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Global energy giants win contracts for 2 Iraqi oil fields _English_Xinhua
The world's leading energy companies won rights to develop two major oil fields in Iraq at an auction on Friday.
Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas were awarded the contract to exploit the Majnoon oil field in southern Iraq, one of the world's largest untapped oil fields with more than 12 billion barrels of proven reserves.
They accepted a fee of 1.39 U.S. dollars per barrel.
AFP: Wildcat strikes spread at British power plants
Wildcat strikes spread to oil refineries and power plants across Britain on Tuesday, after hundreds of workers were sacked, media reports and company officials said.
Thousands of workers demonstrated outside the Lindsey terminal in Lincolnshire, northeastern England, where almost 650 contract workers were sacked by French oil giant Total last week.
"As far as we are concerned, they are victimised and locked-out people, and it is an official dispute from the moment those notices arrived," said Paul Kenny, head of the GMB union.
In a statement, Total called for unions to resume talks over the sacking of 647 workers.
"Total is actively encouraging talks to be opened between its contractors and the unions about how to facilitate the return to work of its contracting companies? former workforces," the French company said.
The Cost of Energy » Blog Archive » Document alert: BP’s Stats
Yes, my fellow energy and enviro geeks, it’s true: BP’s annual release of their Statistical Review of World Energy is out. I’ll pause for a moment while you run around your office or home, leaping and cheering like a maniac.
Oil Giant Shell on Trial for Nigerian Environmentalist Saro-Wiwa’s Execution : Red, Green, and Blue
On May 27, 2009, Shell will stand trial for collaboration and complicity in Saro-Wiwa’s murder. 14 years after his execution, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s sons Ken and Owens Wiwa are the plaintiffs in Wiwa v Shell.
Saro-Wiwa was convicted by a military tribunal in 1995. He was not given proper legal representation, a fair trial, or the right to appeal the court’s ruling. Saro-Wiwa led the Movement for Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and alerted the world to the atrocities against human rights, as well as the environment degradation being committed by big oil companies in Nigeria. The Ogoni Nine were hanged based on “trumped-up charges“, in which Shell is accused of collaborating with Nigerian authorities. Shell’s official statement on human rights in Nigeria is:
Peak Energy: Even If Oil Hits $90, OPEC Won't Increase Production
The Business Insider reports that OPEC is expecting oil at US$75 a barrel by the end of the year - Even If Oil Hits $90, OPEC Won't Increase Production.
Oil prices could reach $80-$90 a barrel by early next year, but OPEC will not increase its output until a huge amount of over-supply has been absorbed, the group's Secretary General said on Tuesday.
OPEC officials have been nudging up their price aspirations since Saudi Arabia's oil minister said last week an oil price of around $75 could be achieved later this year and would not undermine a tentative global economic recovery.
"The price will go to $80-$90 maybe at the beginning of 2010," OPEC's Abdullah al-Badri told the Reuters Global Energy Summit.
"I don't think the price will go down... By the end of the year we'll see $75. $80-$85 is possible -- not with the demand we see at this time, but if demand picks up month after month, then maybe we'll see this price."
Cost of Energy » Document alert: The true cost of the US’s oil addiction
Some days you have to wonder if everyone who’s been sounding the alarm about oil issues for years have been right all along, and the rest of the world, including the US power structure, is just now playing catch-up. At least that’s the thought I had when I read BusinessWeek’s U.S. Reliance on Oil an ‘Urgent Threat’:
A group of retired senior U.S. military officers has concluded that the country’s reliance on fossil fuels undermines its capacity to defend itself. Citing a “serious and urgent threat to national security,” the group has urged the Pentagon to take the lead in shifting to a new age in energy.
The Associated Press: Obama budget rescinds energy industry tax breaks
President Barack Obama outlined a budget plan Thursday that would end $26 billion in oil and gas industry tax breaks, point to a new direction for dealing with nuclear waste and shift government aggressively toward helping to develop renewable energy sources.
Obama called the tax break to the oil and gas industry "unjustifiable loopholes" in the tax system that in most cases other companies do not get.
The proposed budget, details of which were released Thursday, calls for abandoning the decades-old Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project in Nevada and begin the search for another answer to disposing thousands of tons of used reactor fuel now kept at power plants in 31 states. It also would end government subsidies to the nuclear industry to help them certify and plan new nuclear power plants, cutting the program from $178 million to $20 million.
Officials in Three States Pin Water Woes on Gas Drilling - ProPublica
Norma Fiorentino's drinking water well was a time bomb. For weeks, workers in her small northeastern Pennsylvania town had been plumbing natural gas deposits from a drilling rig a few hundred yards away. They cracked the earth and pumped in fluids to force the gas out. Somehow, stray gas worked into tiny crevasses in the rock, leaking upward into the aquifer and slipping quietly into Fiorentino's well. Then, according to the state's working theory, a motorized pump turned on in her well house, flicked a spark and caused a New Year's morning blast that tossed aside a concrete slab weighing several thousand pounds.
Court Blocks Drilling in Polar Bear Habitat : Red, Green, and Blue
A federal appeals court today rejected Bush administration plans to expand offshore drilling in Alaska. The three-judge panel agreed with environmentalists, saying the Bush-era Department of Interior’s plan to open drilling in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas failed to consider impacts on marine life and the environment.
The court has ordered the Interior Department, now run by Ken Salazar, to conduct a proper analysis of environmental impacts and risks before moving ahead with any plans for offshore drilling in these sensitive areas. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are home to approximately one-tenth of the world’s total polar bear population, along with walruses, seals, and whales.
CA to Secretary Salazar: No Offshore Drilling, More Renewable Energy: ENN
Last week, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, hosted the last of 4 public forums around the country to gather input on offshore drilling and offshore renewable energy development. Choosing to end in San Francisco means he is going back to Washington with a resounding "No" in his ears. "No" to offshore drilling and "Yes" to investing in renewable energy, and any other new green technology San Francisco start-ups can figure out.
All the California elected officials on the dais (Boxer, Lee, Speire, Napolitano, Woolsey, Lt Governor Garamendi) and Oregon governor Kulongoski made very clear, and sometimes even passionate, statements to the effect that CA needs and values its coastline the way it is, and the potential output of oil (estimated 1% of US daily consumption by 2030) comes no where near to justifying the risk posed to its economy and ecosystem.
Peak Energy: Enjoy the cheap petrol, while it lasts
Articles in the mainstream press about peak oil are pretty rare these days, but the SMH has one on the subject that never mentions the phrase (and flippantly dismisses Iraqi oil on the way) - Enjoy the cheap petrol, while it lasts.
With demand on the rise, existing wells drying up and a dearth of big discoveries, the oil price is only headed in one direction.
IN July 2008, the oil price hit a record high of $US147 a barrel. In its journey from the lows of 1998 to the highs of last year, many reasons were put forward for its ascent. Explanations included a so-called "war premium" , "a terrorist premium", hurricanes and evil speculators - the list of things and people to blame for the rise in oil prices was long.
As the price rose, calls were made by political leaders and interest groups for oil producers to lift production and for a cut in taxes on oil and petroleum. Accusations of price gouging and profiteering by oil companies and producers soon emerged.
Peak Energy: The Canadian Oil Boom
Next month's edition of National Geographic has an article on the tar sands of Canada - The Canadian Oil Boom. How long the boom lasts if the current downturn continues is questionable of course. In the same issue is an article on Energy Conservation.
In Boucher's memory, though, the change begins that day in 1963, on the long trail his grandfather used to set his traps, near a place called Mildred Lake. Generations of his ancestors had worked that trapline. "These trails had been here thousands of years," Boucher said one day last summer, sitting in his spacious and tasteful corner office in Fort McKay. His golf putter stood in one corner; Mozart played softly on the stereo. "And that day, all of a sudden, we came upon this clearing. A huge clearing. There had been no notice. In the 1970s they went in and tore down my grandfather's cabin—with no notice or discussion." That was Boucher's first encounter with the oil sands industry. It's an industry that has utterly transformed this part of northeastern Alberta in just the past few years, with astonishing speed. Boucher is surrounded by it now and immersed in it himself.
US Interior Department Details Strategy for Offshore Energy - Renewable Energy World
Saying he needed to restore order to a broken process, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar this week announced his strategy for developing an offshore energy plan that includes renewable energy.
On Friday, January 16, its last business day in office, the Bush Administration proposed a new five year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing. The proposal was actually published in the Federal Register on January 21, the day after the Obama Administration took office. The deadline for public comment that the Bush Administration established - March 23, 2009 – does not provide enough time for public review or for wise decisions on behalf of taxpayers, the Secretary said.
Think Progress » Salazar makes clean break from Bush’s midnight ‘headlong rush’ into offshore drilling.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today set aside the Bush administration’s midnight timetable for a vast expansion of offshore drilling. Salazar sharply rebuked the “headlong rush of the worst kind” put in place in Bush’s final week in office. Announcing that “the time for reform has arrived,” Salazar explained that he “will extend the public comment period by 180 days, get a report on offshore energy resources, hold regional conferences, and expedite rulemaking for offshore renewable energy resources“:
I intend to do what the Bush Administration refused to do: build a framework for offshore renewable energy development, so that we incorporate the great potential for wind, wave, and ocean current energy into our offshore energy strategy. The Bush Administration was so intent on opening new areas for oil and gas offshore that it torpedoed offshore renewable energy efforts.
New Study Finds Corn-based Ethanol More Harmful Than Oil-based Gasoline : TreeHugger
Currently in the news, the producers of ethanol are pressing their thumbs to the government, asking them to overturn the 25-year rule limiting the mix of ethanol which can be added to gasoline from its current 10 percent to as much as 15 percent. In the meantime, the Agricultural Department is in discussions with the EPA on raising the current ethanol blend percentage in order to help protect the ethanol industry, which has been deemed a key contributor to the “new energy future”.
Okay, that sounds just great. But a recent study is warning that the corn-based ethanol produced in the US, may in fact be more harmful and costly than helpful and clean... (read on)
Exxon payout a step closer: Exxon Valdez spill | adn.com
A federal judge on Wednesday issued a ruling that could clear the way for a multimillion-dollar payout of punitive damages to thousands of commercial fishermen and others who claimed harm from the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989.
Judge H. Russel Holland of Anchorage rejected a bid from one plaintiff, Sea Hawk Seafoods Inc., to throw out a complex allocation plan for the damages and replace it with one that would steer potentially millions more dollars to the company.
Peak Energy: Peak Oil and Civil Unrest
On the subject of apocaphilia and reversalism, Tom Whipple's latest "peak oil crisis" column in the FCNP is heavy on doom - The Peak Oil Crisis: Civil Unrest. No mention of green new deals or rapid shifts to clean energy sources and transport systems to be found unfortunately - just talk about "involuntary changes" that people will need to make to their lifestyles that seems rather totalitarian to me (did all that time in the CIA make Tom start to think like the Soviets ?). Why not go for persuading people to make the necessary adaptive changes voluntarily ? We'll all end up with a better world in the end (rather than the locked down world of rationing and limited transport that some seem to think inevitable).
Worldchanging: RMI Introduces New Oil Imports Map
Breaking our dependence on fossil fuels isn't only a solution for halting our climate changing emissions, it's also about gaining energy independence and being cautious about when we reach peak oil.
The Rocky Mountain Institute has created a new oil map web tool that intricately illustrates this concept. RMI partnered with Google to create a visual representation of how much oil the U.S. has imported, from where, and how much we have spent during every month since 1973.
Bush Admin. Extends Protections to Ocean Area Bigger Than California | 80beats | Discover Magazine
President Bush will establish three national monuments in the Pacific Ocean today in a move that will protect a vast marine ecosystem from mining, oil exploration, and commercial fishing. With the stroke of a pen this afternoon, Bush will have set aside more square miles of ocean for protection than any other political leader in history. The three new monuments, surrounding far-flung islands, reefs and atolls scattered across the Pacific, will add 195,000 square miles of protected waters to the nearly 140,000 square miles around the Northwest Hawaiian Islands that Bush protected in 2006 [Los Angeles Times]. The United States has authority over these waters because the tiny atolls and islands are U.S. territories.
The three areas are thronged with fish, sharks, coral reefs, and other forms of sea life, all of which will benefit from the new protections. Blue-water fish such as yellowfin, bigeye tuna, and marlin–all in decline–will be big winners because they breed in these waters. So will sharks, birds, turtles, and dolphins accidentally caught by the tuna long-line fleets [ScienceNOW Daily News]. One of the new national monuments also encompasses the deepest location of the earth’s crust. The Marianas Trench, which reaches depths of more than 36,000 feet in some locations, contains undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents around which cluster tough organisms that can withstand high temperatures and harsh chemicals. These “extremophiles” are of interest to scientists who think they signal forms that extraterrestrial life could take.
Oil lays waste to the West The greed, speed and scale of development in wild lands is an open wound on America.
On election day, the Bureau of Land Management in Utah quietly announced its last round of oil and gas lease sales for the year. On Dec. 19, close to 400,000 acres of America's redrock wilderness -- much of it adjacent to Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument -- were to be sold for drilling to the highest bidders.
Public outcry was fierce. The National Park Service had not been consulted, as it usually was, and much of the land listed for auction had long been proposed for wilderness protection. The BLM succumbed to the pressure and met with the National Park Service, which asked that 93 oil and gas leases be removed from the list. The BLM backed off 22 parcels, and then later deferred other leases in sensitive areas.
From a cynical perspective, the lease sale announcement could be seen as a fire the BLM set intentionally around the edges of Utah's most precious natural treasures, knowing it could extinguish the flames, emerge as a reasonable land steward and still get what its current boss, the Bush administration, wants -- more and more public land in the American West to exploit.
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