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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 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...

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.

Energy: New drilling techniques may open up a 14-year supply of natural gas trapped in porous rock in the Northeast. That is, if environmentalists in New York and elsewhere don't keep it trapped in the ground.Natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels, so clean that it is a key part of oilman T. Boone Pickens' plan to wean us off foreign sources of energy. Natural gas can fuel a new generation of automobiles that would help us achieve energy independence and at the same time contribute to a cleaner planet. In the northeastern U.S., there is a massive...

Energy: With a media wind at his back, Barack Obama regularly gets away with false and distorted statements. He repeated one Tuesday that seems superficially plausible but should not go unchallenged.ust as he said during the Sept. 26 University of Mississippi debate with John McCain, the Illinois Democrat claimed during the Nashville town hall setting that "we have 3% of the world's oil reserves and we use 25% of the world's oil. So what that means is that we can't simply drill our way out of the problem." It's disappointing that McCain failed to call out Obama on his figures,...

Energy: While members of Congress take vacations their constituents can no longer afford, a country prepares to end its dependence on foreign oil by extracting supplies from shale rock. It's not the U.S. It's in the Middle East.Jordan imports 95% of its oil. Unlike the U.S., the desert kingdom plans on doing something about it. It does not, however, plan to cover its flat open spaces with solar panels or wind farms. It's going to do something the Democratic Congress has refused to do — get oil from its abundant shale rock. On Sunday, Maher Hjazin, head of the Jordanian...

During a recent flight from Denver to Grand Junction, Colo., I found myself sitting next to Harold L. Bennett, a 78-year-old civil engineer from Albuquerque. In addition to being on his way to a business meeting in Vernal, Utah, Bennett was on his way to securing the nation’s energy future. Before the 55-minute journey on the twin-prop aircraft ended, I learned three important things from Bennett: * First, I learned he has held the patent on the world’s only Clear Coal™ — not “clean coal” — technology since the early 1970s and has improved it twice; * Second, I learned...

The U.S. Geological Survey Thursday increased its estimate of oil shale resources in the Piceance Basin in northwestern Colorado by 50% to more than 1.5 trillion barrels. The Obama administration has halted commercial lease sales of oil shale development, saying more research, particularly on the environmental consequences, is needed before moving ahead with development. The USGS said its latest assessment of the nation's largest oil shale basin, the first since 1989, didn't include a recoverable resource estimate, however, because the resource is currently not economical to recover and there are still a number of environmental concerns about development.

Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is once again taking steps towards increasing our energy dependence. Just a few weeks after the Obama Administration unnecessarily slowed the process of leasing offshore areas to energy companies for drilling; Secretary Salazar is now rescinding leasing plans for oil-shale development on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.The amount of oil available through oil shale is staggering. Some estimates have 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil available in the Green River Formation, an area which expands through most of Colorado and parts of Utah and Wyoming. According to the U.S. Department...

The US Department of the Interior will offer a second round of research, development, and demonstration leases for oil shale in Colorado and Utah and withdraw the Bush administration's proposal for expanded RD&D leases, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday. "We need to push forward aggressively with research, development and demonstration of oil shale technologies to see if we can find a safe and economically viable way to unlock these resources on a commercial scale," Salazar said. "The research, development, and demonstration leases we will offer can help answer critical questions about oil shale, including about the viability of emerging...

I wonder if this will ever see the light of day, and if so, what Al Gore and the left would have to say about it? The U.S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oilmen knew was coming, but man, was it big! It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana ... check THIS out: The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the...

Leasing of more of the US Outer Continental Shelf and development of oil shale should be considered only as part of a larger national energy strategy, US Interior secretary nominee Ken Salazar said on Jan. 15. Salazar, who is currently Colorado's senior US senator, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during his confirmation hearing that President-elect Barack H. Obama has made development of a new energy economy a top priority of his administration. "We need to look at the OCS as an element within a comprehensive energy strategy. Given the opening up of a five-year plan with DOI,...

A titanic battle between the West's two traditional power brokers -- Big Oil and Big Water -- has begun. [...] Extracting oil from rocky seams of underground shale is not only expensive, but it also requires massive amounts of water, a precious resource critical to continued development in the nation's fastest-growing region. [...] Oil shale companies acknowledge that the technology to superheat shale to extract oil is unproven. They also concede that they aren't certain how much water will be needed in the process, although some experts calculate it would take 10 barrels of water to get one barrel of...

A titanic battle between the West's two traditional power brokers -- Big Oil and Big Water -- has begun. [...] Extracting oil from rocky seams of underground shale is not only expensive, but it also requires massive amounts of water, a precious resource critical to continued development in the nation's fastest-growing region. [...] Oil shale companies acknowledge that the technology to superheat shale to extract oil is unproven. They also concede that they aren't certain how much water will be needed in the process, although some experts calculate it would take 10 barrels of water to get one barrel of...

Shell Oil has filed for the first major water right on the Yampa River in northwest Colorado for its oil shale development plans. Shell applied Dec. 30 in state Water Court to use about 8 percent of the Yampa's peak spring flow. Shell spokesman Tracy Boyd says the water would be shipped to a reservoir for later use in oil shale production.

The federal government opened Wednesday the second round of land leases for oil shale research in the western United States. The Bureau of Land Management is soliciting nominations for parcels to be leased in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, according to the agency's news release. "Broadening the scope of research into oil shale technologies will help accelerate the development of these vast western resources, and as a result lessen our dependence on foreign sources of energy," James Caswell, bureau's director said in a news release. The bureau is part of the U.S. Department of Interior. President-elect Barack Obama's pick for Secretary...

The recent drop in oil prices is not likely to derail the push to develop shale oil deposits in the western United States, an oil executive says. Despite sagging crude prices and growing concern about the amount of water used to extract oil from shale, energy companies are forging ahead to exploit reserves on federal lands that last month were opened to production. "As long as we continue to be a nation that is hooked on liquid fuel, we need to look at anything we can do to tap the sources of energy in this country," Tracy Boyd, communications and...

The politics of controversial energy source may be about to turn -- againNEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The availability of billions -- and even trillions -- of barrels of potentially useable fuel has an inherently potent selling pitch.Case in point: oil shale in the Green River Formation lying beneath parts of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Oil shale is one energy pocket where the U.S. is actually king, holding more undeveloped oil-shale resources than any other country in the world. Last month, the Bureau of Land Management announced final rules creating a commercial oil-shale program that could eventually squeeze hundreds of billions...

US Minerals Management Service Director Randall Luthi on Tuesday said the agency would likely have regulations concerning several of its policy priorities, including increased oil and gas drilling, drafted before the Bush administration leaves office January 20. A new draft five-year plan for offshore leasing, including areas that were off limits to drilling until September, as well as final regulations to govern alternative energy development in federal waters are likely to be released before President-elect Barack Obama takes office January 20, Luthi said. Luthi will leave his position that day as well. After a bruising partisan fight, in September Congress...

The Bush administration gave energy companies steep discounts in the royalties they will be required to pay as it established the groundwork last Monday for commercial oil shale development on federal land. Interior Department officials said the 5 percent royalty rate during the first five years of production was needed to spur drilling while still giving taxpayers a fair return. But that rate is much lower than the 12.5 percent to 18.8 percent the government collects from companies harvesting conventional oil and gas on public lands. “In the short run, the American economy will continue to rely on oil and...