OIL

Thanks to Barack Obama’s failed energy policies, seven deepwater rigs were moved from the Gulf of Mexico in the last year. At least one of the rigs was relocated to Brazil.  Obama is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil to finance exploration of its huge offshore oil field discovery. His good buddy George Soros is invested heavily in Brazilian energy.

"New data suggests Israel may not only have much larger gas resources than believed, but also the 3rd largest deposit of oil shale in the world. As a consequence of these new estimates, Israel may emerge as the third largest deposit of oil shale, after the US and China." - JPost

In the view of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, BP is the safest company to hire for offshore work today, having learned its lesson in the gulf. “One beaten man is worth two unbeaten men,” Mr. Putin said, citing a Russian proverb, after BP signed its Arctic deal with Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company.  Rosneft is negotiating joint venture agreements with other major oil companies shut out of North America, including Shell.

The long running legal case by the heirs of Andrew Oenga has resulted in a federal court awarding them $4.924 million against the United States (e.g. US taxpayers - BP is not liable, of course).

For the past 16 years, British Petroleum was allowed to use the land in ways not allowed by the lease to produce oil from unauthorized areas. BP also allowed ARCO and Exxon to use Oengas’ land for a fee. The Bureau of Indian Affairs refused to tell BP to stop the unauthorized use and refused to collect additional rents from BP for authorized use.

Global gas reserves have increased 53% in the past 20 years, outpacing oil

Louisiana BP OIL SPILL 8 Months on Part 2, rawimagefilms, November 24, 2010.

Meanwhile, in Alabama...

12-3-2010 A giant tar mat…nearly an eighth of a mile long…is washing up west of Cotton Bayou in Orange Beach.

12-9-2010 A widespread fungal outbreak is affecting one of Alabama’s key marsh grass species, potentially rendering much of this year’s seed crop sterile, according to scientists.

Also in Missisisppi and Louisiana...

12-9-2010 Dispersants continue to be sprayed, says emergency worker.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who doubles as President Barack Obama's point man on Gulf Coast oil spill recovery, is pressing America's armed services to consume as much Gulf seafood as possible.  A large-scale national marketing campaign will use $30 million in BP money and millions more in federal dollars, to reassure restaurants and markets across the country that Gulf seafood is safe.

Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, said he would like to see Gulf seafood as the choice throughout the public domain, "whether it's the military or prison systems or school systems."

... I never did come across any of that “hard science” documenting ‘Peak Oil’ that Mr. Strahl referred to. All the ‘Peak Oil’ literature that I found, on Ruppert’s site and elsewhere, took for granted that petroleum is a non-renewable ‘fossil fuel.’ That theory is never questioned, nor is any effort made to validate it. It is simply taken to be an established scientific fact, which it quite obviously is not. ...

... the world’s total proved oil reserves have expanded more than twice as fast, swelling by nearly a third to 1.33 trillion barrels by the end of last year from 1 trillion barrels two decades earlier...

The Georgian press broke today (October 15th) that the Georgian court ordered that two Israeli businessman, Ron Fuchs and Zeev Fraenkel, be put in custody on suspicion of offering a bribe worth seven million dollars to a senior official of the Republic of Georgia.

An hour after BP workers were told they had to shift from Destin, Florida to another location and to not discuss anything with anybody, human body parts washed up where they had been working.

... Al Jazeera has obtained a document written by Saddam Hussein's secretary, which conveys Hussein's rejection of an offer to partake in a peace process with Israel in exchange for the lifting of sanctions....

The latest version of the CLEAR Act is slated for a floor vote in the House this week as Democrats look for ways to use the Gulf oil spill as a means to pass elements of their unpopular energy agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stripped out authorization for an independent investigation into the Gulf disaster. 

The Natural Resources Committee unanimously passed the amendment in committee markup July 14 offered by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that would establish a bipartisan, independent, National Commission on Outer Continental Shelf Oil Spill Prevention.

Reuel Marc Gerecht's screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of  the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack. 

Love is in the Air

Mud eruption 'caused by drilling' headlines a BBC report of 2008, two years after a drilling company was found negligent in drilling for gas and oil on the Indonesian island of Java. The amount of material that is still spewing out of the well would fill 50 olympic sized swimming pools EACH DAY. This has been happening every day for four years, with no end in sight. The Lusi mud volcano may be active for decades, some believe.

Does a company that both builds oil rigs and cleans up oil spills have any motivation to prevent oil rig disasters?

Raw Story, June 18th 2010

That's the question some people in business and politics are asking themselves after Halliburton's purchase of an oil clean-up company 10 days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and launched the worst oil spill in US history.