Clean-up Continues as BP Flow of Oil in Gulf Remains Halted
COLLEEN LONG, HARRY R. WEBER Associated Press Writers - 3:29 p.m. EDT, July 16, 2010
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP said its capped-off well appeared to be holding steady Friday as a white-knuckle waiting period ticked by with engineers watching pressure gauges for signs of a leak.
Results monitored from control rooms on ships at sea and hundreds of miles away at the company's U.S. headquarters in Houston showed the oil staying inside the cap, rather than escaping through any undiscovered breaches, BP PLC vice president Kent Wells said on a morning conference call.
Four underwater robots scoured the sea floor but had also found no signs of new leaks, he said.
BP and government scientists huddled Friday afternoon to discuss the first 24 hours of pressure readings as they sought to determine whether they can keep the gusher sealed off or have to release some of the flow and funnel it up to vessels on the surface.
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Deep Water Horizon Oil spill, no prevention, clean-up workers getting sick
BERNARD LAGAN, May 31, 2010
In the US, which assumes no engineering challenge is beyond conquer - nor does it lack the private capital to achieve it - the brackish rouge beneath the waves that is slowly strangling the Louisiana shore not only stains the sea and the sands, that creeping black is also gutting confidence, upturning myths and ruining reputations.
When Americans learned at the weekend that British Petroleum (BP) - which drilled the hole in the seabed nearly two kilometres under the sea - had attempted to seal it 16 times since Thursday by forcing shredded rope, plastics, old tyres and even golf balls into the failed, four-story high blow-out preventer, the crudity of the assault seemed strangely out of step with our times.
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Oil Spill focuses our attention on foreign oil
By T. Boone Pickens - 05-20-2010
Without minimizing the environmental issues involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, let's focus on the economics of the situation. This accident has not disrupted the 19 million barrels of oil we used every day in April - 12.3 million of which was imported oil. In the weeks since the accident, crude oil prices have actually dropped about $15 per barrel - which shows there are much broader forces at work in pricing crude than even a spill like this one.
We should not allow this accident to divert our attention away from our continuing dependence on foreign oil - especially oil from OPEC nations. We are importing nearly two-thirds of our oil requirements, and 70 percent of that is used as gasoline to fuel our 250 million SUVs, cars, and light trucks; and as diesel to power our 8 million heavy trucks.
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BP’s Slick Greenwashing
The petroleum giant tried to sell itself as a green industry leader. That was just an oily tactic.
By James Ridgeway | Tue May. 4, 2010 5:30 AM PDT 
For the last decade, BP has been busily engaged in a multi-million-dollar greenwashing campaign. Changing its name from British Petroleum to BP, the company adopted a new slogan, "Beyond Petroleum," and began a "rebranding" effort to depict itself as a public-spirited, environmentally sensitive, green energy enterprise, the very model of 21st century corporate responsibility.
It’s going to take more than a name change and a clever ad campaign to erase the image of oil spreading across the Gulf Coast [1] from BP’s offshore rig, and dead wildlife washing up onto beaches. Even as the company magnanimously agreed to cover the costs of cleaning up the mammoth spill, BP on Monday was still insisting that it wasn’t at fault [2]for the accident that caused it—instead blaming the offshore drilling contractor that operated the rig. So much for corporate accountability.
Short-term Canadian boost in global Natural Gas supplies
Natural Gas, not Oil, becoming more cheaply available in the US and Canada
Shale Drilling Moves North, Upending Canada Gas Forecasts
by Edward Welsch; Dow Jones Newswires; Tuesday, February 23, 2010
OTTAWA (Dow Jones), Feb. 23, 2010
An unconventional drilling technique that sparked a boom in U.S. gas production has made its way north.
Companies in Canada, the world's fourth-largest natural gas producer, are turning their attention to gas trapped in shale rock. In the U.S., the emergence of horizontal drilling and high-pressure liquid injections into these formations helped fuel the boom in gas supplies and subsequent bust in prices.
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What Arab Nations do when their oil is running out
Arab Nations Want a Piece of the Green Energy Pie, Too
Feb 17th 2010
Europe, North America and Asia have been the primary drivers of the green tech industry thus far, especially in the realm of wind and solar power. Meanwhile, Arab countries have maintained their dominance over oil and gas exports, controlling 45 percent of oil and roughly one quarter of all gas reserves globally. But now, either to claim their stake in a burgeoning industry or to prepare for life after [their] oil and gas [is gone], several Arab states are making aggressive moves to develop their own domestic renewable energy industry.
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reliance on fossil fuels could have “severe consequences”
feb. 11 2010
Bloomberg -- Climate change and U.S. reliance on fossil fuels could have "severe consequences," including potential surges in oil prices and risks to national security, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said today.
"Continued reliance on fossil fuels is leading to the buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and is changing our climate," the CEA said in its annual report to President Barack Obama. "Left unaddressed, these trends will have increasingly severe consequences over time."
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Mexican Oil still in decline
Mexican Oil: World's 3rd largest oil reserve
Bloomberg -- Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, may pump 2.3 million barrels of oil a day this year, Standard & Poor’s analyst Jose Coballasi said.
“This reflects a dose of reality that in general Pemex has had to lower its forecasts in previous years,” Coballasi said today at an event in Mexico City. S&P’s crude forecast would represent an 11.6 percent decline from 2009, according to Bloomberg calculations.
American oil money is now pumping Global Warming denials world-wide
Climate Change Deniers Without Borders
American oil money is pumping up climate change skeptics abroad. Could they kneecap a post-Copenhagen accord?
By Josh Harkinson, Tue Dec. 22, 2009 3:59 AM PST
Writing two weeks ago in Poland's most popular tabloid, the Super Express, an economic analyst named Tomasz Teluk [funded by ExxonMobil] claimed that a potential climate agreement in Copenhagen might double Poles' electricity bills, hobble his coal-dependent country, and even lead to one-world government. "Fortunately," he wrote, the "global warming scare" has been hugely overblown: "As each of us learned in elementary school, carbon dioxide is a gas essential to the development of life, not a poison, so you do not have to eliminate it at any price."
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Big Oil, GM, & Toyota Fuel-Cell Plans Clash With US Battery Car Push
By Alan Ohnsman, Bloomberg; Saturday, October 10, 2009
Oil Co's, General Motors Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and other automakers want to sell consumers electric cars powered by hydrogen within six years. Their plans clash with the U.S. government`s infrastructure priorities.
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the world’s 10 largest oil fields are all in decline
UK E.R.C.: cheap oil is at an end
Warning over global oil decline
02:50 GMT, Thursday, 8 October 2009 03:50 UK, BBC News
There is a "significant risk" that global production of conventional oil could "peak" and decline by 2020, a report has warned.
The report's authors also state that
the 10 largest oil producing fields in the world are all in decline.
The UK Energy Research Council study says there is a general consensus that the era of cheap oil is at an end. But it warns that most governments, including the UK's, exhibit little concern about oil depletion.
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Crude Oil price ’shock’ is next threat to recovery
Volatile energy costs could prompt next crisis, says Bank of England policymaker
There were similar warnings from the oil industry itself yesterday. Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of the French energy giant Total, said oil is set to move back above $100 and warned that if recession-hit oil producers continue to delay investment the world faces shortages by 2015.
By Sarah Arnott Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Soaring energy prices could fuel inflation and derail economic recovery, one of the Bank of England's most senior policymakers warned yesterday. "The oil price is already unusually high" "We need to be looking carefully to see where the next big global shock might be coming from," Andrew Sentance, who sits on the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, told a London conference. "And the energy market is one of the prime candidates we need to keep an eye on."
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Bush’s Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe
Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe
The Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel.
By Jim Tankersley and Josh Meyer, L.A. Times; September 17, 2009
Reporting from Washington - The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department.
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OIL money and morals in such dramatic inverse proportions
"Negligent Homicide" : 15+ deaths reported
British trading giant agrees to pay millions to victims maimed and scarred by dumping of polluted sludge
By Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter Thursday, 17 September 2009
Thousands of west Africans besieged local hospitals in 2006, and a number died, after the dumping of hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic oil waste around the country's capital, Abidjan. Official local autopsy reports on 12 alleged victims appeared to show fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste's lethal byproducts.
Trafigura has been publicly insisting for three years that its waste was routine and harmless. It claims it was "absolutely not dangerous". -- Greenpeace
A British oil trading giant has agreed to a multimillion-pound payout to settle a huge damages claim from thousands of Africans who fell ill from tonnes of toxic waste dumped illegally in one of the worst pollution incidents in decades.
Trafigura, a London-based company which bills itself as one of the world's largest oil traders, said it was in talks to reach a "global settlement" to the claim by 30,000 people from Ivory Coast, who brought Britain's largest-ever lawsuit after contaminated sludge from a tanker ship was fly-tipped under cover of darkness in August 2006.
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“cash for clunkers” program an overwhelming success
August 4, 2009
Spurring Sales, Car Rebate Plan Is Left Up in Air
By MATTHEW L. WALD and NICK BUNKLEY, New York Times 
The short-term tonic of the first billion dollars was evident, in sales figures that automakers reported Monday. New-vehicle sales rose last month to the highest level in nearly a year, and in the final week of July, cars and trucks were rolling off dealers` lots at almost the same rate they had before the recession began.
Dealers estimated that they sold a quarter-million cars with the rebate money.
And the Transportation Department reported that the average gas mileage of the vehicles being bought was significantly higher than required to qualify for a rebate of $3,500 to $4,500. Of 120,000 rebate applications processed so far, the department said the average gas mileage of cars being bought was 28.3 miles per gallon, for S.U.V.`s, 21.9 miles per gallon, and for trucks, 16.3 miles per gallon.
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contact Obama! 