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America Blows Past the World in Oil and Natural Gas

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America is poised to produce far more oil and natural gas over the next five years than any other country in the world, according to a new report.

Why it matters: It shows how America, already the world’s largest oil and gas producer, is poised to cement that position, with pivotal implications for geopolitics and climate change.

By the numbers: The United States could produce just over 24 billion barrels of oil equivalent over the next five years, according to a report by two advocacy groups, the Global Gas and Oil Network and Oil Change International, which analyzed projection data from research firm Rystad Energy.

This works out to be roughly 13.2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, a figure that includes both oil and natural gas. . .

Much of this growth is coming from the Permian Basin across West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, which the report says would account for nearly 40% of new U.S. oil and gas production in the next 30 years.

(Read more from “America Blows Past the World in Oil and Natural Gas” HERE)

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Insufficient Pipelines Hiked Natural Gas Price

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesNew England’s electric grid operator says a lack of pipelines is driving the price up for natural gas, and hiked wholesale electricity prices in the region by 55 percent last year.

ISO-New England said Tuesday that the average price of wholesale electric energy rose to $56.06 per megawatt hour, up from a historic low of $36.09 in 2012.

Read more from this story HERE.

Energy Manipulation

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Why is it that natural gas sells in the U.S. for $3.94 per 1,000 cubic feet and in Europe and Japan for $11.60 and $17, respectively? Part of the answer is our huge supply. With high-tech methods of extraction and with discovery of vast gas-rich shale deposits, estimated reserves are about 2.4 quadrillion cubic feet. That translates into more than a 100-year supply of natural gas at current usage rates. What partially explains the high European and Japanese prices is the fact that global natural gas markets are not integrated. Washington has stringent export restrictions on natural gas.

Naturally, the next question is: Why are there natural gas export restrictions? Just follow the money. According to OpenSecrets.org, The Dow Chemical Co. “posted record lobbying expenditures last year, spending nearly $12 million, and is on pace to eclipse that number this year.” The company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars contributing to the political campaigns of congressmen who support export restrictions. Natural gas is a raw material for Dow. It benefits financially from cheap gas prices, which it fears would rise if Congress were to lift export restrictions. Dow argues, “Continuing optimism for U.S. manufacturing is founded on the prospect of an adequate, reliable and reasonably priced supply of natural gas.” Of course, Dow and other big users of natural gas get support from environmentalists, who are anti-drilling and anticipate that export restrictions will serve their ends.

Big natural gas users and environmentalists have foreign allies, suggested by the statement of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who told Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, that rising American shale gas production is “an inevitable threat.” Nigeria’s oil minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, agrees, saying that U.S. shale oil is a “grave concern.” In light of these foreign “concerns” about U.S. energy production, one wonders whether foreign countries have given financial aid to U.S. politicians, environmentalists and other groups that are waging war against domestic oil and natural gas drilling. It would surely be in their interests to do everything in their power to keep the West dependent on OPEC nations for oil and gas.

Read more from this story HERE.

China Seeks Foothold in Arctic Group As Competition Heats Up for Region’s Resources

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Photo Credit: State DepartmentChina is one of several countries hoping to obtain a foothold in a grouping of nations with territory lying within the Arctic Circle, a resource-rich area of fast-growing economic and strategic significance.

Beijing’s application for observer status at the Arctic Council, which meets in northern Sweden on Wednesday, requires the approval of all eight current members of the intergovernmental body, and some analysts are urging the United States to block it, pointing to China’s territorial disputes with neighboring countries and some of its policies at home.

The rising importance of the Arctic lies in its huge oil and gas potential, and experts predict virtually ice-free summers in the coming decades, making the region more accessible and navigable, and triggering concerns about potential harm to sensitive ecosystems.

A much-cited U.S. Geological Survey study in 2008 found that “the Arctic accounts for about 13 percent of the undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids in the world.”

Geopolitical competition among Arctic nations has been heating up in recent years, and a Russian security strategy released in 2009 warned of the possibility of military conflict over the region’s resources.

Read more from this story HERE.

Governor Parnell, Anchorage Mayor Sullivan Clash on South Central Energy Crisis

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photo credit: jber

Where Southcentral will get its energy in the near future was up for debate between the Anchorage mayor and the governor at the Resource Development Council’s annual conference.

“Everyone needs affordable energy,” said Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan during his opening remarks Nov. 14, and added it was almost a given that Southcentral would be importing natural gas in the near future to bridge supply shortages projected for the 2014-15 winter.

Speaking a few minutes later during the same opening session, Gov. Sean Parnell disagreed.

“Mayor Sullivan, importing gas, I don’t think so,” Parnell said. “We have got to do better than that. And I will work my tail off, to make sure that we don’t have to do that. My hope is that these incentives will work in Cook Inlet so that’s not necessary. Not when our resources here are so vast.

“Importing has got to be a last option, or a last resort.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Great Alaska Shutout

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President Obama is campaigning as a champion of the oil and gas boom he’s had nothing to do with, and even as his regulators try to stifle it. The latest example is the Interior Department’s little-noticed August decision to close off from drilling nearly half of the 23.5 million acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

The area is called the National Petroleum Reserve because in 1976 Congress designated it as a strategic oil and natural gas stockpile to meet the “energy needs of the nation.” Alaska favors exploration in nearly the entire reserve. The feds had been reviewing four potential development plans, and the state of Alaska had strongly objected to the most restrictive of the four. Sure enough, that was the plan Interior chose.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says his plan “will help the industry bring energy safely to market from this remote location, while also protecting wildlife and subsistence rights of Alaska Natives.” He added that the proposal will expand “safe and responsible oil and gas development, and builds on our efforts to help companies develop the infrastructure that’s needed to bring supplies online.”

The problem is almost no one in the energy industry and few in Alaska agree with him. In an August 22 letter to Mr. Salazar, the entire Alaska delegation in Congress—Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski and Representative Don Young—call it “the largest wholesale land withdrawal and blocking of access to an energy resource by the federal government in decades.” This decision, they add, “will cause serious harm to the economy and energy security of the United States, as well as to the state of Alaska.” Mr. Begich is a Democrat.

The letter also says the ruling “will significantly limit options for a pipeline” through the reserve. This pipeline has long been sought to transport oil and gas from the Chukchi Sea, the North Slope and future Arctic drilling. Mr. Salazar insists that a pipeline could still be built, but given the Obama Administration’s decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline, Alaskans are right to be skeptical.

Read more from this article HERE.

Tentative oil plan for Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve

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The U.S. Interior Department opened the door to the possibility of an oil pipeline across the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and to oil and gas leasing on 11.8 million acres of it.

The draft development proposal unveiled Monday by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar represents the federal government’s first coordinated plan for the 22-million-acre reserve, which has seen limited oil production in recent years despite controversy over potential threats to wildlife.

The reserve, which lies west of the oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope, is home to the famous Western Arctic caribou herd, numbering about 325,000, and a smaller herd of 45,000 caribou that migrates near Teshekpuk Lake.

The largest single block of public land in the country, the reserve contains an estimated 549 million barrels of economically recoverable oil and 8.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The compromise plan — unveiled after a long study that collected more than 400,000 public comments — would continue to protect some of the most ecologically sensitive areas, including Teshekpuk Lake, home to tens of thousands of geese and brant that migrate to the far north during sunny Arctic summers.

Read more from this story HERE.