Category:

Hurricane Iselle Set to Be First Over Hawaii in 22 Years

Hurricane Iselle grounded flights, shut tourist areas and closed government offices as it approached Hawaii and threatened the first direct strike on the islands in 22 years. Iselle had top winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour and was 70 miles southeast of Hilo as of 8 p.m. local time on Aug. 7, the U.S. Central Pacific Hurricane Center said . It’s forecast to strike the Big Island overnight, and if it retains hurricane strength, it would be the first such system to hit the state since 1992. “Iselle is expected to make landfall as a Category 1 storm, and in doing so would become the first recorded hurricane landfall on the Big Island of Hawaii,” Scott Stransky, principal scientist at catastrophe-modeling firm AIR Worldwide based in Boston , said by e-mail. Farther east, Hurricane Julio had top winds approaching 115 mph and was traveling west. The storm […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Permian Drilling Boom Prompts Talk of Sand Shortage

Concho Resources Inc. (CXO) is facing delays of several hours to get sand for fracking in the Permian Basin as a drilling boom in West Texas drives up demand and creates delivery bottlenecks. Talk of a sand shortage is most prominent in the Delaware Basin region of the play, Joe Wright, chief operating officer of the Midland, Texas-based company, said on its earnings conference call today. The Permian Basin accounts for 30 percent of the 1,889 active U.S. drilling rigs, according to Baker Hughes Inc. (BHI) “There has been a lot of chatter around sand shortages,” Wright said. “It’s really more of a transportation of sand, or distribution of sand” issue, he said. Wright expects the delays to persist during the next 30 days. The use of sand for fracking in the U.S. and Canada is expected to increase 17 percent a year, reaching 130 billion pounds (59 billion […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Investment decision made for Cameron LNG

French energy company said Thursday it made a final investment decision on a liquefied natural gas plant planned for Louisiana. GDF Suez is a partner with Cameron LNG for the LNG plant planned for Hackberry, La. The plant is designed to produce and export up to 12 million tons of LNG per year. "We are very pleased to partner in one of the first LNG export projects in the United States," Gerard Mestrallet , president and chief executive officer of GDF Suez said in a statement . Production of the facility should be completed in 2019 at a cost of $10 billion. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued its final environmental impact statement on the Cameron LNG facility in early May. The construction and operation of the facility would result in some environmental damage, but that damage would be rendered "less-than-significant" by the company’s proposed mitigation strategies, FERC said. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Canada tightens sanctions noose on Russia

Canadian Prime Minister said new economic pressure on Russia targets technology used for oil exploration and extraction. Harper said he had grave concerns over Russia’s provocative military action in eastern Ukraine. Pro-Russian separatists there are suspected of playing a role in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet last month, killing all 295 people on board. The prime minister said he was imposing a travel ban on 19 Russian and Ukrainian individuals and economic sanctions on close to two dozen Russian and Ukrainian groups. "We are also committed to imposing the necessary regulations to enact export restrictions on technologies used in Russia’s oil exploration and extraction sector," Harper said in a statement Wednesday. "Those will be implemented in parallel with our allies." Harper in July announced sanctions against 10 separate Russian entities, including Russian independent gas company Novatek and Gazprombank, the financial arm of Russian gas giant Gazprom. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.S. gas prices should continue decline

U.S. gasoline prices have declined steadily in line with the drop in crude oil prices attributed to ample supply, the U.S. Energy Department said. The Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department, said the national average price for a gallon of gasoline as of Aug. 4 was $3.52, more than 3 percent lower than the same time last year. Motor club AAA reports a national average price Thursday for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline at $3.47, 18 cents cheaper than one month ago. EIA said crude oil prices, which account for the bulk of the price at the pump, are down globally because of ample supply compared with demand. EIA forecasts show retail gasoline prices have been on a general decline since around June. Trend lines suggest the price at the pump should continue to decline slowly through at least September. Long-term, EIA expects retail […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

More inland rigs in U.S. than anywhere else

Oil services company Baker Hughes said Thursday there were more rigs actively exploring for oil or gas in the United States than any place else in the world. Baker Hughes published its monthly rig count for July. It shows 1,819 rigs active in the United States, compared with the 1,394 rigs combined for Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. The closest rival to the United States for July was the Middle East with 378. Rig counts are an indication of the number of drilling rigs actively exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. Onshore shale oil and natural gas basins are contributed to the increase in U.S. production in part due to advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the controversial practice dubbed fracking. The United States is on pace to become a world leader in oil and gas production. The U.S. Energy […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Watch: Will this be the first Texas city to ban fracking?

It was almost dinnertime when an ice cream truck lazily made its way through the North Texas subdivision. A few kids came running. Maile Bush’s children weren’t among them, because she won’t let them go outside. The family moved to Denton for their slice of heaven. That was, she said, before the fracking industry came knocking. “You constantly live in a state of terror because you have no idea what they’re doing precisely and they don’t tell you,” Bush said. “But your home is at risk. Your family is at risk.” Located 40 miles north of Dallas, Denton sits atop the Barnett Shale, one of the largest natural gas deposits in the nation. The Barnett Shale is also home to the most intensive gas drilling operations ever attempted in an urban area. Now Bush is sandwiched between a gas well and a compressor station, and her […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Peak oil proponents still dancing around reality

The debate over whether we are running out of oil sometimes resembles the medieval controversy over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. By redefining the size of the pin and the agility of the angels, today’s “peak oil” proponents have managed to continue the argument. The characters have changed though. Matthew Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, casting doubt on Saudi oil production, died in August 2010, and the Oil Drum website closed down last September. New disputants, including economist James Hamilton from the University of California, and Stephen Kopits, the managing director of the consultancy Douglas-Westwood, argue that oil production is limited by geology and is a severe drag on economic growth. These factors will ultimately drive up the oil price if they are right. On the other side of the argument, voices such as the Reuters columnist John Kemp, who states […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Russian consumers prepared to swallow food ban

Less than 24 hours after Vladimir Putin issued а blanket ban on western meat, dairy and other produce, Dmitry Kornilov, a well-heeled Moscow shopper, had one thing to say to the Russian president: keep up the good work. Never mind that Mr Kornilov, an economist, shops at one of the capital’s most expensive, import-laden grocery stores, travels regularly to the US and was picking up a bottle of French white on his way to getting a manicure. Like many in Russia, he believes Mr Putin was right to respond to three rounds of serious western sanctions . “If someone comes up to the street and insults you not once, not twice but three times, the third time you’re going to answer back,” Mr Kornilev said. “Pride is not just in a person, it is in a nation.” Over the past six months, Mr Putin’s popularity has risen in line […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Is the Peak Oil Myth Dead?

In his 2005 New York Times best-selling book  Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy , renowned oil analyst Matthew Simmons outlined his belief that Saudi Arabia’s giant Ghawar oil field would soon begin a terminal decline that would result in permanently falling global oil production. Indeed, from the post-recession lows of 2003 until peaking in 2008, oil prices seemed to prove peak oil proponents correct — with prices seemingly on a long-term exponential increase. However, what Mr. Simmons and other peak oil theorists failed to consider is that America’s shale oil revolution could not only make up for Ghawar’s production fall, but even replace the field entirely. Permian Basin: dethroning the Saudis According to Pioneer Natural Resources , the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico holds an estimated 75 billion barrels of recoverable oil, an estimate that is up 50% in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple