From the President’s State of the Union Address: We need to get behind this [green] innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s. Now, clean energy | Read More »
Former Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida is co-chair of the President’s Oil Spill Commission. The Commission, stacked with environmentalists and Harvard lawyers and notably absent any working industry expertise, delivered its report to the President earlier this month. Its contents were predictable, calling for more regulation and more government. Here’s what Sen. Graham had to say this week: This is a wakeup call to | Read More »
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wants the Obama administration to provide Congress with data on the federal government’s offshore drilling revenue — information that would show just how much President Obama’s anti-drilling policies are impacting the budget. Based on recent projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, production in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to drop this year by 220,000 barrels per day. With oil | Read More »
Anyone can be misinformed, or suffer a mental lapse resulting in an incorrect statement. Any of us might be stricken with poor judgment, and take a questionable position on an important matter of state from time to time. But occasionally prejudice, bad judgment and contorted logic become woven together into a tapestry of wrong-headed thinking. And sometimes the people who issue these statements hold responsible | Read More »
Republicans are eager to get to work against the President’s regulatory bypasses of the last two years. Cliff Stearns promises “aggressive and rigorous” oversight of Internet, Energy, and Obamacare, says Hillicon Valley. As the Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, that’s no idle threat. Meanwhile Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton is looking forward as well as | Read More »
As many of you know, your humble correspondent is a veteran of 32 years of service in the oil and gas industry, currently serving as the operations manager for a small Gulf of Mexico exploration and production company. This week, the President’s Oil Spill Commission published its 380-page report on the BP blowout and spill on the Deepwater Horizon. I won’t pretend to have read | Read More »
Our friends at Peak Oil site TheOilDrum.com have an interesting year-end feature: The Chart of the Year. Lots of interesting graphs — have a look. Three of my personal favorites are found below the fold, with minimal commentary from your humble correspondent. Having exhumed and drug the remains of John Maynard Keynes through the streets for the last couple of years … How’s Keynesian economic | Read More »
In 2005, New York Times columnist John Tierney and Houston investment banker Matt Simmons made a bet on the average price of oil for 2010, to be settled today, January 1, 2011. Simmons died in August, 2010, but by that time it was reasonably certain that he was on the losing end of his bet with Tierney. Simmons had wagered that the average price of | Read More »
Via correspondent Poe Leggette, the Western Energy Alliance‘s analysis of oil and gas leasing in the RockY Mountain states under the last three administrations: Bear in mind that the Federal government is the primary owner of much of the land in several western states. Combine that with the fact that the March 2010 Lease Sale was the last one we’ll see in the Gulf of | Read More »
Offshore oil and gas wells typically are able to produce at high rates at the beginning of their lives. Reserves are not infinite, so that means a rapid natural rate of decline as reserves deplete. “Reserve replacement” is a big issue; we often say that every day that you don’t replace production in the oilfield means you’re just slowly going out of business. How do | Read More »
From the diaries by Erick. To quote my friend ‘Ironman’, “If an uncontested re-election doesn’t give John Thune the political courage to say no to BP and the ethanol robber barons, then he has no business getting near the White House when the successor to Obama needs to stop trillions in red ink.” ————- The ethanol mandates are one of the most regressive socialist interventions | Read More »
Turesday night, CNBC featured the broadcast premiere of Haynesville, a documentary film by Gregory Kallenberg. The film tells of the impact of the Haynesville Shale natural gas field on the residents of DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. I’d recommend Haynesville to everyone. According to its boosters, the Haynesville Shale contains some 230 trillion cubic feet of gas. To put that in perspective, that quantity is roughly equal | Read More »
Just a few years ago, you could’ve bought all the land you wanted in DeSoto Parish, LA for $1,000 or so an acre. While oil and gas production was not unknown in the rural northwestern parish, most thought DeSoto’s glory days were gone forever. The Haynesville Shale natural gas play has changed all that. “People went to bed one night poor and woke up the | Read More »
The President’s post-election remarks contained something of an “olive branch” to Congressional Republicans. It came in the form of a broad hint that the Administration might backpedal on its opposition to natural gas development. Obama’s Enthusiasm for Gas Drilling Raises Eyebrows “We’ve got, I think, broad agreement that we’ve got terrific natural gas resources in this country,” Obama said when he was pressed for issues | Read More »
Previously we covered Chris Bowers working over at Daily Kos on a linking scheme to manipulate Google’s search service. Now we come across a new attack on the company, a plan to manipulate click tracking the firm does to figure out what links are most interesting to its users. Of course, the Daily Kos folk want to smear Republicans using Google. Again, we look to | Read More »
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