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The White House is readying an executive order that aims to open up new areas of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans to offshore oil and gas drilling, according to multiple individuals briefed on the proposal. The White House is considering issuing instructions to the Interior Department to reverse President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of hundreds of millions of offshore acres from future drilling in December 2016. The executive order -- which could come out in the next few weeks -- represents President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to promote domestic energy exploration by rolling back restrictions put in place by previous administrations,...

A Saudi logistics company has just opened a Houston office to seize the opportunity to ship increased volumes of oilfield and plant construction equipment to the Port of Houston as the Texas and U.S. drilling activity is gaining momentum. Bahri Logistics – which had opened its U.S. headquarters in Baltimore back in 1992 – is now opening an office in Houston to take advantage of expected higher demand for oilfield equipment, called breakbulk cargo in the shipping industry: these are large items that need to be loaded and shipped individually rather than in containers. Bahri, or the National Shipping Company...

The dynamics of the oil industry have changed dramatically since the beginning of 2010. Because of the U.S. shale revolution, the U.S. is now a country with oil production rivaling that of Saudi Arabia and Russia. The fundamental shift in oil power has come as a direct result of investment in the technology of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of tight oil formations in the U.S. In 2010, U.S. production from tight oil shale formations were marginal in comparison to total U.S. oil production; however, tight oil now makes up 52 percent of all U.S. oil production.

The Department of the Interior will include “all available” federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico that have not already been leased out for offshore oil drilling. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Monday 73 million acres off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida would be offered at a lease sale in August as part of the Interior Department’s five-year leasing plan. “Opening more federal lands and waters to oil and gas drilling is a pillar of President Trump’s plan to make the United States energy independent,” Zinke said in a statement. Interior finalized its current five-year offshore...

Data from the last seismic survey done in the ANWR in the early 1980s suggest the region potentially contains some ten billion barrels of recoverable oil, says Houseknecht—enough to meet U.S. demand for about a year and a half. But the uncertainty is large. In 2002, estimates of the recoverable oil in the vast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), to the west of Prudhoe Bay, were also more than ten billion barrels. That estimate fell by 90 percent in 2010 after exploratory wells found mostly gas. What Obama's Drilling Bans Mean for Alaska and the Arctic

If the GOP-controlled Legislature goes along with Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf's renewed call for a severance tax, it would be a surefire way to debilitate Pennsylvania's shale-gas industry. Always a bad idea, a severance tax is an even worse idea this time around — because 2016 saw the industry “shed a third of its jobs” and gas prices are still rebounding “from record lows,” according to the Commonwealth Foundation. The state's own Independent Fiscal Office estimates that Pennsylvania's existing impact fee is the equivalent of a 6.9-percent severance tax — higher than severance taxes in Louisiana, Wyoming and West Virginia.

resident Obama apparently wants his legacy to be one of energy starvation for the United States and dependence on foreign energy from friendly places like Saudi Arabia and Iran. His ban on offshore drilling in federally owned waters off our Atlantic and Arctic coasts makes no sense, either environmentally or economically. As the Washington Times notes, Obama thinks he can get away with it: Vowing that his successor won’t be able to reverse his actions, President Obama on Tuesday used executive authority to permanently ban new offshore drilling in federally owned waters off the Atlantic coast and in the Arctic...

President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from future offshore oil and gas drilling. Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia from oil exploration and the potential for spills.

Back in early 2015, oil and gas company ConocoPhillips requested a permit from the Obama administration to launch an oil-drilling project in Alaska. The energy project, called the Greater Mooses Tooth development, is located within the National Petroleum Reserve and would create thousands of jobs in an economically depressed area of the state. The project has the full approval of the local community and poses little threat to the environment in a sparsely populated region. It is a multibillion-dollar jobs-and-infrastructure project with roads and housing and pipelines. It won't cost the federal taxpayers a penny to build. In fact, the...

The Obama administration on Friday banned offshore drilling in the Arctic, setting a likely collision course with President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to “unleash” new energy production in the United States by rolling back restrictions on oil and gas companies. The move by the Interior Department, part of a new five-year plan for energy development in federal waters, would put a temporary end to exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off the Alaskan coast. It also dropped plans to allow companies to drill for oil and natural gas in the Atlantic Ocean off of four southeastern states, including Virginia.

Sally Jewell, the U.S. interior secretary, just cancelled leases to drill for natural gas on federal land in Colorado, in a last-ditch effort to stop an energy boom bigger than Bakken Shale discovery in North Dakota. Jewell’s Bureau of Land Management claimed that the 25 “Mancos” energy drilling leases now being cancelled were just a non-performing portion of 65 leases on “lands managed by the White River National Forest” and “amount to less than ½ of 1 percent of the active leases on public lands in the state of Colorado.” But the 25 properties were “non-performing” only because they have...

Color me shocked. (Sarcasm intended.) The long awaited plans for U.S. offshore oil leases are coming out shortly and you’ll never guess what happened. After years of working toward expanded development in the Atlantic shelf, the White House has reportedly yanked the plans entirely and will cancel all plans for such leases. (New York Times) The Obama administration is expected to withdraw its plan to permit oil and gas drilling off the southeast Atlantic coast, yielding to an outpouring of opposition from coastal communities from Virginia to Georgia but dashing the hopes and expectations of many of those states’...

Obama on federal coal mining is a throwback to Carter administration failings. resident Obama's plot to use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to kill federal coal mining with a thousand paper cuts is not the first time he has used NEPA to try to end energy development. Disturbingly, his scheme is a throwback to President Carter and a decade-long moratorium that ended only when President Reagan took office. Meanwhile millions of Americans, vast regions and the nation's economy will suffer. In 2009, the Obama administration settled a "sweetheart lawsuit" by environmental groups by agreeing to a NEPA study on...

According to a report by the Bloomberg Intelligence analysts William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove, Saudi Arabia may have its work cut out for it as it will be far harder to kill many U.S. E&Ps than analysts originally thought. The reason: a break-even model for the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shows that oil production across five plays in Texas and New Mexico may remain profitable even when WTI prices fall below $30 a barrel, according to a 55-variable Bloomberg Intelligence model for horizontal oil wells. The Eagle Ford's DeWitt County has the lowest break-even, at $22.52, followed by Reeves...

Following the mysterious death of seven cattle near an oil field in Kansas, public health authorities are investigating whether oil drilling could be the cause. In late December, seven dead cattle were found near an oil field in the Cimarron National Grassland, Kansas, and authorities believe that cows inhaled something toxic, prompting them to deny public access to the 2,500-acre Cimarron National Grassland until at least May. Six of the cattle were discovered together in a low-lying area, while a seventh was found a short distance away, with local veterinarians identifying the ingestion or inhalation of something toxic leading to...

The natural gas drilling frenzy is grinding to a halt, as the industry struggles with excess supply. Natural gas prices have plunged to their lowest levels in more than a decade this month, dipping below $1.80 per million Btu (MMBtu). The shale gas revolution is an old story at this point, one that everyone is familiar with. But the revolution never really ended, even though the media moved on to focus on the tight oil boom. Natural gas production continued to rise over the past decade, reaching record heights in 2015. However, demand has not kept up, despite the rise...

The hunt for new stores of oil and gas has been dramatically curtailed amid a global crude slump, with exploration budgets at the largest oil companies cut in half from their peak levels in 2013, according to a new analysis. Investment banking firm Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., which tracked exploration capital spending at integrated oil companies and major exploration and production companies, forecast that spending will fall to $25 billion next year, down from the $50 billion these same companies spent three years ago. Oil companies are spending less in part because service costs have tumbled alongside oil prices,...

Cam Hewell runs Premium Oilfield Technologies, a small company that makes equipment and spare parts for drilling rigs from North Dakota to Texas. Like his rivals, he is trying to withstand the worst oilfield downturn in six years, but they face a vexing obstacle: cannibals. In a bid to save cash, rig owners are cannibalizing parts such as motors and drill pipe from idled rigs to fix 800 active ones in the U.S. when stuff breaks. In good times, they would buy new equipment from companies like Hewell's or industry leader National Oilwell Varco Inc when parts fail. Now, they...

In a shift reminiscent of the freefall that occurred earlier this year, the overall US drilling rig count plunged 29 units during the week ended Oct. 2 to a total of 809, the lowest since May 3, 2002, according to data from Baker Hughes Inc. The count has now fallen in 6 consecutive weeks, giving up 76 units during that time. The recent decline follows a small summer rebound in which the total climbed 28 units over a 9-week period from a nadir of 857 to a plateau of 885. The count is now down 1,113 units year-over-year and 1,122...

At the beginning of this week, oil major Shell announced that it will indefinitely postpone (read: completely abandon) its Arctic drilling operations in the Chukchi Sea offshore Alaska. The company stated: "Shell will now cease further exploration activity in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future. This decision reflects both the Burger J well result, the high costs associated with the project and the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska." This retreat will result in Shell losing its $7 billion investment, a bitter pill to swallow for the oil major. While Shell and many others have given up...