Energy Today - March 28, 2011
Rayola Dougher
Posted March 28, 2011
FuelFix: API: White House is stopping domestic oil and gas production: The American Petroleum Institute is circulating a graphic that aims to highlight what the trade group says is a series of Obama administration decisions that are thwarting domestic oil and gas development. The document, which will be circulated on Capitol Hill, represents the latest attack by API, which has taken an increasingly adversarial role fighting the administration's energy policies. With images ripped from the roadway, API argues that the administration "has taken specific steps to stop or delay the development of domestic oil and natural gas resources." According to the trade group, those include: The Interior Department's decision not to proceed with a Bush-era plan for leasing the outer continental shelf that would have opened broad swaths of coastal waters for oil and gas development. The Bush plan would have run from 2010 through 2015 and replaced an existing leasing blueprint that runs through the middle of 2012. The suspension in early 2010 of 61 oil and natural gas leases issued in Montana as part of a settlement with several environmental groups that had challenged them in court. The Bureau of Land Management ultimately lifted suspensions on 45 of the leases but maintained suspensions for six of them. Hot Air: US: Most energy resources in the world and most incoherent energy policy: As Peter Glover says, writing in the Energy Tribune, this ought to be the lead story in every American paper and on every American news show. But it's overshadowed by Japan, Libya and other developments in the world. 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 US and Russia are the two most resource rich countries in the world.
The Morning Call: Origins of a Natural Gas Boom: But a convergence of Wall Street interests, corporate money and academia helped transform Marcellus almost overnight from rock to rock star, spurring predictions of a natural gas bounty in the U.S. and unleashing a massive land rush across the commonwealth. Anchoring one end of the story of Marcellus Shale's migration from textbook nerd to the darling of prospectuses is Range Resources, the energy company that first successfully harvested gas from the rock, and two local boys -- president Jeffrey L. Ventura, who hails from Penn Hills, and Baldwin Borough native and University of Pittsburgh graduate William Zagorski, the company's vice president of technology.
San Francisco Chronicle: Deal with it: We'll need oil, gas for decades: Oil prices climbed back over $100 per barrel last week. When news like this breaks, pundits and policy wonks on both sides of the political spectrum argue we should depend less on oil and natural gas. But nobody has a believable plan to get there because of economic realities. If the United States is going to get serious about finding energy solutions, then the first step is to have a president who understands that, while vilifying Big Oil may be good politics, it's bad policy.
Additional Resources
FuelFix: Oil industry battles claims that leases are languishing