Paid $4.03 a gallon today....
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Drilling leaves fed lands because state, private acres are cheaper, says BLM chief
Posted: Mar 15, 2012
Written by
PHIL TAYLOR, Greenwire
Energy firms face fewer costs and regulatory obstacles when drilling on state and private lands than they do on public lands, where oil production fell last year, a top Obama administration official said today.
Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey said drilling in North Dakota's oil-rich Bakken deposit and other shale gas formations is also more economically promising than other plays under his agency's 250 million-acre estate.
The migration of drill rigs to nonfederal tracts in recent years is an economic decision, not because of Obama administration policies, he said.
"No doubt the aggressive development of shale gas and shale oil has led to a shift to private lands in the east and the south where there is less federal mineral estate," Abbey told a panel of Senate appropriators this morning. "Much of the easy plays are located right now on private mineral estate."
He said drilling on private and state lands is also exempt from federal regulations such as the National Environmental Policy Act and tribal and endangered species consultations that BLM by law must enforce on public lands. That means permitting times are often shorter elsewhere.
But he noted that industry holds more than 7,000 permits to drill on public lands that have not yet been used and that the administration has taken steps to increase certainty in the leasing stage.
"We inherited an onshore oil and gas program that was on the verge of collapse," Abbey said, noting that roughly half of all lease parcels were protested when the Obama administration came into office. BLM's oil and gas leasing reforms have cut protests down to about 35 percent, providing more certainty to industry, he said.
In addition, the pace of permitting for offshore oil and gas permits has increased significantly over the past year, said James Watson, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
From March to September last year, the agency took nearly 100 days to approve new deepwater well permits. But since September, the time has been cut to 62 days, he said.
The permitting debate comes in an election year in which the Obama administration has stressed that oil production nationwide is at an eight-year high and imports of foreign crude have fallen from 57 percent to 45 percent in the past four years.
At the same time, gasoline prices -- which have little correlation to domestic production -- continue to rise, threatening both the president's re-election and the nation's economic recovery.
But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) today said the administration should be forthright about whether the increase in domestic production is occurring on federal tracts.
Oil production fell by 14 percent in fiscal 2011 below the previous year on federal lands and waters, according to statistics provided last month by the Interior Department. Natural gas production fell 11 percent over the same period (Greenwire, Feb. 27).
The dip in production occurred mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, where a moratorium on deepwater drilling stunted exploration for much of 2010 in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Onshore oil production increased by 4 percent in 2011, with natural gas production falling by the same amount, according to the Interior statistics.
However, Abbey today said that onshore oil production was down last year and that natural gas production on federal lands was at its highest point in decades. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a White House briefing this week likewise said production of natural gas from federal lands in 2011 was "one of the best years we've had in the last decade."
Murkowski, who is ranking member of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, pressed Abbey and others to address the data discrepancy.
"We've got a situation where either the data from DOI is wrong or it has not been communicated adequately or appropriately to the secretary," she said. "Are we seeing an increase in production on public lands and offshore, or not?"
Abbey, while conceding a drop in oil production on BLM lands last year, said he was bullish about the future of both oil and natural gas.
"With the price of oil and the economy, I think they will continue to have an interest in drilling wherever such a source of oil exists," he told reporters after the hearing. "The natural gas production was the second highest in many, many decades off federal minerals."
Interior today said it tracks both sales-year data, which represents the year in which the oil or gas was sold, and accounting-year data, which is the year in which the federal government received the money.
Accounting-year data never change, whereas sales-year data change, or increase, often.
Sales-year data, which Interior said are more accurate, show onshore oil production on federal tracts was up by 4 percent in 2011, while natural gas production was down by the same amount.
Posted: Mar 15, 2012
Written by
PHIL TAYLOR, Greenwire
Energy firms face fewer costs and regulatory obstacles when drilling on state and private lands than they do on public lands, where oil production fell last year, a top Obama administration official said today.
Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey said drilling in North Dakota's oil-rich Bakken deposit and other shale gas formations is also more economically promising than other plays under his agency's 250 million-acre estate.
The migration of drill rigs to nonfederal tracts in recent years is an economic decision, not because of Obama administration policies, he said.
"No doubt the aggressive development of shale gas and shale oil has led to a shift to private lands in the east and the south where there is less federal mineral estate," Abbey told a panel of Senate appropriators this morning. "Much of the easy plays are located right now on private mineral estate."
He said drilling on private and state lands is also exempt from federal regulations such as the National Environmental Policy Act and tribal and endangered species consultations that BLM by law must enforce on public lands. That means permitting times are often shorter elsewhere.
But he noted that industry holds more than 7,000 permits to drill on public lands that have not yet been used and that the administration has taken steps to increase certainty in the leasing stage.
"We inherited an onshore oil and gas program that was on the verge of collapse," Abbey said, noting that roughly half of all lease parcels were protested when the Obama administration came into office. BLM's oil and gas leasing reforms have cut protests down to about 35 percent, providing more certainty to industry, he said.
In addition, the pace of permitting for offshore oil and gas permits has increased significantly over the past year, said James Watson, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
From March to September last year, the agency took nearly 100 days to approve new deepwater well permits. But since September, the time has been cut to 62 days, he said.
The permitting debate comes in an election year in which the Obama administration has stressed that oil production nationwide is at an eight-year high and imports of foreign crude have fallen from 57 percent to 45 percent in the past four years.
At the same time, gasoline prices -- which have little correlation to domestic production -- continue to rise, threatening both the president's re-election and the nation's economic recovery.
But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) today said the administration should be forthright about whether the increase in domestic production is occurring on federal tracts.
Oil production fell by 14 percent in fiscal 2011 below the previous year on federal lands and waters, according to statistics provided last month by the Interior Department. Natural gas production fell 11 percent over the same period (Greenwire, Feb. 27).
The dip in production occurred mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, where a moratorium on deepwater drilling stunted exploration for much of 2010 in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Onshore oil production increased by 4 percent in 2011, with natural gas production falling by the same amount, according to the Interior statistics.
However, Abbey today said that onshore oil production was down last year and that natural gas production on federal lands was at its highest point in decades. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a White House briefing this week likewise said production of natural gas from federal lands in 2011 was "one of the best years we've had in the last decade."
Murkowski, who is ranking member of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, pressed Abbey and others to address the data discrepancy.
"We've got a situation where either the data from DOI is wrong or it has not been communicated adequately or appropriately to the secretary," she said. "Are we seeing an increase in production on public lands and offshore, or not?"
Abbey, while conceding a drop in oil production on BLM lands last year, said he was bullish about the future of both oil and natural gas.
"With the price of oil and the economy, I think they will continue to have an interest in drilling wherever such a source of oil exists," he told reporters after the hearing. "The natural gas production was the second highest in many, many decades off federal minerals."
Interior today said it tracks both sales-year data, which represents the year in which the oil or gas was sold, and accounting-year data, which is the year in which the federal government received the money.
Accounting-year data never change, whereas sales-year data change, or increase, often.
Sales-year data, which Interior said are more accurate, show onshore oil production on federal tracts was up by 4 percent in 2011, while natural gas production was down by the same amount.
Exactly correct. Before they drill they have the price high enogh to make it worthwhile. :shrug: Not sure why Conservatives do not understand this. But they also thought Irag and Afghan was a good idea.....
Really?
<iframe height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Cwqh4wQPoQk" frameBorder="0" width="420" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Don't try to change HISTORY.
TIA
Class Dismissed
Thanks Duff but determined is more appropriate than smart.
Pre-2007, forex was 'easy' to me. Currencies moved in nice big oscillating patterns - pick the proper time frame and it was almost like an ATM.
Financial crisis in 08 coupled with new regulations and all the uncertainty outta Europe have really muddied the waters.
I still do it but it is harder. I have added ETF's to my tool belt because of it.
Pre-2007, forex was 'easy' to me. Currencies moved in nice big oscillating patterns - pick the proper time frame and it was almost like an ATM.
Financial crisis in 08 coupled with new regulations and all the uncertainty outta Europe have really muddied the waters.
I still do it but it is harder. I have added ETF's to my tool belt because of it.
Found this article today - thought it was relevant to this discussion:
Oil supply has been ample and large oil reserves are being discovered yearly. Speculation would be the next obvious assumed culprit, and there are certainly some signals of such activity. Oil speculators traditionally use the forced accumulation of oil inventories to reduce market supply and artificially increase prices. Inventories have indeed been high. However, as previously stated, demand for oil has been static or fallen in most countries around the world since 2008, and there has been NO petroleum shortages due to manipulated markets. In fact, there have been no petroleum shortages period. Speculation has the potential to cause sharp but short term shifts in markets, but one must take into account the long term trend of a particular commodity to understand the root cause of its increasing or decreasing value. Again, inadequate supply is NOT the trigger for the ongoing oil price problem, whether by threat of war, or by reduction through speculation.
This schizophrenic disconnection between the stock market, and oil, and true supply and demand, is, though, a symptom of one very disturbing illness lurking in the backwaters of the U.S. fiscal bloodstream; dollar devaluation.
We all understand that the Federal Reserve has been engaged in non-stop quantitative easing measures in one form or another since 2008. We don?t know exactly how much fiat the Fed has printed in that time, and won?t know until a full and comprehensive audit is finally enacted, but we do know that the amount is at the very least in the tens of trillions (be sure to check out page 131 of the GAO report below to find their breakdown of Fed QE activities. This is just the money printing that has been ADMITTED TO, in excess of $16 trillion):
http://www.gao.gov/assets/330/321506.pdf
The dollar is being thoroughly squashed. Why is this not showing in the dollar forex index? The dollar index is yet another example of a useless market indicator, being that it measures dollar value relative to a basket of world fiat currencies, ALL of which also happen to be in decline. That is to say, the dollar appears to be vibrant, as long as you compare it to similarly worthless paper currencies that are being degraded in tandem with the greenback. Once you begin to compare the dollar to commodities, however, it soon shows its inherent weakness.
The dollar?s only saving grace has long been its status as the world reserve currency and its use as the primary trade mechanism for oil. This, however, is changing.
Bilateral trade agreements between China, Russia, Japan, India, and other countries, especially those within the ASEAN trading bloc, are slowly but surely removing the dollar from the game as these nations begin to replace trade using other currencies, including the Yuan. I believe commodities, especially oil, have been reflecting this trend for quite some time. The consequences of the dollar?s ties to oil are detrimental to all nations that consume petroleum, and they are clearly moving to insulate themselves from further devaluation.
Even after the release of strategic oil reserves back in the summer of 2011 in an effort to dilute prices, and the announcement of an even larger possible release of reserves this month, oil has not strayed far from the $100 per barrel mark. High Brent crude price have held for years, even after numerous promises from government and media entities admonishing what they called ?speculation?, and promises of a return to lower energy costs. Not long ago, $100 per barrel oil was an outlandish premise. Today, it is commonplace, and some even consider it ?affordable? compared to what we may be facing in the near future, all thanks to the steady deconstruction of the last pillar of the U.S. economy; the dollar, and its world reserve label.
Ultimately, no matter how manipulated and overindulged the stock market becomes, no matter how many fiat dollars are injected to prop up our failing system, the price of oil is the great game changer. As inflation is reflected in its price, and energy costs burn out of control, the Dow will begin to fall, regardless of any low volume or quantitative easing. In all likelihood, this conundrum will be blamed on as many scapegoats as are available at the moment, including Iran, or China, or Russia, or Japan, etc. Each and every American, and especially those involved in tracking the economy, will have to remind themselves and the public that at bottom, it was the Federal Reserve that created the conditions by which we suffer, including currency devaluation and high oil prices, NOT some foreign enemy.
Oil supply has been ample and large oil reserves are being discovered yearly. Speculation would be the next obvious assumed culprit, and there are certainly some signals of such activity. Oil speculators traditionally use the forced accumulation of oil inventories to reduce market supply and artificially increase prices. Inventories have indeed been high. However, as previously stated, demand for oil has been static or fallen in most countries around the world since 2008, and there has been NO petroleum shortages due to manipulated markets. In fact, there have been no petroleum shortages period. Speculation has the potential to cause sharp but short term shifts in markets, but one must take into account the long term trend of a particular commodity to understand the root cause of its increasing or decreasing value. Again, inadequate supply is NOT the trigger for the ongoing oil price problem, whether by threat of war, or by reduction through speculation.
This schizophrenic disconnection between the stock market, and oil, and true supply and demand, is, though, a symptom of one very disturbing illness lurking in the backwaters of the U.S. fiscal bloodstream; dollar devaluation.
We all understand that the Federal Reserve has been engaged in non-stop quantitative easing measures in one form or another since 2008. We don?t know exactly how much fiat the Fed has printed in that time, and won?t know until a full and comprehensive audit is finally enacted, but we do know that the amount is at the very least in the tens of trillions (be sure to check out page 131 of the GAO report below to find their breakdown of Fed QE activities. This is just the money printing that has been ADMITTED TO, in excess of $16 trillion):
http://www.gao.gov/assets/330/321506.pdf
The dollar is being thoroughly squashed. Why is this not showing in the dollar forex index? The dollar index is yet another example of a useless market indicator, being that it measures dollar value relative to a basket of world fiat currencies, ALL of which also happen to be in decline. That is to say, the dollar appears to be vibrant, as long as you compare it to similarly worthless paper currencies that are being degraded in tandem with the greenback. Once you begin to compare the dollar to commodities, however, it soon shows its inherent weakness.
The dollar?s only saving grace has long been its status as the world reserve currency and its use as the primary trade mechanism for oil. This, however, is changing.
Bilateral trade agreements between China, Russia, Japan, India, and other countries, especially those within the ASEAN trading bloc, are slowly but surely removing the dollar from the game as these nations begin to replace trade using other currencies, including the Yuan. I believe commodities, especially oil, have been reflecting this trend for quite some time. The consequences of the dollar?s ties to oil are detrimental to all nations that consume petroleum, and they are clearly moving to insulate themselves from further devaluation.
Even after the release of strategic oil reserves back in the summer of 2011 in an effort to dilute prices, and the announcement of an even larger possible release of reserves this month, oil has not strayed far from the $100 per barrel mark. High Brent crude price have held for years, even after numerous promises from government and media entities admonishing what they called ?speculation?, and promises of a return to lower energy costs. Not long ago, $100 per barrel oil was an outlandish premise. Today, it is commonplace, and some even consider it ?affordable? compared to what we may be facing in the near future, all thanks to the steady deconstruction of the last pillar of the U.S. economy; the dollar, and its world reserve label.
Ultimately, no matter how manipulated and overindulged the stock market becomes, no matter how many fiat dollars are injected to prop up our failing system, the price of oil is the great game changer. As inflation is reflected in its price, and energy costs burn out of control, the Dow will begin to fall, regardless of any low volume or quantitative easing. In all likelihood, this conundrum will be blamed on as many scapegoats as are available at the moment, including Iran, or China, or Russia, or Japan, etc. Each and every American, and especially those involved in tracking the economy, will have to remind themselves and the public that at bottom, it was the Federal Reserve that created the conditions by which we suffer, including currency devaluation and high oil prices, NOT some foreign enemy.
Aha! Now I see what you mean by your claim that actions of the Fed are devaluing the dollar.
What you *really* mean is that all major currencies are being devalued vs commodities.
Let me suggest you consider the actual reason for increasing commodity prices:
Low interest rates.
Higher interest rates will immediately drive commodity prices down. A bit of research will show you that has always been so.
Now that doesn't mean that an individual commodity cannot rise against high interest rates. Actual or artificial shortages (or threats or panic) can drive up the price of an individual commodity.
Overall commodity prices, however move inversely to interest rates.
Here's a 55 yeqr graph of just that.
And here's one just for gold.
What you *really* mean is that all major currencies are being devalued vs commodities.
Let me suggest you consider the actual reason for increasing commodity prices:
Low interest rates.
Higher interest rates will immediately drive commodity prices down. A bit of research will show you that has always been so.
Now that doesn't mean that an individual commodity cannot rise against high interest rates. Actual or artificial shortages (or threats or panic) can drive up the price of an individual commodity.
Overall commodity prices, however move inversely to interest rates.
Here's a 55 yeqr graph of just that.
And here's one just for gold.
Nice charts.
And yes - the currency war that I am speaking of is this - no one wants to be the strong currency....they are all trying to be the weakest.
And yes - the currency war that I am speaking of is this - no one wants to be the strong currency....they are all trying to be the weakest.
- Feb 26, 2001
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- Feb 26, 2001
- 13,593
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I believe there are several factors that aren't being considered in fuel prices. I see many gas starved countries like Costa Rica which don't require ethanol/petro fuel blends and hence US refineries are very eager to sale their products there for greater profits then in the States This is why Republicans want the Keystone pipeline, not for cheaper gas back in the states, but for more corporate profits from exports.
......................................................
I think this blog guy has it pegged.
its a illusion.
They dont want the gas to help Americans they want the gas to fawking sell to other countrys for the old GOP profit.
just follow the money in the good old USA
......................................................
I think this blog guy has it pegged.
its a illusion.
They dont want the gas to help Americans they want the gas to fawking sell to other countrys for the old GOP profit.
just follow the money in the good old USA
Good article on why commodity prices are where they are.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/fed-losing-race-debase
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/fed-losing-race-debase
- Apr 10, 2014
- 1,769
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- 0
even hank had to laugh at this one
:142smilie:142smilie:142smilie
ssd caught with his pants down on that one...
still obuma had something to do with it I'm sure
:142smilie:142smilie:142smilie
ssd caught with his pants down on that one...
still obuma had something to do with it I'm sure
Thanks, Hank.
You are wrong.
I used Obama's inauguration as a reference point. As I mention later on in the post, if you can read or have any reading comprehension, I did not blame the Pres.
For fuck's sake.
I dont know why I come here and waste my time. And you wonder why this country is where it is......fucking brain dead half-illiterate primates.
You all probably know what color bra Kim Kardashian has on but have no clue that currencies trade against each other or what M1 money supply means.
You'll blame Bush for high gas prices and credit Obama with high stock prices and have no clue as to what actually moves the prices on either.
Enjoy your ignorance.
You are wrong.
I used Obama's inauguration as a reference point. As I mention later on in the post, if you can read or have any reading comprehension, I did not blame the Pres.
For fuck's sake.
I dont know why I come here and waste my time. And you wonder why this country is where it is......fucking brain dead half-illiterate primates.
You all probably know what color bra Kim Kardashian has on but have no clue that currencies trade against each other or what M1 money supply means.
You'll blame Bush for high gas prices and credit Obama with high stock prices and have no clue as to what actually moves the prices on either.
Enjoy your ignorance.
- Apr 10, 2014
- 1,769
- 29
- 0
