Energy Today - May 31, 2011
Rayola Dougher
Posted May 31, 2011
The Orlando Tribune: Fracking Raises Hope for Onshore Oil Boom: Until last year, the 17-mile stretch of road between this forsaken South Texas village and the county seat of Carrizo Springs was a patchwork of derelict gasoline stations and rusting warehouses. Now the region is in the hottest new oil play in the country, with giant oil terminals and sprawling RV parks replacing fields of mesquite. More than a dozen companies plan to drill up to 3,000 wells around here in the next 12 months. The Texas field, known as the Eagle Ford, is just one of about 20 new onshore oil fields that advocates say could collectively increase the nation's oil output by 25 percent within a decade... In the most developed shale field, the Bakken field in North Dakota, production has leaped to 400,000 barrels a day today from a trickle four years ago. Experts say it could produce as much as 1 million barrels a day by the end of the decade. The Eagle Ford, where the first well was drilled only three years ago, is already producing more than 100,000 barrels a day and could reach 420,000 by 2015, almost as much as Ecuador, according to Bentek Energy, a consultancy. National Journal: Canadian Oil Sands Engine for Jobs: Canada and the U.S. have the world's largest trading partnership and an excellent political relationship. Canada's reliable and plentiful oil is crucial to improving our nation's energy security and meeting its growing energy demand. Canada is already our leading supplier of non-domestic energy, and they are ready to do more. The proposed extension of the Keystone pipeline - known as Keystone XL - will improve access to Canada's vast oil reserves, which are second only to Saudi Arabia. By 2025, Canada's oil sands production is expected to rise from 1.3 million barrels a day to about 3.3 million barrels a day. The Keystone pipeline could expand access to this vital resource by providing transportation for an additional 830,000 barrels of oil a day. This is oil they want to provide us. This is oil we need. But the pipeline isn't just about energy. It's also about jobs. U.S. jobs supported by Canadian oil sands development could grow from 21,000 jobs today to 465,000 jobs by 2035. Construction of the pipeline alone would create 20,000 manufacturing jobs.
Christian Science Monitor: Repealing Tax Breaks for Oil Companies: Common Sense vs. Political Thuggery: Although Democrats narrowly lost a key vote on this issue earlier this month, you can be sure that political demagoguery of "Big Oil" will continue, setting a bad precedent for other American industries that may find themselves out of favor in Washington. That's too bad, because a number of facets of this debate are off-target - if not downright mythical - and they can be remedied with a little common sense and attention to actual numbers. First, the oil industry is no more to blame for the price of gas than Kay Jewelers is to blame for the high price of gold. Middle East unrest and the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing - which is lowering the value of the US dollar - are far more responsible. Second, oil industry profits, while currently high, are a relatively miniscule part of what consumers pay at the pump. The price of crude, federal, state, and local taxes, refining costs and distribution expenses all play a much bigger role.
PennLive: Marcellus Shale Drilling Creates 48,000 Jobs, Report Says: Nearly 48,000 people have been hired in the last year by industries related to drilling in the Marcellus Shale, and 71 percent of those people were Pennsylvania residents. Nine thousand of them were hired in the first three months of 2011. The average salary was higher than the statewide average. And the rate of hiring is accelerating. While there has been much talk of the economic impact of the Marcellus, most of it has been anecdotal, until the Department of Labor and Industry quietly published its most up-to-date hard numbers about two weeks ago.
Additional Resources:
The Washington Times: Pyle: Running On Empty: The Drilling Ban One Year Later
The Hill's E2 Wire: Gingrich Calls for 'All Out' Drilling
USA Today: Who's to Blame When Gas Costs $1 More than Last Year?