Summer Heats Up

Centennial's Peter Grant: Gold technicals portend impending breakout

http://silvervigilante.com/catch-me-if-you-can-jpmorgue-has-11-state-fed...

“Catch Me If You Can” JPMorgue Has 11+ State, Fed & Int’l Enforcement Bodies After It

“The firm expects heightened scrutiny by its regulators of its compliance with new and existing regulations,” the company said. Regulators will begin to bring “formal enforcement actions for violations of law rather than resolving those violations through informal supervisory processes.”......

I sense a little confusion on the board today.

Endeavour Silver is the silver miner in Mexico.

Endeavour Mining is the gold miner in West Africa.

Two different companies.

Carry on....

Thanks ancientmoney, for providing Butler's incredibly astute analysis of all aspects of the silver market manipulation. He raised points that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He made me realize how vast this criminal conspiracy truly is and to think  I thought I had a pretty good understanding of JPM's evil deeds. YIKES!

As I mutter over and over: "What else is coming and just how fucked are we?

The real fun will start once they start getting stolen. 

yep... ;) But I still must admit it looks like Endeavor silver had pretty good production, cost, and is still holding quite a bit back all compared to some of the other miners that have been reporting recently....any thoughts you have on how that might put them in a pretty good position going forward???

The United States has plenty of oil
  ... and natural gas.

Shale will free US from oil imports, says ex-BP boss.  The big growth in oil extracted from shale rock means the US will not need to import any crude within two decades, the former boss of BP has said.  Lord Browne told a conference in Oxford the US would be "completely independent of imported oil, probably by 2030".  He also said the amount of shale gas in the US was "effectively infinite".

Expanded Oil Drilling Helps U.S. Wean Itself From Mideast.  America will halve its reliance on Middle East oil by the end of this decade and could end it completely by 2035 due to declining demand and the rapid growth of new petroleum sources in the Western Hemisphere, energy analysts now anticipate.  The shift, a result of technological advances that are unlocking new sources of oil in shale-rock formations, oil sands and deep beneath the ocean floor, carries profound consequences for the U.S. economy and energy security.

Derry well sites empty as low gas prices stop Marcellus Shale drillers.  Natural gas prices have fallen to the lowest levels in a decade, leading drillers to move rigs to places like Ohio where more profitable natural gas liquids and oil are available.  As a result, the rigs have taken a hiatus in Derry.  The evidence can be seen on Mr. Gera's property, where the hole has been drilled but the rock hasn't been hydraulically fractured.  No gas is coming to the surface to be fed into a pipeline — and no royalties will be paid until then.

U.S. — The Saudi Arabia of Oil?  I recall how in the late 1970s, back during the dark ages of the government-caused "energy crisis," President Jimmy Carter liked to say that the United States is "the Saudi Arabia of coal." Yes — there was a time when liberal Democrats were in favor of expanded coal use (unlike today), and Carter's pro-coal policies led to a significant expansion of coal-fired electricity in the 1980s.  But as usual Carter was too narrow.  Turns out the United States might well be regarded as the "Saudi Arabia of oil" as well as coal (not to mention natural gas, about which everyone has caught up to speed).

U.S. hits record for distillate exports.  U.S. distillate fuel exports hit a record high in April, as production grew and imports fell to the lowest in 27 years, according to a report Thursday [7/5/2012] by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  In April, the United States shipped a net 981,000 barrels of distillate fuels per day — primarily diesel and heating oil.

The US unconventional oil revolution: are we at the beginning of a new era for US oil?  Everyone is familiar by now with the unconventional (shale) gas revolution in the US, which has transformed US and global gas markets.  Less well known to the wider public is that an unconventional (shale) oil revolution is also gathering pace, with equally far-reaching implications.  It is not unlikely that the US, the world's largest crude oil importer, could go a long way towards self-sufficiency by 2035.  This would drastically change the global energy equation.

North Dakota Achieves Record Oil Production.  North Dakota is cementing its reputation as "U.S. OPEC," with a record number of oil rigs now operating in the state.  Government records show 214 oil rigs now operating in the state, with 95 percent of the rigs producing oil from the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations in the western part of the state.

US could outproduce Russia, Saudi Arabia in oil and gas.  The United States is seeing a dramatic surge in oil and gas production and could overtake the world's biggest producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in another decade, a US official said.

GAO To Obama: More Oil Than Rest Of The World.  The Government Accountability Office tells Congress the Green River Formation out West contains an "amount about equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."  So why are we keeping it locked up on federal lands?

Government, Environmentalists Blocking Access to Rich Shale Reserves.  The President has recently made a habit of claiming that oil self-sufficiency is impossible because the US has just 2% of the world's oil reserves.  However, congressional testimony given Thursday May 10th reinforces that America is exceedingly rich in natural resources, especially a type of oil reserves known as oil shale.  However, the testimony also pointed out that the future development of these resources, 72 percent of which is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, is largely up to the federal government.  The present administration doesn't seem very eager to get at those (or other) natural resources.

GAO: Recoverable Oil in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming 'About Equal to Entire World's Proven Oil Reserves'.  The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world's proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday [5/10/2012].  The GAO testimony stressed that the federal government was in "a unique position to influence the development of oil shale" because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land.

Report: Booming Eagle Ford Shale created 48K jobs.  The Eagle Ford Shale has been touted as a modern-day Spindletop, and a study released Wednesday [5/9/2012] underscored that view.  The vast oil and gas play in South Texas contributed $25 billion in total economic output to a 20-county South Texas region last year and provided 47,097 full-time jobs, according to a study by the Center for Community and Business Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Institute for Economic Development.

Republicans say new study belies Obama claim US has 2 percent of world oil.  Republican senators are accusing President Obama of pushing a "less-than-honest" claim about the scarcity of domestic oil, after a U.S. Geological Survey study showed the United States might actually hold a quarter of the world's untapped, undiscovered supply.  The president often uses a much different statistic in speeches.  He said Tuesday [4/17/2012], as he has before, that "the problem is we use more than 20 percent of the world's oil and we only have 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves."

North Dakota Oil Boom Should Inspire Federal Energy Policy.  North Dakota's per-capita income jumped 78% in the past 12 years, largely due to its fossil fuel boom.  Imagine the impact at the national level if Washington stopped blocking energy development.

N.D. Oil Production Surpasses OPEC Nation Ecuador.  Oil production in North Dakota has surged to more than a half-million barrels per day, now surpassing the production levels of OPEC member Ecuador.  North Dakota's 6,300 wells produce enough oil to displace U.S. imports from foreign suppliers such as Iraq and Colombia, according to the state's Oil and Gas Division.

What Happened To Our Cheap Oil?  It didn't disappear.  It's still here. [...] There hasn't been an oil refinery built in the U.S. since 1976, ironically the same year that Jimmy Carter was elected.  He was responsible for the creation of the Department of Energy and the enabling legislation was passed and signed into law on August 4, 1977.  Hundreds of billion dollars later with a budget of $24.2 billion a year, 16,000 federal employees and approximately 10,000 contract employees, we are no closer to being independent of foreign oil.  That's how a bureaucracy operates — it produces nothing except a mechanism to drain money from taxpayers.

Rethinking America's Energy Policy.  Consider oil and natural gas.  Not long ago, many believed supplies had peaked and it was only a matter of time until we were left with nothing but dry holes in the ground and increased dependence on foreign imports.  Based on this belief, Washington decided that American taxpayers needed to spend dramatically on developing alternative supplies to replace hydrocarbons.  President Obama continues this policy today.  During his recent energy public relations tour, he repeatedly referred to Republicans as subscribers to the "flat earth" worldview because we do not share his affinity for massive taxpayer spending on more expensive energy sources.  But if anyone is stuck in the past, it's President Obama, as he has refused to acknowledge the great potential of America's energy resources thanks to new technologies that help us unlock them.

Is North America the New Middle East for Oil?  I don't know if North America is the next Middle East, although it's worth recalling that we were the world's biggest oil supplier before the first well was drilled in Saudi Arabia, and DOE estimates suggest we have as much oil left as we've produced to date since 1859.

Peak oil doomsayers ignore human ingenuity.  There has been a revolution in power production over the last decade, one that has been driven by engineering and science.  The proliferation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, means that the US will be the world's second largest gas producer by 2035, with its output dwarfed only by Russia, according to the International Energy Agency.  The US currently has record low gas prices because the new technology has created a glut of natural gas.

The Old Democrat Party: FDR Expanded US Domestic Oil Production.  In spite of the Obama Administration, a rag tag assortment of small "wildcat" oil and gas entrepreneurs have proven that America has over 100 years' supply of natural gas and over 50 years' supply of oil.  With Obama's green initiatives in tatters, his new strategy seems to be taking credit for drill, baby, drill achievements, but remains fearful of the political consequences to build the pipelines to pump, baby, pump all that oil and gas to markets.

Scarce Oil?  U.S. Has 60 Times More Than Obama Claims  When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump.  "Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said.  "America still has only 3% of the world's oil reserves."  Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn't affect global oil prices.  It's the same rhetoric President Obama is using now, as gas prices hit $4 again, except now he puts the figure at 2%.

On Energy, Massachusetts Tilts At Windmills.  A nationwide boom in natural gas production is set to fuel nearly 900,000 jobs and add roughly $1,000 to annual household budgets by 2015, according to a study by HIS Global Insight, a Denver energy research firm.  It is estimated that we have at least a 100-year supply of the relatively cheap, cleanest-burning fossil fuel.

Big Lies on Big Oil.  According to the Institute for Energy Research, we have more than 1.4 trillion barrels of oil that is [sic] technically recoverable in the United States with existing technology.  The largest deposits are located offshore, in portions of Alaska and in shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain states.  So the United States has more recoverable oil than the rest of the non-North American world combined.  The Heritage Foundation says this is enough to fuel every passenger car in the nation for 430 years. ... When you add in recoverable resources from Canada and Mexico, the total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels.  "To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves."

U.S. oil gusher blows out projections.  The United States' rapidly declining crude oil supply has made a stunning about-face, shredding federal oil projections and putting energy independence in sight of some analyst forecasts.  After declining to levels not seen since the 1940s, U.S. crude production began rising again in 2009.  Drilling rigs have rushed into the nation's oil fields, suggesting a surge in domestic crude is on the horizon.

Surprise! Our energy future isn't so bad.  The EIA report suggests three important conclusions.  First, despite big gains in energy efficiency and increases in "renewables" (wind, solar, biofuels), fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of America's energy system for years.  In 2010, fossil fuel represented 83 percent of U.S. energy consumption, with oil at 37 percent, natural gas at 25 percent and coal at 21 percent.

Enough Oil?  A report for November 2011 indicated that, for the first time in forty years, the U.S. was a net exporter of petroleum products.  Liberals seized on this report as evidence that the U.S. needs no acceleration in drilling, no XL pipeline — indeed, no new exploration or production of any kind. ... In reality, the U.S. still imports 51% of its oil despite the existence of vast undeveloped reserves to be found offshore and onshore.  The fact that America imports 51% of its oil, at huge cost and from unfriendly regimes including Venezuela, is hardly an argument to halt drilling.

Americans Gaining Energy Independence With U.S. as Top Producer.  Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years.  The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal.  Methanex Corp. (MX), the world's biggest methanol maker, said it will dismantle a factory in Chile and reassemble it in Louisiana to take advantage of low natural gas prices.  And higher mileage standards and federally mandated ethanol use, along with slow economic growth, have curbed demand.

Oil Fields Gushing in the U.S..  The U.S. Energy Information Administration is likely to raise by a substantial amount its existing estimate that U.S. oil production will grow by 550,000 barrels per day by 2020, to just over six million barrels daily.

Wake Up and Smell the Energy.  In terms of oil, the proven reserves of 1.79 trillion barrels available in North America is more than will likely ever flow through the Strait of Hormuz and in fact twice that of all the OPEC nations combined.  That's enough to fill the tank of every passenger car in the United States for the next 30 years.  Our natural gas future is even brighter.  An estimated 4.244 quadrillion cubic feet of recoverable resources could keep every home well-heated for the next 575 winters at current usage rates.

The Hype Surrounding Renewable Energy.  [Scroll down]  America is blessed with vast amounts of coal (providing nearly half of our electricity), and natural gas (about 23% of power).  We also have huge land and offshore oil reserves vital for transportation fuel, including enormous amounts contained along with gas in oil shale deposits amounting to hundreds of years of supply.

Oil and Gas Bubble Up All Over.  You'll know the U.S. energy industry is really on the rebound when North Dakota's newfangled Bakken oil field starts pumping more crude than Alaska's stalwart Prudhoe Bay.  Energy experts expect it to happen in 2012.

Informative animated graphic:
Bakken formation oil and gas drilling activity mirrors development in the Barnett.  Oil production growth in the Bakken shale play mirrors somewhat the growth in natural gas production in the Barnett play.  Like the Barnett, the Bakken drilling and production animation above shows that drilling activity built up gradually and eventually led to rapid growth, particularly from 2006 to 2010.  Production grew because of increased use of horizontal drilling and the addition of hydraulic fracturing, coupled with elevated prices for crude oil and other natural gas liquids.

Unlimited Domestic Energy... Right Now.  The National Petroleum Council estimates that by 2035 — if the regulators will just stop endlessly excreting new hurdles — the U.S. will hit 3 million bpd of shale oil alone.  There are about 14 to 16 new American shale oil fields just starting to be exploited.  This has led the federal Energy Information Administration to raise its estimates for total American liquid fuel output by nearly 40% — for next year alone!

In a first, gas and other fuels are top US export.  Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990.

Ohio set to see oil boom thanks to fracking.  Ohio hasn't been an oil powerhouse for nearly 100 years.  But thanks to controversial new drilling technology, the state that once produced a third of the nation's crude and was the birthplace of John D. Rockefeller's mighty Standard Oil could once again be a significant source of domestic supply.

How we became a net petroleum exporter again.  This one will probably come as a surprise to many of you.  Despite the best (read: worst) efforts of the Obama administration and the counter-intuitive nature of what you're paying for gas and heating bills this winter, the United States is on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time in more than half a century.

The Volt Administration.  The United States is an energy colossus.  Just this week, the state of North Dakota announced that it had produced 488,068 barrels of oil per day in October, up 100,000 barrels from June of this year.  State officials predict that by 2013 to 2014, North Dakota will be producing 900,000 barrels a day, putting it ahead of California and Alaska and behind only Texas (at 1.2 million barrels per day) in domestic oil production.

Climate talks, then climate tax.  Beneath our feet lies a treasure trove of affordable energy resources that warmist adherents, who include President Obama, have placed off-limits.  The United States possesses 1.4 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, more than the oil the entire world has consumed during the past 150 years, according to an Institute for Energy Research report released last week.  Add in an estimated 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas and 486.1 billion short tons of recoverable coal, and our energy reserves exceed those of any other nation on Earth.

America's Vast Energy Resources.  For a long time, the Left has gotten away with underselling America's energy resources.  The old chestnut that the U.S. uses 25% of the world's oil but only has 2% to 3% of the world's oil reserves has been repeated endlessly by Barack Obama and many others.  This claim fooled millions of people who didn't understand that in the U.S., "reserves" means petroleum that is 1) legally available for development, and 2) profitably extracted at current prices.  So if Democrats would stop preventing drilling, we could vastly increase our "reserves," as legally defined, overnight.

Oil-Rich America?  There is a revolution going on in America.  But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests.  Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling.  Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable.

Gasoline: The new big U.S. export.  The United States is awash in gasoline.  So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.  The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Green Energy Skepticism.  Although our energy needs have been increasing rapidly, the U.S. didn't build a new refinery between 1998 and 2008, even then over the strong objections of liberal progressives. ... Saying that the U.S. is rich in energy resources is an understatement.  At today's consumption levels, we have enough coal to meet our needs for the next 500 years.  We have 22,450,000,000 barrels of proven oil reserves, and we are finding new oil reserves all the time.  The U.S. has 250 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves.  We are finding new gas reserves daily, and we are discovering new ways to tap into hard-to-get gas deposits.

The Oil Industry Can Save America — If Washington Lets It.  Have we drained the "natural wealth" of America dry?  Hardly.  Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm sees the big picture of American wealth.  As head of the 14th-largest oil company in the nation, he knows how much fossil fuel America possesses.  He observes that if America had the right energy policies, it could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade.  We can become the Saudi Arabia of oil and gas in the 21st century.  President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy."  Hamm adds that so-called "green energy," despite billions in taxpayer subsidies, will not work.

A Disastrous Presidency.  The gulf lost 40,000 jobs when the president decided it was best to shut down all oil production after the BP oil spill.  The approval for Keystone XL Pipeline sits on his desk, awaiting his signature.  It would connect Canadian oil from the tar sands of Alberta with refineries in Cushing, Oklahoma and Nederland, Texas, while providing 20,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs.  With recent discoveries and improvements in drilling techniques, some have called America the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.  America also has the largest oil reserves in the world; the Bakken Formation alone is said to contain more than 11 billion barrels.

Tight oil loosens up.  Vast fortunes await those willing to quickly claim Canada's still-unknown troves of tight oil reserves, though it may cost them a small fortune first.  New technologies have provided access to energy resources that for decades appeared wholly unreachable.  Advanced horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques have in recent years spawned countless land grabs across North America for new plays like the Bakken.  Interest has also been reignited for older plays like the Cardium.

Warren Buffett, the Keystone Pipeline, and Crony Capitalism.  A decades-long crusade by the environmental left to convince us that oil is evil, unsustainable, and destroying our planet has yet to accomplish its goal of eliminating oil as a fuel, but it has succeeded in making oil [very] expensive.  However, new technologies for the extraction and transport of previously unrecoverable oil promise to reverse that trend.  One such project is the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport bitumen from the oil sands of Alberta to the refineries and ports along the Gulf coast.

Activists Move to Prevent Canada from Supplying U.S. with Oil.  Canada is eager to provide the United States with valuable oil from a friendly nation, but environmental activists are urging the Obama administration to block construction of an oil pipeline that would deliver the oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas.  At issue is a long-delayed, $7 billion, 1,700-mile expansion of a pipeline that would make possible the sending of crude oil from Alberta's oil sands to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas.

Science, Lies, and Videotape.  [Scroll down]  As the world economy weakens and it turns out that we are sitting on enormous quantities of natural gas and oil, it grows more likely that this childish nonsense — which, probably not coincidentally, has proven a financial boon for Democrat-backers, too — shall pass.  But faster, please, so we can get back to being the world's powerhouse.

How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia.  Harold Hamm ... came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism:  With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade.  We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century."

Report: North American oil output will hit all-time record by 2016.  U.S. oil production in areas like the Permian Basin, the Eagle Ford, Bakken and others will rise by a little over 2 million barrels per day between 2010 and 2016, according to data compiled by Bentek Energy, a Colorado firm that tracks energy infrastructure and production projects.  It's a reversal of the steady downward production trend that started around 1970, when U.S. oil production peaked at around 9.5 million barrels per day.

America Can Be An Energy Superpower.  America could have enough oil resources to meet today's oil demand levels in the future for decades without importing from unfriendly foreign countries.  That is the conclusion of a new report from the National Petroleum Council.  The report also finds that America has huge volumes of natural gas that can meet decades of demand.

Chevron makes potentially big oil find in Gulf's Moccasin play.  Chevron has made a new oil discovery in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico. ... Chevron started drilling the well in March 2010 but had to stop in June 2010 when the U.S. government imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon accident.  In March 2011 it became the first wildcat well in the Gulf to resume drilling after the accident.

Blueprint for Western Energy Prosperity.  The West is projected to generate 1.3 million barrels of domestic oil and condensate production a day by the year 2020, an amount that exceeds the current daily oil imports from Russia, Iraq and Kuwait combined.

Exxon makes major oil discovery in Gulf.  Exxon Mobil said Wednesday [6/8/2011] it has discovered an estimated 700 million barrels of oil equivalent at a deepwater well off the Louisiana coast, a major find that a top House Republican argued should push the administration to speed up offshore permitting.  "This is one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico in the last decade," Exxon Mobil Exploration Company President Steve Greenlee said in a statement.

Drill here Drill now works -- because it already has!.  Once again the fraudulent message from the environmental activists in the EPA is being echoed by a willing media, claiming drill here drill now won't have an effect on gas prices when there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary.  Where is the proof you ask?  Currently there is one commodity that has not adjusted with inflation, is not tied to the devaluation of the Dollar, nor follows the rise in Gold and Oil.  America's Natural Gas is trading at 2003 rates and when adjusted for inflation is closer to 2000 rates.  Why?  Because multitudes of Americans are developing this vast resource not a handful of multinational concerns.  They are bringing an abundant supply of American energy to the market; in New York State alone we have over 3000 gas wells.

The Big Energy Lie.  Geologists and engineers make estimates of petroleum resources, the total potential future recoverable quantity of oil and/or gas.  Right now, the U.S. has considerable potential resources in places like the Outer Continental Shelf, ANWR and the Colorado Oil Shale.  Reserves, on the other hand, is the term applied to that subset of resources that have been proven to exist by drilling and can be recovered with existing technology.

The truth behind all that 'The U.S. has only 2% of the world's oil reserves' malarkey.
The Big Energy Lie, Revisited.  In 1986, we produced 8.7 million barrels a day, or an annual total of 3.2 billion barrels.  The ratio of reserves to production is 8.5 years — often incorrectly reported in the press with alarm:  "We have only 8.5 years of reserves left!  We're running out of oil!"  If this were true, we'd have run slap out of oil in 1995.  The dashed line on the graph [in this article] shows the cumulative amount of oil produced since 1986.  Sure enough, by 1995 we had produced over 27 billion barrels, and we still had reserves in the ground of over 22 billion barrels.  Fast forward to 2010:  we're still producing 2 billion barrels a year, and we still have over 20 billion barrels in the ground.  In fact, we've produced 58 billion barrels since 1986, over twice the 1986 reserve total.

The incoherence of Obama's energy policies:  As Americans watch skyrocketing gasoline prices (up an average of nearly 80 cents a gallon from this time last year) frustrate their hopes for economic recovery, they should be outraged by a new report on America's energy resources from the Congressional Research Service.  The report shows that the United States is sitting on the largest batch of energy resources on the planet.  In fact, these vital fuel sources add up to more than the resources of energy-rich Saudi Arabia, China and Canada combined.

Straw Man Environmental Alarmism 101, California Style.  How many times must it be proved that the world is not close to "exhausting its supply of petroleum" before environmentalists stop making the claim?  And as Americans are realizing in greater and greater numbers, there is no objective support for the shrill claim that "greenhouse gas emissions… threaten the planet we call home."

Oil Without Apologies.  It's the day after President Obama delivered his most recent vision of America's energy future, and I'm sitting in the sunny corporate offices of Chevron, the country's second-largest oil company.  Let's just say John Watson has a different view.  The Chevron CEO is a rare breed these days:  an unapologetic oil man.

More about Obama's (alternative) energy speech.

Morons Who Hate Oil:  According to the US Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Service at the Department of Interior that regulates America's on- and off-shore oil reserves, they estimate that America holds more than 21 billion barrels of "proven" conventional oil reserves.  Add to this the estimated 100 billion barrels of oil reserves in the postage stamp-sized proposed drilling area of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.  According to the Congressional Research Service, America's combined energy resources, oil, coal, and natural gas, are the largest on Earth!

Drill, Baby, Drill (Again).  It may come as a shock to many that rather than having a mere 2 percent of global reserves, this country is energy-rich, with known reserves far exceeding those of any other nation.  Many Americans already know that our proven coal reserves will hold out for another 400 years — and probably much longer.  Less well known is that in recent years there has been a quiet natural-gas revolution in this country.  [...] Even less well known is that the U.S. sits on at least three times as much recoverable oil as the entire Middle East.  The techniques used to uncover vast new sources of natural gas, are now being transferred to the shale-oil deposits in the Midwest, where they are unlocking trillions of barrels of oil.

Energy Secretary: I'm Not Going To Talk About Drilling In ANWR.  After testifying before the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee about his department's FY2012 budget, CNSNews.com asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu if — given the high price of gasoline — he supports increasing offshore drilling and opening up ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] to domestic drilling?  Chu responded, "I'm not going to talk about ANWR, but I think there's many areas in the arctic that are potential exploration sites.

Did someone mention ANWR?

U.S. Has Earth's Largest Energy Resources.  America's combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth.  They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined — and that's without including America's shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.  The energy facts in the CRS report should be making front page news all over America.  Mostly it isn't.

Solving US Energy Problems:  The big problem is the Democratic agenda to destroy US oil.  Currently, this agenda is well illustrated in the Gulf of Mexico.  BP's Macondo Prospect well, which blew out in the Gulf of Mexico last year, was reported by the federal government to be producing 62,000 barrels of oil per day.  At the present oil price, that is $2.2 Billion a year.  This well may have been the largest oil well in the history of the world.  Yet, it was plugged and abandoned, and the federal government would not allow the development of the large oil reservoir it was in, which may have created thousands of new jobs.  No other nation on earth would do that to an oil well which may have been the largest oil well in world history.

Green Goons.  It's getting so people are afraid to drive more than 150 miles for fear that they won't be able to afford the gas to get home again.  Still, President Obama refuses to allow oil development either on government-owned land or just off our coasts.  We have enough petroleum in the ground right here in the United States to last us centuries but Obama, the Democrats and their green goons won't let us get at it for fear there might be a spill and a sea gull might get oil on its wings.  It's all right though to send $1,000,000,000 a day to Muslim countries who use much of it to finance jihad against us in their radical quest to destroy western civilization.  Our liberal Democrat rulers want fossil-fuel energy prices to go up in hopes that Americans will turn to solar panels, windmills and Chevy Volts.

The Green Dream Is an Economic Nightmare.  A rush of recent reports on energy has much to say about the fundamental foolishness of the green vision of energy production — the vision long regnant in academia and the one that informs the Obama regime. ... The first report is the happy news that the number of new American oil wells is increasing at a pace not seen in over three decades.  According to the major oil drilling company Baker Hughes, the number of new oil rigs it has installed is over 800 last year — over twice last year's total, and a tenfold increase over the yearly average during the late 1990s.

Deliberately making Americans poorer.  The Obama administration's policies are causing Americans to pay far more for gasoline and other fuels than necessary.  America is awash in fossil-fuel energy sources with almost 30 percent of the world's coal and 80 percent of the world's oil shale — which contains an estimated three times the recoverable oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.  Canada, with its oil sands, has the world's third-highest oil reserves, after the United States and Saudi Arabia.  New technologies that enable low-cost natural gas production from shale mean that many countries, including the United States, will have gas for centuries at current production rates.

Canada's Oil Sands Are a Jobs Gusher.  For all its soaring rhetoric, President Obama's "jobs speech" last week didn't demonstrate a lick of insight into why economies grow or how wealth is created.  It was merely trademark Obamanomics:  using government diktat to move money that's over here, over there.  Having spent an hour the day before with Ron Liepert, the energy minister from the Canadian province of Alberta, I found it especially disturbing to hear nothing in the speech about reversing the administration's anti-fossil-fuels agenda.

Murkowski uses rising gas prices to call for opening Alaska's oil fields.  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), citing rising gas prices, called on the administration Thursday [3/10/2011] to open up Alaska's oil reserves for further exploration.  "We are the only country that has identified a huge resource base and then absolutely refused to use it," said Murkowski, referring to her state's massive oil reserves that remain untapped because of their designation as a wildlife refuge.  "We need to develop a coherent national energy policy."

More about ANWR.

Eagle Ford seen fueling fast growth.  The Eagle Ford shale, a vast oil and gas play in South Texas, will become one of the state's fastest-growing areas for new business and job creation over the next decade, a group of experts said Wednesday [2/23/2011].  That's if they can get the oil out.  Pipelines already are full, and companies are having to truck it out or ship it by rail.

Wind Power:  Questionable Benefits, Concealed Impacts.  America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches — as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. ... The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas passé:  the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens' Plan and forests of wind turbines.

A Shale Of A Difference.  On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Obama administration is going to take a "fresh look" at oil shale leasing rules put forward in 2008 by President George W. Bush to develop oil-rich land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. ... The Bush rules would have opened up about 2 million acres of federal land in what is known as the Green River Formation to the possible commercial-scale development of oil shale and tar sands.  The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the region, dubbed the "Persia of the West," may hold more than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, six times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, and enough to meet U.S. oil needs for the next two centuries.

Is America's Energy Policy Perverse?  The U.S. is the only country in the world that, as a matter of policy, does not develop its own energy reserves.  It is hard to see a rational basis for that policy.

The Bakken factor.  The news may not rate with a No. 1 ranking in the college football polls, but residents of North Dakota have reason — make that 11 billion reasons — to have their own celebration in this new year.  Eleven billion barrels is the latest estimate of reserves in the state's share of the Bakken Formation, which extends for some 25,000 square miles from Canada down into Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.  Increasingly, the Bakken is being viewed as a major oil resource in the United States.

2011 may be a gusher in South Texas.  Though still facing uncertainty on many fronts as 2011 begins, the oil and gas industry knows one thing:  It likes what it sees in South Texas.  That's the site of the Eagle Ford shale formation, a vast underground network of dense rock layers, discovered only recently and now thought to be one of the nation's biggest oil and gas fields.

Energy independence is close at hand.  Washington's political class often seems impervious to changing facts.  Case in point is the nation's current and probable future access to essential energy resources, especially fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal.  This trio of carbon-based fuels accounts for the vast majority of the nation's electrical and other forms of power, and will continue to do so through at least 2030, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.  The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but is also the world's most productive economy, so demand here for energy resources is going to continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

A Few Questions for President Obama.  [Scroll down]  America is not running out of oil.  It is running out of places the government allows us to drill. ... Companies have been drilling in deep waters, because most onshore and shallow water areas are off limits.

The U.S. has an abundance of fossil fuels.  Most Americans are surprised to find out that the two largest suppliers of oil to the United States are Canada and Mexico.  Each nation draws billions of dollars in economic activity from the United States to provide these vast supplies.  Is it not logical to conclude that the United States, lodged between these two massive suppliers, has resources of its own that remain untapped?  Of the three major fossil fuels, the United States is in the top ten of two of the fossil fuels' proven reserves globally.  The U.S. has the largest proven reserves of coal and the fifth-largest proven reserves of natural gas.

Firms announce big oil find beneath shallow Gulf waters.  McMoRan Exploration Co. today announced what it said could be one of the largest oil and natural gas discoveries in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico in decades.  The discovery was made at the Davy Jones ultra-deep prospect located on South Marsh Island Block 230 in about 20 feet of water and 10 miles off the Louisiana coast, the New Orleans company and Energy XXI, one of its Houston partners in the project, said in statements this morning.

Governor announces 1.9 billion barrels in Three Forks.  The Three Forks Formation could yield nearly 2 billion barrels of petroleum, according to a geologic study released today [4/29/2010] by the North Dakota Geological Survey and Department of Mineral Resources.  Results of the study essentially double the estimated recoverable amount of oil in the Bakken and Three Forks formations.  Current estimates now put the amount of recoverable oil from the Bakken Formation at 2.1 billion barrels and the Three Forks Formation at 1.9 billion.

North Dakota may produce 700,000 barrels of oil per day by 2014-2017.  Continental oil estimates that the Bakken and Three Forks-Sanish oil formations have 24 billion barrels of recoverable oil based on current technology.

Beneath the Gulf, drillers uncover bounty.  Despite a tough economy that forced cuts elsewhere, oil and gas producers in 2009 continued their push into the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, and many of their efforts were rewarded.  So far this year, there have been 12 discoveries in at least 1,000 feet of water, representing some 1.35 billion barrels of oil equivalent, the most found there in a single year since 2002, according to an analysis by Wood Mackenzie, an energy industry consulting firm.

NYS:  drill, baby, drill!.  The Paterson administration 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.

Power To Spare.  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?


Alaska Can Meet U.S. Energy Needs.  The United States is now facing a decision on how to meet its future energy needs.  In the coming months, the U.S. Department of the Interior will weigh whether to allow oil and gas exploration on Alaska's Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to be expanded.  Such exploration could set the country on a clear and sustainable energy path for decades to come.

New North Dakota Oil Find Could Be a Gusher.  Dozens of very productive new wells near North Dakota's Bakken oil field have state officials believing another massive new oil find may be at hand.  A newly discovered oil field in the Three Forks-Sanish formation is producing high yields, and some analysts believe it may surpass production in the huge Bakken oil field just above it.  The Bakken oil is sandwiched between shale above and below, while the Three Forks-Sanish oil sits in porous rock and sand directly beneath the Bakken shale.

Oxy oil discovery could spark new interest in California's energy potential.  The Westwood company revealed in July that it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil and natural gas in an undisclosed part of Kern County using techniques that the oil company's executives would rather not talk about.  It was California's biggest find in 35 years.  Some experts say it could herald a period of new exploration in California and the U.S.

Oxy Petroleum's oil and gas discovery may be California's largest in 35 years.  Occidental Petroleum Corp. said it had discovered oil and natural gas in a Kern County field that might represent the biggest find in California in more than 35 years.  The nation's fourth-biggest oil company said Wednesday [7/22/2009] that it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil, adding that two-thirds of the new source was believed to be natural gas.

Peak Government, Not Oil.  Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey says the Chukchi Sea off Alaska holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply, and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.  The Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has been called the "Persia of the West."  This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.

Cap-and-Trade Bill: Villainy on a Grand Scale.  It is no accident that his Secretary of the Interior unilaterally cancelled 77 oil and gas leases or that, on March 25, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 that adds two million more acres of wilderness to the 107 million acres already "protected" by the federal government.  It is estimated that 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath these "protected" acres.  The government owns 607 million acres of land in a nation founded on the belief in the sanctity and power of private property, the keystone of capitalism.

The Bias Against Oil and Gas.  Contrary to popular wisdom, the United States still has huge oil and natural-gas resources.  The outer continental shelf (OCS), including parts that have been off limits to drilling since the early 1980s, may contain much natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil, about four times today's "proven" U.S. reserves.  The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated that the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana may hold 3.65 billion barrels, about 22 times a 1995 estimate.  And then there's upwards of 2 trillion barrels of oil shale, concentrated in Colorado.  If 800 billion barrels were recoverable, that's triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.

Environmental Policy Constrains U.S. Oil Supply.  Consider the volumes of U.S. oil resources.  The most conservative measure is "proven reserves."  To be proven, it must be reasonably certain that the crude oil can be produced using current technology at current prices, current commercial terms, and with government consent.  The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates the U.S. has 21.8 billion barrels of oil (bbo) in "proven reserves."  At today's consumption rates, proven reserves would last 50 years.  Yet the amount of proven reserves might jump to more than 50 billion barrels if the government "consented" to development of areas now off-limits.  And "recoverable reserves" — known oil resources capable of recovery, but with more cost and technical difficulty than proven reserves — hold several thousand times more.

Drill, Drill, Drill.  Onshore and offshore drilling restrictions for oil and natural gas have to be removed.  Deregulate the energy sector.  Open the door to nuclear power.  Drill the shale regions for natural gas.  Exploration has dried up in the new Obama environment, which is so very anti-fossil-fuel and anti-nuke.  If we are going to power our way to economic growth, fossil fuels and nuclear energy have to play key roles.  Alternative-fuel technologies may grow up, but that's gonna take several decades.  Right now they're about 2 percent of our power.  That's all.

Seeing Chukchi.  Back in July [2008], ... it was thought that Chukchi's waters northwest of Alaska's landmass held 30 billion cubic feet of natural gas.  Today, Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey now finds it holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.  That's enough U.S. energy to achieve self-sufficiency and never worry about it as a national security question again.  The only thing left to do is drill.

Start Drilling.  It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia.  We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits.  These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.  By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

A crude October surprise?  In 2006, the Interior Department estimated about 85.9 billion barrels of "undiscovered technically recoverable" oil sit offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf within U.S. territory.  In 2007, the Energy Department's "Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels" reported that:  "America's oil shale resource exceeds 2 trillion barrels, including about 1.5 trillion barrels of oil equivalent in high quality shales concentrated in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. ..."

Only Action Can Put America Back in Drive.  First, we must increase production and open up access to explore for American-made energy.  For too long our own precious resources have been off limits, and competing nations are gaining from our neglect.  Right now, China, Venezuela, and others are working with Cuba to extract oil near our waters.  Yet American companies are not able to extract our own resources to provide for American consumers.  This is outrageous.  How can we honestly demand OPEC nations pump more oil when we will not even utilize our own resources?

Dakota Oil Fields of Saudi-Sized Reserves Make Farmers Drillers.  Unlike the tar from Canada's oil sands, Bakken crude needs little refining.  Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin, honey-colored film along the sides.  It's light  — almost like gasoline — and sweet, meaning it's low in sulfur.  Best of all, the Bakken could be huge.  The U.S. Geological Survey's Leigh Price, a Denver geochemist who died of a heart attack in 2000, estimated that the Bakken might hold a whopping 413 billion barrels.  If so, it would dwarf Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the world's biggest field, which has produced about 55 billion barrels.

U.S. Policies Put Most U.S. Oil Off-Limits to Drilling.  Huge basins of untapped oil can be found on federal lands throughout the United States, according to a new report from the federal government.  But much of it cannot — and may never be — recovered, because it lies under national parks and national monuments, or it is subject to environmental laws and restrictions that make drilling prohibitive. … If you add in the 85.9 billion barrels of oil that lie offshore, as determined by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, there are 117 billion barrels of oil on lands owned or managed by the U.S. government.

Who was in the White House when those "national monument" land grabs took place?
Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Cult of Gaia (1999):  [Scroll down]  Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, who is recognized as the driving force behind the administration's environmental agenda, the American people have witnessed rather extraordinary actions designed to stop economic development. … [President Clinton] designated 1.7 million acres of land in southwest Utah as a national monument, placing it off limits to development.  This area reportedly contains billions of barrels of oil, minerals and tens of billions of tons of low sulfur clean-burning coal.  It could have produced thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue for the state and federal governments.

Montana Governor is Sitting on an Oil Mine.  Here's some very good news about oil that the manipulators on Wall Street don't want you to know:  there could be as much as 40 billion barrels of crude lying untouched in eastern Montana.

North Dakota town sitting on oil jackpot.  In this tiny reservation town about two hours from the Canadian border, a Southern twang is sometimes heard over the din at the local diner and there's talk of Texas tea beneath the streets.  Roughnecks from Texas and Oklahoma have travelled here on hopes that they now share with the town's 1,000 or so inhabitants — that there is oil in Parshall.

Drivers Say U.S. Should Drill for Oil on Federal Lands.  A recent Department of Interior report, requested by Congress, estimates there are 139 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the United States, onshore and off-shore combined — more than the known oil reserves of Iran, Iraq or Russia.  But most of that oil cannot be tapped because of environmental regulations.

Who Will Pay For Promises Of Politicians?  Congress, doing the bidding of environmental extremists, created our energy supply problem.  Oil and gas exploration in a tiny portion of the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, according to a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey's estimate, increase our proven domestic oil reserves by approximately 50%.  The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and eastern Gulf of Mexico offshore areas have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.  These energy sources of oil have also been placed off-limits by Congress.  Because of onerous regulations, it has been 30-plus years since a new refinery has been built.  Similar regulations also explain why the U.S. nuclear energy production is a fraction of what it might be.

Is oil's price run-up a problem?  Maybe.  Is oil in short supply?  No.  In fact, the world's ability to produce more oil than it needs is better now than it was after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, which spotlighted how tight global oil production had become.  Then why are prices going up?

Environmental Alarmists Have It Backwards.  President Bush chides us for our "addiction to oil."  But under current conditions, using oil makes perfect sense.  Someday, if we let the free market operate, someone will find an energy source that works better than oil.  Then richer future generations won't need oil.  So why deprive ourselves and make ourselves poorer with needless regulation now?  Anyway, it's not as if we're running out of oil.

State of the Union 2007:  A Counterproductive Energy Policy.  Recent Department of the Interior studies, conducted pursuant to the 2005 energy bill, confirm that the United States has substantial oil and natural gas deposits.  These studies also show that much of these onshore and offshore resources are off-limits due to legal and regulatory constraints.  In fact, America remains the only nation on earth that has restricted access to a substantial portion of its domestic energy potential.  Removing the federal impediments on domestic exploration and drilling will allow for greater domestic supplies and potentially lower prices in the years ahead.

Energy Answers Await At Our Doorstep.  As gasoline prices continue to soar, few Americans realize that a key element for strengthening our energy security is right next door.  Nearly 50% of our energy imports come from our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere.  Canada is our single-largest energy supplier, providing 17% of U.S. oil imports.

Abundant Domestic Supplies are Off-Limits.  The Bureau of Land Management recently published [a report which] concludes that onshore federal lands are "estimated to contain 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 21 billion barrels of oil, which represents 76 percent of onshore Federal oil and gas resources."  That 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to supply all of America's households for 39 years, and 21 billion barrels of oil represents over 30 years' worth of current imports from Saudi Arabia.

Abundant energy supplies off-limits.  Good news:  The more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the more we find.  That might even be great news — if so much of the energy wasn't out of reach.  According to a new Interior Department report, there are substantial onshore energy deposits on federal lands.  A companion study of offshore energy reserves released earlier this year reached the same conclusion.  But both reports found much of this energy is either explicitly off-limits or hampered by regulatory constraints that effectively make it so.

A Big Dose of Energy Reality.  Representative Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Committee on Resources, will tell anyone who will listen that "for the foreseeable future, America has no shortage of oil or other traditional energy resources.  Washington, D.C., has a shortage of the political will required to let American workers go get it."  For example, "The United States has enough non-park federal resources to supply natural gas to 100 million homes for 157 years.  But, despite that massive supply, we cannot deliver even one year of affordable natural gas to Americans right now."

Late Word from the Oil Patch:  When people tell me that America is too dependent on foreign oil imports, I keep telling them we have lots of oil, but thanks to the environmentalists, our own government has made it either too costly to get at it or access has been restricted because the bulk of our undeveloped energy resources is found on federal lands or federally controlled areas offshore.  This is what happens when the federal government owns nearly half the landmass of the nation.

Don't ignore America's oil reserves.  Driving through Sistersville, W.Va., a little town alongside the Ohio River, you would never know that 110 years ago it was the center of an oil boom.  But in the first decade of the 20th century, if you were in the oil business, it was the place to be.

Pipeline, Not Pipe Dream:  Credit Palin.  It must be sweet vindication for Alaska's governor.  Against critics who said her 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline project would never get off the ground, who should the project bag but the "big gorilla" of American energy — Exxon Mobil.  In a major surprise, Exxon announced Thursday [6/11/2009] that it had forged a partnership with TransCanada, the Canadian pipeline company that holds the state license for Palin's $126 billion Alaska Gasoline Inducement Act project.

Natural Gas, America's Best Bet.  There is little question why natural gas is considered the best energy investment due to its growing demand, environmental advantages, and supply breakthrough that has radically changed the outlook for cleaner energy.  Arguably, shale gas, slated to account for 17 percent of total US natural gas supply, is the largest story in the energy business in the last 20 years.

Alaska is floating on oil

Shell gears up to tap into Arctic crude again.  A new chapter in U.S. oil exploration could open within days as Shell sails into seas north of Alaska, hoping to tap into a potential 90 billion barrels of crude that have beckoned for decades.  The company has been there before, drilling exploratory wells in the 1980s and 1990s that tantalized with promise of riches deep below the freezing Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Heavy sea ice could mean slight delay in offshore Arctic drilling.  The heaviest polar ice in more than a decade is clinging to the northern coast of Alaska and could postpone the commencement of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic until the beginning of August — a delay of up to two weeks, Shell Alaska officials said Friday [5/25/2012].  Unveiling the newly refurbished ice-class drilling rig that is poised to commence plumbing two exploratory wells this summer in the Beaufort Sea, Shell executives said the unusually robust sea ice would further narrow what already is a tight window for operations in a $4-billion program designed to measure the extent of what could be the United States' most important new inventory of oil and gas.

The Editor says...
Wait a minute.  I thought the global warming alarmists said the ice at the North Pole was disappearing!  And I thought the environmentalists said there was no more oil to be found!

Exxon to drill in the Arctic.  The Arctic will have oil rigs.  Except they will benefit Russia, not the United States.  21 years after ridding itself of communism, Russia welcomes capitalism.  Meanwhile, the United States government will celebrate Lenin's birthday on Sunday by calling it Earth Day, an excuse to shutter capitalism in this nation.

Arctic Ocean drilling: Shell launches preemptive legal strike.  Royal Dutch Shell launched an extraordinary preemptive legal strike Wednesday [2/29/2012] against opponents of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, filing suit against more than a dozen environmental organizations likely to challenge its plan for drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer.

ANWR — Is President Obama Serious About Domestic Oil Production?  President Obama admitted in the State of the Union that energy production creates jobs, so why isn't he opening up new areas like the North Slope of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas production?  As we have noted numerous times, the federal government leases a mere 3 percent of federal lands for energy production.  The United States is already the world's third largest oil producer, but we could produce a lot more oil if the federal government would let the American people explore for oil on more federal lands.
[Italics in original.]

More about ANWR.

What's the Hold-Up on Alaskan Oil?  My state's ANWR region could produce one million barrels of oil per day if only Washington let us.

First permit OK'd for oil drilling in Alaska reserve.  After rejecting the project nearly two years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today [12/19/2011] issued ConocoPhillips a permit to begin work on the first commercial oil well in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, according to news reports.

Congressman warns Alaska pipeline could be dismantled within 10 years.  The Obama administration is setting the stage for the dismantling of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and poses the greatest threat to its existence today, according to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings.  The 800-mile pipeline cost $8 billion to construct in the 1970s, and has moved more than 18 billion barrels of crude oil.  Three oil companies constructed it, in the face of significant opposition from environmentalists, in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

Our elected leaders are the problem.
Drill in ANWR!  A 1998 United States Geological Survey (USGS) study indicates that there are a minimum of 4.3 billion and possibly (though unlikely) as many as 11.8 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  But ANWR, for all the press it has received, is only the tip of the oil iceberg.  John K. Carlisle, of the National Center for Public Policy Research, claims that the US likely has more than 110 billion barrels total of recoverable oil (which is five times the estimated current supply).  But we are not drilling for this oil.  Why?

Don't Let the Alaska Oil Pipeline Shut Down.  Lack of oil volume due to administration bans on new Alaskan drilling may force the shutdown of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, denying us even the tens of billions of barrels left in already developed fields.

Drill, Dems, Drill.  That an Alaskan senator-elect wants to drill in ANWR is not a surprise.  That he's a Democrat is.  Were high oil prices what helped push Detroit over the edge?

GOP staking out offshore drilling as major issue.  Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate has served to underscore the significance Republicans are putting on opening new areas to energy exploration.  As governor of Alaska, Palin championed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling — something even McCain has opposed.

Alaska's Real Bridge.  A recent study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found that alternative energy will at best supply 16% of global electric and transport needs — by 2030.  In reality, drilling ANWR is critical, as [Alaska's] two senators urge.  "We almost passed it in 2001," Stevens said.  "Some said that if we had acted then, we would have had (the oil) to market right now."  Yes, getting oil into production would take time.  But [Sen. Lisa] Murkowski thinks the very act of passing the bill would damp price speculation.

Feds grim on gas line.  Prospects for an Alaska natural gas pipeline "are more remote than a year ago," and the holdup is political indecision in Alaska, says a new report from federal energy regulators. … The seven-page report says the federal government stands ready to move the megaproject forward, but the "main obstacle" is the state's "failure to resolve" tax or other issues that major oil companies have said must be settled before they can commit to building the multibillion-dollar pipeline project.

Trans Alaska pipeline could do job for 30 more years.  When engineers first turned the spigot on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1977, they thought it would run for about 30 years.  Accountants were a bit more generous, saying it would be 34 years before the 800-mile, $8 billion asset could be written off the books.  But with its 31st anniversary approaching in June, the pipeline, known as TAPS, is primed for another 30 years.

Alaska governor wants to tap oil resources.  Speaking to a group of Hillsdale College supporters, the governor said, "Alaska has so many resources to tap into, so that this state can be a contributor, not a recipient of the federal government."  The governor announced that another $30 billion to $40 billion pipeline for natural gas has just been made possible through the efforts of an independent company for moving natural gas to the lower 48 states and is about to begin construction.

To Drill, or Not to Drill.  Republican presidential candidate John McCain says that he's taking another look at the possibility of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and as part of that assessment McCain says that he plans to talk to the nation's most prominent advocate of drilling in ANWR, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Zapped crude oil flows faster through pipes.  Zapping thick crude oil with a magnetic or electric field could make it flow more smoothly through pipes.  The technique, which reduces the viscosity of the liquid, could make transporting crude through cold underwater pipes easier and cheaper, researchers claim.

Why might Alaskans favor Arctic drilling?  A $2,000 check.  This year's Permanent Fund dividend check — what Alaskans receive each year from the state's oil-revenue investment fund — is likely to be more than $2,000, the first time since the state began making the payments in 1982 that the dividend has topped two grand.  The biggest previous dividend was $1963.86 in 2000.  Last year's was $1,654.  The dividend spins off the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state's $37 billion oil wealth savings account.

Open ANWR.  Many votes against drilling [in Alaska] come from California, Northeastern and Midwestern legislators who have made a career of railing against high energy prices, "obscene" oil company profits, unemployment and balance of trade deficits — while simultaneously doing everything possible to constrict supplies, increase demand and drive up prices.  For instance, air quality rules — coupled with a virtual prohibition on building new nuclear plants — mean that most new electrical generating plants are gas-fired.  So demand for natural gas continues to climb, while domestic supplies continue to decrease.

Oil Prices and the Media:  Don't Believe the Hype.  With regard to folks blocking drilling for oil in ANWR due to environmental concerns, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) offered the following analogy:  If ANWR was the size of a basketball court, the proposed area for drilling would be the size of a dollar bill.  He also said that if President Clinton had not vetoed ANWR drilling in 1995, the U.S. domestic oil supply be 20 percent higher today.

ANWR and Our Nation's Energy Future.  Many of the same people that are now complaining about our dependence on foreign oil consistently oppose opening Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to production.  This is not some radical idea.  The 1980 law that doubled the size of ANWR to 19 million acres explicitly called for Congress to develop a process through which exploration and production could be conducted on the 2000 acre Coastal Plain.  Yet, across the past 24 years, anti-development forces in Congress have ignored America's energy needs and, through the use of filibusters, prevented oil and gas development.  This inaction is irresponsible.

Alaska senators make another push for oil drilling in ANWR.  Hoping to capitalize on consumer concern about gasoline prices, Alaska's two Republican senators introduced legislation Thursday that would allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if the price of oil hits $125 a barrel.  With oil hovering near $110 a barrel and gasoline expected to reach $4 a gallon, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens said that they hoped the continuing price spiral would spark consumer clamor and overcome opposition to opening the wildlife refuge to drilling.

The Editor says...
Why wait for $125 a barrel?  This issue should have come up when oil hit $40 a barrel.

Green movement also behind gas hike.  What if we had our own Iraq-sized supply that we haven't even touched yet?  We do.  According to the U.S. Geological Survey and American Petroleum Institute, we have at least 112 billion barrels of undrilled oil — "enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years."  By comparison, Iraq has 115 billion barrels and Venezuela 80 billion.  At least 16 billion barrels of our oil is in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Drilling would only touch 8 percent of 17 million acres — but environmentalists say it's off-limits.

More information about ANWR can be found here.

And not only oil...
Study:  Tap natural gas from Alaska's frozen areas.  Today's technology could extract enough untapped natural gas, frozen in Alaska's North Slope, to heat millions of homes for years, federal officials announced Wednesday [11/12/2008].  An estimated 85.4 trillion cubic feet of "undiscovered, technically recoverable gas" is frozen in the state's North Slope region, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study released by the Interior Department.  The deposits could heat more than 100 million homes for a decade, the study says.

Thawing Fuel For Palin's Pipeline.  A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey shows that 85.4 trillion cubic feet of frozen natural gas crystals lie buried beneath Alaska's icy North Slope, a region where the crude production peaked in 1988 and had to be replaced by imported oil.  The frozen gas, known as gas hydrate, is a new Made-In-U.S.A. energy source that's nearly three times the 30 trillion cubic feet of estimated U.S. reserves from conventional gas sources; it had not even been counted in current estimates of domestic energy reserves.

The world is not running out of oil

We face a worldwide glut of oil, with profound implications, most of them good.  So much for peak oil.  According to a fascinating new study by Leonardo Maugeri of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the the John F Kennedy School of Government, we should stop worrying about when the oil runs out and get ready for $70 a barrel prices (using the Brent benchmark).  Likely supply of the black stuff has been significantly underestimated, he reckons, with a veritable glut of new production due to come on stream over the next eight years.  If he's right, we can indeed stop worryng about a lot of things, unless a lover of windfarms and green energy.

No peak oil in sight: We've got an unprecedented upsurge in global oil production underway.  Contrary to what most people believe, oil is not in short supply and oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption.  From a purely physical point of view, there are huge volumes of conventional and unconventional oils still to be developed, with no "peak-oil" in sight.  The full deployment of the world's oil potential depends only on price, technology, and political factors.  More than 80 percent of the additional production under development globally appears to be profitable with a price of oil higher than $70 per barrel.

Meet The Oil Shale Eighty Times Bigger Than The Bakken.  Everyone has heard about the Bakken shale, the huge expanse of oil-bearing rock underneath North Dakota and Montana that billionaire Harold Hamm thinks could yield 24 billion barrels of oil in the decades to come.  The Bakken is a huge boon, both to the economic health of the northern Plains states, but also to the petroleum balance of the United States.  From just 60,000 barrels per day five years ago, the Bakken is now giving up 500,000 bpd, with 210,000 bpd of that coming on in just the past year. [...] But as great as the Bakken is, I learned last week about another oil shale play that dwarfs it.  It's called The Bazhenov.

12 Incredible Facts About Canada's Oil Sands.  [#1]  Of Canada's 175 billion barrels of oil that can be recovered, 170 billion barrels come from the oil sands in the Alberta region.

British oil strike off the Falkland Islands.  A Huge oil discovery has been made in the Falklands, sources claimed last night [4/22/2012].  The find, by a British-backed company, could contain up to a BILLION barrels of "black gold" an insider revealed.  The strike across two reservoirs off the Falklands' southern coast was made by oil explorer Borders and Southern.

What If Oil and Natural Gas Are Renewable Resources?  The evidence is mounting that not only do we have more than a century's worth of recoverable oil in the United States alone (even if there is a limit to the earth's oil supply), but that we also actually have a limitless supply of Texas tea because oil is in fact a renewable resource that is being constantly created deep under the earth's surface and which rises upward, where microscopic organisms that thrive in the intense pressure and heat miles below us interact with and alter it.

US Firm: 3-9 Trillion Cubic Feet of Gas Off Cyprus.  A top official with United States firm Noble Energy says a field it is conducting undersea exploratory drilling in off the coast of Cyprus may contain between 3 to 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Resurging North American Oil Production and the Death of the Peak Oil Hypothesis.  The concept of peak oil is being buried in North Dakota, which is now leading the US to be the fastest growing oil producer in the world.  The belief that global oil production has peaked, or is on the cusp of doing so, has underpinned much of crude oil's decade-long rally (setting aside the 2008 sell-off).  The belief was bolstered by the repeated failure of supply to live up to the optimistic forecasts put forward by various governmental and international energy agencies.  The IEA, the industry benchmark, made a habit of putting forth forecasts for the coming year of big gains in non-OPEC supply, only to spend the next 18 months revising those forecasts lower.

Monbiot: wrong again — 'Peak Oil' this time.  Until recently George "Reverse-Cassandra" Monbiot was very, very worried about Peak Oil. [...] So you might not unreasonably imagine that, were he ever to discover that the "Peak Oil" threat was nothing to worry about and that there was more than enough extractable oil to supply our needs for the foreseeable future, the Moonbat would be over the moon.  Right?  Wrong!  Here is what George Monbiot airily declared yesterday [7/2/2012] — sounding for all the world as if he'd read neither Watermelons nor a James Delingpole blogpost in his entire life.

RIP: Peak Oil — we won't be running out any time soon.  The death of Peak Oil kicks away the underpinnings from a great deal of policy-making by our bureaucracies and their advisers.  Over the past two decades, we've seen the mushrooming of the "sustainability" sector, which is almost completely dependent on state funding and which shares similar erroneous assumptions.  The proposition we're invited to accept in each case is that modern industrial society is founded on a resource which is being depleted and which cannot be easily replaced.  The second part of that is rather crucial.

Rising Oil Production in Alberta: More Evidence Disproving Hubbert's Peak.  [There was a] theory first offered by M. King Hubbert in 1956 that claimed that oil production in the United States would reach its peak between 1965 and 1970 and begin to decline thereafter.  It was based upon the assumption that the amount of oil reserves is fixed and that it is analogous, according to peak theory supporter Colin Campbell, to a glass of beer:  "The glass starts full and ends empty, and the faster you drink it, the quicker it's gone."  From that theory, Hubbert then claimed that this would drastically alter life in the United States, predicting chaos, war, starvation, economic decline and possibly even the extinction of mankind.

Peak oil:  Although supporters of peak oil theory are correct that new oil discoveries over the last several decades have been smaller than in the past, it is unknown how much crude oil is yet to be discovered.  Predictions about hitting peak oil in the near term might be correct, but there are at least four reasons for optimism that they are not.  First, high oil prices induce more exploration by oil companies.

Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields.  At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau — roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day — since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26.

The Editor says...
Oil production has never been easy.  Therefore, any prediction of the end of "easy oil" is misleading at best.

Peak Oil Scam is Based Upon Ideological, Fact-Blind Liberalism.  While it cannot come as a surprise after so many liberal hoaxes, it's still shocking to find we've been duped again — this time by the "Peak Oil" myth.  Peak Oil is the theory the world is on the verge of a catastrophic decline in global petroleum reserves that will result in major energy crises causing chaos across the world.  This notion has now been proved demonstrably false — yet, how was it accepted in the first place?

There Will Be Oil.  Since the beginning of the 21st century, a fear has come to pervade the prospects for oil, fueling anxieties about the stability of global energy supplies. ... The date of the predicted peak has moved over the years.  It was once supposed to arrive by Thanksgiving 2005.  Then the "unbridgeable supply demand gap" was expected "after 2007."  Then it was to arrive in 2011.  Now "there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020."  But there is another way to visualize the future availability of oil: as a "plateau."

Hubbert's Peak or Yergin's Plateau?  Peak Oil's fundamental assumption is that the supply of oil is finite and fixed.  The peak of the oil production curve is reached when half of the total resource base has been produced, so rate vs time exhibits a symmetric bell-shaped curve.  Post peak, rate declines rapidly.  Hubbert demonstrated a peak for oil production in Texas, and he extended his theory to correctly predict the time (but not the rate) of the peak for the U.S. World oil production is supposed to have peaked in the last five years or so.  But Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, argues...

Controversy Over Oil Sands Pipeline Project Approval.  A 4-by-8-mile pit deep in the wilderness of northwest Canada is taking center stage in America's energy debate.  The Athabasca tar sands in Alberta Province is the largest mine in what is the second largest oil reserve in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia.  The United States gets 20 percent of its imported oil from Canada, about half of it coming from the vast Athabasca tar sands.  And now there are plans to more than double the oil sands production and pipe nearly all of the oil through a new pipeline that would take it to refineries in Texas.

Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil?  The Peak Oil Theory was largely the invention of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, with his prediction "that the fossil fuel era would be of very short duration."  He originally published a world production curve on the theory in 1956, using the prediction that the world oil production would peak in 1970.  That prediction of course proved to be quite untrue, but that does not stop those who want to shut down our oil production.

Peak renewables.  The "peak oil" scare has long been used as an excuse for alternative-energy providers to demand government subsidies.  We are told that oil production will reach a zenith and the wells will run dry any day now, so failure to provide billions in handouts to the providers of other fuels would be irresponsible.  Forget peak oil — the world may be on the verge of peak renewables.  The much-hyped intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind have proved so expensive to maintain that other developed nations are trimming subsidies.

Energy Independence:  Are You Serious?  At last, some promising energy news.  A new discovery of oil and gas in an unexplored region is leading to hope for potentially more energy than that possessed by the oil-rich nation of Libya.  Enough energy to make every man, woman, and child an instant millionaire.  Americans can only dream about this happy news, because the new discovery is not in the U.S. It is off the west coast of Greenland.

Rockhopper shares jump after raising Falklands oil estimate.  Rockhopper, the Falklands oil exploration company, ... announced today [4/4/2011] that it believes there are at least 155m barrels of oil extractable from the Sea Lion well, which is some 80 miles north of the Falkland Islands.  Rockhopper estimated in June that there would be a minimum of 57m barrels recoverable from the site.

Global warming and the 'settled science' baloney.  [Scroll down]  Indeed, most big scientific questions are unsettled, from galaxy formation to the origins of the moon.  Closer to home, even 150 years after the first commercial extraction of oil in western Pennsylvania, the mechanism of hydrocarbon formation is still a hotly contested issue.  While most petroleum geologists believe that oil and natural gas resulted from the slow anaerobic decomposition of biomass over eons, many others believe that hydrocarbons are an abiotic product of simple chemical reactions in the deep earth crust.  The relative numbers of scientists in the two camps do not speak to which explanation is correct.  Scientific truth is not decided by polls.

Deep oil:  a giant discovery.  BP has announced a "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, drilled to a total depth of 35,055 feet.  Drilling began at a depth of 4,132 feet below the surface of the water.  No further details of the magnitude of the discovery are being released.  But this is further evidence that deep oil and gas deposits may dwarf the resources discovered at shallower depths.

BP's oil find is big, but miles out and down.  A major new oil discovery by BP in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the potential of a highly touted deep-water area where other oil companies also scored big in recent years, but the task of producing the crude has just begun.

BP Finds 'Giant' Oil Source Deep Under Gulf of Mexico.  BP said Wednesday [9/2/2009] that it made a "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts said that the find deep below the sea floor raised hopes that further exploration in the region could help sustain U.S. offshore oil production.  The discovery, known as Tiber, was made 250 miles southeast of Houston and was "in the same league" as other big fields BP has discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said.

Canada's Oil Bonanza.  Canada has the oil the American economy desperately needs — and then some.  So why do we treat this and other energy allies like pariahs?

The Problem's Not Peak Oil, It's Politics.  Some "peak oil" cassandras warn that global energy production will soon fall into permanent decline.  But a more immediate danger to world oil supplies may be the tempestuous politics of many producing countries.

Morons Who Hate Oil:  Are we running out of oil?  No.  Let me repeat.  No.  There is no such thing as "peak oil" because every time someone has made the prediction that we are using up all the oil, we find some more.  This not to say the Obama administration will let oil companies drill for it in America.  Not only do we pay less for domestic oil as opposed to importing it, but we have so much domestic oil we wouldn't have to import it.

The World Has Plenty of Oil.  The world is not running out of oil anytime soon.  A gradual transitioning on the global scale away from a fossil-based energy system may in fact happen during the 21st century.  The root causes, however, will most likely have less to do with lack of supplies and far more with superior alternatives.  The overused observation that "the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones" may in fact find its match.

Environmentalists Still Can't Get It Right.  In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.  In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.  In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.  Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

Peak Oil:  An Idea Whose Time Is Up.  Some analysts believe that investors who have swallowed the peak oil theory are pricing oil higher because they fear the world is running out of crude and permanent shortages are nigh.  They shouldn't believe it.

Have we underestimated total oil reserves?  Black gold might not be as scarce as we thought.  This week oil prices escalated to a record $139 per barrel, but that may partly be because the amount of available oil in known reserves has been significantly underestimated.  So says Richard Pike, a former oil-industry adviser and chief executive of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry, who blames flawed statistical calculations.

World has enough oil supplies for 'many decades':  Nuaimi.  Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said on Sunday [6/22/2008] the world has enough crude to last for "many decades" and that his country will invest massively to be able to produce 15 million barrels a day.  "The world has enough petroleum reserves, both conventional and non-conventional, to meet oil demand for many, many decades to come," Nuaimi told a summit in Jeddah of top consumers and producers.

Kuwait oil lifespan 115 years.  The lifespan of Kuwait's oil fields could prolong to 115 years if state-of-the-art technologies are tapped, according to a new book released by Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).  Kuwait's confirmed oil reserves are 101.5 billion barrels, the book said, citing British Petroleum (BP) figures in 2005.  Now that Kuwait's daily oil output is 2.415 million barrels according to February 2007 statistics, the lifespan of oil fields is 42,029 days or 115 years, the book said.

Why So High?  According to [the American Petroleum Institute], "The U.S. government estimates that deepwater regions of the Gulf of Mexico may contain 71 billion barrels of oil."  API estimates that there are 10.5 billion barrels off the shores of California and the Pacific Northwest, 3.8 billion barrels off the Atlantic coastline, and 18 billion barrels onshore and 26.6 billion barrels off the Alaska coast and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  This adds up to 138.1 billion barrels of oil, enough to power over 60 million automobiles for 60 years according to government estimates.  (These same reservoirs could supply 656 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, sufficient to heat 60 million homes for the next 160 years.)

Peak Oil Is a Waste of Energy.  Remember "peak oil"?  It's the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe.  Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, ...

The IEA Puts a Date on Peak Oil Production.  Faith Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), believes that if no big new discoveries are made, "the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis."

At this point, it's anybody's gas!  (That's a pun.)
How much oil lies beneath the Earth's crust?  The only thing we know for sure is that history is littered with estimates so far off the mark — usually below the mark — that they border on the comical.  In the 1920s, for instance, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (now BP) refused to take a stake in Saudi Arabia, thinking that the country didn't hold a single drop of oil.  In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that the United States would run out of oil in nine years.  Yet by the time nine years had passed, huge discoveries, topped by the Black Giant field in Texas, had created a massive oil glut that almost destroyed the industry.

World oil supplies are set to run out faster than expected, warn scientists.  Scientists have criticised a major review of the world's remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are prepared to admit.  BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough "proven" reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates.  The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry.

Running out of oil?  "Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels.  That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for the Italian energy company ENI. … There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves.  Mr. Maugeri says these oil reserves will probably meet the "proven" standard in a few years as technological improvement and increased sub-soil knowledge come online.

We Are Not Running Out of Oil.  Every time oil prices rise for an extended period, the news media issue dire warnings that a crisis is upon us — it's not!  Many factors are contributing to the currently high gas prices: limited refining capacity, political restrictions on development of new domestic sources of oil, reduced supply from several oil exporting countries due to political conflicts, limited supplies due to the actions of the oil cartel, OPEC, and finally, increased demand for oil in China.  Dwindling supplies of oil is not a factor in the current price at the pump.

Geologist:  Earth has lots and lots of oil.  A University of Washington economic geologist says there is lots of crude oil left for human use.  Eric Cheney said Friday in a news release that changing economics, technological advances and efforts such as recycling and substitution make the world's mineral resources virtually infinite.

The Peak Oil Myth:  The U.S. had 321 refineries in 1981; the U.S. has 149 oil refineries today.  Many plants operate 24 hours a day (with no down-time for maintenance) to supply the growing demand for fuel, and to comply with EPA regulations that require refineries to formulate different types of gasoline in different regions of the country at different times of the year.

Plenty of oil left in the global tank.  [Scroll down] The most important reason for rejecting the "peak oil is here" argument, however, is that current production reflects investment decisions taken years ago, when prices were much lower.  It was only just over three years ago that oil rose above $40 a barrel.  A few years earlier it was $10-$11.  Higher prices will bring more output on stream.

Oil is Not a fossil fuel.  [In the 1940s] Stalin's team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a 'fossil fuel' but is a natural product of planet earth — the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide — two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth's crust.  This continuous reaction occurs at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the 'death' of planet earth in millions of years' time.

IEA Sees No Twilight for Saudi Oil.  Mark Twain's old line about the reports of his death being greatly exaggerated might apply to the Saudis.  If this year's oil production results and the 2008 predictions are to be believed, then the Saudis are going to continue to dominate the global oil business.

Aramco Chief Debunks Peak Oil.  "We have grossly underestimated mankind's ability to find new reserves of petroleum, as well as our capacity to raise recovery rates and tap fields once thought inaccessible or impossible to produce."  So said Abdallah S. Jum'ah, Saudi Aramco's president and CEO, during his address at the 11th Congress of the World's Energy Council in Rome last November.  With the mass media focused on soaring oil prices and publishing a rash of peak oil stories, Jum'ah's latest contribution to the peak oil debate has gone largely unreported.

Oil Prices:  Cause and Effect.  The price of crude didn't rise from $12 in early 1999 to nearly $60 because the world suddenly ran out of oil.  On the contrary, the world supply of petroleum has risen 10 percent since then, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 65.8 million barrels a day in 1999 to 72.5 million in 2004.

Natural Gas Needs No Dinosaurs to Form.  Credible scientists have now demonstrated that methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, can form inorganically, as a result of natural processes that involve no biological material whatsoever — no dead dinosaurs, no rotting ancient forests, not even any little plankton trapped in the soil.

Endless oil.  Do dead dinosaurs fuel our cars?  The assumption that they do, along with other dead matter thought to have formed what are known as fossil fuels, has been an article of faith for centuries. ... Sooner or later, we will run out of liquefied dinosaurs and be forced to turn to either nuclear or renewable fuels, virtually everyone believes.  Except in Russia and Ukraine.  What is to us a matter of scientific certainty is by no means accepted there.  Many Russians and Ukrainians — no slouches in the hard sciences — have since the 1950s held that oil does not come exclusively, or even partly, from dinosaurs but is formed below the Earth's 25-mile deep crust.

Obama and the Alternative Energy Fiasco:  [Scroll down]  All of these things are happening at a time when natural gas is abundant and cheap. ... Many cars could run on natural gas, much like many buses do already. ... New technologies continually revive old oil and gas fields and make new ones economically viable.  So it's little more than socialist Malthusianism to argue that the world is running out of cheap energy.

Peak Government, Not Oil.  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.

Peak Oil:  A Theory Running Out Of Gas.  One year ago, Congress responded to the chorus of Americans calling for more American energy by lifting the ban on offshore drilling.  For the first time in a quarter-century, it became legal to drill for more oil and natural gas reserves offshore.  This anniversary allows us to look back on how far we have come since 2008.  The sad reality is we have barely moved.

Petrobras:  Oil field may have 380 million barrels.  Brazil's state-run oil company says it has found a new offshore oil reserve that could hold nearly 400 million barrels of oil equivalent.  Petroleo Brasileiro SA says in a statement that the pre-salt reservoir was discovered 14,633 feet (4,460 meters) below the ocean floor off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

Giant oil pipeline in the works from Alberta to the Gulf.  In the coming weeks, the Obama administration will decide if it wants to significantly increase the amount of oil the country imports from Canada's controversial Alberta oil sands.  The State Department is set to issue what could be a final ruling to allow a massive new pipeline expansion from central Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.  A decision is expected early in the new year.

There Is No Gas Shortage.  Gasoline reserves on hand are at the highest levels since the early 1990s, which is remarkable considering the nation's refineries have been cutting back on the production of gasoline because their margins have declined.  In fact, average gasoline reserves on hand have risen since this past October [2007], while oil reserves in this country have gone up virtually every week this year — and only fog in the Houston Ship Channel that kept oil tankers from unloading their crude one week kept it from being every week.

Oil Is Not A Fossil Fuel.  To begin with, oil is not a fossil fuel.  This is a theory put forth by 18th century scientists.  Within 50 years, Germany and France's scientists had attacked the theory of petroleum's biological roots.  In fact, oil is abiotic, not the product of long decayed biological matter.  And oil, for better or for worse, is not a non-renewable resource.  It, like coal, and natural gas, replenishes from sources within the mantle of earth.  This is the real and true science of oil.  Read all about it.

The Myth Of Peak Oil:  Peak oil is a scam designed to create artificial scarcity and jack up prices while giving the state an excuse to invade our lives and order us to sacrifice our hard-earned living standards. ... The analysis of the oil now being produced at Eugene Island shows that its age is geologically different from the oil produced there after the refinery first opened.  Suggesting strongly that it is now emerging from a different, unexplained source.  The last estimates of probable reserves shot up from 60 million barrels to 400 million barrels.  Both the scientists and geologists from the big oil companies have seen the evidence and admitted that the Eugene Island oil field is refilling itself.  This completely contradicts peak oil theory and with technology improving at an accelerating pace it seems obvious that there are more Eugene Islands out there waiting to be discovered.

Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil?  The Peak Oil Theory was largely the invention of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, with his prediction "that the fossil fuel era would be of very short duration."  He originally published a world production curve on the theory in 1956, using the prediction that the world oil production would peak in 1970.  That prediction of course proved to be quite untrue, but that does not stop those who want to shut down our oil production.  They just revise it when facts force them to, and continue with the theory and their efforts to shut down our oil production as much as possible.

Peak Oil, Entirely Nonsense: As is Peak Gas.  One of the things that really rather annoys me about the peak oil (and in the UK, there's a similar one about peak gas) argument is that it entirely ignores the impact of changing technology. ... Now that we've developed fracking, to do what geology hasn't done in the far more numerous shales, there just really isn't any long term, long term meaning century or more, shortage of oil and or gas.

Fracking: The Radical Left's Latest Weapon of Fear.  In 1977, President Jimmy Carter warned Americans of a pending "national catastrophe" in a prime time nationally televised speech.  "The Oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out."  Resources were being depleted so fast that the world "could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," Carter said.  Rather obviously, Carter's end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it prediction didn't happen. ... Instead of running out of oil and gas as Carter predicted, the inventory of America's recoverable domestic reserves has increased dramatically.

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that was a lot of oil.....

I think I wore out my scroll button!

A link might of been nice.....or not.....

Dawg

Adding thanks for the data-driven report and analysis.

I understand the bottom line thesis that energy (diesel) is getting more expensive and ores are getting poorer, generally harming miner profitability.  However, it seems from quarterly reports that the miners are still profitable, so their demise has not yet arrived.

And if I were CEO, I would do exactly what they are doing, trying to keep production up since there is still profit margin on each oz at the end of the day.  I don't know the operations of miners, but I assume like any other industry there are fixed start up and shut down costs that are pure loss compared with continuing with the status quo.  though the status quo may be gambling.

Has anyone produced a model/ formula or table that compares crude oil price and gold price to determine at any given moment whether gold mining per oz is profitable?  I know there are other variables, especially ore grade, and these could inputs as well (or assumed average values).

It is going to get interesting to watch the dynamics as both oil and gold rise.  It seems the odds are for rest of 2012 for a rebound in gold and a modestly high oil price in 90-110 range.  This seems to favor miners (depending on the model mentioned above).  Middle East crisis or an unknown black swan changes everything.

Does anyone know if miners hedge fuel costs with long term contracts with fuel suppliers, as the airline companies do?  Would make a lot of sense considering their business model.  Miners could be in the catbird seat if they are sitting on stable fuel contracts and get a rapidly rising gold price.

One final point to ponder.  I listened to a Bloomberg interview about platinum, gold and it was mentioned that China (China?) had surpassed S. Africa as the world's largest gold producer.  However, China is liquid fuels poor, not sure about S. Africa but believe so also.  I appreciate that China does not care whether gold is profitable, and restricts exports of gold.  But it (high oil price) will force China into some interesting decisions re gold v. food.  In an expensive oil world, where pressure will simultaneously ramp up on oil from multiple directions since its needed for food and water (am I talking myself into long oil?), seems like the nations which produce both oil and metals (and food) i.e U.S., Mexico, Russia? will be better off in a metals-backed world.

In high school I read The Population Bomb.  Then I heard our plant was going to freeze about the same time I first heard we were going to run out of oil in 10 or 20 years.  After that, I have always looked at any of these type of projections with a huge amount of skepticism.  Even those that might have been based on accurate numbers fail to factor in economic and technological changes.  And that is at least partially understandable as they are unknown at the time of the original projection.

I appreciate the work that SRS does.  His command of data is nothing short of amazing.  If the economy were to remain robust, I think there is a good chance he is right. 

But here is the main reason I am not worried about peak oil or sky rocketing energy prices (at least not more than I worry about sky rocketing food prices).  The economy of most of the developed word is going to collapse from debt long before oil runs out and it will take years to recover.  Energy demand will drop drastically.   People that stand in bread lines don't use a lot of oil.  We may have shortages but they will be caused by problems in the refining and distribution, not lack of oil in the ground.  Once we get through that era I will worry about peak oil.  If I am still alive.

Nana asks:

"Why is the Flag Backwards on the Homeland Security ARMORED Vehicles?

http://www.infowars.com/ministry-of-homeland-security-rolls-out-armored-... "

Because that is the proper etiquette to display the flag.  The blue field of stars is always forward.  Therefore if displayed on the left side of anything the flag shows 'normal' (with the blue field to the left).  Displayed on the right side of anything it shows 'backwards' (with the blue field to the right).  If you'll notice any military uniform with the flag on it, if the flag patch is on the right shoulder, it appears with the blue field to the right, or backwards as you call it.  Just remember the blue field is always forward when looking at it.

Regards,

Icarus

Patrancus.... I see you found a great deal of SOUND BITES ABOUT THE PEAK OIL MYTH.  I am not going to spend a lot of time rebuking the information in that post.  Some of it is true.  North Dakota is producing oil at a record.  However, it will come at a cost.  Its huge exponential increase will be matched by an exponential decrease on the way down:

Now, if you want to see a LINEAR INCREASE IN OIL PRODUCTION.... HERE IS THE USA:

So, we can see that if oil production is to be LONG TERM, it has to increase in a linear fashion.  North Dakota oil production fails this test of time.  Anyone who disagrees with me, just stay alive for a few more years to watch the exponential decrease... sorry I wish I had better news.

About everything else... so be it.  All those huge reserves of oil in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and etc is OIL SHALE... not to be confused with SHALE OIL (tight oil).  That stuff is shale that has to be crushed and then made into oil.  Its actually far worse than TAR SANDS which has an EROI of 2-4/1.  Oil Shale is not even commercially viable at $100-120 a barrel.... and its EROI maybe closer to 1-2/1.

I hate to break the DON"T BE A DOOMER...GIVE ME SOLUTIONS PARTY, but the minimum EROI of OIL for an advanced society to sustain itself is over 8/1.

I guess we can just keep on DREAMING THE GREAT WHITE WAY....until reality hits us on the forehead.

WORD......

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