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State Department Says Keystone Pipeline Will Create Just 50 Jobs

Big news this afternoon: The U.S. State Department released its long-awaited “Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement” on the Keystone XL pipeline. The findings could determine whether or not the pipeline proceeds. The State Department concluded that the project would create 42,100 temporary jobs during the two-year construction period. But the report says once the pipeline enters service, it will support only 50 U.S. jobs—35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors. Here’s the relevant passage:   State Department Facebook’s Next Decade

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Boom Increases Barge Operators' Fortunes

The rising tide of North American oil is lifting a lot of barges, as energy companies increasingly turn to rivers and coastal waterways to get U.S. and Canadian crude to refineries. Oil floating on barges from the Midwest down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico coast, for example, is up 13-fold since 2010, as companies find alternate routes where pipelines don’t exist or have sufficient capacity. Nearly five million barrels of crude a month is being sent by barge south after companies pump it from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and, increasingly, Canada’s oil sands, according to federal data. Barge operators such as Houston-based Kirby Corp. , which is the biggest by fleet size, are generating healthy profits. The company last week reported a record profit, $64.3 million, for the fourth quarter, on revenue of $568.4 million. Kirby is spending $90 million this year to add 37 inland […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Boom Increases Barge Operators’ Fortunes

The rising tide of North American oil is lifting a lot of barges, as energy companies increasingly turn to rivers and coastal waterways to get U.S. and Canadian crude to refineries. Oil floating on barges from the Midwest down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico coast, for example, is up 13-fold since 2010, as companies find alternate routes where pipelines don’t exist or have sufficient capacity. Nearly five million barrels of crude a month is being sent by barge south after companies pump it from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and, increasingly, Canada’s oil sands, according to federal data. Barge operators such as Houston-based Kirby Corp. , which is the biggest by fleet size, are generating healthy profits. The company last week reported a record profit, $64.3 million, for the fourth quarter, on revenue of $568.4 million. Kirby is spending $90 million this year to add 37 inland […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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North Dakota Flares $100m of Natural Gas a Month

It is well known that advances in technology have enabled the US to experience a huge boom in oil production over the past several years. Since 2007, oil production from North Dakota’s Bakken formation has increased by 4,000% , and turning the state into the second largest oil producer after Texas. The problem is that a natural by-product of oil extraction is natural gas, and due to the lack of infrastructure to store, transport, and compress the gas, nearly 30% has to be burned at the well in a process known as flaring. Think Progress reports that an estimated $100 million worth of natural gas is flared in North Dakota every month, depriving the US economy of a huge source of revenue, and also releasing vast amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. On Wednesday, the North Dakota Petroleum Council, comprised of hundreds of companies, promised to try and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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French minister supports allowing 'clean' shale gas fracking

A split over France’s ban on shale gas development has emerged within the government, with one minister supporting an experimental type of "clean fracking." French Minister for Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg, a member of President Francois Hollande ‘s Socialist Party, is calling on the president to reconsider his opposition to hydraulic fracturing due to what he calls the emergence of environmentally safer methods to extract natural gas trapped in shale rock. Despite Hollande’s public reiteration in July of opposition, on environmental grounds, to any exploitation of shale gas during his tenure, Montebourg has renewed his efforts to push for a change in policy — touting a potential of a type of fracking that uses fluoropropane, rather than a mix of water and chemical additives, to break apart underground rock formations. Other ministers, including Housing Minister Cecile Duflot of the Green Party, or EELV, and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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French minister supports allowing ‘clean’ shale gas fracking

A split over France’s ban on shale gas development has emerged within the government, with one minister supporting an experimental type of "clean fracking." French Minister for Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg, a member of President Francois Hollande ‘s Socialist Party, is calling on the president to reconsider his opposition to hydraulic fracturing due to what he calls the emergence of environmentally safer methods to extract natural gas trapped in shale rock. Despite Hollande’s public reiteration in July of opposition, on environmental grounds, to any exploitation of shale gas during his tenure, Montebourg has renewed his efforts to push for a change in policy — touting a potential of a type of fracking that uses fluoropropane, rather than a mix of water and chemical additives, to break apart underground rock formations. Other ministers, including Housing Minister Cecile Duflot of the Green Party, or EELV, and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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A Forecast of Our Energy Future; Why Common Solutions Don’t Work

In order to understand what solutions to our energy predicament will or won’t work, it is necessary to understand the true nature of our energy predicament. Most solutions fail because analysts assume that the nature of our energy problem is quite different from what it really is. Analysts assume that our problem is a slowly developing long-term problem, when in fact, it is a problem that is at our door step right now. The point that most analysts miss is that our energy problem behaves very much like a near-term financial problem . We will discuss why this happens. This near-term financial problem is bound to work itself out in a way that leads to huge job losses and governmental changes in the near term. Our mitigation strategies need to be considered […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Big oil companies find it harder to turn a buck

Judging by pump prices, drivers might think oil companies were rolling in profits that only move higher. Lately, though, the big boys in the global oil industry are finding that earning a buck isn’t as easy as it used to be. Royal Dutch Shell, for instance, just announced that fourth quarter earnings would fall woefully short of expectations. The Anglo-Dutch energy giant warned its quarterly profits will be down 70 percent from a year earlier. Full year earnings, meanwhile, are expected to be a little more than half of what they were the previous year. The news hasn’t been much cheerier for Shell’s fellow Big Oil stalwarts. ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, saw profits fall by more than 50 percent in the second quarter to their lowest level in more than three years. Chevron and Total, likewise, are warning the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Peak Oil vs. Peak Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peak Oil is a controversial concept. Some people actually think that the production of oil in nature is continuous (which is a tiny bit, but hardly at all, true) so we can keep pumping oil out of the ground and it will just keep being produced by tiny microbes. But aside from that particular, and annoying, made-up controversy, “real” Peak Oil (or should I say Peak Real Oil) is still controversial. Peak Oil is defined as the moment when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction occurs, and thereafter production declines steadily, like on a bell curve. But that is, in my view, the wrong way to look at it. I would like to propose a different way, and to understand this approach we first must understand chocolate chip cookies. Which is not difficult. If you make a batch of chocolate chip cookies, then […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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WTI Oil Falls on Emerging-Market Risk

West Texas Intermediate crude fell from the highest level of 2014 on concern that developing economies may shrink. The U.S. benchmark grade’s discount to Brent oil narrowed to the least in more than three months. Futures dropped 0.8 percent. Emerging-market currencies weakened this week as Chinese growth slowed and the Federal Reserve further cut stimulus. About $1.8 trillion has been erased from the value of equities worldwide in January. The WTI-Brent spread slipped as cold weather in the eastern U.S. bolstered the relative value of the U.S. grade. “We’re seeing a bit more correlation between oil and the global markets,” said Rob Haworth, a senior investment strategist in Seattle at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, which oversees about $110 billion of assets. “Some of the concern about emerging markets is bleeding into crude.” WTI for March delivery fell 74 cents to settle at $97.49 a barrel on the New York […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple