rising prices and growing demand, especially as the people of China and other emerging economies have taken to the road. This specter goes by the name of "peak oil." Its advocates argue that the world is fast approaching (or has already reached) a point of maximum oil output. They warn that "an unprecedented crisis is just over the horizon." The result, it is said, will be "chaos," to say...

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...

A new report that predictably found huge potential natural gas supplies in the U.S. also contained news its own writers found surprising - that oil is more abundant than they thought. "Contrary to conventional wisdom the North American oil resource base also could provide substantial supply for decades ahead," the report said.

THE EUROPEAN Commission yesterday issued its strongest rebuke yet to Turkey over its threatening behaviour towards Cyprus’ efforts to drill for hydrocarbon reserves within its own Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Unfazed, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan continued to raise the stakes in his row with Israel and Cyprus over hydrocarbon explorations in the eastern Mediterranean, vowing yesterday to stop them from exploiting natural resources in the area while also pledging to send warships to escort aid to Gaza. The EU, through Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule yesterday “urged Turkey to refrain from any kind of threat, sources of friction or...

Rep. Allen West's (R-Fla.) opposition to oil-and-gas drilling in the Everglades put him on the side of his fellow Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D), with whom West has feuded publicly.

Libya, Khaddafy’s impact on the U.S.Reporter: Erin McGinn Posted: 10:44 AM Aug 28, 2011 Here in Michiana, we are more than 5,000 miles away from everything going on right now in Libya. So how does this affect us? Libya is the fourth largest country in Africa. Nearly two million people live in Tripoli alone, that is the area where Moammar Khaddafy has held the most power. The United States has a vested interest in the country’s oil production. In fact, Libya has the largest oil reserve in all of Africa. Experts agree that a resolution to this conflict would help...

How long before hydro-fracture drilling for natural gas is blamed?

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A state lawmaker is explaining his remark that suggests the impact of Pennsylvania's booming natural gas industry includes the spread of sexually transmitted disease "amongst the womenfolk." Democratic Rep. Michael Sturla of Lancaster County was expected to discuss the remark at a previously scheduled hearing Wednesday on gas drilling.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A judge on Friday threw out Obama administration rules that sought to slow down expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on federal land. U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of a petroleum industry group, the Western Energy Alliance, in its lawsuit against the federal government, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The ruling reinstates Bush-era expedited oil and gas drilling under provisions called categorical exclusions on federal lands nationwide, Freudenthal said. The government argued that oil and gas companies had no case because they didn't show how the new rules, implemented by the...

The next presidential election is 15 months away, and 2012 (like most elections) will come down to the mundane, everyday, bread-and-butter issue of economics. I submit that the biggest economic indicator is the price of gasoline. Back in 2006, Nancy Pelosi railed about high gasoline prices, asserting that they were the result of “Big Oil” running the government. Barack Obama picked up on this theme during his 2008 presidential bid, and said he "felt the pain" of those who had to pay exorbitant gas prices.

KMBC's Exclusive Interview With President ObamaUPDATED: 5:02 pm CDT July 20, 2011 Watch The Entire Interview On KMBC.com **SNIP** Q: Lara Moritz: “One thing that also is something that is frustrating Kansans and Missourians is that almost overnight, gas prices jumped $.20 this week. They averaged $3.68. What do we do about that?” A: President Obama: “This has been a big headwind that we’ve experienced in the economy. Because gas prices not only take money directly out of people’s pockets. But psychologically every time you pass a filling station you say boy, things are getting tough out there. And that...

N.C. Senate overrides all 6 vetoesAction against Perdue may be just a message. There's no guarantee the House will do the same. By Craig Jarvis and Lynn Bonner Staff Writers Posted: Thursday, Jul. 14, 2011 RALEIGH In quick order and with little debate, the state Senate overrode all six vetoes of its bills on Wednesday, sending Gov. Bev Perdue a clear - if not necessarily effective - message. Although the Republican-controlled Senate flexed its muscles, successful overrides aren't guaranteed in the House and so might amount to no more than an opportunity to make a political statement. After the votes,...

The Day Freedom Dies - Harlingen, Texas, June 21, 2011: It was 38 years ago that a group of journalist acquaintances gathered in my Manila, Philippines hotel room to tell me about the arrest of another friend who had written with disfavor about the Marcos government. They were not even allowed to visit or correspond with him in any way. These writers also showed me how newspapers and television presented events in their country that was living under martial law. Nothing reflecting disfavor of the government could be printed or voiced. Now we fast forward to this morning’s newspaper in...

Unlike drilling projects in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, where the Interior Department is responsible for granting air permits, Arctic projects require approval from the EPA. The EPA's process for approving Clean Air Act permits for offshore drilling came into focus after Shell struggled to secure clean-air permits for drilling projects in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas spent about $3.5 billion to explore and prepare for those projects, but EPA, clean-air regulatory hurdles have prevented the company from obtaining necessary approvals… "It's time to either give the permits now or stop altogether," said Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.), chairman...

Energy Policy: The former governor of energy-rich Alaska calls the administration's bluff: End tax breaks for all forms of energy, she says, and let the free market pick winners and losers. End the ethanol pandering too. She isn't running, or riding, for president, at least not yet. But at a stop on her One Nation bus tour, Sarah Palin offered a winning idea for an economy strapped for energy and jobs and saddled with unsustainable debt. "I think all our energy subsidies need to be re-looked at today and eliminated," Palin told Scott Conroy of Real Clear Politics during a...

Memorial Day normally kicks off the summer vacation and heavy driving season, but with gas prices at the pump more than twice as expensive as they were two years ago, American families are being forced to stay close to home and pull back on normal family expenses.   The cost to fill up the tank is consuming 40% more of the family budget than it did last summer.  According to AAA, 17 cents of every consumer dollar is spent at the pump, up from 12 cents one year ago.  That has consequences, of course.  "Dining, shopping, museums, and gambling are taking...

How much did the Obama administration’s knee-jerk moratorium on offshore drilling cost residents on the Gulf of Mexico last year? Although the moratorium was lifted after six months, the Heritage Foundation notes that nothing changed. It was only after tens of thousands of jobs were lost and gas prices soared that the Obama administration began approving a permit here and there. This lagging energy exploration has had serious impacts on the energy industry and, as a result, the entire U.S. economy:

For now, state geologists are finished with their research in central North Carolina. After studying 59,000 acres in the Deep River basin for 15 years, they have concluded that Lee, Chatham and Moore counties could produce enough natural gas from shale to make North Carolina self-sufficient for 40 years at current levels of consumption. "That's what we think," said Kenneth Taylor, chief of the N.C. Geological Survey. "We could become a net exporter." The geologists recently sent their findings to the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, which is being asked to assess the full potential of the Sanford sub-basin, a...

With narrow majority, Senate Democrats adopt minimalist agendaBy David A. Fahrenthold and Paul Kane, Published: May 20 Just one year ago, the Democrats who controlled the Senate had won their latest landmark victory: passage of a bill to remake financial regulation. Today, Democrats still run the Senate, but their agenda looks a good bit different. This week, the highlight was a vote to end tax breaks for oil companies. As expected, they lost. Senate Democrats are in a historically difficult spot. House Republicans have the energy. President Obama has the spotlight. And thus they have become the third wheel of...

(PhysOrg.com) -- In what can only be described as a mammoth undertaking, scientists, led by British co-chiefs, Dr Damon Teagle of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England and Dr Benoit Ildefonse from Montpellier University in France, have announced jointly in an article in Nature that they intend to drill a hole through the Earth’s crust and into the mantle; a feat never before accomplished, much less seriously attempted.

Democratic U.S. lawmakers have asked Congressional panels to look into whether Koch, an energy company led by brothers who are powerhouses in conservative politics, will benefit if the Obama administration approves a $7 billion pipeline to bring crude from Canada into the United States. U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush wrote a letter on Friday to Republicans chairing the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and one of its subcommittees, asking them to request documents from Koch Industries regarding the extent to which the company would benefit if the Keystone XL oil sands line would be built. Privately held...

The price at the pump has increased 28% in just the last four months, 116% since Barack Obama took office.  The reaction from the White House and the Democrats?  Punish the energy industry with $85.5 billion in new taxes – a penalty that will further discourage domestic production and sure to be passed on to consumers driving prices even higher. The President says that oil and gas should pay their "fair share."  I did a little checking and found that the industry pays an average 41.1% of net income in taxes compared to 26.5% for all other S&P industrials.  Only...

The Senate rejected a Republican measure Wednesday to expand offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. coastal waters, signaling a continued partisan stalemate over energy policy and, more specifically, how to respond to rising gas prices. The bill was defeated in a 42-57 vote. Sixty votes were required for passage. Five Republicans -- Alabama's Richard Shelby, Louisiana's David Vitter, Maine's Olympia Snowe, South Carolina's Jim DeMint, and Utah's Mike Lee -- voted against the bill.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski is convinced that Poland can exploit the full potential of shale gas.

Energy: 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. The Trans-Alaskan pipeline is dying, another casualty of the Obama administration's war on domestic fossil fuel energy and its deliberate effort to drive up energy prices to make so-called "green" energy alternatives more attractive. It was built to handle the oil produced on Alaska's North Slope at Prudhoe Bay and was a marvel of American engineering and exceptionalism. When oil exploration began in Prudhoe Bay,...

Energy: Extending existing oil leases as the president has proposed accomplishes nothing if the White House's environmental handcuffs won't let them be used. Lucy wants to hold the football for Charlie Brown again. When President Obama said during his Saturday radio address that "we should increase safe and responsible oil production here at home," the operative words were "safe and responsible." We will drill if it's safe for polar bears, caribou and West Texas lizards, and if it doesn't contribute to the "climate change" myth. Similar words were used to justify the seven-year moratorium on offshore drilling off both coasts,...

Washington Post headline: Obama looks to drilling to relieve oil pricesIn an effort to defuse Republican and oil industry pressure over drilling permits and soothe public anger over gasoline prices, President Obama will order the Interior Department to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and speed up seismic work that is a precursor to drilling off the south and mid-Atlantic coasts.In his Saturday radio address, Obama will also extend oil company leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska where work was delayed by the drilling moratorium the president imposed during the massive Gulf of Mexico oil...

Many liberals in the media are expressing shock over Obama’s apparent willingness to increase oil production.  We all know that he is full of …, I mean ethanol, and they do too. Those of you who were befuddled at the news that Obama will ‘expand drilling’ in Alaska are not missing anything.  Obama has pulled this political chicanery a number of times.  Whenever a specific proposal that he so adamantly opposes becomes too popular to ignore, he announces his support for it by promising to implement inconsequential reforms.  To that end, he declared during his Saturday radio address that he...

The New York Times is reporting “Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time”. Time to pop the corks on the champagne and celebrate. Right? Maybe not. At first blush this seems to be a major reversal for the administration and a win for domestic drilling advocates. If we can believe what the times is reporting: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time,...

While everyone, including me, is talking about the “natural gas revolution” these days, slowly and quietly one other surprise has been taking shape: a revival in domestic oil drilling. As of mid-April, the number of oil drilling rigs passed up the number of gas drilling rigs in the United States, according to the Baker-Hughes rig count released this week by the Energy Information Administration. Ten years ago, as the figure displays, the ratio of gas to oil rigs was as high as four-to-one.The reason for this dramatic turnabout is simple: falling natural gas prices, and rising oil prices. The...

You know, in about 15 years or so, Barack Obama might actually come up with an energy policy that increases energy and grows the economy. After five months of escalating political heat, Obama finally decided that we could drill our way out of our problems — or at least his problems: Facing continued public unhappiness over gas prices, President Barack Obama is directing his administration to ramp up U.S. oil production by extending existing leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska’s coast and holding more frequent lease sales in a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska.Obama said Saturday that...

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....

The House of Representatives voted to open more of the nation's oceans for oil and gas exploration on Thursday by a vote of 243 to 179. The "Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act," requires the Interior Department to set a production goal of three million barrels of oil per day for its 2012-2017 leasing plan. In order to reach that target, the legislation requires the department to hold lease sales off the coast of Southern California, in the Arctic Ocean, off Alaska's Bristol Bay, and in the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to North Carolina. Republicans say that the bill, along...