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“Made in China 2025” plan unveiled to boost manufacturing

BEIJING, May 19 (Xinhua) — China’s State Council has unveiled a ten-year national plan, Made in China 2025, designed to transform China from a manufacturing giant into a world manufacturing power. The plan, endorsed by Premier Li Keqiang , is the country’s first action plan focusing on promoting manufacturing, a notice said on Tuesday. The plan will be followed by another two plans in order to transform China into a leading manufacturing power by the year 2049, which marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Nine tasks have been identified as priorities: improving manufacturing innovation, integrating technology and industry, strengthening the industrial base, fostering Chinese brands, enforcing green manufacturing, promoting breakthroughs in 10 key sectors, advancing restructuring of the manufacturing sector, promoting service-oriented manufacturing and manufacturing-related service industries, and internationalizing manufacturing. The 10 key sectors are new information technology, numerical control tools and […]

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Oil groups ask court to temporarily block U.S. fracking rules

WASHINGTON Two oil and gas groups have asked a federal court to block the implementation new U.S. rules for hydraulic fracturing on public lands until their lawsuit challenging the regulations is resolved. The Independent Petroleum Association Of America (IPAA) and the Western Energy Alliance filed a motion on Friday for a preliminary injunction to prevent the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management from enforcing the regulations, arguing the standards will cause their members irreparable harm. The regulations, finalized in March, would require companies to provide data on the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and to take steps to prevent leakage from oil and gas wells on federally owned land. They do not cover wells on private land. Fracking, involves the injection of large amounts of water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure to extract fuel. In their filing with the U.S. District Court for the District […]

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Protesters gather in Seattle to block access to Shell oil rig

SEATTLE About 200 protesters gathered at the Port of Seattle on Monday to block access to a Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig headed for the Arctic this summer to resume exploration for oil and gas reserves. Holding signs reading "Shell No" and "Seattle Loves the Arctic," protesters gathered early to prevent workers from reaching the rig, one of two that Shell will store in Seattle before sending to the Chukchi Sea off Alaska. Environmental groups have planned days of demonstrations over Shell’s plans, saying drilling in the icy Arctic region, where weather changes rapidly, could lead to a catastrophic spill that would be next to impossible to clean up. They also say drilling would threaten the Arctic’s vast layer of sea ice that helps regulate the global temperature and that they say has already been disappearing as a result of global warming. "I’m joining in solidarity with the environmental […]

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Bakken Rig Count Down to 79

Rig Count Falls by One The Bakken-Three Forks rig count fell this week to 79 rigs running across our coverage area by midday Friday. In recent Bakken news, the SEC froze the assets of North Dakota Developments, LLC (“NDD”) and its principles, claiming they defrauded over 980 investors from 66 different countries of $62 million dollars intended to go towards Bakken man camps. Read more: Bakken Man Camps Center of Ponzi-Type Scheme The U.S. rig count fell by six, ending with 888 rigs running by midday Friday.  A total of 223 rigs were targeting natural gas (an increase of two from the previous week) and 660 were targeting oil in the U.S. (eight less than the previous week). The remainder were drilling service wells (e.g. disposal wells, injection wells, etc.)    79 rigs are running in the Williston Basin across MT, ND, and SD. 79 are in ND alone. […]

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Crude-Oil Exports to Canada Kept U.S. Gulf Coast Storage Hubs Below Capacity

Crude-oil exports to Canada provided a crucial relief valve for U.S. producers this year, according to a new report from data provider Genscape Inc. Almost 19 million barrels were shipped from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Canada’s eastern coast from the beginning of the year through early May, according to Genscape. Without those shipments, storage terminals in Corpus Christi, Texas, would have run out of capacity by now, according to the report, which is slated to be released on Wednesday. Though federal law prohibits exports of most U.S. crude oil, there is an exception for shipments to Canada. As production in the U.S. and in Canada has increased in recent years, more oil has criss-crossed the border, allowing both countries to import less crude oil from outside North America. Growing U.S. oil output has raised concerns among traders that some storage locations could reach full capacity. If an area […]

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Texas Prohibits Local Fracking Bans

A natural gas-fueled drilling rig is shown earlier this year in Mentone, Texas. Texas, which has benefited from fracking, has tripled its production of oil in the past five years. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images AUSTIN, Texas—Last year, a city in North Texas banned fracking. State lawmakers want to make sure that never happens again. On Monday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that prohibits bans of hydraulic fracturing altogether and makes it much harder for municipal and county governments to control where oil and gas wells can be drilled. Similar efforts are cropping up in states including New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado and Oklahoma, where both chambers of the legislature have passed a bill that limits local governments to “reasonable” restrictions on oil and gas activities. This is all part of a broader legislative and judicial effort, backed by the oil industry, to limit local governments’ ability to regulate […]

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Nonpetroleum share of transportation energy at highest level since 1954

Republished May 18, 2015, 9:30 a.m. to correct an error in the graph Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review In the United States, petroleum is by far the most-consumed transportation fuel. But recently the share of fuels other than petroleum for U.S. transportation has increased to its highest level since 1954, a time when the use of coal-fired steam locomotives was declining and automobile use was growing rapidly. The recent increase can be mostly attributed to increased blending of biomass-based fuels with traditional vehicle fuels and growing use of natural gas in the transportation sector. After nearly 50 years of relative stability at about 4%, the nonpetroleum share started increasing steadily in the mid-2000s, reaching 8.5% in 2014. Of the nonpetroleum fuels used for transportation, fuel ethanol has grown most rapidly in recent years, increasing by nearly one quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) between 2000 and 2014. […]

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Texas RRC March Production Data

The Texas RRC is out with their latest Oil and Gas Production Data . Looks like oil production has leveled out with March production pretty much level with February. All RRC data is trough March 015. Texas Crude Only I always show the last 6 months or the RRC data in order to get a pretty good indication of which way data production is moving. From the data you can see that December was a very good month but January was just awful. February was a lot better and March was about the same as February. The chart above was created by Dean Fantazzini, PhD, of the Moscow School of Economics. He has developed an algorithm which predicts what the data will reflect after the final data has come in. His data suggests that Texas crude has plateaued. For more on the underlying methodology of Dr. Fantazzini see: Nowcasting Texas RRC […]

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Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection

Richard Thornton / Shutterstock.com Environmentalists filed a motion requesting a preliminary injunction today in a California court to immediately stop the daily illegal injection of millions of gallons of oil field wastewater into protected groundwater aquifers in the state. Last week, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity in Alameda County Superior Court that challenges California regulators’ emergency rules meant to rein in the state’s disastrous Underground Injection Control (UIC) program . Officials with the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) have admitted that their agency improperly permitted more than 2,500 wells to pump oil industry wastewater and fluids from enhanced oil recovery techniques like acidization and steam flooding into groundwater aquifers that should be protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. Instead of shutting down the offending wells, however, DOGGR issued emergency rules last February […]

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Ukraine Says It Has Captured 2 Russian Soldiers

MOSCOW — The Ukrainian government said on Monday that it had captured two wounded Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine and would prosecute them on terrorism charges, prompting a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin to repeat the Kremlin’s longstanding denial that any Russian troops had been deployed across the border. The soldiers were identified by Gen. Viktor Muzhenko, the chief of the general staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as Capt. Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sgt. Aleksandr Aleksandrov of the Third Special Forces Brigade, which is based in Togliatti, a city in southern Russia . Russia’s denials that its active duty soldiers have been fighting in eastern Ukraine have continued despite substantial evidence to the contrary, including the funerals of young Russian soldiers killed in action. The Kremlin has acknowledged that some Russians have participated in the fighting, but says that they are volunteers who often choose to fight […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple