That grown-up would be Robert J. Samuelson in the May 18 issue of Newsweek magazine. In an article entitled The Bias Against Oil and Gas, Samuelson demolishes the Obama Administration’s policies on energy and the environment, which seem focused more on punishing the Big Oil bogeyman than on actually achieving any kind of progress against the economic and strategic challenges facing the nation. Notwithstanding the | Read More »
H/T www.ocsbbs.com, From EnergyCurrent.com It’s not what you may think; this proposal covers Florida State waters, within 10 miles of shore. They have structured the deal so that it will cost plenty to be a player. I’m sure they’re still dead-set against drilling in Federal waters, farther offshore, where the state’s share of the revenue pie would be small to non-existent. Bully for them. But | Read More »
Everyone in the Obama Administration seems to be infected with the same disease: If we repeat this bulls*** long enough and loud enough, it just might come true! And never let facts get in the way of a really cool story! The most recent example is Jon Wellinghoff, the new Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has jurisdiction over utilities and pipelines. They | Read More »
Promoted from the diaries by EPU On March 31st, a bill co-sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-People’s Republic of Beverly Hills) and Edward Markey (D-MA) was filed in the House. Called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), a more appropriate title might be The Let’s-Hogtie-the-American-Economy-and-Throw-It-In-the-Ditch Act of 2009. Waxman chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Markey leads the House | Read More »
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s road show made its New Orleans stop yesterday. The Secretary extended the public comment period on the Minerals Management Service’s Five Year Leasing Plan for the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), a Plan that would potentially open areas outside the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico and Alaska to oil and gas exploration for the first time since 1981. A copy of | Read More »
The other day, my boss made an interesting observation. Six months ago, ExxonMobil recorded annual net income of $40 billion. It was widely considered, even by some in these august pages, to be outrageous. Bear in mind, that profit was gained lawfully, and it was either be returned to shareholders (98.5% of which are you, me, and our retirement funds, and not XOM executives) as | Read More »
Democrats question proposed oil and gas fees and taxes From Energycurrent.com, H/T www.ocsbbs.com The group, led by Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, and including fellow Texas Democratic Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green, Charlie Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, made their pitch late Tuesday, a day before the House Budget Committee was set to take the first steps in considering the Obama administration’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal. | Read More »
This morning, bids will be opened for Lease Sale 208, an offering of Federal mineral leases in the central Gulf of Mexico. Early indications are that a relatively low number of blocks have received bids, and there are relatively few blocks with multiple bids. This morning’s Lease Sale 208 will offer 6,200 blocks in the central Gulf of Mexico, covering more than 33.5 million acres | Read More »
Meet The Obama Energy Strategy: cripple the fossil fuel industry with a goal of curtailing production/consumption with high prices while boosting the competitiveness of highly-subsidized alternatives. It’s called Central Planning.
Read More »It sounds as though the New York Times agrees with me: relatively low product prices (coupled with, I maintain, a hostile Democratic administration) are setting the stage for a shortage of domestic natural gas in the future. And by “in the future”, that’s not ten or twenty years from now. The NYT says 2010, and I’d bet that’s not far wrong. Certainly we’ll have a | Read More »
US Treasury secretary attacks oil, gas tax breaks In my business, and I’ll wager in your business too, you read contracts. Carefully. Because the contract defines the relationship between the two parties, and signifies a meeting of the minds. If you screw up, and the contract doesn’t mean what you thought it meant, well, shame on you. Back in the ’90s, oil and gas prices | Read More »
Just wait. Just wait a little while. It’s axiomatic for conservatives, and other people with common sense, that if you want less of an activity, you tax it. If you want more, reduce the tax. Governor Jindal said that recently, but I’m sure he wasn’t the first. The oil and gas industry is tax advantaged. Historically, the government saw a benefit in encouraging drilling; tax | Read More »
Never fear, Raul my friend, you have a friend in Washington. HAVANA — Cuba is still waiting for its offshore oil rush. It has been four years since U.S. experts said the island may sit atop nearly 10 billion barrels of deep-sea oil, revealing for Cuba an enormous economic Catch-22. Cuba needs the technical expertise of major Western oil companies to get to any of | Read More »
H/T Artie Nobel-laureate Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu apparently did not realize that lobbying OPEC on matters like price and production levels falls under his purview: Chu Retracts Comment That OPEC Isn’t His Domain, Cites Naivete U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said today that lobbying OPEC on oil production is “not in my domain,” only to retract the statement hours later, citing his “naivete.” Chu, | Read More »
The downturn in energy prices is putting a cash flow squeeze on all producers, including the national oil companies. Many of them made long-term commitments to use equipment at dayrates reflective of $140 oil. Now, with oil at $40/bbl, those commitments made a mere 6 months ago seem short-sighted. Petrosucre, a joint venture of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PdVSA and Italian giant ENI, entered in | Read More »
H/T The Houston Chronicle, The OCS Bulletin Board Reprinted overleaf in their entirety. To recap: ENERGY DO’s: CAFE standards, high tire pressure, cute light bulbs, insulation (how long to pay that back?), investing in new green jobs (whatever those are), emphasis on the proven science of Climate Change ENERGY DON’Ts: Domestic oil, gas and coal, nuclear energy, ANWR, OCS, acting like a grownup $4.00/gallon gasoline | Read More »
Sometimes oil men and energy executives are a big disappointment. When times are good, they talk a good game about being free marketeers, “Just get out of our way; drill, baby, drill!” But when Washington starts passing out free money, they’re fighting like pigs at a trough for their more-than-fair share. You can bet, when they start suggesting government policy, they have an angle.
And she does so by sending a pod of killer whales orcas (rarely seen in the Gulf of Mexico) to protest the presence of BP’s Horn Mountain oil platform, visible in the background of this video: WKRG.com The sensitive beasts clearly find the presence of the platform threatening.
Do you ever get the feeling that the proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming are just winging it? The mildest conclusion I can draw from the following sequence of news reports is that there is a heck of a lot of science that remains to be done on the subject of global warming, the carbon cycle, and the complex interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans and | Read More »
Reports: Obama picks top officials for energy and environment Oh. My. Word. Carol Freaking Browner. Administrator of the EPA for eight years under for Bill Clinton. I guess that it should come as no surprise, but this appointment indicates that, despite the rhetoric, energy security, supply and affordability will not be on this administration’s agenda. Instead, the focus will be on CAFE standards, carbon sequestration, | Read More »
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