Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, has come out swinging against “elitist” environmentalists, politicians, and the nonprofit foundations that fund them for promoting “energy racism” by cutting off access to fossil fuels in the US and pushing up energy prices.
For months now, members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and many western analysts have blamed the weak US dollar as a primary cause of the escalation of oil prices.
Driven by public outcry over $4/gal gasoline, the US energy policy debate is beginning to shift toward discussions for a return of punitive, self-defeating measures directed at companies that produce the nation’s fuels.
Democrats and Republicans traded charges of obstructing debate as the US Senate began on July 22 to discuss Majority Leader Harry M. Reid’s (D-Nev.) bill to reform energy commodity markets.
Fundamental supply and demand forces provide the best explanation for recent crude oil price increases, concluded a staff report for the Interagency Task Force on Commodity Markets.
In a week that began with US President George W. Bush’s rescinding the presidential Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leasing withdrawal and ended with the US House defeating the latest bill incorporating “Use it or lose it” provisions, American Petroleum Institute President Red Cavaney raised some important points.
The US House of Representatives rejected the Democratic leadership’s latest energy bill in a 244-173 vote on July 17 when HR 6515–which came to the floor under a rules suspension–fell short of the necessary two-thirds vote for passage.
The US Bureau of Land Management on July 22 published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale development program, which it said could add as much as 800 billion bbl of oil to US reserves.
Indonesia’s state-owned PT Pertamina, already a candidate for government scrutiny over corruption in the upstream sector, is facing charges by legislators of “irregularities” in its importation of crude oil and products.
Production of Canadian oil sands bitumen will continue to rise in the coming decades but not without advances in processing technologies and the adoption by producers of varied strategies to market the resulting heavy crude blends.
The burgeoning development of Alberta’s vast oil sands resources and its effect on the province’s land, water, and air is being closely and carefully monitored by government officials as well as other environmental research agencies to ensure its sustainability.
Valuing lost production from destroyed structures is an important measure in investment decision making, since if the value of future production is less than the expected redevelopment and cleanup cost, then the decision to redevelop the property will either be postponed or not undertaken.
