Burning food for fuel creates interesting possibilities. In a recent issue of its Amber Waves periodical, the US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS) hints at some of them.
Crude prices shot past $71/bbl May 23 with predictions of another strong hurricane season, then fell below $70/bbl in the next session because of a bigger-than-expected build in US gasoline inventories just prior to the start of the summer driving season.
Market principles and the rule of law are under assault. From Russia to Latin America to the US, high oil prices have touched off a round of government activism.
On Jan. 1 of this year, Mexico initiated a new fiscal regime for its oil and gas industry, primarily to ensure the financial stability of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the national oil company.
US Sen. Hillary R. Clinton (D-NY) has called for creation of a strategic energy fund, bankrolled by additional taxes on major oil company profits, to stimulate research and investment in technologies and to cut US oil imports in half by 2025.
The US Federal Trade Commission found no instances of illegal market manipulation to increase gasoline prices in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina late last summer, the federal agency said in a report issued May 22.
With the administration of President George W. Bush apparently trying to get as far away from oil and gas as possible while it promotes alternative energy sources, the 109th Congress has assumed the initiative on several issues.
The House passed another bill authorizing oil and gas leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain May 26 as opponents protested that supporters had choked off debate.
US oil and gas producers, pipelines, and refiners are working closely with federal, state, and local governments to prepare for the 2006 hurricane season, industry and government officials said on May 30.
Integration of conventional seismic data with nonlinear seismic data can provide the industry with new opportunities to better map in situ reservoir properties.
Petrobras’s numerical simulations by finite-element modeling yielded a preliminary two-stage drilling strategy through thick salt sections in the Santos basin off Brazil.
Field results and laboratory tests show that including surfactant treatments can lengthen the polymer injection effectiveness to 30 months from the 3 months previously experienced at the Daqing oil field.
While buyers in Japan have been willing to make long-term purchase commitments in early 2006, Korea Gas Corp. (Kogas) and other private importers in Korea were still sitting on the sidelines.
Since Scottish physicist James David Forbes developed the first seismograph in 1841, inventors have turned increasingly to the sciences for better ways to identify sources of oil and gas.
The huge influx of cash stemming from the spikes in commodity prices during 2004-05, coupled with diminished exploration results and the pressure to replace reserves, leaves oil and gas companies poised at the brink of another round of mergers and acquisitions.
Claude Mandil, executive director of the IEA, dismisses the notion that global oil production has peaked and observes that “technological progress has always been the key factor to prove the doomsayers wrong.
