Free Republic

The Great Geopolitical Battle Over Energy Transit Routes As we all live in the present, it is very hard to fully assess the future implications of decisions supported or made by political and business leaders. An extraordinary game of geo-strategy is under way to lock in long-term agreements, notably in the energy sector. At a global level, the transit routes of future oil & gas pipelines become the object of a power struggle involving not only the suppliers and end-users but also the transit countries. Intensive courtships are under way where a ménage à trois, or more, may be the...

The U.S. Obama administration put its mark in the overwhelmingly Republican state of Alaska, asking Alaska pipeline coordinator Drue Pearce to step down, according to U.S. news sources Monday. Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, USCG (Ret.), the deputy federal coordinator, will be interim coordinator until a permanent replacement is named. Pearce, a former Alaska Senate president, had been appointed federal coordinator of Alaska natural gas transportation projects by former President George W. Bush 2006. A terse statement by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska lamented the move, adding "I regret the loss of Drue's experience and knowledge on this project, but I understand...

We Alaskans have a very special relationship to our environment. The land is our back yard. We use it for recreation and subsistence. The land has provided our livelihood, for the people and for the state. Alaska is a land of amazing natural beauty, and the resources that underlie that beauty are what sustains our economy. Responsible development, sustainable yield, and resource stewardship were written into the constitution and statutes when Alaska became a state 50 years ago, and have been part of how we have developed our natural resources ever since. When Alaska Statehood was being debated, a major...

Just how tough is Gazprom? As the world's biggest supplier of natural gas, the Russian company has a reputation for hard-nosed bargaining. So when John Hattenberger, chief of the company's new U.S. operation, hired George Thorogood and The Destroyers to play at a party marking the opening of Gazprom's Houston office, he insisted Thorogood leave his Epiphone guitar after the show. "That was clause 19 of the contract," Hattenberger jokes. Today the autographed instrument hangs above Gazprom's trading floor. That's Gazprom with a sense of humor. But more often, its negotiating style is no laughing matter. In January, Gazprom slowed...

While many Western investors remain fixated on somehow acquiring a slice of Turkmenistan’s natural gas riches, despite a recent scandal over the country’s actual reserves, there is another country further east whose energy and mineralogical reserves have been overlooked – Uzbekistan. While a number of factors are responsible for this oversight, including relative geographical isolation (Uzbekistan, along with Liechtenstein, is one of the world’s doubly landlocked nations, requiring crossing two other nations to gain access to the oceans), which currently limits energy exports available for the global market, there are a number of pluses that the country has for investors...

[Venezuela] may be an energy colossus, with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and one of the world’s mightiest hydroelectric systems, but that has not prevented it from enduring serious electricity and water shortages that seem only to be getting worse. ... The country has huge reserves of oil and natural gas and sizable coal deposits. Its Guri dam complex, built with postwar oil riches in the 1960s, ranks as one of the world’s largest hydroelectric projects. Guri provides Venezuela with as much as three-quarters of its electricity and, just as crucial, allows Venezuela to export about...

NEW ORLEANS — Offshore oil and gas operators in the Gulf of Mexico are evacuating platforms and rigs in the path of Tropical Storm Ida. The Minerals Management Service’s Continuity of Operations Plan team is monitoring the operators’ activities. This team will be activated until operations return to normal and the storm is no longer a threat to the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas activities. Based on data from offshore operator reports submitted as of 11:30 a.m. CST today, personnel have been evacuated from a total of 126 production platforms, equivalent to 18.1 % of the 694 manned platforms...

U.S. oil companies were shutting production on Sunday as they evacuated workers from the Gulf of Mexico ahead of Hurricane Ida, which is forecast to roar across the offshore oil patch Monday before making landfall on Tuesday. BP Plc, (BP.L) one the Gulf's largest oil producers, said on Sunday some of its production was shut and nonessential workers were evacuated from Ida's forecast path. The company does not disclose amounts of shut production. Marathon Oil Corp (MRO.N) had shut its Ewing Bank production platform after evacuating workers, a spokeswoman said on Sunday. The Ewing Bank platform can produce 11,700 barrels...

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

Yesterday we noted a blog entry from local geological consultant Art Berman, saying he resigned from his monthly column-writing duties for World Oil magazine after they spiked his November column. Berman says he was told to back off on his posts that cast doubt on claims about natural gas shale as the country's energy saviour, to take a one month hiatus on the topic. He did for the month of October but claims World Oil spiked the November column when he returned to it. John Royall, president and CEO of Gulf Publishing told me the column wasn't pulled due to...

The United States could be energy independent if it possessed the collective political will to make it happen. After all, the country has the largest energy reserves on earth, according to a recently-released Congressional Research Service report.

WALSENBURG, Colo. – Bernice and Jerry Angely like to show visitors the singed T-shirt a friend was wearing when their water well exploded and shot flames 30 feet high. The friend wasn't hurt. But that and an explosion at another home weeks earlier forced Colorado to suspend natural gas drilling around this southern plains town until someone could find out why dangerous levels of methane were getting into the groundwater.

The state Public Service Commission offered heartening news to cash-strapped consumers on Friday. Based on data submitted by the state's natural gas companies, the average resident can expect to pay nearly 40 percent less on their bills this winter compared to last. Behind the decrease is a sharp drop in the wholesale price of natural gas that PSC Chairman David Armstrong said was "artificially high" last year due to what many consider to have been speculative investing in the commodity. The PSC noted wholesale prices, which make up the largest portion of natural gas bills, are now at their lowest...

The oil and gas services industry of Western Canada hit bottom in the second quarter and is now making its slow way back, the chairman and CEO of transport and oilfield services company Mullen Group declared Thursday. But the rehiring of 1,100 Mullen employees and contractors--some 20 per cent of its staff--whose jobs disappeared in the past 12 months will not occur until "ridiculously stupid" pricing by competitors is halted, said Murray Mullen. "We have, in my opinion, seen the bottom. It is tough, at times it's ugly. It's particularly difficult on our people. But we are survivors of what...

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...

HA NOI — Three Vietnamese banks will jointly provide a loan of up to US$51 million to the PetroVietnam Exploration and Production Corporation (PVEP) to exploit oil and gas in the Ca Ngu Vang (Gold Tuna) oilfield. Under a credit agreement signed in Ha Noi on Thursday with the Viet Nam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VIB), Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB) and the Sai Gon-Ha Noi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB), the PVEP would use the five-year loan to pay for the development and exploitation of oil and gas at the oilfield, located southeast of Viet Nam’s continental...

An owner of Beck Oilfield Supply traveled from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania this year to find the best place in the midst of the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling rush to plant one of his stores. He picked Wysox, a small town that borders Towanda, the Bradford County seat, and he wasn't alone. Two other stores that specialize in drilling and gas production supplies have opened within two miles of Beck Supply along Route 6 in the past year. The supply shops are more than specialty hardware stores; they are tailored to the uninterrupted pace and idiosyncratic needs of gas drilling....

Alaskans await progress on Palin pipeline plan By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 9 mins ago ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Sarah Palin hit the vice presidential campaign trail last year and touted what Alaska could provide for the rest of America — a natural gas pipeline to help lead the country to energy independence. When a pipeline might be built remains a giant question for Alaskans who need the project to support a vulnerable economy and for the Lower 48 states that need the gas, and a petroleum economist who spent more than 25 years in the Alaska Department...

Promoters of liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) ignore two large issues when seeking to incorporate LNG into the energy security mix. According to many energy and national security experts, LNG will actually increase dependency from the very countries which the United States seeks to reduce dependency—countries such as Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Paterson administra tion has finally given a green light to proposed drilling in the Marcellus Shale, considered by many to be the nation's largest natural-gas reservoir. Covering several states and extending more than 600 miles, the basin may contain as much as six decades' worth of US natural-gas needs. Drilling is already under way in Pennsylvania and other Marcellus states. Well over a year ago, Gov. Paterson put energy production on hold here at home so regulators could study the issue. This delay satisfied the demands of anti-drilling greens, but it denied the Empire State's economy a much-needed boost....

MOSCOW, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday that Turkey had given Russia the go ahead to begin work in Turkish waters on the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline to Europe. Russia, which supplies more than a quarter of the European Union's gas, is in a race to build South Stream under the Black Sea ahead of the EU-supported Nabucco pipeline which is meant to reduce reliance on Russia by securing gas from the Caspian. The Kremlin said in a statement that Turkish President Abdullah Gul had telephoned his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, to tell him...

I have a brick fireplace with a manufactured fireplace box complete with functioning flue. I also have gas logs, etc. The literature on the logs says they are "ventless." However, the fireplace box isn't designed for ventless logs. According to a fireman who examined it, he said closing the flue during operation would generate more heat than the box can handle. Now, before he examined it, I had run the fireplace with the flue closed and it generated decent heat. But now with the flue open, it's almost useless. I was directed to a log setup that uses Ceramic Fiber...

With an ambitious new pipeline planned to run along the bed of the Baltic Sea, the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom is driving a political wedge between Eastern and Western Europe. While the Russian-German pipeline offers clear energy benefits to Western Europe, Central and Eastern European leaders fear it could lead to a new era of gas-leveraged Russian domination of the former Soviet bloc. With its gas wealth and eyebrow-raising network of personal ties, Russia has divided members of the European Union that have vowed to act collectively to protect their security. Currently, Russian gas has to be piped through...

America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all. The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years' supply – and rising fast....

Engineers have performed their magic once again. The world is not going to run short of energy as soon as feared. America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all. The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves...

"New Mexico’s oil and gas producers are used to cyclic ups and downs, but operators say the current slump is the worst they’ve seen in decades." .... "Industry representatives also blame adverse environmental regulations, especially new state rules on the management of oil-and-gas pits that took effect in New Mexico last June. “The overzealous and out-of-control regulatory environment makes it very tough to do business in New Mexico,” said Bob Gallagher, president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. “I’d say that’s even a bigger concern than price instability.”"

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel. Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields. The global...

The U.S. Government’s arm that oversees energy statistics and projections, Energy Information Administration (EIA) has released its 2009 Winter Heating expenditure forecast for households and it states the average expenditure per household to be $960 this winter, October 1-March 31. This is a decrease of $84 or 8% from last year.

Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA, the U.S. arm of the world's largest natural gas producer — which is majority owned by the Russian government — is ramping up operations in Houston in a big way. The company has signed deals for more than 350 million cubic feet per day of physical supply at several locations around the U.S. and is set to import Russian liquefied natural gas into the country. “We're entering a business that's very liquid, where the margins are small, so you have to come in with a position with some size,” said John Hattenberger, president of Gazprom...

WESTWORTH VILLAGE -- On 20 acres all but hidden between the flows of both Texas 183 and Farmers Branch Creek, Deborah Rogers runs a farm, complete with dozens of goats, a few chickens, dogs, even peacocks, all of whom live peaceably in the shade of giant oak stands. It has been an idyllic existence for her. Until this year. The change came in the form of two laboratory reports she commissioned this spring and summer showing toxic and irritant pollutants on her property. Carbon disulfide. Dimethyl disulfide. Methyl ethyl disulfide. Methyl propyl disulfide. In a lengthy lab report that also...

Boone Pickens likes to call it a "game changer," and the game he has in mind is a big one: the game for our global energy security. Boone is the billionaire Texas oilman who years ago warned that the price of oil will continue to go up, price plateau by price plateau -- each plateau being higher and more expensive for the American consumer. Sure, the price of oil will dip from its highs, but then it will go up again to a higher plateau. As the years pass, the price of oil has been climbing and will continue to...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

BERLIN - An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people’s basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year. The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid. The two firms said the concept of “SchwarmStrom” (literally, “swarm power”) would allow Germany to abandon nuclear and coal power stations sooner and help compensate for the volatility of renewables like wind and solar...

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world. “With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm. Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs...

Energy Policy: Ignoring peak-oil Cassandras, BP has made another giant oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. We're not running out of oil. Our government just doesn't want us to look for it.The world is running out of oil and good riddance. That's the environmentalists' mantra. But since the first well was drilled near Titusville, Pa., 150 years ago, the prophecy has gone unfulfilled. Trouble is, those darn greedy oil companies keep finding the stuff. Oil has been produced in the Gulf of Mexico since the first well was drilled by Kerr-McGee Corp. in 1947. Some of the wells are...

The hawk flies just above the car as it rounds the corner. It glides through the trees, and comes to rest on a branch. Around the next corner, the road opens out into a fold between the hills. An old farmhouse and barn sits up slightly to the left. This is rural Pennsylvania - lush, green, and refreshingly cooler than the humid east coast at this time of year. And hidden underneath all this beauty, a natural resource that could answer the US's energy prayers. Around another small hill, and along a gravel track, sits a gas platform. It is...

Energy Policy: New York's governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York's and America's energy economy? Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada. The Marcellus Shale...

Boone Pickens should be commended for his leadership on American energy security, and for bringing Ted Turner along on some sensible approaches to enhancing it. (See their article in today’s Wall Street Journal.) Specifically, it makes sense to tap the nation's vast on-shore and off-shore natural-gas reserves for the purpose of weaning our trucks and government and corporate fleets from petroleum — much of which is imported from places that exhibit a slavish devotion to sharia, Chavismo, or some other ideology seeking our destruction. If combined with the adoption of an Open Fuel Standard for automobiles sold in America —...

Energy Policy: New York's governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York's and America's energy economy?Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada. The Marcellus Shale stretches...

Energy: As Russian attack submarines patrol our eastern seaboard, Moscow signs a deal to help Castro's Cuba drill for oil off the Florida coast. In Moscow and Havana, the cry is "Drill, Comrade, Drill!"Two Russian nuclear attack submarines have taken up positions along our East Coast in recent days, another sign of renewed assertiveness by the former communist giant. The move comes as Moscow inks a deal with the communist relic of Cuba to drill for oil we refuse to go after. The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the...

As Palin pointed out to Salazar, the USGS assessment "estimates that Arctic Alaska has mean technically recoverable resources of approximately 30 billion barrels of oil, 6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 221 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas."

Energy Policy: The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil. We've been told that for the last 150 years. The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.Ever since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pa., in 1859, experts have been predicting we would soon run out of oil. The latest is Dr. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency in Paris, whose job it is to assess future energy supplies by OECD countries. In an interview with the Independent, Dr. Birol says that based...

But they don't. It costs between $12,500 to $22,500 to convert a gasoline-powered car to natural gas in an autoshop. That old gas hog just can't be greened up for cheap. Now. But it could be. Natural gas conversions don't have to cost that much: there is no technological problem driving what it truly needs to cost for auto mechanics to make a living at it. The true cost is only a few hundred dollars in parts and labor. "For an individual (or shop) to be licensed to do a conversion, the person must pay $10,000 per year, per engine...

But they don’t. It costs between $12,500 to $22,500 to convert a gasoline-powered car to natural gas in an autoshop. That old gas hog just can’t be greened up for cheap. Now. But it could be. Natural gas conversions don’t not have to cost that much: there is no technological problem driving what it truly needs to cost for auto mechanics to make a living at it. The true cost is only a few hundred dollars in parts and labor. The reason for this incredible difference is exceedingly interesting, as Robert Rapier notes in a well researched piece over at...

Energy Policy: Obama announces his energy team without mentioning a green source of renewable energy that could create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and reinvigorate a vital manufacturing sector — nuclear power.The domestic auto industry isn't the only uncompetitive industry that seems to require life-sustaining transfusions of government cash to stay in business. Alternative energy sources have relied on such subsidies, called "investments," for years. Yet in President-elect Obama's announcement of his energy team, we were told "the foundations of our energy independence" lie in "the power of wind and solar." Except that for these alternative sources there's been a severe...

Great IBD Editorial Regarding My "Cap and Tax" Article Yesterday at 7:20pm The political death of Sarah Palin has been greatly exaggerated. In a devastating op-ed in the Washington Post, Alaska's governor exposes the cap-and-tax fraud that has nothing to do with earth's temperature and everything to do with government control of the economy. She also exposes the stealth socialism ambitions of the Democratic left and once again points out the availability of abundant "shovel-ready" resources under America's soil, off America's shores and even in America's rocks. Judging from the reaction from Sen. Kerry and the political arm of George...

Politics: John Kerry, replying to an op-ed Sarah Palin wrote on cap-and-trade, suggests the Alaska governor "check the view from her front porch." What she sees from there, senator, is energy wealth going to waste.The political death of Sarah Palin has been greatly exaggerated. In a devastating op-ed in the Washington Post, Alaska's governor exposes the cap-and-tax fraud that has nothing to do with earth's temperature and everything to do with government control of the economy. She also exposes the stealth socialism ambitions of the Democratic left and once again points out the availability of abundant "shovel-ready" resources under America's...

Thirty years after Jimmy Carter's malaise speech, we return to the days of rising joblessness, an unresponsive economy, deference to dictators, gutting the military and an energy policy tilting at windmills... As history repeats itself on the anniversary of the speech MSNBC's Chris Matthews wrote, we wonder if the "Hardball" host, who has worked for four Democratic politicians, is still getting tingles up his legs. The Democratic Party apparently has learned nothing in the past three decades. Will we see a return of the misery index? The only thing that's different is the sweater.

A top expert tells Congress that oil will be around for a long time and high inventories and low prices are no excuse not to find more. Oil shock? How about a no-oil shock? Be careful what you wish for, goes the old proverb. Well, as we all had hoped, energy prices have fallen — but only as part of the global decline in economic activity. This has been used as an excuse to further discourage exploration for and development of domestic oil resources. But if the economy does recover, that policy could provoke another recession.