http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120125/ARTICLES/120129672

Richard Charter has spent nearly three decades working to protect the Sonoma County coastline and beyond from interests such as offshore oil and gas drilling. (The Press Democrat/ Christopher Chung, 2005))

By GUY KOVNER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 4:14 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 4:14 p.m.

Environmentalists scrambled Wednesday to determine if President Obama’s reference to offshore oil drilling in his State of the Union speech posed a new prospect for oil rigs along the North Coast.

It didn’t, but activists said the reference underscores the need to achieve permanent protection from oil and gas drilling for the rugged coast that supports the region’s fishing and tourism industries.

“Our coast has become a political football – and we are in overtime,” said Richard Charter of Bodega Bay, a veteran anti-drilling advocate.

Obama’s statement that he will open “more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources” essentially affirmed the Department of Interior’s five-year oil and gas leasing program announced in November.

The plan calls for 15 potential lease sales in 2012-17 period, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico and three off the coast of Alaska.

The Pacific Coast was not included, the plan said, in deference to a 2006 agreement by the governors of California, Oregon and Washington opposing energy development off their coasts.

But after 2017, “all bets are off for California,” said Charter, a senior fellow with The Ocean Foundation, a nonprofit environmental group.

The oil industry, in an effort to rebound from the gulf oil spill of 2010, has mounted an aggressive promotional campaign featuring posters on Washington, D.C. subway cars and on television, Charter said.

A bill by Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s, D-Petaluma, to double the size of two marine sanctuaries would permanently ban drilling off the Sonoma coast and up to Point Arena in Mendocino County.

“It’s my highest priority,” said Woolsey, who is retiring this year. “It just has to happen.”

Woolsey said she was surprised by Obama’s comment, and said it amplifies the Interior Department’s plan.

In his speech, Obama noted that U.S. crude oil production was “the highest that it’s been in eight years” and that reliance on foreign oil was the lowest in 16 years.

Offshore oil production increased by more than one-third, from 446 million barrels in 2008 to more than 600 million barrels in 2010, the Interior Department said.

By excluding California, the five-year lease plan left an estimated 10.5 billion barrels of oil “off limits to U.S. customers,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association.

Dependence on foreign oil is down partly because the recession reduced oil consumption, she said.

Obama’s recognition of the benefits of a secure oil supply “is a little bit at odds” with his decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline bringing Canadian crude oil into the U.S., Reheis-Boyd said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Posted by Brad Plumer at 12:38 PM ET, 01/23/2012

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just released its Annual Energy Outlook 2012 report, and three things stick out: The United States is dramatically curbing its oil imports, carbon emissions are flatlining and we have less shale gas than once thought. Here’s a rundown:

1) The United States is reducing its dependence on foreign oil. According to EIA forecasts (which, do note, are far from perfect), Americans will likely continue restraining their gasoline consumption, thanks, in part, to the Obama administration’s new fuel-economy standards for cars and lights trucks. Meanwhile, oil and gas production in places such as North Dakota has been booming, thanks to higher prices and new drilling technology. Put those together, the EIA calculates, and the United States is set to import just 36 percent of its petroleum by 2035, down from 60 percent in 2005.

2) U.S. global-warming pollution is flat-lining. Carbon-dioxide emissions plummeted after the financial crisis in 2008, and the EIA expects that greenhouse-gas pollution from the energy sector won’t recover back to 2005 levels anytime soon, as the chart below shows. The reasons? New vehicle fuel-economy standards; cheap natural gas that’s displacing dirtier coal-fired places; state-level laws that mandate renewable energy; and new environmental regulations on power plants from the EPA.
Granted, U.S. emissions aren’t on pace to decline – remember, at the Copenhagen climate talks, the White House pledged to reduce U.S. carbon emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and the EIA doesn’t think we’re anywhere near on pace to do that (Congress would most likely need to step in with new climate policies). Still, after decades of greenhouse-gas increases, there does seem to be a break from historical trends, assuming the EIA forecast holds up:

3) We have less shale gas than once thought. Remember all those old predictionsabout how the United States had a 100-year supply of natural gas, thanks to new fracking technology that can extract energy from shale rock? Lately, those first-draft euphoric estimates have been facing downward revisions, and now even the EIA report is climbing aboard the sobriety wagon.
Back in 2011, the EIA estimated that the Marcellus Shale, which stretches across Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia, had 410 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas – enough to meet all our gas needs for the next 20 years or so. Then, last August, the U.S. Geological Survey slashed that estimate by 80 percent. As I reported at the time, the final EIA revision was likely to be somewhat less stark, and it was – the EIA now believes there’s some 141 trillion cubic feet that’s “technically recoverable” (this means the amount of gas that can be extracted, in theory, using existing technology, though not all of that gas is necessarily worth the economic cost of drilling).

In the end, there’s still plenty of shale gas around the country, and EIA expects production to keep rising, albeit slowly thanks to low prices. By 2021, the report notes, the United States will become a net exporter of gas. But America’s underlying shale resources are a little smaller than many people once thought.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2012/01/shell_oil_president_says_pace.html

Times-Picayune/Nola.com

Shell Oil President says pace of federal permitting is improving
Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 5:33 PM Updated: Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 5:36 PM
By Richard Thompson, The Times-Picayune

Shell Oil president Marvin Odum said Wednesday that he believes the pace of federal permitting for deepwater oil and gas drilling in the U.S. “may have turned a corner” by the end of 2011, in the nearly two years since a temporary moratorium was put in place in the wake of the BP oil spill. Odum, speaking at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association in New Orleans, said Shell now has five floating drilling rigs working in the Gulf of Mexico and will soon add two more.

“We’re working hard to make up for what we lost,” he said. “Shell has always had confidence that we’ll get back to where we need to be.”

A day after President Barack Obama outlined his domestic energy policy in his third State of the Union address — a speech in which he cited projections that developing natural gas could support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade and touted jobs created by federal investments in renewable energy — Odum offered a similarly optimistic outlook for the natural gas industry in Louisiana.

“For the state, we see even more opportunity in technology that turns natural gas into liquid products, like diesel fuel and lubricants,” Odum said, adding that developing such technology would create jobs and give the state an economic boost, but also “fulfill a critical need for domestic, secure supply of transportation fuels for the U.S.”

Odum said Shell has drilled about 350 vertical and horizontal wells in the Haynesville Shale natural gas field the field since 2008, and has reduced its drilling costs by 50 percent and completion costs by 45 percent, which he described as “real tangible costs.”

Last year Shell announced plans to build a 72-office building complex to service its workforce in the area, where it had a working interest in several hundred thousand acres.

The state Department of Natural Resources announced last week that 39 rigs were drilling off Louisiana’s coast, the most since May 2010. That is almost twice the number of rigs that were operating in the area at the start of 2011, but less than the average rig count of about 42 that were working there in the three months prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Richard Thompson can be reached at rthompson@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3496.

_________________________________

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Oil-Majors-Move-Back-to-the-Gulf-of-Mexico.html

Oil Price

Oil Majors Move Back to the Gulf of Mexico
By Energy Digital | Wed, 25 January 2012 23:42 | 0

Over a year since America’s worst oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, big oil finally gets back to business… with a vengeance.

For the first time since BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion, leading to America’s worst oil spill in history, the Gulf of Mexico has officially reopened its doors for business. In December’s lease sale, the enormity of pent up demand since permits were halted over a year ago resulted in over $337 million in bids on 191 different tracts from 20 companies.

Despite fierce opposition from environmental groups, the Obama administration remains true to the most critical energy strategies meant to boost economic recovery, lower fuel and energy prices and decrease oil imports. And considering that the Keystone XL pipeline may very well not happen along with the more recent events in Iran, which threaten to block the world’s most important oil portal, where else would the US get its most crucial energy source?

While environmentalists fear a repeat of history, moving back into the Gulf without the proper safety procedures and technologies in place, the White House sees the sale as a major milestone in the area’s recovery process.

December’s lease sales, “the first since the tragic events of Deepwater Horizon, continues the Obama administration’s commitment to a balanced and comprehensive energy plan,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who attended the sale and provided opening remarks. “Offshore drilling will never be risk free, but over the last 19 months we have moved quickly and aggressively with the most significant oil and gas reforms in U.S. history to make it safer and more environmentally responsible. Today’s sale is another step in ensuring the safe and responsible development of the nation’s offshore energy resources.”

Not according to environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and oceans advocacy group Oceana, who are pushing forward with a lawsuit over the environmental impacts of the Gulf spill. Ocean Senior Campaign Director Jackie Savitz claims there is no new assessment of how a future spill will affect ecosystems or a baseline for how much they’ve already been damaged.

But according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the new five-year program will make available for development more than three-quarters of undiscovered oil and gas resources estimated on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), including frontier areas such as the Arctic. In addition to the Gulf, offshore drilling in Alaska will recommence under the supervision of the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE).

“The Best Place in the World to Drill”

Since the administration lifted the moratorium on drilling permits in the region, oil executives are racing to pursue what many are calling the world’s best place to drill, where more deepwater rigs are expected to go into operation this year than were present before the BP spill.

Shell’s deepest rig Perdido, meaning “lost” in Spanish, runs nearly two miles deep-no other well on Earth produces oil in deeper water. That’s good news for the industry, moving quickly to take advantage of the Gulf’s 15 billion barrels of potential oil, according to analysts.

“We are at the point where … depth is not the primary issue anymore,” Marvin Odum, head of Royal Dutch Shell’s drilling unit in the Americas told the Associated Press. “I do not worry that there is something in the Gulf that we cannot develop … if we can find it.”

That’s a frightening mindset, considering the challenges faced in deepwater drilling made clear from the BP disaster and, more recently, last month’s spill from a Chevron deepwater well off the coast of Brazil. While the Gulf remains the most attractive solution for meeting current and future demands, both from oil companies and under the administration, it’s not so clear whether the technologies and environmental regulations are up to par with the speed at which more deepwater operations are about to reoccur.

By. Carin Hall of Energy Digital

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Gulf of Mexico, Outer Continental Shelf, Central Planning Area; Oil and Gas Lease Sale, etc., 2991-2992

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-01-20/pdf/2012-1124.pdf

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-01-20/html/2012-1124.htm

Emily Yehle, E&E reporter
Published: Monday, January 23, 2012

A scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration falsified findings to lowball the amount of oil
that leaked in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, according to
a scientific integrity complaint filed today.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is already
pursuing a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior over a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the memos and
emails behind the official scientific assessments of the size of
the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Today’s complaint stems from the
documents thus far received and is the first the group has filed
under NOAA’s new scientific integrity policy.

The complaint alleges that NOAA senior scientist William Lehr
intentionally misrepresented the findings of the one of the teams
under the Flow Rate Technical Group, a panel of experts convened
by the White House to estimate the flow of oil in the disaster.
Lehr headed the Plume Analysis Team.

NOAA’s scientific integrity policy was finalized in December,
meaning Lehr’s actions preceded the policy. How that will affect
the complaint is unclear.

Lehr wrote in a final report a few weeks after the spill that
“most of the experts” concluded that the best estimate was
between 25,000 and 30,000 barrels per day. That estimate turned
out to be only half of the actual leakage, and experts have said
that the original low estimate hampered the cleanup.

PEER asserts that the team was actually split on that estimate
from the beginning. According to the group’s complaint, only
three of 13 team members made such an estimate, using a technique
called Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), and they concluded that
it was inappropriate.

Three others used a different method that estimated a leak rate
to be between 50,000 to 60,000 barrels per day, while one team
member used a third method, and the rest didn’t submit estimates
at all, according to PEER.

The group cites an email to the plume team from Marcia McNutt,
director of the U.S. Geological Survey, who led the Flow Rate
Technical Group. In it, she appears to respond to some concerns
about oil plume estimates released to the press. She refers to
pressure from White House officials on how to frame the results,
including one communications person who suggested she say that
the flow was 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day but could be as
much as 25,000.

“I cannot tell you what a nightmare the past two days have been
dealing with the communications people at the White House, DOI,
and the [National Incident Commander] who seem incapable of
understanding the concept of a lower bound,” she wrote. “The
press release that went out on our results was misleading and was
not reviewed by a scientist for accuracy.”

NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said the agency had just received
the documents and thus was unable to respond to it. PEER sent out
a press release at about 11 a.m. announcing the complaint.

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said the complaint will serve
as a “litmus test as to whether the Obama administration will
apply its scientific integrity rules to its own actions.”

“Hopefully, the investigation of this complaint will force the
immediate release of the full deliberations so that the
scientific record can be set straight,” Ruch said, citing his
group’s continuing lawsuit over emails concerning the plume
estimate.

Special thanks to Richard Charter