Thanks to crude oil prices that have fallen over $100 per barrel since July’s historic highs, there are no more windfall profits to tax. From the Houston Chronicle: President-elect Barack Obama has shelved a proposal to slap the oil and gas companies with a new windfall profits tax because oil prices have dropped so much in recent months, the transition team confirmed today. “President-elect Obama | Read More »
This, from a RedState 2.0 post by yr humble correspondent over a year ago: In their never-ending quest to extend EPA’s regulatory tentacles into all phases of our lives, Congressional Democrats, professional hysteria-mongers, give us this: “Oil and gas companies can pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of fluid — containing any number of toxic chemicals — into sources of drinking water with little or | Read More »
Recall the good old days, before the election, back, oh, about six months ago. Here at RedState, it seemed that every other diary was titled “Drill, Drill, Drill” or “Drill Here, Drill Now!!!” or “Drill, Baby, Drill!”, or some variation on the theme. A common belief among liberal trolls, and even some die-hard conservatives, was that the markets for crude oil/gasoline are firmly in the | Read More »
H/T Ellie Belle In a Nov. 9 Guest Editorial in the august New York Times, Nobel laureate and erstwhile VP Albert Gore offers a sort of a Unified Filed Theory of Big Government Solutions to All of Life’s Problems. [emphasis mine throughout] The inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful | Read More »
Obama’s website http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy outlines the detail of his energy plan. It reeks of Central Planning and is committed to the core Democratic value of Solving A Problem By Throwing Dumptrucks Full Of Money At It. The centerpieces of the Obama-Biden New Energy Plan are: a Windfall Profits Tax/Middle Class Tax Credit that will never happen; $150 billion/10 year/5 million job make-work plan that is woefully | Read More »
During last night’s debate, Candidate Barack Obama perpetuated one of the most pernicious memes of the current energy debate, one that lets the candidate of “Yes, We Can!” wrongly declare “No, We Can’t!” when it comes to energy policy. The meme: The U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s petroleum, but contains only 3% of the world’s reserves. Therefore, there is no point in trying to | Read More »
Courtesy our friends at Fugro/Chance (a surveying firm), and hosted by the Offshore Operators’ Committee: A .pdf file showing the tracks of Hurricanes Gustav & Ike. There’s a ton of detail in this map. You’ll need to look at it at close to 100% to make any sense of it. The purpose of this map is to show the structures (red squares) that experienced hurricane-force | Read More »
The reactions the press and the commodities markets to the impact Hurricanes Ike and Gustav on our energy infrastructure seem to be “So what?” and “Ho-Hum”, respectively. My company has spent the last three days trying to assess the impact of Ike on our operations and on oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico in general. A picture is just now starting to | Read More »
From Energy Current: A report released by the Department of the Interior Office of the Inspector General has revealed ethical violations by employees of the Royalty In Kind (RIK) program. The report alleges “unbridled unethical conduct” by employees, including illicit sexual relations with both RIK employees and members of the oil and gas industry, illegal drug use, and acceptance of numerous gifts and gratuities from | Read More »
Dear Friends, Today I returned to the House Floor in Washington, D.C., calling on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to reconvene the House to vote on meaningful energy legislation. Gas prices continue to squeeze family budgets, this is what I heard across Southwest Louisiana. Congress can act to help lower the cost of gas and diesel, but the Speaker and Washington Democrats refuse any reasonable | Read More »
Based on this map (which, by the way, is two years old), does it look to you like the oil and gas industry has not been aggressively exploring the deepwater Gulf of Mexico? That’s where a big chunk of the 68 million acres of non-producing Federal oil and gas leases are located. Even the Washington Post recognizes the fallacy of counting non-producing leases: deepwater tracts | Read More »
“Why don’t we just go drill the 86 billions of barrels we know we have?!” So goes the argument for expanding drilling in the OCS (or in ANWR, or any other unexplored basin, for that matter) – as if there is an existing inventory of “proved reserves” just waiting to be exploited. The problem is, many of the places where those 86 billion barrels supposedly | Read More »
Elizabeth Ames Jones is a Railroad Commissioner in the State of Texas. The Railroad Commission is the primary state body with responsibility for regulating oil and gas drilling and production in the state. Here’s a link to her Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal highlighting the success of the Barnett Shale natural gas play near Fort Worth. Link may require subscription. For those of | Read More »
Deroy Murdock gets it mostly right in National Review Online: Santa Barbara [the catastrophic 1969 oil spill] accelerated oil companies’ efforts to prevent such disasters. Beyond compliance with 17 major permits and 90 different federal regulations, offshore operators frequently conduct accident training and safety exercises. Sensors and other instruments now help platform personnel monitor and handle temperatures and pressures of subsea oil, even as drill | Read More »
The catastrophic spill occurred early Wednesday after a 600-foot Liberian-flagged tanker named The Tintomara collided with a barge being pulled by a tugboat near the Harvey Locks. The barge — which was carrying 400,000 gallons of thick, tar-like No. 6 fuel oil — was split in half, sending its contents into the river. As a result, the Mississippi River is shut down to boat traffic | Read More »
Prominent Californians including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are adamantly opposed to offshore drilling in all its forms. Unless, apparently they have some skin in the game… From the Wall Street Journal: Environmentalists Say Yes to Offshore Drilling After the [disastrous 1969 oil] spill, Santa Barbara residents formed an environmental group called GOO! (Get Oil Out!), one of the first community groups to oppose offshore oil | Read More »
Democrats try to spur more oil exploration The Gulf of Mexico, at least the western “shelf” portion off Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama, is what is know as a mature oil and gas basin. It has been under intensive exploration since 1947. Billions of barrels and trillions of cubic feet have already been produced. While billions/trillions more may be found, the vast majority of the | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}