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BP Makes Big Oil Discovery In Gulf Of Mexico
From the AP:
BP PLC said Wednesday that it had made a "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico but had not yet determined the size and commercial potential of the find.
The well, in Keathley Canyon block 102 about 250 miles (400 kms) southeast of Houston, is in 4,132 feet (1,259 meters) of water, the company said.
The Tiber well was drilled to a total depth of 35,055 feet (10,685 meters), making it one of the deepest wells ever drilled by the oil and gas industry, BP said.
I happen to live in Houston, and unlike the fools in California we like our drilling. Since we provide most of the country with energy, I think we should cut California off until they pull their weight. There are billions of barrels of oil off the coast of California, but eco-extremists and global warming nuts are keeping it from being drilled.
Palin Rips Obama For Funding Off-Shore Oil Drilling In Brazil
Sarah Palin has responded via Facebook to the reports of the Obama administration giving Brazil $2 billion dollars to expand off-shore drilling off their coast while continuing to prevent America from doing the same.
Here’s the entire piece:
YOUR TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK: FIRST CARS, NOW FOREIGN OIL.
Today’s Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.
For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.
So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That’s all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.
I’ll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: "Drill, baby, drill." Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a "win" for some states just to play to the left with our money.
The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.
Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can’t say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.
- Sarah Palin
Well said.
(hat tip Gateway Pundit)
Kerry And Boxer Say Palin Is Wrong On Energy
John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post rebutting Sarah Palin’s piece in last week’s WaPo attacking Cap and Trade.
Here’s a little taste of their stupidity:
Palin argues that "the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!" The truth is, clean energy legislation doesn’t make energy scarcer or more expensive; it works to find alternative solutions to our costly dependence on foreign oil and provides powerful incentives to pursue cutting-edge clean energy technologies.
Palin asserts that job losses are "certain." Wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and American Clean Energy and Security legislation will create significant employment opportunities across the country in a broad array of sectors linked to the clean energy economy. Studies at the federal level and by states have demonstrated clean energy job creation. A report by the Center for American Progress calculated that $150 billion in clean energy investments would create more than 1.7 million domestic and community-based jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.
Kerry and Boxer are living in the land of Oz. The left doesn’t give a damn about “breaking our dependence on foreign oil” they don’t want us to depend on any oil. They’re using phony climate change as an excuse to gain a vice-like grip on every aspect of our lives.
If Kerry and Boxer really gave a damn about ending out dependence on foreign oil they would let us use our own oil. They would allow us to build more nuclear plants and experiment with oil shale. They would allow off-shore drilling, drilling in ANWR, and drilling anywhere else we have oil.
We have a enough oil, natural gas, and nuclear potential to be completely self-sustaining if we really wanted to be. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about environmental extremism and phony science being used as a rationale for stopping human development and destroying our country.
John Kerry and Barbara Boxer are nothing but contemptible jerks who should be thrown out of office.
Video: Newt Gingrich Joins The Energy Debate On Capital Hill
Putin Visits Iran, Threatens U.S.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said nations shouldn’t pursue oil pipeline projects in the area if they weren’t backed by regional powers.
Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the Caspian support them.
Putin did not name any specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow’s strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West bypassing Russia.
The legal status of the Caspian – believed to contain the world’s third-largest energy reserves – has been in limbo since the 1991 Soviet collapse, leading to tension and conflicting claims to seabed oil deposits.
Iran, which shared the Caspian’s resources equally with the Soviet Union, insists that each coastal nation receive an equal portion of the seabed. Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want the division based on the length of each nation’s shoreline, which would give Iran a smaller share.
Oil hits record $80 on tight supply
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Crude oil prices vaulted to a record high $80 a barrel on Wednesday as dealers focused on tight inventories in top consumer the United States ahead of peak winter demand.
A rash of fires at BP’s oil fields in Alaska’s North Slope added to the record run, though BP said the accidents had minimal impact to production that was already being curtailed by routine maintenance.
The surge in oil prices came a day after OPEC agreed to a small production hike in an effort to soothe consumer nations’ fears that soaring crude costs could slow economic growth.
“The OPEC outcome was not enough of a shocker to turn around a market that likes to read extremes,” said Olivier Jakob of oil consultancy Petromatrix.
U.S. light crude for October delivery was up $1.59 at $79.82 per barrel at 2:07 p.m. EDT after setting a record high of $80.00 a barrel earlier. London Brent crude was up $1.35 at $77.73 a barrel.
Crude oil stocks in top consumer the United States fell 7.1 million barrels last week to their lowest level in eight months ahead of the winter heating season, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Analysts had expected a fall of 2.4 million barrels.
“The reality is that the crude tightness in Europe and Asia has begun to affect the U.S. market in a big way,” said Antoine Halff, analyst at Fimat Research in New York. “In retrospect, it validates OPEC’s decision to increase production.”
Heating oil futures prices also struck a record Wednesday of $2.2139 a gallon, up 3.12 cents.
Experts said OPEC’s deal in Vienna Tuesday to raise output by a half a million barrels per day starting November 1 was not enough to reverse rising energy prices.
“It legitimises the excess production that was there relative to OPEC’s previous implied quota and not much more,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, senior oil market analyst at BNP Paribas.
The new OPEC output deal will reverse most of the 1.7 million barrels per day of cuts agreed by the group since October 2006 because the group was already pumping almost 1 million bpd above their nominal ceiling.
The oil market also was getting support from concerns over energy supplies from Mexico, where a leftist militant group blew up several fuel pipelines this week for the second time since July.
Mexico has said the blasts cut 25 percent of the country’s natural gas flow, but added that exports were unaffected.
The rebel group, known as EPR, said it will continue its attacks until the Mexican government releases two of its guerrilla organizers.
[Reuters]
Tenn. Nuclear Fuel Problems Kept Secret
A three-year veil of secrecy in the name of national security was used to keep the public in the dark about the handling of highly enriched uranium at a nuclear fuel processing plant – including a leak that could have caused a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
The leak turned out to be one of nine violations or test failures since 2005 at privately owned Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., a longtime supplier of fuel to the U.S. Navy’s nuclear fleet.
The public was never told about the problems when they happened. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed them for the first time last month when it released an order demanding improvements at the company, but no fine.
In 2004, the government became so concerned about releasing nuclear secrets that the commission removed more than 1,740 documents from its public archive – even some that apparently involved basic safety violations at the company, which operates a 65-acre gated complex in tiny Erwin, about 120 miles north of Knoxville.
Congressmen and environmental groups have criticized the policy, and now the commission staff is drafting recommendations that may ease its restrictions.
But environmental activists are still suspicious of the belated revelations and may challenge the commission’s decision not to fine Nuclear Fuel Services for the safety violations.
“That party is not over – the full story of what is going on up there,” said Ann Harris, a member of the Sierra Club’s national nuclear task force.
Nuclear Fuel Services has been supplying fuel to the Navy since the 1960s. More recently, it has also been converting the government’s stockpile of weapons-grade uranium into commercial reactor fuel.
While reviewing the commission’s public Web page in 2004, the Department of Energy’s Office of Naval Reactors found what it considered protected information about Nuclear Fuel Service’s work for the Navy.
The commission responded by sealing every document related to Nuclear Fuel Services and BWX Technologies in Lynchburg, Va., the only two companies licensed by the agency to manufacture, possess and store highly enriched uranium.
BWX Technologies has not experienced any problems as serious as the uranium spill at Nuclear Fuel Services, commission spokesman David McIntyre said. But its operations were included in the order to seal documents because it produces nuclear fuel for the Navy, too.
Under the policy, all the documents were stamped “Official Use Only,” including papers about the policy itself and more than 1,740 documents from the commission’s public archive.
The Associated Press first reported the policy in May after the commission briefly mentioned in its annual report to Congress a March 6, 2006, uranium leak at Nuclear Fuel Services. The leak was one of three “abnormal occurrences” of license holders cited during the year.
Agency commissioners, apparently struck by the significance of the event, took a special vote to skirt the “Official Use Only” rule so that Nuclear Fuel Services would be identified in the report as the site of the uranium leak.
Some 35 liters, or just over 9 gallons, of highly enriched uranium solution leaked from a transfer line into a protected glovebox and spilled onto the floor. The leak was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid “running into a hallway” from under a door, according to one document.
The commission said there were two areas, the glovebox and an old elevator shaft, where the solution potentially could have collected in such a way to cause an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
“It is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death,” the agency wrote.
“We don’t want any security information out there that’s going to help a terrorist,” agency Commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. said in a newly released transcript from a closed commission meeting May 30. But “that’s entirely separate” from dealing with an event that could have killed a worker at the plant.
“The pendulum maybe swung too far,” agreed Luis Reyes, the commission’s executive director for operations. “We want to make sure we don’t go the other way, but we need to come back to some reasonable middle point.”
Agency spokesman David McIntyre said it may be difficult to separate Nuclear Fuel Service’s secret work for the Navy from its public work converting bomb-grade uranium to commercial reactor fuel. The leak happened on the commercial reactor side.
In a stinging letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman in July, two Democratic congressman from Michigan also blasted the policy.
“We agree that NRC should withhold from public view any sensitive security information of this nature. However, NRC went far beyond this narrow objective,” read the letter from John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
McIntyre defended the commission’s decision not to fine Nuclear Fuel Services, even though the agency rated the uranium leak last year as its second most-serious violation.
Instead, the agency ordered Nuclear Fuel Services to conduct a full review of its “safety culture” and make changes using outside experts.
“If we can get long-term permanent changes and improvements in their process it is better than slapping them with a fine every time something goes wrong,” McIntyre said.
Nuclear Fuel Services Executive Vice President Timothy Lindstrom, a Navy veteran who joined the company in September, said the company had already made “significant progress.”
“I think it is important that the public recognize that we do have a very robust safety program at NFS. We live in this community and take our stewardship very seriously,” he said.
“I think if we were to have an event like this again, we would push to make it public,” he added. “Clearly it would have been better to have this discussion 18 months ago than it is to have it now.”
Meanwhile, NFS told its 700 employees this past week it will be “exploring the possibility of a sale” over the next 12 months – not because of the commission’s disclosure, but because of the company’s increasing value to a booming nuclear power industry.
“We are in a position of strength,” company spokesman Tony Treadway said.
[AP]
Kremlin lays claim to huge chunk of oil-rich North Pole
It is already the world’s biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic.
According to Russian scientists, there is new evidence backing Russia’s claim that its northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf.
Under international law, no country owns the North Pole. Instead, the five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to a 200-mile economic zone around their coasts.
On Monday, however, a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage on a nuclear icebreaker. They had travelled to the Lomonosov ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia’s remote and inhospitable eastern Arctic Ocean.
According to Russia’s media, the geologists returned with the “sensational news” that the Lomonosov ridge was linked to Russian Federation territory, boosting Russia’s claim over the oil-and-gas rich triangle. The territory contained 10bn tonnes of gas and oil deposits, the scientists said.
Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper celebrated the discovery by printing a large map of the North Pole. It showed the new “addition” to Russia – the size of France, Germany and Italy combined – under a white, blue and red Russian flag.
Yesterday, however, some scientists doubted whether Russia’s latest Arctic grab stood up to scrutiny.
To extend a zone, a state has to prove that the structure of the continental shelf is similar to the geological structure within its territory. Under the current UN convention on the laws of the sea, no country’s shelf extends to the North Pole. Instead, the International Seabed Authority administers the area around the pole as an international area.
“Frankly I think it’s a little bit strange,” Sergey Priamikov, the international co-operation director of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg, told the Guardian. “Canada could make exactly the same claim. The Canadians could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia.”
Mr Priamikov said the area was one of breathtaking natural beauty. It was much drier, colder and quieter than the western Arctic, he added. “I’ve been there many times. It’s an oasis for marine life,” he said. Asked whether it would be feasible to drill for oil, he said: “Yes”.
The shelf was 200 metres deep and oil and gas would be easy to extract, especially with ice melting because of global warming, he said.
Russia has the world’s largest gas reserves. It is the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia. The Kremlin is keen to secure Russia’s long-term hegemony over global energy markets, and to find new sources of fuel.
Russia first made a submission in 2001 to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf, seeking to push Russia’s maritime borders beyond the existing 200-mile zone. It was rejected.
But the latest scientific findings are likely to prompt Russia to lodge another confident bid – and will alarm the US, which is mired in a 13-year debate over ratification of a UN treaty governing international maritime rights.
The Law of the Sea Treaty is the world’s primary means of settling disputes over exploitation rights and navigational routes in international waters. Russia and 152 other countries have ratified it.
But the US has refused, arguing it gives too much power to the UN. If the US does not ratify it, Russia’s bid for the Arctic’s energy wealth will go unchallenged, proponents believe.
Power Back On In NYC
NEW YORK — A brief power outage darkened a large swath of Manhattan and the Bronx Wednesday, knocking out traffic lights, cutting subway service and forcing the evacuation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on one of the hottest days of the year.
Power was restored within about an hour, but that did not stop the city from experiencing some of the chaos it endured during blackouts last year and in 2003.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was evacuated, and visitors were forced to sit on the outside steps in the sweltering heat. Traffic lights up and down the east side of Manhattan and the Bronx, including the area around Yankee Stadium, went dark.
The city was in the second day of temperatures well over 90 degrees.
“People came in off the street and we were selling flashlights, bottled water, candles, ice,” said Barry Newman, a pharmacist at a Gristede’s Pharmacy on the Upper East Side.
In the street, “people stood outside their apartment buildings, looking nervous. Everyone was saying, ‘What’s going on? What’s going on?’”
Consolidated Edison said the blackout affected 136,700 customers in all, or more than 500,000 people.
The cause was under investigation, but utility spokesman Chris Olert said it was some sort of transmission disturbance. He didn’t know whether the heat was a factor. “We won’t even speculate on the cause yet,” Olert said.
Suspensions and delays were reported along the city’s subways because of the power failure. The Metro-North commuter railroad, which serves the northern suburbs, had to reduce the number of trains it was using, resulting in delays and crowded trains as the evening rush-hour approached, said spokeswoman Marjorie Anders.
The power outage was reminiscent of previous summer blackouts that struck New York City.
Last summer, about 174,000 people were affected by a blackout in Queens. Residents sweltered without air conditioners on some of the hottest days of the year, and estimated business losses ran into the tens of millions of dollars as stores were forced to throw out perished goods.
The Public Service Commission issued a blistering report this year, and said the company needed to make “critical and substantial” improvements.
New York was also hard hit by a 2003 blackout that cut power to a large chunk of the Northeast.
Protests at Iran fuel rationing
At least one petrol station has been set on fire in the Iranian capital, Tehran, after the government announced fuel rationing for private motorists.
Iranians were given only two hours’ notice of the move that limits private drivers to 100 litres of fuel a month.
Despite its huge energy reserves Iran lacks refining capacity, forcing it to import about 40% of its petrol.
Tehran is trying to rein in fuel consumption over fears of possible UN sanctions over its nuclear programme.
Iran fears the West could sanction its petrol imports and cripple its economy.
‘Dangerous move’
The restrictions began at midnight local time on Wednesday (2030 GMT Tuesday).
The BBC’s Frances Harrison in Tehran says there is anger and frustration the government did not give people more notice.
“Guns, fireworks, tanks, [President] Ahmadinejad should be killed,” chanted angry youths, throwing stones at police.
Eyewitnesses have seen at least one petrol station in the outskirts of the west of Tehran on fire.
All over the city there are huge queues and reports of scuffles at petrol stations as motorists try to beat the start of the rationing and fill their tanks.
“I think rationing is not bad by itself but it must be organised,” one man told the Associated Press news agency.
“One cannot announce at 9pm that the rationing would start at midnight, they should have announced the exact date at least two days earlier.”
Iran’s petrol is heavily subsidised, sold at about a fifth of its real cost.
The price of 1,000 rials ($0.11) per litre makes Iran one of the cheapest countries in the world for motorists.
So far there has been no announcement about whether Iranians can buy more petrol at the real market cost.
Licensed taxi drivers will be able to buy 800 litres a month at the subsidised price.
US pressure
Our correspondent says rationing fuel is only likely to add to high inflation.
It is a dangerous move for any elected government, especially in an oil-rich country like Iran where people think cheap fuel is their birthright and public transport is very limited, she says.
The US, which is leading efforts to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, has said Iran’s fuel imports are a point of “leverage”.
Washington and other Western nations accuse the Islamic Republic of seeking to build nuclear weapons.
Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and is solely aimed at producing civilian nuclear power.
[BBC]
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