Category:

Venezuela’s Economy Suffers as Import Schemes Siphon Billions

Photo Venezuelan oil workers demonstrating against the United States in March. During the boom years of high oil prices, little was done to stop the billions that disappeared through corruption and fraud. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times CARACAS, Venezuela — The weed whackers were $12,300. Each. Then there was the $1.8 million machinery to kill and gut chickens. When the police checked it, they found a worthless jumble of rusted scrap metal. And there were the businessmen who collected $74 million to ship chemicals and other products from abroad — but sent almost nothing in return. For years, Venezuela has had a hole in its pocket, a very big hole. The government’s complex currency system has led to exorbitant schemes by importers, who wildly inflate the value of goods brought into the country to grab American dollars at rock-bottom exchange rates. Sometimes, they fake the shipments […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

World’s Worst Air Spurs Modi’s $25 Billion Utility Clean-Up Push

Barely 16 miles from central Delhi, a 40-year-old coal-fired power plant run by NTPC Ltd. stands testament to the bargain struck by India’s capital city: The world’s dirtiest air for electricity. The state-owned utility is now seeking to cut emissions across its facilities in India, starting with its oldest — the one in Delhi. NTPC plans to spend 12 billion rupees ($189 million) annually on technology upgrades, a company official said, asking not to identified as the person isn’t authorized to speak on the subject. “Their Badarpur plant is running way beyond its life,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general at Centre for Science and Environment , a lobby group based in the city. “The result is its coal consumption is very high and so are the emissions.” NTPC’s clean-up attempt is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s $25 billion spending proposal to revamp aging utilities as he seeks […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Beneath Antarctica, a wonderland of oil awaits

A report in The New York Times published on Monday revealed that the Chinese are aggressively engaged in securing the country’s energy future overseas. The People’s Republic is courting Latin American governments, securing its ties to African strongmen, is building up a military presence in the South China Sea, and has sent hundreds of advisors to the Caribbean; all in pursuit of energy security. One of the PRC’s latest targets is the frozen continent of Antarctica, where an international accord reached in 1959 prohibits mining and military activity. “But [Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to a south Australian port last autumn] was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty expires in 2048,” The Times reported, “or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say.” And the stakes are high for China and […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
Category:

‘Beyond petroleum’ – fracking’s collapse heralds the arrival of peak oil

Despite the exploitation of unconventional oil resources like high-cost tar sands (pictured in Canada) and shales, peak oil really is upon us. Photo: Gord McKenna via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND). The ‘death of peak oil’ has been much exaggerated, writes Paul Mobbs. Take out high-cost ‘unconventional’ oil and production peaked ten years ago, and even North America’s fracking and tar sands boom has failed to open up new resources both big enough to make good the shortfall, and cheap enough to reward investors. We really do need to be thinking ‘beyond petroleum’. This is the cleft stick within today’s global energy supply: too little ‘cheap energy’ to enable economic growth, too low a return on capital to allow investment in higher production. A few weeks ago tremors rocked the world of ‘fracking’ in the USA – though few heard them. The US Energy Information Agency (USEIA) had issued its latest […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
Category:

U.S. shale oil firms say refracking not the best path in downturn

HOUSTON/WILLISTON, N.D. (Reuters) – Refracking, the practice of fracking an oil and gas well a second time, is still too unpredictable to rely on as a way to slash costs and increase output during the oil price slump, top U.S. shale oil executives said on Tuesday. Oilfield service companies, including Schlumberger NV and Baker Hughes Inc., have touted refracking as a cheap way to revive output from existing shale wells. Output from existing wells, measured in barrels per day, normally drops as much as 70 percent in the year of operation. Also, some wells were not thoroughly fracked the first time. But executives from producers say the refracking technology, while promising, remains tricky. "We have not tried any refracks. Our outlook on that is that it is really technical," said Bill Thomas, CEO of EOG Resources Inc., widely regarded as one of the most efficient U.S. shale oil producers. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Canadian oil trains shift to carry less-volatile crude

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – A growing share of Canadian oil-by-rail traffic is made up of tough-to-ignite undiluted heavy crude and raw bitumen, say industry executives, as companies scramble to cut expenditures with the price of crude down more than 40 percent since June. By eliminating the cost of diluting with ultra-light condensate, heavy oil offers rail shippers an opportunity to claw back a few dollars per barrel in transportation costs. Official data does not break down the different Canadian crudes shipped by rail but interviews with industry executives suggest undiluted heavy and raw bitumen shipments now make up roughly a quarter of the estimated 200,000 barrel per day (bpd) oil-by-rail market. An added bonus is that heavy crude and bitumen are far less combustible than the Bakken and Canadian synthetic crudes involved in fiery crashes that spurred the Canadian and U.S. governments on Friday to tighten safety rules for […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Rising oil prices put U.S. driving recovery at risk: Kemp

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. gasoline demand is running around 300,000 barrels per day above last year’s level, as lower pump prices and continued economic expansion encourage motorists to use their cars more. Estimates for gasoline supplied to U.S. customers published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show demand consistently running above the same point in 2014 There is no way accurately to measure fuel consumption in real time. EIA estimates product supplied as a residual from reported refinery output, imports, exports and stock changes. Errors estimating the other terms therefore result in errors estimating demand. Exports are particularly problematic because the agency does not survey these directly and has to the delayed publication of customs data. EIA’s estimating procedure can have problems allocating the disappearance of fuel between domestic use and exports particularly when the level of exports is changing rapidly. Nonetheless, the data show clearly large amounts of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Alberta Tory Dynasty at Risk as Voters Seek Change

Alberta, home to Canada’s vast oil sands, is preparing for a political shake-up for the first time in a generation as voters head to the polls Tuesday with surveys showing the Progressive Conservative’s 44-year dynasty may be coming to an end. Premier Jim Prentice is seeking to extend his Conservative party’s reign with a 13th-consecutive majority. Polls show the Tories, as the party is known, trailing Rachel Notley’s New Democrats and the right-leaning Wildrose under Brian Jean. An NDP victory may weigh on oil company earnings and share prices as the pro-labor party has pledged to raise corporate taxes and review the royalty payments made by producers, said AltaCorp analyst Jeremy McCrea. Prentice, who has led the province since September, called the early election just days after releasing a March budget designed to loosen the government’s reliance on oil revenue by increasing taxes on income, gasoline and alcohol. The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Radioactive and Short on Cash to Pay for Closures

The Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant is seen in the early morning hours in Middletown, Pennsylvania on March 28, 2011. Photographer: Jeff Fusco/Getty Images At the edge of Humboldt Bay in northern California lies a relic from the heyday of U.S. nuclear power. The reactor was shut down in 1976. The remaining cost to decommission the plant once and for all -– cleaning up lingering radiological dangers, dismantling the remains — will be about $441 million, according to its owner, PG&E Corp. The question is who will pay — for Humboldt Bay, and for dozens of other reactors that are in the process of closing or might soon. Nuclear operators like PG&E are supposed to lay up enough money to cover the costs, similar to how corporations fund pensions. Turns out, most haven’t. PG&E’s Humboldt Bay trust fund, for instance, is currently $308 million short, according to a company […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Marcellus Shale Extraction Fluids Discovered in 3 Water Samples

Chemical compounds used to extract natural gas were found in three water samples from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The contamination occurred at three Bradford County households whose owners settled a lawsuit with Chesapeake Energy Corp. in 2012 after natural gas polluted their well water. The additional chemicals may have mixed with groundwater after a pit leak from a conventional well or when nearby drilling drove them toward the aquifer, according to the study. “We’re not claiming that it’s from hydraulic fracturing,” Garth Llewellyn , a hydrogeologist at Appalachia Hydrogeologic & Environmental Consulting LLC, and the study’s lead author, said in a telephone interview Monday. “We’re not trying to make assertions where we shouldn’t be. We’re looking at all the possibilities.” In hydraulic fracturing, water and chemicals are blasted into rock formations to extract oil […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple