http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/us-worlds-top-oil-producer_n_2006640.html?ir=Green

By JONATHAN FAHEY 10/23/12 04:10 PM ET EDT

NEW YORK – U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer.

Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. This will be the fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain since 1951.

The boom has surprised even the experts.

“Five years ago, if I or anyone had predicted today’s production growth, people would have thought we were crazy,” says Jim Burkhard, head of oil markets research at IHS CERA, an energy consulting firm.

The Energy Department forecasts that U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons, which includes biofuels, will average 11.4 million barrels per day next year. That would be a record for the U.S. and just below Saudi Arabia’s output of 11.6 million barrels. Citibank forecasts U.S. production could reach 13 million to 15 million barrels per day by 2020, helping to make North America “the new Middle East.”

The last year the U.S. was the world’s largest producer was 2002, after the Saudis drastically cut production because of low oil prices in the aftermath of 9/11. Since then, the Saudis and the Russians have been the world leaders.

The United States will still need to import lots of oil in the years ahead. Americans use 18.7 million barrels per day. But thanks to the growth in domestic production and the improving fuel efficiency of the nation’s cars and trucks, imports could fall by half by the end of the decade.

The increase in production hasn’t translated to cheaper gasoline at the pump, and prices are expected to stay relatively high for the next few years because of growing demand for oil in developing nations and political instability in the Middle East and North Africa.

Still, producing more oil domestically, and importing less, gives the economy a significant boost.

The companies profiting range from independent drillers to large international oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, which increasingly see the U.S. as one of the most promising places to drill. ExxonMobil agreed last month to spend $1.6 billion to increase its U.S. oil holdings.

Increased drilling is driving economic growth in states such as North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Montana and Texas, all of which have unemployment rates far below the national average of 7.8 percent. North Dakota is at 3 percent; Oklahoma, 5.2.

Businesses that serve the oil industry, such as steel companies that supply drilling pipe and railroads that transport oil, aren’t the only ones benefiting. Homebuilders, auto dealers and retailers in energy-producing states are also getting a lift.

IHS says the oil and gas drilling boom, which already supports 1.7 million jobs, will lead to the creation of 1.3 million jobs across the U.S. economy by the end of the decade.

“It’s the most important change to the economy since the advent of personal computers pushed up productivity in the 1990s,” says economist Philip Verleger, a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics.

The major factor driving domestic production higher is a newfound ability to squeeze oil out of rock once thought too difficult and expensive to tap. Drillers have learned to drill horizontally into long, thin seams of shale and other rock that holds oil, instead of searching for rare underground pools of hydrocarbons that have accumulated over millions of years.

To free the oil and gas from the rock, drillers crack it open by pumping water, sand and chemicals into the ground at high pressure, a process is known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

While expanded use of the method has unlocked enormous reserves of oil and gas, it has also raised concerns that contaminated water produced in the process could leak into drinking water.

The surge in oil production has other roots, as well:
_ A long period of high oil prices has given drillers the cash and the motivation to spend the large sums required to develop new techniques and search new places for oil. Over the past decade, oil has averaged $69 a barrel. During the previous decade, it averaged $21.

_ Production in the Gulf of Mexico, which slowed after BP’s 2010 well disaster and oil spill, has begun to climb again. Huge recent finds there are expected to help growth continue.

_ A natural gas glut forced drillers to dramatically slow natural gas exploration beginning about a year ago. Drillers suddenly had plenty of equipment and workers to shift to oil.

The most prolific of the new shale formations are in North Dakota and Texas. Activity is also rising in Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio and other states.

Production from shale formations is expected to grow from 1.6 million barrels per day this year to 4.2 million barrels per day by 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm. That means these new formations will yield more oil by 2020 than major oil suppliers such as Iran and Canada produce today.

U.S. oil and liquids production reached a peak of 11.2 million barrels per day in 1985, when Alaskan fields were producing enormous amounts of crude, then began a long decline. From 1986 through 2008, crude production fell every year but one, dropping by 44 percent over that period. The United States imported nearly 60 percent of the oil it burned in 2006.

By the end of this year, U.S. crude output will be at its highest level since 1998 and oil imports will be lower than at any time since 1992, at 41 percent of consumption.
“It’s a stunning turnaround,” Burkhard says.

Whether the U.S. supplants Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer will depend on the price of oil and Saudi production in the years ahead. Saudi Arabia sits on the world’s largest reserves of oil, and it raises and lowers production to try to keep oil prices steady.

Saudi output is expected to remain about flat between now and 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.

But Saudi oil is cheap to tap, while the methods needed to tap U.S. oil are very expensive. If the price of oil falls below $75 per barrel, drillers in the U.S. will almost certainly begin to cut back.

The International Energy Agency forecasts that global oil prices, which have averaged $107 per barrel this year, will slip to an average of $89 over the next five years – not a big enough drop to lead companies to cut back on exploration deeply.

Nor are they expected to fall enough to bring back the days of cheap gasoline. Still, more of the money that Americans spend at filling stations will flow to domestic drillers, which are then more likely to buy equipment here and hire more U.S. workers.

“Drivers will have to pay high prices, sure, but at least they’ll have a job,” Verleger says.
___
Follow Jonathan Fahey on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JonathanFahey

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/defend-coast-protesters-stage-mass-rally-b-c-152951842.html

By Andy Radia
Politics Reporter

By Andy Radia | Canada Politics – 14 hours ago

Anti-oil pipeline activists have planned two events: one rally starting on Monday morning on the grounds of the Š

It’s going to be a protest-mania this week in British Columbia.

Anti-oil pipeline activists have planned two events: one rally starting on Monday morning on the grounds of the legislature and a series of rallies on Wednesday at MLA offices throughout the province.

Some are dubbing Monday’s sit-in the “largest act of peaceful civil disobedience on the climate issue that Canada has ever seen.” Organizers are expecting upwards of 3,500 protesters and a series of high profile guest speakers including Green Party leader Elizabeth May and B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix.

Zoe Blunt from the Forest Action Network says while she expects the event to be peaceful, they want to send a message to Prime Minister Harper and B.C. premier Christy Clark that Canadians don’t want tar sands pipelines and tankers on the west coast.

“We’re sending a signal to the government about exactly how strongly people feel about stopping tankers and pipelines and how far they’re willing to go to make sure that happens,” she told Yahoo! Canada News.

“People are willing to commit civil disobedience and they’re willing to risk arrest and risk their freedom to show the government that this is not acceptable. People will not accept this.”
The demonstrators will essentially be protesting in front of an empty building, given that the governing Liberals have cancelled the Fall sitting of the legislature.
The cancellation was one of the reasons organizers added the second day of protest, at the constituency offices of 55 MLAs.

George Hoberg, a UBC professor who is organizing the demonstration in premier Clark’s riding, says he’s expecting about 250 people at his event.

“We’re expecting [Clark] to be there, because if she’s not at the legislature she should really be in her constituency office, right?” he told Yahoo!.

The so-called ‘Defend our coast’ protests are endorsed by the likes of David Suzuki, Stephen Lewis, Daryl Hannah, Michael Moore, Ellen Page and Pamela Anderson.
In a recent interview with Vancouver Co-op Radio, reprinted at Rabble.ca, Suzuki talked about the need for civil disobedience in the battle against pipelines.

“I think we should be ready to put our bodies on the line if it’s imperative to really make a demonstration about how urgently we feel about this,” he said.

“We’ve got to be ready to put our bodies on the line.”

The protests get under way at 11am pacific standard time.

B.C. legislature jammed with pipeline protesters
: Thousands of opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline packed the lawn at the B.C. legislature in Victoria.

[ Related: Jim Prentice predicts legal confrontation with First Nations over oil sands pipeline ]

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/24191

This is the BEST news I have heard in ages. The last sentence is the zinger!!!! DV

10/17/2012 02:17 PM

In a huge success for Amazon farmers that have been suing Chevron for 18 years, an Ecuadorian court ruled they can seize $200 million in assets from the oil company.

That includes $96.3 million the Ecuador government owes Chevron, money held in Ecuadorean bank accounts by Chevron, and licensing fees generated by the use of the company’s trademarks in the country, reports Reuters.

Chevron has been struggling to get out of paying $19 billion in damages to Ecuadorean villagers for polluting rivers with 16 billion gallons of oil sludge from 1964-1990.

This is a critically important case – the first time an indigenous community has prevailed against a multinational corporation. Oil companies are, of course, keeping close watch on this case as it provides an important precedent for communities to fight their pollution. Shell has a similar case against it in Nigeria.

The company even took it to the US Supreme court, which last week rejected Chevron’s attempt to overturn the $19 billion judgment against it.

The suit was originally brought against Texaco (bought by Chevron in 2001). In February 2011, an Ecuadorean judge imposed damages for $8.6 billion – the fine has more than doubled since then because Chevron has not made the public apology the court required.
Instead, the company filed an appeal in New York to block the judgment, saying it was illegal and unenforceable under the state’s law – and a federal judge took its side in March 2011.

But earlier this year, an appeals court overturned that decision, noting US courts can’t interfere with courts from other countries. So Chevron appealed again – this time to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s rejection of that appeal opened the door for this week’s ruling, issued in the Amazon town of Lago Agrio.

“This is a huge first step for the rainforest villagers on the road to collecting the entire $19 billion judgment,” Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the communities, told Reuters.
Chevron is fighting back again, charging racketeering against New York attorney Steven Donziger, a group of Ecuadoreans and the environmental groups that helped win the original judgment against it.

It is also bringing the matter to an international trade arbitration panel which is scheduled to begin hearings on the dispute in November, reports Reuters.

After the original judgment, Ecuador and the United Nations Development Program signed a historic deal to leave an estimated 846 million barrels of crude oil untapped beneath Yasuní National Park, a World Biosphere Reserve since 1989.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.examiner.com/article/macondo-not-dead-bp-hiding-crude-oil-source

TOP NATIONAL NEWS OCTOBER 15, 2012BY: DEBORAH DUPRE

Government scientists definitively linked a new Gulf of Mexico oil slick, that has moved to some 90 miles from the sinkhole, to BP’s 2010 oil catastrophe, saying it is probably from a BP Deepwater Horizon rig pipe, but one expert is not buying it and people are demanding evidence about the source of the crude oil, both in the gulf and the sinkhole.

Catastrophic Gulf Operation continues

“People are demanding evidence of where the fresh crude is coming from, because the storyline that BP is floating out there now – that a small amount of leftover oil is now being released from a bent riser at the rig that exploded in 2010 – simply is not holding water,” environmental attorney Stuart Smith stated Monday in his blog post.

According to a senior government scientist, the most likely source of the new oil in the Gulf is the mile-long length of pipe from the Deepwater Horizon rig, now in a “crumpled loop on the ocean floor” near the Macondo well, the Guardian reported Friday.

“At worst, he said, the pipe was thought to contain some 1,800 barrels of oil – a minuscule amount compared with the 4.9m barrels that gushed into the ocean from BP’s well during the 2010 oil disaster.”

“When you look at all those pieces of information and put them together, there is a high degree of confidence that the oil we are seeing and the sheening on the surface is coming from the riser, and that this is residual oil,” said Frank Csulak, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) scientific co-ordinator for the Deepwater Horizon disaster site.

BP says its tests confirmed the oil was from the riser, and samples contained compounds found in drilling mud.

“The size of the sheen, its persistent point of origin and other factors indicate the most likely source is the bent riser pipe that once connected the rig to the well head, where a mix of oil, drilling mud and sea water were trapped after the top kill operation,” BP spokesman Brett Clanton said.

“It’s very reasonable and logical to conclude that maybe a little crack formed in one of the creases, in one of the bends, and that is where the oil is leaking out of.”

Last week, the sheen, only microns thick, extended three miles, from near the BP-wrecked Macondo well about 50 miles offshore of Louisiana and about 90 miles from the giant sinkhole that emerged in Bayou Corne. New evidence has shown that BP possibly cracked the ocean floor

The United States Coast Guard said in a statement Wednesday night that lab tests, performed at a government facility in Connecticut, matched the slick oil to the Deepwater Horizon.

The size and persistence of the new sheen near BP’s disaster site at Macondo well, first detected by satellite images on 9 September, prompted further investigation.

“The exact source of the oil is unclear at this time but [it] could be residual oil associated with the wreckage or debris left on the seabed from the Deepwater Horizon incident,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.

The Washington Post said other government officials said it is unlikely that oil could be leaking again from the original Macondo well head. Engineers poured thick plugs of cement into both ends of the well to finally cap it last July 2010, and officials said a new breach was very unlikely. “With what we did to it it’s pretty hard to imagine,” Marcia McNutt, who heads the US Geological Survey, told the Post.

A more detailed chemical analysis also ruled out a natural seep from the well reservoir. Csulak said researchers discovered the presence of drilling mud, which had been in the riser.

She appeared to “downplay concerns about more oil entering the Gulf.”
“We don’t feel that is causing an environmental impact. It’s not going to reach the shore-line.” McNutt said

Macondo not dead

Americans along the Gulf Coast still want answers about both the 2010 BP-wrecked Macondo Well and now, its possible relationship to south Louisiana’s monster sinkhole, both seeping crude oil and methane. Predictions had been made in 2010 that methane from the Macondo Well could cause a sinkhole problem.

Today, as one citizen reporter reports dissatisfaction seeing a large order of generators in a Panama City, Florida Home Depot heading to New Orleans, 70 miles from the disastrous crude-inundated sinkhole in Bayou Corne, environmental attorney Stuart Smith says he is not satisfied with answers provided by the government and BP.

(Watch “Alert! Imminent Disaster About to Happen in New Orleans” video on this page.)
Responding to what the Washington Post called “persistent rumors and allegations on blogs that Macondo is not truly dead, and that it is continuing to spew oil into the gulf,” Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, spoke to the Post.

McNutt said rough calculations show the riser, if full of oil, could hold around 1,000 barrels of oil and because it’s open on two ends, it’s unlikely to have that much oil.

“McNutt said it’s unlikely that oil came from the deep reservoir” of Macondo well.
“The well was plugged from both the top and the bottom, and has a mile of cement crammed into it.

“With what we did to it, it’s pretty hard to imagine, ” added McNutt.

Matt Simmons had claimed that what they did do was a sham, that the well-capping shown on TV was a performance, a “dog and pony show.” After the untimely death of Simmons, a surveyor, using government data, proved Simmons correct.

Now, according to Smith on Monday, BP and the government are still trying to hide the real cause of the sheen and people want the truth.

“BP wants us to believe that this new sheen is coming from residual oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig and the equipment that was used to cap it after the April 2010 explosion that killed 11 people and spewed an unbelievable 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico,” Smith states.

“But most experts fear that the more likely source is a more troubling scenario, which is that the efforts to cap the massive leak two years ago led to cracks in the sea floor that are releasing fresh oil that cannot easily be stopped.

Smith points to “a good independent analysis of the situation” as follows:
But there is not that much oil in the riser. As the Washington Post reported Wednesday:
Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said a rough calculation showed that the riser, if full of oil, could hold about 1,000 barrels of oil. Because it’s open on two ends it is unlikely to have that much oil, she said.

Indeed, Dr. Ian MacDonald – an expert in deep-ocean extreme communities including natural hydrocarbon seeps, gas hydrates, and mud volcano systems, a former long-time NOAA scientist, and a professor of Biological Oceanography at Florida State University-

told us today:
The key statement in the BP discussion was the fact that oil recovered on the ocean surface was not biodegraded. This is not consistent with a pool of oil supposedly trapped in the wreckage of the riser, which would have been exposed to ambient bacterial activity for over two years.

This piece also responds to the question, “So where is the oil coming from?”

We’re not sure yet. But top oil spill experts – such as UC Berkeley professor and government consultant Robert Bea and LSU professor Ed Overton – have told us that oil blowouts such as the one in the Gulf can create new pathways to the seafloor and enlarge natural oil seeps Š so that leaks can continue for years.

“Exactly,” says Smith. “But BP and the feds have plenty of good reason not to let people know if this is what’s indeed happening under the Gulf.

“That’s because that would mean that the Deepwater Horizon spill is still an ongoing event – one with no immediate end in sight – which would thwart the oil giant’s efforts to put the disaster behind them.”

Smith continues, “In particular, it would really mess up BP’s efforts to settle its ongoing legal woes from the 2010 explosion. I’ve told you a lot recently about problems with BP’s proposed $8.7 billion settlement about claims by Gulf residents and small businesses.”

“These things are not happening in a vacuum. They’re all connected,” Smith says, asserting what other independent scientists have said relating to the Louisiana sinkhole that is regurgitating and spreading crude from an unknown source throughout swamplands north of Macondo well.

“BP wants to sweep what’s going on at the Macondo field under the rug because it wants to settle its outstanding claims as quickly and with as little damage as possible. We can’t allow this to happen,” Smith asserts.

“There needs instead to be a thorough – and independent – investigation of where this new oil is really coming from.”

Citizens also want an independent investigation including one that answers how far far inland that crude can travel into south Louisiana, comprised mainly of water, and whether it is linked to or even triggered the giant sinkhole if BP cracked the ocean floor.

Smith explained on Oct. 4 that since BP wrecked the underwater Macondo well with its catastrophic deep sea drilling, blocked crude continues seeking a path to the surface, and that could create fissures or cracks in the sea floor for the hydrocarbons to escape.
According to Gary Hecox, Geologist with Shaw Environmental contracted by the Department of Natural Resources, 54,600 gallons of crude oil has been collected at the Bayou Corne sinkhole site near a collapsed storage cavern.

“Now we’ve got 1,300 barrels in a… tank,” Hecox said at a sinkhole Resident Meeting last Tuesday, after the sinkhole with an insatiable appetite for Cajun swampland grew to 4.2 acres. “If the source is coming in from crude, that resolves that discrepancy, but there is crude oil coming into the cavern.”

Deborah Dupré is author of the book, Vampire of Macondo, out soon.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

By Steven Mufson and Joel Achenbach, Published: October 10

The oil in a slick detected in the Gulf of Mexico last month matched oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill two years ago, the Coast Guard said Wednesday night, ending one mystery and creating another. “The exact source of the oil is unclear at this time but could be residual oil associated with the wreckage or debris left on the seabed from the Deepwater Horizon incident,” the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard added that “the sheen is not feasible to recover and does not pose a risk to the shoreline.” One government expert said the thin sheen, just microns thick, was 3 miles by 300 yards on Wednesday.
Some oil drilling experts said it was unlikely that BP’s Macondo well, which suffered a blowout on April 20, 2010, was leaking again given the extra precautions taken when it was finally sealed after spilling nearly 5 million barrels of crude into the gulf.

BP declined to comment. But a BP internal slide presentation said the new oil sheen probably came from the riser, a long piece of pipe that had connected the drilling rig to the well a mile below the sea surface.

The presentation said that “the size and persistence of this slick, the persistent location of the oil slick origin point, the chemistry of the samples taken from the slick … suggest that the likely source of the slick is a leak of Macondo … oil mixed with drilling mud that had been trapped in the riser of the Deepwater Horizon rig.”

But Ian MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University and a spill expert, cautioned said that the origin of the new oil remains uncertain. “The jury is out here,” he said, adding that it was too early “to rule out that this is oil freshly released from the reservoir.”

The sheen, located about 50 miles off Louisiana’s shore in the Mississippi Canyon block 252 where the Macondo well was drilled, was detected in satellite images taken on Sept. 9 and Sept. 14. The Coast Guard said the size of the sheen has varied with weather conditions.

Samples of the crude were collected and sent to a Coast Guard laboratory in New London, Conn. On Tuesday, the Coast Guard told BP and Transocean, owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that caught fire and sank, that the oil from the sheen and spill matched. In a meeting Wednesday, the Coast Guard told the companies to come up with a plan of action for determining the source. “No one’s 100 percent as to where it’s coming from,” said Frank Csulak, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Since the disaster in 2010, which killed 11 workers, the wreckage of the massive rig, the crumpled riser and some hardware used in the attempt to kill the well have remained on the gulf floor. An August 2011 investigation, which came after oil blobs were observed on the surface and which included a visit to the wellhead by a remotely operated vehicle, turned up no sign that the well was leaking. That inspection was conducted by BP with federal government officials observing the process.

Nonetheless, there have been persistent rumors and allegations on blogs that Macondo is not truly dead, and that it is continuing to spew oil into the gulf. Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said a rough calculation showed that the riser, if full of oil, could hold about 1,000 barrels of oil. Because it’s open on two ends it is unlikely to have that much oil, she said.

McNutt said it’s unlikely that oil came from the deep reservoir. The well was plugged from both the top and the bottom, and has a mile of cement crammed into it. “With what we did to it, it’s pretty hard to imagine, ” McNutt said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter