A Personal Note from Bob Weinert: Analyst predicts plunge in gas prices
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Robert Weinert
Sep 16, 2006, 3:04:09 AM9/16/06
to Absolut...@googlegroups.com, phillip...@bigpond.com
Dear Children
To all of you who did all the whining about high gas prices and how we ought to control the oil companies greed...
Will you complain as loudly about low prices when gasoline drops to $1.15 a gallon?
You babies do not understand how the free market works.
Catholic Bill O'Reilly and other simpletons who do not understand the beauty and efficiency of the market place were crying foul at the high prices and decrying the "greedy oil companies."
BUNK, JUNK AND LIES. Shame on you Bill O'Reilly.
Friends, we need freedom, free markets, more drilling, more refineries, more competition and less extremist environmental regulations that choke the ability of entrepreneurs to supply oil to the market place.
Quoting Robert Weinert (me): "Capitalism is the worst economic system on earth, except when compared with all the alternatives."
Yes speculators drove up the prices. That is the market at work. That is an essential aspect of the market. The speculators had many good reasons to fear the possibility of very high oil prices in our immediate future.
If you advocate, like Bill O'Reilly did, that the government ought to step in and control prices, then you destroy the free market and give control to government bureaucrats.
I hope you are not stupid enough to believe that when the government becomes involved in controlling prices that things are going to work out better for you the consumer.
If you believe that scata, then I want to spit on you because I am so outraged at your public school uneducation about how markets work to the benefit of the consumer.
Now the article below says that oil prices are going to drop drastically, perhaps as low as $1.15 per gallon. That is the market at work.
There is no alternative to letting the free market set prices, except for empowering THE STATE.
What do I think are some of the answers, you ask?
First we need to get both the government regulators and the environmentalist
extremist nutcases off the backs of the oilmen and allow these business
men to more efficiently deliver gas and oil to the consumers.
Again Quoting Robert Weinert (me): "Capitalism is the worst economic system on earth, except when compared with all the alternatives."
The alternatives to the Free Market are all terrible. Morons from Marx to Lenin to Hitler to Mao, to economically illiterate Catholic thinkers G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and warped men like C.H. Douglas have demonically formulated various economic / philosophical systems designed to improve upon the "evils of laisse faire capitalism."
But the problem with all of the replacement systems these "men" have created is that they give more, far more power to "THE STATE" in their failed flaccid attempts to alleviate the so-called cruelties of the cold, analytical, calculating investors in a free market system.
It does not matter what name these charlatans give to the systems they have designed to replace the free market.
Regardless of whether they call their satanic creation "Communism" or "Socialism" or "Distributism" or "Social Credit" or "The Third Way" the result is the same, they want to empower "THE STATE" to control the market.
I have declared ideological war upon all, friends and foes, who advocate any of these idiotic, nay, satanic creations that would empower "THE STATE" to "control the excesses" of the free market via "socialism," "distributism," "social credit" or a so called "third way."
THE STATE IS MY ENEMY.
I WANT TO LIMIT THE STATE, not the Free Market.
The only legitimate role of "THE STATE" biblically speaking is to punish those who do evil, ie, those who violate the commandments of God including those who commit fraud in the market place or those who use coercion in the market place. Other than that, biblically speaking, the Free Market is necessarily a rough and tumble competition and only the strong businesses will survive. And these businesses will only survive as long as they keep delivering goods or services that the publics wants at a price that the public is willing to pay.
Rugged individualism.
Self-reliance.
Self-determination.
Independence.
Individual liberty.
Hard work.
Competition.
These are the words and ideas that created the wealth of America and it also must be stressed that Christianity was the foundation of morals in early American colonies.
As shocking as it may seem to modern Americans, in the early days of Christian America many businessmen did business on a simple handshake and they did not need any damned lawyers to write 200 page long contracts to be signed in triplicate by both parties.
My friends, the answer to all our problems in America will be found in returning to the economic system our founding fathers bequeathed unto us in the early days of the Republic.
First and foremost, they gave us a sound monetary system based upon Gold and Silver coin rather than a fiat currency system.
Secondly, they gave us an extremely limited form of civil government that strictly prohibited agencies of local, state or federal government to engage in any wealth redistribution or socialist schemes to "help the poor."
Thirdly, they gave us free market capitalism which is a terrible system of economic wealth allocation, EXCEPT WHEN COMPARED WITH EVERY OTHER SYSTEM DREAMED UP IN THE MIND OF GODLESS BIBLE HATING NON-CHRISTIAN SCHEMERS.
If you truly deeply desire to understand what the Bible teaches about economics, I recommend that you read everything you can absorb written by Dr. Gary North at http://freebooks.entrewave.com/
I am sincerely yours in the hopes of making a difference in this world,
Robert Weinert
Lansing, Michigan
Sept. 16, 2006
PS - Please forward this email to all intelligent life forms and skip the subhuman liberals, socialists and Nazi's. I get tired of their babbling nonsense.
Date: Sep 15, 2006 7:47 PM
Subject: Analyst predicts plunge in gas prices
Source: Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com
Analyst predicts plunge in gas prices
http://tinyurl.com/fz42w
Thursday, September 14, 2006
By Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The recent sharp drop in the global price of crude oil could mark
the start of a massive sell-off that returns gasoline prices to lows not seen
since the late 1990s - perhaps as low as $1.15 a gallon.
"All the hurricane flags are flying" in oil markets, said Philip Verleger, a
noted energy consultant who was a lone voice several years ago in warning that
oil prices would soar. Now, he says, they appear to be poised for a dramatic
plunge.
Crude-oil prices have fallen about $14, or roughly 17 percent, from their July
14 peak of $78.40. After falling seven straight days, they rose slightly
Wednesday in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, to $63.97, partly in
reaction to a government report showing fuel inventories a bit lower than
expected. But the overall price drop is expected to continue, and prices could
fall much more in the weeks and months ahead.
Here's why:
For most of the past two years, oil prices have risen because the world's oil
producers have struggled to keep pace with growing demand, particularly from
China and India. Spare oil-production capacity grew so tight that market players
feared that any disruption to oil production could create shortages.
Fear of disruption focused on fighting in Nigeria, escalating tensions over
Iran's nuclear program, violence between Israel and Lebanon that might spread to
oil-producing neighbors, and the prospect that hurricanes might topple oil
facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil traders bet that such worrisome developments would drive up the future price
of oil. Oil is traded in contracts for future delivery, and companies that take
physical delivery of oil are just a small part of total trading. Large pension
and commodities funds are the big traders and they're seeking profits. They've
sunk $105 billion or more into oil futures in recent years, according to
Verleger. Their bets that oil prices would rise in the future bid up the price
of oil.
That, in turn, led users of oil to create stockpiles as cushions against supply
disruptions and even higher future prices. Now inventories of oil are
approaching 1990 levels.
But many of the conditions that drove investors to bid up oil prices are ebbing.
Tensions over Israel, Lebanon and Nigeria are easing. The hurricane season has
presented no threat so far to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. peak summer driving
season is over, so gasoline demand is falling.
With fear of supply disruptions ebbing, oil prices began sliding. With oil
inventories high, refiners that turn oil into gasoline are expected to cut
production. As refiners cut production, oil companies increasingly risk getting
stuck with excess oil supplies. There's already anecdotal evidence of oil
companies chartering tankers to store excess oil.
All this is turning financial markets increasingly bearish on oil.
"If we continue to build inventories, and if we have a warm winter like we had
last winter, you could see a large fall in the price of oil," said Gary Pokoik,
who manages Hedge Ventures Energy in Los Angeles, an energy hedge fund. "I think
there is still a lot of risk in the market."
As it stands now, the recent oil-price slump has brought the national average
for a gallon of unleaded gasoline down to $2.59, according to the AAA motor
club. In the Seattle area, prices per gallon have fallen to $2.856 currently
from $3.071 a month ago, a decline of 7 percent, according to AAA.
Should oil traders fear that this downward price spiral will get worse and run
for the exits by selling off their futures contracts, Verleger said, it's not
unthinkable that oil prices could return to $15 or less a barrel, at least
temporarily. That could mean gasoline prices as low as $1.15 per gallon.
Other experts won't guess at a floor price, but they agree that a race to the
bottom could break out.
"The market may test levels here that are too low to be sustained," said Clay
Seigle, an analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy in
Boston.
On Monday, the oil-producing cartel OPEC hinted that if prices fall
precipitously, OPEC members would cut production to lift them. But that would
take time.
"That takes six to nine months. If we don't have a really cold winter here
[creating a demand for oil], prices will fall. Literally, you don't know where
the floor is," Verleger said. "In a market like this, if things start falling
... prices could take you back to the 1999 levels. It has nothing to do with
production."
--
BELOW ARE OLDER ARTICLES ABOUT OIL, OIL COMPANIES, PROFITS, DISCOVERY & EXPLORATION, ETC.
From: Phil Atkinson <phillip...@bigpond.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 07:56:44 +1000
To: <phillip...@bigpond.com>
Subject: Oil Company Last Quarter Profits
The world's biggest oil company, Exxon Mobil, made a profit of $A13.6 billion last quarter.
That works out at $54 billion a year, or $1 billion profit a week.
Last week, all five global oil giants reported their quarterly results and all told the same story:
* Royal Dutch $9.5 billion profit (up 40 per cent)
* BP $9.5 billion (up 30 per cent)
* ConocoPhillips, $6.8 billion (up 65 per cent)
* Chevron, $5.7 billion (up 19 per cent)
That's a collective quarterly profit of $45 billion.
Almost $3.5 billion a week.
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From: "William A. Bacon" <wba...@voicenet.com
Energy: Are Oil And Natural Gas Renewable?
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/09/02/energy_are_oil_and_natural_gas_renewable.htm
Raining hydrocarbons in the Gulf World Is Awash With Oil - Just ONE Of Many Examples
Below the Gulf of Mexico, hydrocarbons flow upward through an intricate network of conduits and reservoirs. They start in thin layers of source rock and, from there, buoyantly rise to the surface. On their way up, the hydrocarbons collect in little rivulets, and create temporary pockets like rain filling a pond. Eventually most escape to the ocean. And, this is all happening now, not millions and millions of years ago, says Larry Cathles, a chemical geologist at Cornell University.
"We're dealing with this giant flow-through system where the hydrocarbons are generating now, moving through the overlying strata now, building the reservoirs now and spilling out into the ocean now," Cathles says.
He's bringing this new view of an active hydrocarbon cycle to industry, hoping it will lead to larger oil and gas discoveries. By matching the chemical signatures of the oil and gas with geologic models for the structures below the seafloor, petroleum geologists could tap into reserves larger than the North Sea, says Cathles, who presented his findings at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans on March 27.
This canvas image of the study area shows the top of salt surface (salt domes are spikes) in the Gas Research Institute study area and four areas of detailed study (stratigraphic layers). The oil fields seen here are Tiger Shoals, South Marsh Island 9 (SMI 9), the South Eugene Island Block 330 area (SEI 330), and Green Canyon 184 area (Jolliet reservoirs). In this area, 125 kilometers by 200 kilometers, Larry Cathles of Cornell University and his team estimate hydrocarbon reserves larger than those of the North Sea. Image by Larry Cathles.
Cathles and his team estimate that in a study area of about 9,600 square miles off the coast of Louisiana, source rocks a dozen kilometers down have generated as much as 184 billion tons of oil and gas ?? about 1,000 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent. "That's 30 percent more than we humans have consumed over the entire petroleum era," Cathles says. "And that's just this one little postage stamp area; if this is going on worldwide, then there's a lot of hydrocarbons venting out."
According to a 2000 assessment from the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the mean undiscovered, conventionally recoverable resources in the Gulf of Mexico offshore continental shelf are 71 billion barrels of oil equivalent. But, says Richie Baud of MMS, not all those resources are economically recoverable and they cannot be directly compared to Cathles' numbers, because "our assessment only includes those hydrocarbon resources that are conventionally recoverable whereas their study includes unconventionally recoverable resources." Future MMS assessments, Baud says, may include unconventionally recoverable resources, such as gas hydrates.
Of that huge resource of naturally generated hydrocarbons, Cathles says, more than 70 percent have made their way upward through the vast network of streams and ponds, venting into the ocean, at a rate of about 0.1 ton per year. The escaped hydrocarbons then become food for bacteria, helping to fuel the oceanic food web. Another 10 percent of the Gulf's total hydrocarbons are hidden in the subsurface, representing about 60 billion barrels of oil and 374 trillion cubic feet of gas that could be extracted. The remaining hydrocarbons, about 20 percent, stay trapped in the source strata.
Driving the venting process is the replacement of deep, carbonate-sourced Jurassic hydrocarbons by shale-sourced, Eocene hydrocarbons. Determining the ratio between the younger and older hydrocarbons, based on their chemical signatures, is key to understanding the migration paths of the oil and gas and the potential volume waiting to be tapped. "If the Eocene source matures and its chemical signature is going to be seen near the surface, it's got to displace all that earlier generated hydrocarbon ?? that's the secret of getting a handle on this number," Cathles says.
Another important key to understanding hydrocarbon migration is "gas washing," Cathles adds. A relatively new process his research team discovered in the Gulf work, gas washing refers to the regular interaction of oil with large amounts of natural gas. In the northern area of Cathles' study area, he estimates that gas carries off 90 percent of the oil.
Ed Colling, senior staff geologist at ChevronTexaco, says that identifying the depth at which gas washing occurs could be extremely useful in locating deeper oil reserves. "If you make a discovery, by back tracking the chemistry and seeing where the gas washing occurred, you have the opportunity to find deeper oil," he says.
Using such information in combination with the active hydrocarbon flow model Cathles' team produced and already existing 3-D seismic analyses could substantially improve accuracy in drilling for oil and gas, Colling says. ChevronTexaco, which funds Cathles' work through the Global Basins Research Network, has been working to integrate the technologies. (Additional funding comes from the Gas Research Institute.)
"All the players are looking for bigger reserves than what's on shore," Colling says. And deep water changes the business plan. With each well a multibillion dollar investment, the discovery must amount to at least several hundred million barrels of oil and gas for the drilling to be economic. Chemical signatures and detailed basin models are just more tools to help them decide where to drill, he says.
"A big part of the future of exploration is being able to effectively use chemical information," Cathles says. Working in an area with more oil by at least a factor of two than the North Sea, he says he hopes that his models will help companies better allocate their resources. But equally important, Cathles says, is that his work is shifting the way people think about natural hydrocarbon vent systems from the past to the present.
Lisa M. Pinsker
__________________________________________________
Act mailing list A...@mylist.net http://mylist.net/listinfo/act
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Oil!
Think the world is running out of oil? Think again. A new book, given to me by a a client, (I have the nicest people! Thanks Beech!), titled "Black Gold Stranglehold," is a must read by one and all. It explodes the age old theory that oil is a "fossil fuel" which was made by decaying dinosaurs and plant life. It demolishes the "Hubbert's Peak" theory that we will run out of oil. As an example, look at the Department of Energy's (which of course produces no energy, but that's another column) estimate of world wide oil reserves. In 1980, this outfit decided that there were worldwide proven reserves of 645 billion barrels. In 1985, they decided that there were proven reserves of 670 billion. In 1990, one trillion barrels.
In 2005, these gurus estimated that there are 1.28 trillion barrels of proven reserves. As each year passes, it seems as though there is more and more oil. The 1956 Hubbert's Peak scenario said that peak oil production would be in 1970. Most of it is in Muslim nations, which America seems intent on alienating. (I'm sort of skimming, and it barely touches the surface of the book!)
Josef Stalin decided back in 1950, that Russia needed oil, and it produced virtually none. One of his top scientists said that oil had nothing to do with fossils, and that it lies buried miles deep in the earth. So it was, and so it is. The Ruskies are among the top of the world's producers of oil, which all comes from those wells drilled down several miles. The postulation is that oil is there, possibly still being produced, and we ought to drill down several miles and find out, certainly here in America.
The fossil fuel nonsense was begun way back in 1757, when a Russian scientist named Lomonosov decided that oil was a "fossil fuel," and no one has ever questioned it since! There don't seem to be any dinosaur bones in the mid-east, where all the oil is coming from, and there are tons of them in Montana, where there is no oil. I won't go into the details of the book, but it makes much sense to me. America produces most of its own natural gas, and new wells are being driven daily. Natural gas (methane) can be produced in land fills, and a host of other places. Atomic power needs to be started again, and new refineries need to be built. The book is superb, and I haven't even finished it yet! The cover says it is $27.95, but I'm sure it can be had at Amazon for less. Is there a better thing to do with one's spare time than to enlarge one's sphere of knowledge? Can there possibly be a better thing to do than to READ? Get the book. You'll love it!
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NewsWithViews.com
http://www.newswithviews.com/
CHINA DRILLS 50 MILES FROM KEY WEST
http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon143.htm
By Jon Christian Ryter mailto:BAFFa...@aol.com
July 26, 2006
If the United States decided to drill for oil 50 miles off the coast of China, we would be embroiled in WWIII overnight. Thanks to wacko environmentalist Congressmen and Senators using the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] to stymie drilling along the continental shelf of the United States, oil that rightfully belongs to American oil companies is now being drilled by Canada, Spain and Cuba-with help from both China and India. With only modest energy needs and no drilling expertise or money, Cuba's government-owned oil corporation, CubaPetroleo-with money and expertise from China's national oil company, Sinopec-is now "exercising its option" in the Straits of Florida. China, according to reports, is slant drilling. Slant drilling is what oil companies do when the oil they are trying to tap is on someone else's property. China will try to tap into reserves on the "American-side" of the Florida Straits that legally belongs to the United States in a 2-year renewable treaty negotiated with Cuba and signed by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
Surveys done by the Department of the Interior suggest the outer banks of the Straits contain more than 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The oil reserves in the Florida Straits would cover America's oil and gas needs for approximately 16 years. The government of the United States and the Seven Sisters have been aware of the existence of these oil reserves for over two decades, yet they have all continued to insist there's a severe world oil shortage-as the price of crude continues to climb and oil storage facilities all over the world bulge from surpluses of crude the nation's refineries can't handle.
The Carter-Castro treaty drew an imaginary line through the middle of the Florida Straits, ceding all oil rights south of the line to Cuba and the balance to the United States. Cuba's drilling plans have been "on hold" for many years due to lack of financial resources-and fear of the United States. Being this close to the American coastline is seen as doubly beneficial to the Chinese since it now gives them "radar eyes" along the East Coast of the United States as well as their spy station at the former naval yard in Long Beach, California. Every two years, the treaty expires. Every president since Ronald Reagan has renewed it. I is important to keep in mind that, in the late 1970s, the treaty was largely one that protected a country's fishing rights. Today, the commercial interest is oil and natural gas.
George W. Bush renewed the treaty in December, 2005 against the strong objections of Sen. Bill Nelson [D-FL]. Nelson has proposed legislation that will prevent Cuba from drilling in the Florida Straits. The Nelson legislation would seek to prevent Cuba from producing energy within what is termed by the treaty as its own territorial waters in the southern Gulf of Mexico. "It's one thing for the distinguished senior Senator from Florida to focus his efforts on controlling and, in my view, undermining the national energy policy of the United States," Congressman John E. Peterson said in a press release. "As a US Senator that is, I suppose, his right. It's something altogether different for him to attempt to control the national energy policy of Cuba. It's simply a waste of effort." Peterson said that Nelson's latest gambit is tantamount to throwing a grenade into the fight over oil drilling rights off Florida's coastline. Peterson added that he didn't see how the United States could enforce a ban on Cuban drilling for oil or natural gas in the Florida Straits-particularly since Bush renewed the treaty last December.
And, where Nelson wants to block anyone from reaping the harvest of what appears to be the second largest oil reserve in the United States, Peterson wants to open drilling along the continental shelf and tap into the bonanza that he feels will solve the energy crisis in the United States. (Peterson is just one of a long list of Congressmen and Senators who don't understand that our energy "crisis" is a manufactured dilemma-created by the Seven Sisters and their oil allies in the Mideast, and fanned to crisis level by the environmental activists Big Oil funded. There is no oil shortage and never has been. There is a deliberate shortage of oil refineries in the United States, caused by EPA regulations that shut over 80% of them down during the Reagan-Bush and early Clinton years. The price of gasoline at the pumps is determined not by the amount of oil pumped from the ground, but the number of gallons of gasoline refined and delivered to the filling station down the street from your home. As long as shortages of refined gasoline exist, the price of oil will continue to rise-and so will the price you pay at the pump.)
The rapidly escalating price of crude at the wellhead-based on oil company maneuvering to manipulate prices rather than there being actual oil shortages-have now made deep sea drilling extremely profitable. Believing, or at least promulgating, the "peak oil" myth, half of the lawmakers in the US House and Senate are blocking any new oil exploration or the construction of any new refineries. The other half are complaining that America can no longer afford overly protective EPA regulations against offshore drilling, since high oil prices are now damaging the nation's economy. The Florida Straits treaty allows foreign oil companies to come within 50 to 90 miles of the American coastline to drill for a bonanza of oil that is second only to ANWR in sheer volume on the North American continent. In addition to oil, the area Carter ceded to Cuba contains up 232 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The oil and natural gas farmed from the Florida Straits by China and Cuba will not be sold to the United States. It will be sold to those nations who oppose the dictates and diplomacy of Washington and London.
At a recent trade conference in Mexico City, Cuban trade officials invited American drillers to bid on the oil leases they were selling to China, Canada and the European Union nations. However, the US-Cuba trade embargo prevented American businessmen from doing business with the Cubans-even drilling for oil and natural gas within the 200 nautical mile economic enterprise zone that legally belongs to the United States. Paying $2 thousand a head to attend the trade conference were executives from several American corporations including Exxon-Mobil and Valero Energy Corporation (the nation's largest oil refiner, which is now part of the Seven Sisters). Which, of course, explains why Bush renewed the Carter-Castro treaty.) If I was a betting man, my money would be on the Seven Sisters owning a piece of the Canadian or Old World drilling companies profiting in the Straits of Florida-which is why, up to this point, that the eco-alarmists have been quiet on the potential environmental damage to the coastline of Florida by the foreign drillers.
For the past decade Republicans in Congress tried to open the continental shelf for oil exploration. But the environmentalists from Florida and California, aided by lobbyists from the tourism industry, proved to be too much for the GOP controlled Congress. Both argued that potential oil spills would be devastating not only to the ecosystem but the tourist industry as well, and could cost the State hundreds of millions of dollars.
As a result, environmentalists, aided by liberals on both sides of the aisle, successfully legislated a national ban on new offshore drilling up to 100 miles. Even with perceived shortages of oil, legislators-pushed by environmentalists who were largely funded by the oil industry-are now urging Congress to extend the offshore drilling ban to 250 miles-which is 50 miles farther than they can legally go. According to the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea, every nation with a seacoast has an "Exclusive Economic Zone." Under the Law of the Sea, every nation has the exclusive sovereign right to explore and exclusively exploit the natural resources in and under the sea within 200 nautical miles of their shoreline.
Cuba divided its side of the enterprise zone into 59 parcels which it is now leasing to oil-starved nations-all of whom now have the legal right to come within 50 to 100 miles of the American coast and drill for oil. Thus far, Cuba has sold only at least 16 leases. Those nations are now building deep sea platforms off the coast of the United States. Those who slant drill will be able to tap into oil reserves under sovereign American soil-or at least, under the North American continental shelf. Canada, which has been the recipient of Cuba's largess, is now drilling in the Florida Straits. Canada has been drilling off the shores of several northeastern States for several years. But drilling in the Florida Straits is like fishing in a barrel full of fish.
Canadian oil driller Sheritt International and Pebercan, Inc. are pumping approximately 20 thousand barrels of crude from offshore oil fields in the Strait about 90 miles from Key West. Spain's Repsol Oil Company recently announced that they struck "quality oil" in the same region.
When Cuba parceled its section of the economic enterprise zone, Sen. Larry Craig [R-ID] railed against letting the People's Republic of China drill for oil off the coast of the United States. Addressing his peers on the Senate floor, Craig said: "Red China should not be left to drill for oil within spitting distance of our shores without competition from US industries."
Peterson-who has already collected over 160 cosponsors for a bipartisan bill to open the coastal waters around the United States for natural gas development-said his fear "...is for the future of America. We have a natural gas crisis, and its the biggest threat we have to the American economy." Opponents of drilling in US coastal waters for either natural gas or oil argue that drilling poses environmental risks, and undermines long term conservation. They added that the modest amount of oil under the continental shelf around the United States won't impact gasoline prices in the United States because oil is traded on a world market. Proponents of ending the ban on drilling along the continental shelf said it is unfair to allow China and India to capture oil and gas so close to the US shoreline and that American companies not be allowed to compete.
Peterson's bill is only one of several dealing with opening the coastal waterways for oil and gas exploration. Congressman Richard Pombo [R-CA], Chairman of the House Resources Committee, plans to introduce a bill that will cede control of the first 125 miles of offshore water beyond the coastline to the States. Business executives, angered that Cuba and China are profiting from American gas and oil that we need, lobbied Congress for a repeal of the decades old regulation that prevents Americans from harvesting American oil and natural gas. John Paro, the CEO of CPH Holding Corporation, a petrochemical company in Chicago summed it up best: "It's such an easy fix. We have the supply. And, it's close. I just wish the public would recognize how easy this problem is to deal with."
And, me...I just wish the American public would recognize what the problem is-refining oil, not drilling oil. But, of course, we also need to regain oil and gas independence. The Seven Sisters have capped all exploration and exploitation of oil and natural gas in the continental United States because Mideast oil is cheaper. We have the oil. We have the natural gas. We need to tap into our own reserves and regain control not only of the supply, but the price. And, that is precisely what the Seven Sisters does not want to happen-America regaining control of the price of oil at the wellhead by building new refineries that are not controlled by Exxon-Mobil (Standard Oil's flagship), Chevron, BP-Amoco, Valero Energy or the other members of the transnational American oil cartel.
It should be obvious to the environmentalists in Congress who have very consciously hamstrung independent American drillers from exploiting much needed natural gas and oil along the continental shelf in the Florida Straits that banning American entrepreneurs from undersea drilling serves no ecological purpose since 16 nations are already drilling within 50 to 150 miles of the American coastline. Only, the gas and oil they harvest will not heat any US homes or fuel the cars on any US highway or byway.
© 2006 Jon C. Ryter - All Rights Reserved
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From: spiker <spi...@spiker.biz>
Date: Jul 30, 2006 7:04 PM
Subject: There is an ocean of crude oil in Alaska
Do you know that British Petroleum now owns the Alaskan oil fields?
ARCO, the company that developed the Alaskan oil fields, sold out to BP.
Listen to this AFN show from Thursday, July 27, 2006.
Lindsey Williams said there is enough oil under Alaska's Gull Island to fulfill ALL of the US oil needs for 150 years.
Eric Cedarstrom interviews Lindsey Williams (Energy Non-Crisis author)
http://www.allamericangold.com/ptg27jul06lw.mp3
Read the Energy Non-Crisis online book by Lindsey Williams
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis.html
Energy Non-Crisis Chapter 15
So I set off across the North Slope of Alaska for another day of excitement. ... The ARCO official proceeded to explain to me that
very, very edge of that 100 square miles from which they were allowed to produce..
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis-ch15.html
Energy Non-Crisis Chapter 17
Seismographic testing has indicated that there is as much crude oil on the North Slope of Alaska as in Saudi Arabia.
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis-ch17.html
Call your Congrsscritter's office and demand him/her/it to override the tree hugger's blocking of drilling in Alaska.
Capitol Switchboard Toll-free Numbers
1-800-833-6354
1-866-340-9281
1-877-762-8762
1-866-808-0065
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http://api-ec.api.org/policy/index.cfm?bitmask=001001000000000000
DEAD LINK? http://www.api.org/oilsup.htm
Oil Supplies -- Are We Really Running Out of Oil?
In a sense, we are always running out of oil. Because oil is a limited resource, each barrel we produce brings us one step closer to the upper limit of oil which can be extracted.
However, we're also running into oil, discovering new reserves and developing technologies which will help us extract more from known fields.
More important, it's unlikely that our demand will ever exceed or use up our supply. As supplies grow scarce, oil prices will begin to rise, and people will turn to a more abundant, less expensive alternative. In the near term, with oil products both economical and practical, alternatives will find it hard to compete.
The shift, when it comes, won't happen overnight, because oil supplies -- both conventional and unconventional -- are substantial. Moreover, the change is likely to be as painless a transition as when people switched from wood to coal to heat their homes or substituted computers for typewriters to prepare letters and documents.
That's why government subsidies and mandates intended to help the nation move to approved alternatives -- to "anticipate change" -- are unnecessary. Government isn't needed to do what the market can and will do better and more cheaply.
World reserves are substantial
World reserves are greater now than ever before. Even if we never discover another drop of oil, current reserves will be able to sustain the current rate of oil consumption for another half-century.
In 1993, the world's proved reserves were estimated to be just under a trillion barrels -- about a 45-year supply of oil, based on current rates of consumption. This estimate represents a working inventory of the world's supply at a single moment in time.
Taking into account probable future oil discoveries, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that between 1.4 trillion and 2.1 trillion barrels of oil remain to be produced worldwide. This amount of oil would sustain the current rate of consumption between 63 to 95 years.
To be more specific, there is a 95-percent possibility that the world's remaining oil resources could last 63 more years and a 5-percent chance that the world's resources will last another 95 years at recent rates of consumption.
However, any estimate of oil reserves is somewhat uncertain. These predictions are based on current demand for petroleum products. There is no surefire way to predict future demand, although some experts predict that demand for oil will grow somewhere between 1 and 2 percent annually.
Technological progress forestalls exhaustion
Our oil supply also depends critically on technology. The amount of resources remaining is fixed, but only in the way that a rubber band is fixed. The world's production capacity can be expanded with better technology.
New exploration techniques are already improving the scope and success of offshore drilling operations, adding to the world's known resources.
For example, in 1965, the petroleum industry's drilling capabilities limited offshore wells to waters less than 300 feet deep. Today, the industry drills for oil in waters as deep as 3,000 feet.
One new technology is three-dimensional seismic analysis. Using traditional seismic analysis, the industry successfully completed just over 40 percent of new wells. With 3-D seismic analysis, that success rate has risen to over 70 percent.
Such advances are crucial to the lifespan of the world's oil supply, because every 1 percent increase in the industry's average recovery rate can add between 60 billion and 80 billion barrels to resource estimates. That's enough to last three to four years, based on current rates of consumption.
And, if economically feasible ways to extract and refine unconventional sources of oil are found, our oil supply could be extended for hundreds of years. A large part of the world's remaining resources is found in the form of oil shales, heavy and extra heavy oils and bitumins. These unconventional resources are equal in volume to ten times the amount of recoverable conventional oil resources that remain.
Challenges are ahead
The good news is that world oil resources are abundant, and, if anything, are likely to become more so with new discoveries and changes in technology. However, major new investment will be needed to translate this potential into production -- and, in most of the world's largest producing countries, there has been stagnation or deterioration in the investment climate. That's because, at home as well as abroad, barriers stand in the way of full resource extraction.
At home, the area that has been called "the best single opportunity to increase significantly domestic oil production" by the U.S. Department of the Interior -- the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- is closed to drilling, despite the fact that the department found that there is a 46-percent chance of discovering economically recoverable oil, possibly totaling several billion barrels.
And internationally, institutional and other barriers threaten the realization of full production potential. For example, in Russia, ambiguous property rights and political turmoil add risks. Oil developed in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union must be transported through volatile or politically hostile territory in order to reach its destination.
Political volatility also remains an obstacle to new investment in the Middle East. Territorial disputes, shifting alliances and issues of succession cloud the future of investments in this
crucial region.
To all of you who did all the whining about high gas prices and how we ought to control the oil companies greed...
Will you complain as loudly about low prices when gasoline drops to $1.15 a gallon?
You babies do not understand how the free market works.
Catholic Bill O'Reilly and other simpletons who do not understand the beauty and efficiency of the market place were crying foul at the high prices and decrying the "greedy oil companies."
BUNK, JUNK AND LIES. Shame on you Bill O'Reilly.
Friends, we need freedom, free markets, more drilling, more refineries, more competition and less extremist environmental regulations that choke the ability of entrepreneurs to supply oil to the market place.
Quoting Robert Weinert (me): "Capitalism is the worst economic system on earth, except when compared with all the alternatives."
Yes speculators drove up the prices. That is the market at work. That is an essential aspect of the market. The speculators had many good reasons to fear the possibility of very high oil prices in our immediate future.
If you advocate, like Bill O'Reilly did, that the government ought to step in and control prices, then you destroy the free market and give control to government bureaucrats.
I hope you are not stupid enough to believe that when the government becomes involved in controlling prices that things are going to work out better for you the consumer.
If you believe that scata, then I want to spit on you because I am so outraged at your public school uneducation about how markets work to the benefit of the consumer.
Now the article below says that oil prices are going to drop drastically, perhaps as low as $1.15 per gallon. That is the market at work.
There is no alternative to letting the free market set prices, except for empowering THE STATE.
What do I think are some of the answers, you ask?
First we need to get both the government regulators and the environmentalist
extremist nutcases off the backs of the oilmen and allow these business
men to more efficiently deliver gas and oil to the consumers.
Again Quoting Robert Weinert (me): "Capitalism is the worst economic system on earth, except when compared with all the alternatives."
The alternatives to the Free Market are all terrible. Morons from Marx to Lenin to Hitler to Mao, to economically illiterate Catholic thinkers G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and warped men like C.H. Douglas have demonically formulated various economic / philosophical systems designed to improve upon the "evils of laisse faire capitalism."
But the problem with all of the replacement systems these "men" have created is that they give more, far more power to "THE STATE" in their failed flaccid attempts to alleviate the so-called cruelties of the cold, analytical, calculating investors in a free market system.
It does not matter what name these charlatans give to the systems they have designed to replace the free market.
Regardless of whether they call their satanic creation "Communism" or "Socialism" or "Distributism" or "Social Credit" or "The Third Way" the result is the same, they want to empower "THE STATE" to control the market.
I have declared ideological war upon all, friends and foes, who advocate any of these idiotic, nay, satanic creations that would empower "THE STATE" to "control the excesses" of the free market via "socialism," "distributism," "social credit" or a so called "third way."
THE STATE IS MY ENEMY.
I WANT TO LIMIT THE STATE, not the Free Market.
The only legitimate role of "THE STATE" biblically speaking is to punish those who do evil, ie, those who violate the commandments of God including those who commit fraud in the market place or those who use coercion in the market place. Other than that, biblically speaking, the Free Market is necessarily a rough and tumble competition and only the strong businesses will survive. And these businesses will only survive as long as they keep delivering goods or services that the publics wants at a price that the public is willing to pay.
Rugged individualism.
Self-reliance.
Self-determination.
Independence.
Individual liberty.
Hard work.
Competition.
These are the words and ideas that created the wealth of America and it also must be stressed that Christianity was the foundation of morals in early American colonies.
As shocking as it may seem to modern Americans, in the early days of Christian America many businessmen did business on a simple handshake and they did not need any damned lawyers to write 200 page long contracts to be signed in triplicate by both parties.
My friends, the answer to all our problems in America will be found in returning to the economic system our founding fathers bequeathed unto us in the early days of the Republic.
First and foremost, they gave us a sound monetary system based upon Gold and Silver coin rather than a fiat currency system.
Secondly, they gave us an extremely limited form of civil government that strictly prohibited agencies of local, state or federal government to engage in any wealth redistribution or socialist schemes to "help the poor."
Thirdly, they gave us free market capitalism which is a terrible system of economic wealth allocation, EXCEPT WHEN COMPARED WITH EVERY OTHER SYSTEM DREAMED UP IN THE MIND OF GODLESS BIBLE HATING NON-CHRISTIAN SCHEMERS.
If you truly deeply desire to understand what the Bible teaches about economics, I recommend that you read everything you can absorb written by Dr. Gary North at http://freebooks.entrewave.com/
I am sincerely yours in the hopes of making a difference in this world,
Robert Weinert
Lansing, Michigan
Sept. 16, 2006
PS - Please forward this email to all intelligent life forms and skip the subhuman liberals, socialists and Nazi's. I get tired of their babbling nonsense.
Date: Sep 15, 2006 7:47 PM
Subject: Analyst predicts plunge in gas prices
Source: Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com
Analyst predicts plunge in gas prices
http://tinyurl.com/fz42w
Thursday, September 14, 2006
By Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The recent sharp drop in the global price of crude oil could mark
the start of a massive sell-off that returns gasoline prices to lows not seen
since the late 1990s - perhaps as low as $1.15 a gallon.
"All the hurricane flags are flying" in oil markets, said Philip Verleger, a
noted energy consultant who was a lone voice several years ago in warning that
oil prices would soar. Now, he says, they appear to be poised for a dramatic
plunge.
Crude-oil prices have fallen about $14, or roughly 17 percent, from their July
14 peak of $78.40. After falling seven straight days, they rose slightly
Wednesday in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, to $63.97, partly in
reaction to a government report showing fuel inventories a bit lower than
expected. But the overall price drop is expected to continue, and prices could
fall much more in the weeks and months ahead.
Here's why:
For most of the past two years, oil prices have risen because the world's oil
producers have struggled to keep pace with growing demand, particularly from
China and India. Spare oil-production capacity grew so tight that market players
feared that any disruption to oil production could create shortages.
Fear of disruption focused on fighting in Nigeria, escalating tensions over
Iran's nuclear program, violence between Israel and Lebanon that might spread to
oil-producing neighbors, and the prospect that hurricanes might topple oil
facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil traders bet that such worrisome developments would drive up the future price
of oil. Oil is traded in contracts for future delivery, and companies that take
physical delivery of oil are just a small part of total trading. Large pension
and commodities funds are the big traders and they're seeking profits. They've
sunk $105 billion or more into oil futures in recent years, according to
Verleger. Their bets that oil prices would rise in the future bid up the price
of oil.
That, in turn, led users of oil to create stockpiles as cushions against supply
disruptions and even higher future prices. Now inventories of oil are
approaching 1990 levels.
But many of the conditions that drove investors to bid up oil prices are ebbing.
Tensions over Israel, Lebanon and Nigeria are easing. The hurricane season has
presented no threat so far to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. peak summer driving
season is over, so gasoline demand is falling.
With fear of supply disruptions ebbing, oil prices began sliding. With oil
inventories high, refiners that turn oil into gasoline are expected to cut
production. As refiners cut production, oil companies increasingly risk getting
stuck with excess oil supplies. There's already anecdotal evidence of oil
companies chartering tankers to store excess oil.
All this is turning financial markets increasingly bearish on oil.
"If we continue to build inventories, and if we have a warm winter like we had
last winter, you could see a large fall in the price of oil," said Gary Pokoik,
who manages Hedge Ventures Energy in Los Angeles, an energy hedge fund. "I think
there is still a lot of risk in the market."
As it stands now, the recent oil-price slump has brought the national average
for a gallon of unleaded gasoline down to $2.59, according to the AAA motor
club. In the Seattle area, prices per gallon have fallen to $2.856 currently
from $3.071 a month ago, a decline of 7 percent, according to AAA.
Should oil traders fear that this downward price spiral will get worse and run
for the exits by selling off their futures contracts, Verleger said, it's not
unthinkable that oil prices could return to $15 or less a barrel, at least
temporarily. That could mean gasoline prices as low as $1.15 per gallon.
Other experts won't guess at a floor price, but they agree that a race to the
bottom could break out.
"The market may test levels here that are too low to be sustained," said Clay
Seigle, an analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy in
Boston.
On Monday, the oil-producing cartel OPEC hinted that if prices fall
precipitously, OPEC members would cut production to lift them. But that would
take time.
"That takes six to nine months. If we don't have a really cold winter here
[creating a demand for oil], prices will fall. Literally, you don't know where
the floor is," Verleger said. "In a market like this, if things start falling
... prices could take you back to the 1999 levels. It has nothing to do with
production."
--
BELOW ARE OLDER ARTICLES ABOUT OIL, OIL COMPANIES, PROFITS, DISCOVERY & EXPLORATION, ETC.
From: Phil Atkinson <phillip...@bigpond.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 07:56:44 +1000
To: <phillip...@bigpond.com>
Subject: Oil Company Last Quarter Profits
The world's biggest oil company, Exxon Mobil, made a profit of $A13.6 billion last quarter.
That works out at $54 billion a year, or $1 billion profit a week.
Last week, all five global oil giants reported their quarterly results and all told the same story:
* Royal Dutch $9.5 billion profit (up 40 per cent)
* BP $9.5 billion (up 30 per cent)
* ConocoPhillips, $6.8 billion (up 65 per cent)
* Chevron, $5.7 billion (up 19 per cent)
That's a collective quarterly profit of $45 billion.
Almost $3.5 billion a week.
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From: "William A. Bacon" <wba...@voicenet.com
Energy: Are Oil And Natural Gas Renewable?
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/09/02/energy_are_oil_and_natural_gas_renewable.htm
Raining hydrocarbons in the Gulf World Is Awash With Oil - Just ONE Of Many Examples
Below the Gulf of Mexico, hydrocarbons flow upward through an intricate network of conduits and reservoirs. They start in thin layers of source rock and, from there, buoyantly rise to the surface. On their way up, the hydrocarbons collect in little rivulets, and create temporary pockets like rain filling a pond. Eventually most escape to the ocean. And, this is all happening now, not millions and millions of years ago, says Larry Cathles, a chemical geologist at Cornell University.
"We're dealing with this giant flow-through system where the hydrocarbons are generating now, moving through the overlying strata now, building the reservoirs now and spilling out into the ocean now," Cathles says.
He's bringing this new view of an active hydrocarbon cycle to industry, hoping it will lead to larger oil and gas discoveries. By matching the chemical signatures of the oil and gas with geologic models for the structures below the seafloor, petroleum geologists could tap into reserves larger than the North Sea, says Cathles, who presented his findings at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans on March 27.
This canvas image of the study area shows the top of salt surface (salt domes are spikes) in the Gas Research Institute study area and four areas of detailed study (stratigraphic layers). The oil fields seen here are Tiger Shoals, South Marsh Island 9 (SMI 9), the South Eugene Island Block 330 area (SEI 330), and Green Canyon 184 area (Jolliet reservoirs). In this area, 125 kilometers by 200 kilometers, Larry Cathles of Cornell University and his team estimate hydrocarbon reserves larger than those of the North Sea. Image by Larry Cathles.
Cathles and his team estimate that in a study area of about 9,600 square miles off the coast of Louisiana, source rocks a dozen kilometers down have generated as much as 184 billion tons of oil and gas ?? about 1,000 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent. "That's 30 percent more than we humans have consumed over the entire petroleum era," Cathles says. "And that's just this one little postage stamp area; if this is going on worldwide, then there's a lot of hydrocarbons venting out."
According to a 2000 assessment from the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the mean undiscovered, conventionally recoverable resources in the Gulf of Mexico offshore continental shelf are 71 billion barrels of oil equivalent. But, says Richie Baud of MMS, not all those resources are economically recoverable and they cannot be directly compared to Cathles' numbers, because "our assessment only includes those hydrocarbon resources that are conventionally recoverable whereas their study includes unconventionally recoverable resources." Future MMS assessments, Baud says, may include unconventionally recoverable resources, such as gas hydrates.
Of that huge resource of naturally generated hydrocarbons, Cathles says, more than 70 percent have made their way upward through the vast network of streams and ponds, venting into the ocean, at a rate of about 0.1 ton per year. The escaped hydrocarbons then become food for bacteria, helping to fuel the oceanic food web. Another 10 percent of the Gulf's total hydrocarbons are hidden in the subsurface, representing about 60 billion barrels of oil and 374 trillion cubic feet of gas that could be extracted. The remaining hydrocarbons, about 20 percent, stay trapped in the source strata.
Driving the venting process is the replacement of deep, carbonate-sourced Jurassic hydrocarbons by shale-sourced, Eocene hydrocarbons. Determining the ratio between the younger and older hydrocarbons, based on their chemical signatures, is key to understanding the migration paths of the oil and gas and the potential volume waiting to be tapped. "If the Eocene source matures and its chemical signature is going to be seen near the surface, it's got to displace all that earlier generated hydrocarbon ?? that's the secret of getting a handle on this number," Cathles says.
Another important key to understanding hydrocarbon migration is "gas washing," Cathles adds. A relatively new process his research team discovered in the Gulf work, gas washing refers to the regular interaction of oil with large amounts of natural gas. In the northern area of Cathles' study area, he estimates that gas carries off 90 percent of the oil.
Ed Colling, senior staff geologist at ChevronTexaco, says that identifying the depth at which gas washing occurs could be extremely useful in locating deeper oil reserves. "If you make a discovery, by back tracking the chemistry and seeing where the gas washing occurred, you have the opportunity to find deeper oil," he says.
Using such information in combination with the active hydrocarbon flow model Cathles' team produced and already existing 3-D seismic analyses could substantially improve accuracy in drilling for oil and gas, Colling says. ChevronTexaco, which funds Cathles' work through the Global Basins Research Network, has been working to integrate the technologies. (Additional funding comes from the Gas Research Institute.)
"All the players are looking for bigger reserves than what's on shore," Colling says. And deep water changes the business plan. With each well a multibillion dollar investment, the discovery must amount to at least several hundred million barrels of oil and gas for the drilling to be economic. Chemical signatures and detailed basin models are just more tools to help them decide where to drill, he says.
"A big part of the future of exploration is being able to effectively use chemical information," Cathles says. Working in an area with more oil by at least a factor of two than the North Sea, he says he hopes that his models will help companies better allocate their resources. But equally important, Cathles says, is that his work is shifting the way people think about natural hydrocarbon vent systems from the past to the present.
Lisa M. Pinsker
__________________________________________________
Act mailing list A...@mylist.net http://mylist.net/listinfo/act
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Oil!
Think the world is running out of oil? Think again. A new book, given to me by a a client, (I have the nicest people! Thanks Beech!), titled "Black Gold Stranglehold," is a must read by one and all. It explodes the age old theory that oil is a "fossil fuel" which was made by decaying dinosaurs and plant life. It demolishes the "Hubbert's Peak" theory that we will run out of oil. As an example, look at the Department of Energy's (which of course produces no energy, but that's another column) estimate of world wide oil reserves. In 1980, this outfit decided that there were worldwide proven reserves of 645 billion barrels. In 1985, they decided that there were proven reserves of 670 billion. In 1990, one trillion barrels.
In 2005, these gurus estimated that there are 1.28 trillion barrels of proven reserves. As each year passes, it seems as though there is more and more oil. The 1956 Hubbert's Peak scenario said that peak oil production would be in 1970. Most of it is in Muslim nations, which America seems intent on alienating. (I'm sort of skimming, and it barely touches the surface of the book!)
Josef Stalin decided back in 1950, that Russia needed oil, and it produced virtually none. One of his top scientists said that oil had nothing to do with fossils, and that it lies buried miles deep in the earth. So it was, and so it is. The Ruskies are among the top of the world's producers of oil, which all comes from those wells drilled down several miles. The postulation is that oil is there, possibly still being produced, and we ought to drill down several miles and find out, certainly here in America.
The fossil fuel nonsense was begun way back in 1757, when a Russian scientist named Lomonosov decided that oil was a "fossil fuel," and no one has ever questioned it since! There don't seem to be any dinosaur bones in the mid-east, where all the oil is coming from, and there are tons of them in Montana, where there is no oil. I won't go into the details of the book, but it makes much sense to me. America produces most of its own natural gas, and new wells are being driven daily. Natural gas (methane) can be produced in land fills, and a host of other places. Atomic power needs to be started again, and new refineries need to be built. The book is superb, and I haven't even finished it yet! The cover says it is $27.95, but I'm sure it can be had at Amazon for less. Is there a better thing to do with one's spare time than to enlarge one's sphere of knowledge? Can there possibly be a better thing to do than to READ? Get the book. You'll love it!
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NewsWithViews.com
http://www.newswithviews.com/
CHINA DRILLS 50 MILES FROM KEY WEST
http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon143.htm
By Jon Christian Ryter mailto:BAFFa...@aol.com
July 26, 2006
If the United States decided to drill for oil 50 miles off the coast of China, we would be embroiled in WWIII overnight. Thanks to wacko environmentalist Congressmen and Senators using the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] to stymie drilling along the continental shelf of the United States, oil that rightfully belongs to American oil companies is now being drilled by Canada, Spain and Cuba-with help from both China and India. With only modest energy needs and no drilling expertise or money, Cuba's government-owned oil corporation, CubaPetroleo-with money and expertise from China's national oil company, Sinopec-is now "exercising its option" in the Straits of Florida. China, according to reports, is slant drilling. Slant drilling is what oil companies do when the oil they are trying to tap is on someone else's property. China will try to tap into reserves on the "American-side" of the Florida Straits that legally belongs to the United States in a 2-year renewable treaty negotiated with Cuba and signed by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
Surveys done by the Department of the Interior suggest the outer banks of the Straits contain more than 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The oil reserves in the Florida Straits would cover America's oil and gas needs for approximately 16 years. The government of the United States and the Seven Sisters have been aware of the existence of these oil reserves for over two decades, yet they have all continued to insist there's a severe world oil shortage-as the price of crude continues to climb and oil storage facilities all over the world bulge from surpluses of crude the nation's refineries can't handle.
The Carter-Castro treaty drew an imaginary line through the middle of the Florida Straits, ceding all oil rights south of the line to Cuba and the balance to the United States. Cuba's drilling plans have been "on hold" for many years due to lack of financial resources-and fear of the United States. Being this close to the American coastline is seen as doubly beneficial to the Chinese since it now gives them "radar eyes" along the East Coast of the United States as well as their spy station at the former naval yard in Long Beach, California. Every two years, the treaty expires. Every president since Ronald Reagan has renewed it. I is important to keep in mind that, in the late 1970s, the treaty was largely one that protected a country's fishing rights. Today, the commercial interest is oil and natural gas.
George W. Bush renewed the treaty in December, 2005 against the strong objections of Sen. Bill Nelson [D-FL]. Nelson has proposed legislation that will prevent Cuba from drilling in the Florida Straits. The Nelson legislation would seek to prevent Cuba from producing energy within what is termed by the treaty as its own territorial waters in the southern Gulf of Mexico. "It's one thing for the distinguished senior Senator from Florida to focus his efforts on controlling and, in my view, undermining the national energy policy of the United States," Congressman John E. Peterson said in a press release. "As a US Senator that is, I suppose, his right. It's something altogether different for him to attempt to control the national energy policy of Cuba. It's simply a waste of effort." Peterson said that Nelson's latest gambit is tantamount to throwing a grenade into the fight over oil drilling rights off Florida's coastline. Peterson added that he didn't see how the United States could enforce a ban on Cuban drilling for oil or natural gas in the Florida Straits-particularly since Bush renewed the treaty last December.
And, where Nelson wants to block anyone from reaping the harvest of what appears to be the second largest oil reserve in the United States, Peterson wants to open drilling along the continental shelf and tap into the bonanza that he feels will solve the energy crisis in the United States. (Peterson is just one of a long list of Congressmen and Senators who don't understand that our energy "crisis" is a manufactured dilemma-created by the Seven Sisters and their oil allies in the Mideast, and fanned to crisis level by the environmental activists Big Oil funded. There is no oil shortage and never has been. There is a deliberate shortage of oil refineries in the United States, caused by EPA regulations that shut over 80% of them down during the Reagan-Bush and early Clinton years. The price of gasoline at the pumps is determined not by the amount of oil pumped from the ground, but the number of gallons of gasoline refined and delivered to the filling station down the street from your home. As long as shortages of refined gasoline exist, the price of oil will continue to rise-and so will the price you pay at the pump.)
The rapidly escalating price of crude at the wellhead-based on oil company maneuvering to manipulate prices rather than there being actual oil shortages-have now made deep sea drilling extremely profitable. Believing, or at least promulgating, the "peak oil" myth, half of the lawmakers in the US House and Senate are blocking any new oil exploration or the construction of any new refineries. The other half are complaining that America can no longer afford overly protective EPA regulations against offshore drilling, since high oil prices are now damaging the nation's economy. The Florida Straits treaty allows foreign oil companies to come within 50 to 90 miles of the American coastline to drill for a bonanza of oil that is second only to ANWR in sheer volume on the North American continent. In addition to oil, the area Carter ceded to Cuba contains up 232 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The oil and natural gas farmed from the Florida Straits by China and Cuba will not be sold to the United States. It will be sold to those nations who oppose the dictates and diplomacy of Washington and London.
At a recent trade conference in Mexico City, Cuban trade officials invited American drillers to bid on the oil leases they were selling to China, Canada and the European Union nations. However, the US-Cuba trade embargo prevented American businessmen from doing business with the Cubans-even drilling for oil and natural gas within the 200 nautical mile economic enterprise zone that legally belongs to the United States. Paying $2 thousand a head to attend the trade conference were executives from several American corporations including Exxon-Mobil and Valero Energy Corporation (the nation's largest oil refiner, which is now part of the Seven Sisters). Which, of course, explains why Bush renewed the Carter-Castro treaty.) If I was a betting man, my money would be on the Seven Sisters owning a piece of the Canadian or Old World drilling companies profiting in the Straits of Florida-which is why, up to this point, that the eco-alarmists have been quiet on the potential environmental damage to the coastline of Florida by the foreign drillers.
For the past decade Republicans in Congress tried to open the continental shelf for oil exploration. But the environmentalists from Florida and California, aided by lobbyists from the tourism industry, proved to be too much for the GOP controlled Congress. Both argued that potential oil spills would be devastating not only to the ecosystem but the tourist industry as well, and could cost the State hundreds of millions of dollars.
As a result, environmentalists, aided by liberals on both sides of the aisle, successfully legislated a national ban on new offshore drilling up to 100 miles. Even with perceived shortages of oil, legislators-pushed by environmentalists who were largely funded by the oil industry-are now urging Congress to extend the offshore drilling ban to 250 miles-which is 50 miles farther than they can legally go. According to the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea, every nation with a seacoast has an "Exclusive Economic Zone." Under the Law of the Sea, every nation has the exclusive sovereign right to explore and exclusively exploit the natural resources in and under the sea within 200 nautical miles of their shoreline.
Cuba divided its side of the enterprise zone into 59 parcels which it is now leasing to oil-starved nations-all of whom now have the legal right to come within 50 to 100 miles of the American coast and drill for oil. Thus far, Cuba has sold only at least 16 leases. Those nations are now building deep sea platforms off the coast of the United States. Those who slant drill will be able to tap into oil reserves under sovereign American soil-or at least, under the North American continental shelf. Canada, which has been the recipient of Cuba's largess, is now drilling in the Florida Straits. Canada has been drilling off the shores of several northeastern States for several years. But drilling in the Florida Straits is like fishing in a barrel full of fish.
Canadian oil driller Sheritt International and Pebercan, Inc. are pumping approximately 20 thousand barrels of crude from offshore oil fields in the Strait about 90 miles from Key West. Spain's Repsol Oil Company recently announced that they struck "quality oil" in the same region.
When Cuba parceled its section of the economic enterprise zone, Sen. Larry Craig [R-ID] railed against letting the People's Republic of China drill for oil off the coast of the United States. Addressing his peers on the Senate floor, Craig said: "Red China should not be left to drill for oil within spitting distance of our shores without competition from US industries."
Peterson-who has already collected over 160 cosponsors for a bipartisan bill to open the coastal waters around the United States for natural gas development-said his fear "...is for the future of America. We have a natural gas crisis, and its the biggest threat we have to the American economy." Opponents of drilling in US coastal waters for either natural gas or oil argue that drilling poses environmental risks, and undermines long term conservation. They added that the modest amount of oil under the continental shelf around the United States won't impact gasoline prices in the United States because oil is traded on a world market. Proponents of ending the ban on drilling along the continental shelf said it is unfair to allow China and India to capture oil and gas so close to the US shoreline and that American companies not be allowed to compete.
Peterson's bill is only one of several dealing with opening the coastal waterways for oil and gas exploration. Congressman Richard Pombo [R-CA], Chairman of the House Resources Committee, plans to introduce a bill that will cede control of the first 125 miles of offshore water beyond the coastline to the States. Business executives, angered that Cuba and China are profiting from American gas and oil that we need, lobbied Congress for a repeal of the decades old regulation that prevents Americans from harvesting American oil and natural gas. John Paro, the CEO of CPH Holding Corporation, a petrochemical company in Chicago summed it up best: "It's such an easy fix. We have the supply. And, it's close. I just wish the public would recognize how easy this problem is to deal with."
And, me...I just wish the American public would recognize what the problem is-refining oil, not drilling oil. But, of course, we also need to regain oil and gas independence. The Seven Sisters have capped all exploration and exploitation of oil and natural gas in the continental United States because Mideast oil is cheaper. We have the oil. We have the natural gas. We need to tap into our own reserves and regain control not only of the supply, but the price. And, that is precisely what the Seven Sisters does not want to happen-America regaining control of the price of oil at the wellhead by building new refineries that are not controlled by Exxon-Mobil (Standard Oil's flagship), Chevron, BP-Amoco, Valero Energy or the other members of the transnational American oil cartel.
It should be obvious to the environmentalists in Congress who have very consciously hamstrung independent American drillers from exploiting much needed natural gas and oil along the continental shelf in the Florida Straits that banning American entrepreneurs from undersea drilling serves no ecological purpose since 16 nations are already drilling within 50 to 150 miles of the American coastline. Only, the gas and oil they harvest will not heat any US homes or fuel the cars on any US highway or byway.
© 2006 Jon C. Ryter - All Rights Reserved
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From: spiker <spi...@spiker.biz>
Date: Jul 30, 2006 7:04 PM
Subject: There is an ocean of crude oil in Alaska
Do you know that British Petroleum now owns the Alaskan oil fields?
ARCO, the company that developed the Alaskan oil fields, sold out to BP.
Listen to this AFN show from Thursday, July 27, 2006.
Lindsey Williams said there is enough oil under Alaska's Gull Island to fulfill ALL of the US oil needs for 150 years.
Eric Cedarstrom interviews Lindsey Williams (Energy Non-Crisis author)
http://www.allamericangold.com/ptg27jul06lw.mp3
Read the Energy Non-Crisis online book by Lindsey Williams
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis.html
Energy Non-Crisis Chapter 15
So I set off across the North Slope of Alaska for another day of excitement. ... The ARCO official proceeded to explain to me that
very, very edge of that 100 square miles from which they were allowed to produce..
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis-ch15.html
Energy Non-Crisis Chapter 17
Seismographic testing has indicated that there is as much crude oil on the North Slope of Alaska as in Saudi Arabia.
http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis-ch17.html
Call your Congrsscritter's office and demand him/her/it to override the tree hugger's blocking of drilling in Alaska.
Capitol Switchboard Toll-free Numbers
1-800-833-6354
1-866-340-9281
1-877-762-8762
1-866-808-0065
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http://api-ec.api.org/policy/index.cfm?bitmask=001001000000000000
DEAD LINK? http://www.api.org/oilsup.htm
Oil Supplies -- Are We Really Running Out of Oil?
In a sense, we are always running out of oil. Because oil is a limited resource, each barrel we produce brings us one step closer to the upper limit of oil which can be extracted.
However, we're also running into oil, discovering new reserves and developing technologies which will help us extract more from known fields.
More important, it's unlikely that our demand will ever exceed or use up our supply. As supplies grow scarce, oil prices will begin to rise, and people will turn to a more abundant, less expensive alternative. In the near term, with oil products both economical and practical, alternatives will find it hard to compete.
The shift, when it comes, won't happen overnight, because oil supplies -- both conventional and unconventional -- are substantial. Moreover, the change is likely to be as painless a transition as when people switched from wood to coal to heat their homes or substituted computers for typewriters to prepare letters and documents.
That's why government subsidies and mandates intended to help the nation move to approved alternatives -- to "anticipate change" -- are unnecessary. Government isn't needed to do what the market can and will do better and more cheaply.
World reserves are substantial
World reserves are greater now than ever before. Even if we never discover another drop of oil, current reserves will be able to sustain the current rate of oil consumption for another half-century.
In 1993, the world's proved reserves were estimated to be just under a trillion barrels -- about a 45-year supply of oil, based on current rates of consumption. This estimate represents a working inventory of the world's supply at a single moment in time.
Taking into account probable future oil discoveries, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that between 1.4 trillion and 2.1 trillion barrels of oil remain to be produced worldwide. This amount of oil would sustain the current rate of consumption between 63 to 95 years.
To be more specific, there is a 95-percent possibility that the world's remaining oil resources could last 63 more years and a 5-percent chance that the world's resources will last another 95 years at recent rates of consumption.
However, any estimate of oil reserves is somewhat uncertain. These predictions are based on current demand for petroleum products. There is no surefire way to predict future demand, although some experts predict that demand for oil will grow somewhere between 1 and 2 percent annually.
Technological progress forestalls exhaustion
Our oil supply also depends critically on technology. The amount of resources remaining is fixed, but only in the way that a rubber band is fixed. The world's production capacity can be expanded with better technology.
New exploration techniques are already improving the scope and success of offshore drilling operations, adding to the world's known resources.
For example, in 1965, the petroleum industry's drilling capabilities limited offshore wells to waters less than 300 feet deep. Today, the industry drills for oil in waters as deep as 3,000 feet.
One new technology is three-dimensional seismic analysis. Using traditional seismic analysis, the industry successfully completed just over 40 percent of new wells. With 3-D seismic analysis, that success rate has risen to over 70 percent.
Such advances are crucial to the lifespan of the world's oil supply, because every 1 percent increase in the industry's average recovery rate can add between 60 billion and 80 billion barrels to resource estimates. That's enough to last three to four years, based on current rates of consumption.
And, if economically feasible ways to extract and refine unconventional sources of oil are found, our oil supply could be extended for hundreds of years. A large part of the world's remaining resources is found in the form of oil shales, heavy and extra heavy oils and bitumins. These unconventional resources are equal in volume to ten times the amount of recoverable conventional oil resources that remain.
Challenges are ahead
The good news is that world oil resources are abundant, and, if anything, are likely to become more so with new discoveries and changes in technology. However, major new investment will be needed to translate this potential into production -- and, in most of the world's largest producing countries, there has been stagnation or deterioration in the investment climate. That's because, at home as well as abroad, barriers stand in the way of full resource extraction.
At home, the area that has been called "the best single opportunity to increase significantly domestic oil production" by the U.S. Department of the Interior -- the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- is closed to drilling, despite the fact that the department found that there is a 46-percent chance of discovering economically recoverable oil, possibly totaling several billion barrels.
And internationally, institutional and other barriers threaten the realization of full production potential. For example, in Russia, ambiguous property rights and political turmoil add risks. Oil developed in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union must be transported through volatile or politically hostile territory in order to reach its destination.
Political volatility also remains an obstacle to new investment in the Middle East. Territorial disputes, shifting alliances and issues of succession cloud the future of investments in this
crucial region.
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