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The American Petroleum Institute has just released the results of its third annual “Energy IQ” survey, and it reflects that Americans’ knowledge about energy issues is lacking. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, comes as President Obama and Congress are pursuing aggressive energy and climate policies that threaten the nation’s economy, and which will determine America’s economic competitiveness for years to come. Some high points from the survey: • When asked about the role fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal will play in meeting global energy demand, only 10 percent of respondents answered correctly that fossil fuels...

This would create new jobs and stop the obama Death Spiral into Depression and China would once again be buying from us! As it is now "Welfare Rolls have seen a SHARP Increase" we have the worse housing market in this generations memory and the Death Spiral continues. Scientists Confirm U.S. Has World’s Biggest Oil Reserves It has been more than a year since the Department of Interior announced that North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3 to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation, but little is being done about it....

There are several studies that prove this. UCSB's study is rather bold right up front in it's findings: Next time you step on a glob of tar on a beach in Santa Barbara County, you can thank the oil companies that it isn't a bigger glob. That's pretty clear, isn't it? There's a study out there from the US Government which has taken note of seepages and compared them with leaks that happen from offshore oil rigs and notes that rigs leak less than the ocean floor does. The Brits have also noticed the positive benefits of offshore riggery, though...

The proliferation of marine life around oil production platforms turned on its head every "environmental expert" opinion of its day. The original plan, mandated by federal environmental "experts" back in the late '40s, was to remove the big, ugly, polluting, environmentally hazardous contraptions as soon as they stopped producing. Fine, said the oil companies. About 15 years ago some wells played out off Louisiana and the oil companies tried to comply. Their ears are still ringing from the clamor fishermen put up. Turns out those platforms are going nowhere, and by popular demand of those with a bigger stake in...

About half of the oil in the ocean bubbles up naturally from the seafloor, with Earth giving it up freely like it was of no value. Likewise, NASA satellites collect thousands of images and 1.5 terrabytes of data every year, but some of it gets passed over because no one thinks there is a use for it.

Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil. Related Podcasts 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Oil in North Dakota and Montana Download directly | Details or subscribe by e-mail. Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the...

Last week, as a friend of mine and I were discussing the energy business, an acquaintance of ours came into the room. When told the topic of discussion, she immediately denounced Exxon Mobil. She'd just heard on the radio that the energy giant had had a record $45.2 billion profit in 2008. She was clearly hoping that we would join in her disgust. I asked, "So are you suggesting that Exxon should not make money?" I went on, "Would you prefer that Exxon be like AIG, or Citigroup, or one of the big Wall Street outfits that's now asking for...

The US rig count continues to plummet, down 73 with 1,399 rotary rigs still drilling, said Baker Hughes Inc. That's the lowest activity level since July 19, 2005, when 1,404 rigs were working and the count was climbing. A year ago this week there were 1,755 units at work. Canada's rig count inched up by 3 units to 435 drilling, down from 598 during the same time last year. US land drilling dropped 74 rigs to 1,330 working. Inland water activity was down 1 rig to 7. However, US offshore drilling increased by 2 rotary rigs to 61 in the...

U.S. Offshore Oil Production Matters Contrary to conventional wisdom about U.S. crude oil production, EIA’s November Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) predicts U.S. crude oil production will increase 8 percent from 2008 to 2009. For example, the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW Nov.10, 2008, pg. 5), commenting on the likely future track of global production, said, “Accelerating decline rates in these two areas [the North Sea and North America] are widely expected to swamp growth from newer non-OPEC regions…” Offshore production from the federal Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is a major part of the STEO’s production story, projecting that it will make...

The California Independent System Operator said Thursday it is eyeing an expected influx of thousands of plug-in electric cars in the state by the year 2012 that could pose a challenge to its grid's power flows unless the cars are developed to charge only at night. The ISO met with researchers from the University of California-Davis on Wednesday, who are studying plug-in cars, to get a handle on what sort of impact plug-in cars will have on the grid in coming years. "We really don't know yet," what the impact will be, and the university researchers were not able to...

The Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has proposed that oil and gas Lease Sale 208 for the Central Gulf of Mexico Planning Area be held March 18, 2009. The Notice of Availability of the Proposed Notice of Sale (PNOS) was published in the Federal Register on Friday, October 3. The proposed sale encompasses approximately 6,200 unleased blocks covering more than 33.5 million acres offshore Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. This area includes 5.8 million acres, known as the 181 South Area, that will be offered for lease for the first time since 1988. "What makes Sale 208 noteworthy...

This is a reposting of an article written by Robert Rapier two years ago, on how winter gasoline differs from summer gasoline, and why this tends to make winter gasoline less expensive than summer gasoline. We also now have a lot of reports of gasoline outages due to short supply following Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Feel free to discuss those in this thread also. Every year in late summer, you will start hearing references in the media about the conversion to winter gasoline, such as the following (originally in the Bradenton Herald, but the link is long dead): Motorists...

When Arizona Sen. John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he vowed to cut America's reliance on foreign oil by opening up the nation's Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling—drawing cheers from GOP delegates on hand for his party's national convention. "We will drill new oil wells offshore, and we'll drill them now," McCain pledged to his faithful, who gushed with enthusiastic chants of "drill, baby, drill!" The ultimate goal, the candidate said: to "stop sending $700 billion a year (for oil) to countries that don't like us very much." No one disputes that a lot of oil lies...

The House introduced new energy legislation late last night. Finally…right? The House also wants to bring the 290-page bill, which can be found here, to the floor today. You think the 435 Members in the House of Representatives are going to meticulously read all 290 pages? A bill that makes fundamental changes to thousands of pages of earlier energy bills as well as the tax code. Please. This isn’t Harry Potter. You can’t just cruise through something as complex as energy policy in one short night. It’s true that Congress should craft an energy policy as expeditiously as possible to...

WASHINGTON: Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives attacked a Democratic offshore drilling plan Friday for including a 50-mile coastal buffer that they said would leave untouched most of the 18 billion barrels of oil in waters now off-limits to energy companies. A Democratic drilling proposal expected to be taken up by the House next week would allow energy development access to waters 50 to 100 miles from shore along almost all the country's coastlines as long as a coastal state agrees to drilling off its shores. Waters off Florida's Gulf coast and a nationwide 50-mile coastal buffer would remain...

Updated 9/12 1800 EDT. Hurricane Ike's current track currently is headed directly for Houston/Galveston and is expected by the National Hurricane Center to be Category 2 (or perhaps a 3) at a late Friday/early Saturday am landfall, which remains in striking distance of over 5 million bpd of US petroleum refining capacity. (A little perspective: 5 MMBBL is about 30% of US capacity (about 15 MMBBL), and a bit less than 6% of global capacity (~85 MMBBL)). Current path estimates for Hurricane Ike (Methaz NHC official track Sep 12 (17:00 EDT)-click twice to enlarge--colors represent storm surge from SLOSH models,...

As discussion regarding domestic exploration for oil and natural gas off Florida’s coast grips the nation’s attention, new poll results today released by Associated Industries of Florida (AIF) demonstrate a significant increase in the percent of Floridians in favor of drilling off the state’s coast over the percent of those in favor this time last year. The McLaughlin & Associates poll, conducted last week, concluded 73.2 percent of Floridians favor drilling for oil off the coast of Florida – a 10 percentage-point increase over the previous year’s poll results. Further, the results show bipartisan support of the issue with the...

A U.S. appeals court Monday awarded nearly a dozen oil companies more than $1 billion to recover costs from breached 1980s exploration and production leases off the coast of California. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a previous court's decision for the plaintiffs claiming the government owed them for the bonuses paid for the Outer Continental Shelf leases. It may send a strong signal to congressional lawmakers who've been trying to force oil companies to pay royalties on offshore oil and gas leases signed in the late 1990s that omitted royalty relief provisions. "It's very important...

The Energy Challenge When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing. That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new...

Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands. The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not. The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads. “We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen...

Oil fields aren't new in Los Angeles. But with the price of crude beyond $100 a barrel, it is cost-effective to start drilling there again, in both old and new wells. And that has made some residents very unhappy. "What we have is a world class oil field sitting below a world class city," said John Martini, manager of governmental affairs for Plains Exploration and Production Co., or PXP. The Texas oil company does extensive work in the Inglewood oil fields. Now, the company is seeking government approval to tap as many as 50 new or existing wells a year...

Denbury Resources Inc., Dallas, plans to pay $600 million or more to acquire giant Conroe field north of Houston where it intends to begin injecting carbon dioxide within 5 years in a development project worth $750 million-1 billion. Recovery at Conroe from CO2 injection is estimated at 130 million boe, depending on the ultimate recovery factor, and the properties contain 18.2 million boe of proved conventional reserves. Conroe is producing 2,500 boe/d to the interest to be acquired from an undisclosed private seller, which will retain a 2.8% interest, and unspecified other interest. Meanwhile, the company booked 29.8 million bbl...

The OU researchers found that they can use their organisms to convert hydrocarbons in oil reservoirs to natural gas. "Because two-thirds of U.S. oil is still in place, we can use these organisms to convert residual hydrocarbons into natural gas and create a new source of domestic energy.

Be sure to READ THIS!!Please continue prayers for Trueblackman  DON'T STOP FOLKS!!JUST SAY NO TO GANGS!!Congressman John R Carter of Texas says Gang of 10 a "Bad Deal"Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a total lack of our "Establishment Media/Misinformation Socialist Monarchy" reporting on the price of gas and food for the past 2 weeks?New FTC Rule Could Apply To Pelosi After reading this post I decided to pull up her financial disclosure report and look for any other natural gas producers. On 11/8/07, she purchased between $250,001 and $500,000 of Quest Energy Partners, LP. (see pages 12...

NEW ORLEANS – Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced that the Western Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Lease Sale 207, held today in New Orleans, attracted $487,297,676 in high bids. The sale was conducted by Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and had 53 companies submitting 423 bids on 319 tracts comprising over 1.8 million acres offshore Texas. The sum of all bids received totaled $607,134,968. “In the midst of the national discussion about energy production, the activity at today’s sale signals that the offshore oil and gas industry is serious about developing our Nation’s resources,” said Interior Secretary...

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada's Newfoundland province will sign a final deal Wednesday with a consortium led by US giant Chevron to develop its fourth offshore oil field, worth billions of dollars, the government said Tuesday. < > The Hebron field was discovered in 1981 about 350 kilometres (220 miles) offshore from St. John's, and is said to hold more than 700 million recoverable barrels of oil. < >

Oil production has begun falling at all of the major Western oil companies, and they are finding it harder than ever to find new prospects even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand. Part of the reason is political. From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. They are being forced to renegotiate contracts on less-favorable terms and are fighting losing battles with assertive state-owned oil companies. And much of their production is in mature regions that are declining, like the North Sea. The reality, experts say, is...

The specter of an oil spill ruining New Jersey beaches is keeping state officials from even considering the potential benefits of what could be vast supplies of natural gas discovered nearly three decades ago about 90 miles off Atlantic City. The discovery was not exploited at the time because prices were too low to justify costly pipelines and platforms. Then Congress banned all drilling in the Atlantic in 1982. Now Congress is under pressure to revisit the ban because of the recent spike in gasoline prices. Even though opening new areas to oil drilling would not produce additional gasoline for...

Be sure to READ THIS!!Please continue prayers for TrueblackmanDON'T STOP FOLKS!!JUST SAY NO TO GANGS!!Congressman John R Carter of Texas says Gang of 10 a "Bad Deal"Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a total lack of our "Establishment Media/Misinformation Socialist Monarchy" reporting on the price of gas and food for the past 2 weeks?New FTC Rule Could Apply To Pelosi After reading this post I decided to pull up her financial disclosure report and look for any other natural gas producers. On 11/8/07, she purchased between $250,001 and $500,000 of Quest Energy Partners, LP. (see pages 12...

In the world of alternative fuels, there may be nothing greener than pond scum. Algae are tiny biological factories that use photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy so efficiently that they can double their weight several times a day, producing oil in the process — 30 times more oil per acre than soybeans, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Like soybean oil, the algae oil can be burned directly in diesel engines or further refined into biodiesel. University of Virginia researchers have a plan to greatly increase algae oil yields by feeding the algae extra carbon...

The Perdido spar will bring production in from three fields—Great White, Silvertip and Tobago—with a production design of 130,000 boe/day. The Shell-operated Perdido Regional Development Spar has arrived in the ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and is currently being secured to the seafloor in 7,816 ft (2,382 m) of water, a process that will take about one month. Perdido will be the deepest oil development in the world, the deepest drilling and production platform in the world and have the deepest subsea well in the world to date. Other partners in the joint venture are BP...

Wind farms may have an impact on local weather patterns. As environmental engineers have discovered, wind farm propellers create a lot of turbulence in their wake, mixing air up and down with effects that can be detected for miles... ...a large windmill array could influence the local climate, raising temperatures by about 2 degrees Celsius (about 4 Fahrenheit) for several hours. The rotating blades could also redirect high-speed winds down to the Earth's surface, boosting evaporation of soil moisture... ...At best, wind farms produce electricity at an efficiency rate of 30 percent, compared to a 70 percent efficiency rate from...

US drilling continued to increase the week ended Aug. 15, with 23 more rotary rigs for a total of 1,990 working, up from 1,795 during the same period in 2007, said Baker Hughes Inc. Land operations accounted for the week's increase, up 25 units to 1,895 drilling. Inland water activity was down 2 rigs to 29 still working. Offshore drilling in US waters was unchanged at 66 rigs working, despite a loss of 3 to 63 in the Gulf of Mexico. Of the rigs working, 395 were drilling for oil, 8 more than the previous week. There were 1,586 rotary...

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats. To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this...

If you had to bet whether the price of oil would be higher or lower 10 years in the future, what would you say? Some argue that the world is running out of low-cost oil and that oil prices will get higher and higher. Others argue that the current high price of oil will cause a flood of new oil, much of it from nonconventional sources; hence, prices will fall significantly (provided the political class in Washington, D.C., does not continue its energy and environmental death march policies). The case for much lower oil prices is as follows. There...

An excerpt from Rush Limbaugh dot com, paid subscriber's side:Rush speaks: But the interview with Charles Gibson on ABC, and they write this up at the ABC website: "ExxonMobil CEO and chairman Rex Tillerson defended his company's staggering $11.7 billion in profits for the second quarter, saying that the company's earnings reflected the magnitude of its business operation. 'I saw someone characterize our profits the other day in terms of $1,400 in profit per second. Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes, and we spent $15,000 a second in cost,' Tillerson told ABC News'...

Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source by Bernard L. Cohen, American Journal of Physics, 1983 (H/T Crowlspace Uranium can last for 5 billion years with a withdrawal rate of 6,500 tonne per year from the oceans [with breeder reactors this would be double current world electricity usage]. This estimate does not include using Thorium which is more common in the earth's crust than Uranium. < > Currently nuclear reactors use about 100 to 200 tons of uranium every year. 10,000 to 20,000 kg of uranium per billion kWh. 200 to 400 times more uranium than the french msr design uses....

Washington, DC – Today the Institute for Energy Research released a chart that debunks the myths surrounding the development of federal leases. As Russia threatens Europe’s oil pipeline in Georgia and Iran threatens to cutoff Middle East oil at the Strait of Hormuz, America’s energy and economic security depend on understanding the reality of domestic energy development, says Institute for Energy Research President Tom Pyle.Democrats, though, are blocking access to US energy resources with phony claims that oil companies are just sitting on 68 million acres of untapped leases and don’t require access to new areas, he says. To strike...

Crude Oil ForecastWill "Private" Oil Sink the NYMEX? Oil-Rich And Oil-Hungry Governments Are Ditching Conventional Markets And Locking Up Reserves… Here's How They Could Permanently Destabilize the Price of CrudeAn Investment U White Paper Report by Stewart Miller and the Investment U Research Team The world's largest governments are drastically changing the way they buy and sell oil. And it could affect every family, small business and multibillion-dollar corporation across the globe…So far, this historic shift has been scarcely reported. But the transformation is undoubtedly underway, and quietly altering the future of energy.Rapid economic expansion in Russia, India and, most importantly, China, has led...

Be sure to READ THIS!!Congressman John R Carter of Texas says Gang of 10 a "Bad Deal"Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a total lack of our "Establishment Media/Misinformation Socialist Monarchy" reporting on the price of gas and food for the past 2 weeks?New FTC Rule Could Apply To Pelosi After reading this post I decided to pull up her financial disclosure report and look for any other natural gas producers. On 11/8/07, she purchased between $250,001 and $500,000 of Quest Energy Partners, LP. (see pages 12 and 18). According to its site (http://qelp.publishpath.com), “The Partnership owns...

It’s true: Hundreds of promising oil leases on federal lands are being stonewalled, contributing to lower supplies and higher prices at the pump. But the blame lies not with the oil companies, but with environmental activists. Much of America’s energy potential lies underneath federally controlled lands and waters, but some of those areas are off-limits to oil exploration and drilling. In response to high gasoline prices, several Washington lawmakers want to open these areas, including some of the 85 percent of our territorial waters that are restricted, as well as a small portion of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)....

Remember all those times OPEC tried to tell us that they didn't want high oil prices and we didn't believe them? Well, they meant it. They knew that technology was available to crush oil demand but they hoped that the low price of oil would keep the technology buried. The cat's now out of the bag. The commodity run is over. The talking heads are trying to temper the recent selloff in oil by saying that it will settle around $100 a barrel but that is not what happens when a bubble bursts. Oil is headed back down to historical...

Opec last month pushed its production to the highest level in its 48-year history even as demand was slipping in the US and Europe, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday. The combination of surplus supply and weaker demand has pushed oil prices to $113.50 a barrel, down 24 per cent in the past month and the lowest level since late April. The effort was led by Saudi Arabia, which had come under increasing pressure for doing too little to compensate for lower supplies from countries outside Opec, where growth has been lacklustre as fields have aged in countries...

The media constantly repeat the claim that it would take a decade to get the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into oil production and about as long for offshore continental oil to start flowing. Most accounts promote the views of extreme environmentalists to make the issue appear so hopeless that we must instead "change our way of life" rather than tap into proven oil reserves. In July, CNN repeatedly reported that offshore drilling would take "seven to 10 years" to get into production. Yet Brazil's Petrobras expects its new finds in extraordinarily deep waters to already be producing 100,000 barrels per day in just two years. What is...

There's something about the oil business that turns even intelligent people into frothmouthed loons: they're raping the planet, shafting Joe Sixpack or, from the other side, insisting that the drill in every back yard is the very definition of America. I realise that in the middle of an election that the small still voice of reason isn't going to get much airplay but let's give it the old school try anyway.

Summary We are issuing a split decision in the Obama vs. McCain dispute over whether proper tire inflation could save as much oil as expanded offshore drilling is likely to produce. We find that proper tire inflation could save more than a billion gallons of fuel per year and do it several years sooner than expanded drilling could produce a single drop. McCain has exaggerated by representing Obama's suggestion as a silly notion or implying that it constitutes his entire energy policy. But we also figure that expanded offshore drilling is projected to produce far more oil eventually than can...

Brazil's state-run oil company is planning to bring 63 new oil rigs into operation at newly discovered offshore fields and other sites by 2018. Petrobras' Chief Financial Officer Almir Barbasa said Wednesday that 59 of the rigs will be able to drill in very deep waters... ...will spend US$112 billion...

COMMENTARY: Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Rep. Nick Rahall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who oppose producing more American oil are in a bind. They know voters are hurting from high gas prices and overwhelmingly want the government to allow more American oil production. But they can't side with the American people and risk upsetting their left-wing base. So they needed a way to make us think they support more drilling - while effectively preventing us from ever drilling a single new well. They think they've found a solution: a proposed "use it or lose it" law on...

Six out of 10 Americans (61%) say Congress should return to Washington immediately to vote on lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. But voters overwhelmingly expect Congress to adjourn this year without taking action. Even more (67%) recognize that Republicans are the ones pushing for offshore drilling, and 77% say the issue is important to them in terms of how they will vote for Congress this November. Forty-five percent (45%) of voters say it is Very Important. Voters see a clear difference between the political parties on this issue as...

Support for more U.S. oil drilling is on the rise, despite the opinions of many analysts who say the potential supply is too small to significantly lower the price. Government estimates assume that drilling off the eastern and western coasts offers just over 1 million barrels a day. Even John McCain - who has made offshore drilling a cornerstone of his energy platform - doesn't dispute that figure, which is dwarfed by worldwide production. Currently world production stands at about 73 million barrels of oil each day. Drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could kick in another million barrels,...