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Yemen strikes will continue until Hadi can rule: Saudi spokesman

RIYADH (Reuters) – Air strikes in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia will continue until Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who left the country on Thursday, is able to rule, a Saudi military spokesman said on Sunday. Riyadh announced early on Thursday that it and nine other Sunni Muslim countries had commenced air strikes against the Shi’ite Houthi militia, who are allied to the kingdom’s main regional foe Iran. Iran, which denies helping the Houthis, has strongly condemned the offensive. "We will set the conditions necessary to allow the president and his government to run the country," said Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, spokesman for the coalition. "The Yemeni army was almost dismantled (by internal fractures after a 2011 uprising) … one of the conditions is for them to take over. We will continue to attack the militias, we will keep them under pressure, until the conditions become very favorable for […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Fighting in Aden as Yemen’s Houthis make gains

ADEN (Reuters) – Iran-allied Houthi militiamen pushed into the northeastern outskirts of the Yemeni port city of Aden on Monday amid heavy clashes with loyalists of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, sources on both sides said. Artillery and rocket fire struck the area on the approaches to the city, Hadi’s fighters said, after the Houthis made a fresh advance from the east along an Arabian Sea coast road. Aden is Hadi’s last bastion of control in Yemen and remains besieged despite a fifth day of Saudi-led air strikes aimed at checking the Houthi gains. North of Aden, residents in the city of Dhalea said Houthi fighters backed by allied army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh shelled militia opponents with tanks and artillery. Five civilians were killed in heavy street fighting, they said. Saudi Arabia, backed by regional Sunni Muslim allies, launched an air campaign to support Hadi […]

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Saudi Arabia wants nuclear weapons

Saudi Arabia wants nuclear weapons thumbnail Saudi Arabia will not rule out building or acquiring nuclear weapons , the country’s ambassador to the United States has indicated. Asked whether Saudi Arabia would ever build nuclear weapons in an interview with US news channel CNN, Adel Al-Jubeir said the subject was “not something we would discuss publicly”. Pressed later on the issue he said: “This is not something that I can comment on, nor would I comment on.” The ambassador’s reticence to rule out a military nuclear programme may reignite concerns that the autocratic monarchy has its eye on a nuclear arsenal. Western intelligence agencies believe that the Saudi monarchy paid for up to 60% of Pakistan’s nuclear programme in return for the ability to buy warheads for itself at short notice, the Guardian newspaper reported in 2010. The two countries maintain close relations and are sometimes said to have […]

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Fukushima — A litany of failures costing hundreds of millions

Fukushima — A litany of failures costing hundreds of millions thumbnail Four years after the earthquake and resulting tsunami that killed 18,000 people and destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plan in Japan, the tragedy is far from being over. Despite the litany of failures in cleaning up the mess, Japan carries on. The daunting task of cleanup at the Fukushima nuclear power plant site, where three of six reactors melted down, and one other is badly damaged, has been an ongoing chore that seems to have no end. And to add insult to injury, Japanese government auditors revealed this past week that over one-third of the $2.0 billion of taxpayer money earmarked for the cleanup has been wasted. But believe it or not, tourists are beginning to return to the area as radiation fears have faded, perhaps due to positive information being issued to the public by government […]

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Exclusive: Exxon eyes 850,000 bpd goal for Beaumont refinery expansion -sources

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp is considering scaling up plans for a multibillion-dollar expansion of its Beaumont, Texas, oil refinery to make it one of the largest in the world, according to sources familiar with the plans. Since at least last summer, Exxon has been quietly contemplating a major project to expand Beaumont in what would be the biggest U.S. refinery investment since the shale revolution, which has transformed the country into a growing producer and handed refiners a profit windfall of cheap crude. Initially the company was considering doubling the current 344,600-barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity by 2020, Reuters reported last year. Now it may go as high as 850,000 bpd by the end of the decade, according to the sources, a figure that would make it the largest U.S. plant and fourth-largest in the world. The latest details of the expansion plan, on which it has not made […]

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In Texas oil town, early signs of economic strain as drilling slows

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sales tax receipts in the thriving oil town of Midland, Texas, fell this month, only the second decline in five years and one of the first signs of how low oil prices are beginning to ripple beyond oil company bottom lines and into the wider economy. Midland’s sales tax revenues, which reflect commercial and residential spending, dipped to $5.119 million in March from $5.126 million in March 2014, according to data from the Texas Comptroller released last week. The fall was slight, but it was just the second year-over-year decline since April 2010, when an oil production boom was just beginning to transform Midland. It also marks a stark and potentially protracted turnaround from recent years: last year in March, when oil prices soared above $100 a barrel, sales tax receipts increased 11 percent. "These numbers are more significant to me than anything else," said […]

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Big Oil Pressured Scientists Over Fracking Wastewater’s Link to Quakes

In November 2013, Austin Holland, Oklahoma’s state seismologist, got a request that made him nervous. It was from David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma, which houses the Oklahoma Geological Survey where Holland works. Boren, a former U.S. senator, asked Holland to his office for coffee with Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, one of Oklahoma’s largest oil and gas operators. Boren sits on the board of Continental, and Hamm is a big donor to the university, giving $20 million in 2011 for a new diabetes center. Says Holland: “It was just a little bit intimidating.” Holland had been studying possible links between a rise in seismic activity in Oklahoma and the rapid increase in oil and gas production, the state’s largest industry. During the meeting, Hamm requested that Holland be careful when publicly discussing the possible connection between oil and gas operations and a big […]

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U.S. oil production growth in 2014 was largest in more than 100 years

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Petroleum Supply Monthly U.S. crude oil production (including lease condensate) increased during 2014 by 1.2 million barrels per day (bbl/d) to 8.7 million bbl/d, the largest volume increase since recordkeeping began in 1900. On a percentage basis, output in 2014 increased by 16.2%, the highest growth rate since 1940. Most of the increase during 2014 came from tight oil plays in North Dakota, Texas, and New Mexico where hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling were used to produce oil from shale formations. In percentage terms, the 2014 increase is the largest in more than six decades. Annual increases in crude oil production regularly surpassed 15% in the first half of the 20th century, but those changes were relatively less in absolute terms because production levels were much lower than they are now. Crude oil production in the United States has increased in each of the […]

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Supply or Demand? Peak Oil with Richard Heinberg and James Hamilton

3 Comments on "Supply or Demand? Peak Oil with Richard Heinberg and James Hamilton" Davy on Sat, 28th Mar 2015 10:10 am  Why don’t these academic greenie weennies divest out of the car culture and show real backbone? Why don’t they admit that no matter how much they want to have their cake and eat it there are no free lunches? Why don’t they admit or try to understand that BAU is carbon and without carbon there is no BAU. Then while they are at it admit without BAU there is no Stanford. This is just another greenie joke of feel-goodism that will go nowhere. If you want to change things then lobby government to restrict liquid fuels enough to put the economy in a tailspin so we can begin the power down that will involve huge changes to bad attitudes, lifestyles, and economic activity. This power down will […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Why Oil Could Be Facing A 20-Year Bear Market

In the past, the usual “oil crisis” was caused by self-serving news items of an oil shortage, causing soaring prices. Just 2-3 years ago, the fear mongers said that the world had “seen peak oil,” meaning that oil production would be on a long term decline and there would be big shortages. Instead, oil production is now at a high The current crisis is one of plunging oil prices and a glut as far as the eye can see. Oil production, after prices have fallen over 60%, is at a new high. As we predicted late last year, oil producers are making up for plummeting income by pumping even more. Rig counts in production are plunging, but these are from the low production wells. The high producers are still pumping away. In fact, the latest rig count even shows that there is little additional reduction in producing rigs. The […]

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