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How Much Water Does The California Oil Industry Actually Use?
How Much Water Does The California Oil Industry Actually Use?
When California Governor Jerry Brown issued mandatory water restrictions for the first time in state history, he notably excluded the agriculture and oil industries from the conservation efforts, a decision that was heavily criticized.
The oil industry, for its part, insists it is a responsible user of water. The Western States Petroleum Association, an oil industry lobbying group, for instance, wrote that “Oil companies are doing their part to conserve, recycle and reduce the water they use to produce oil and refine petroleum products.”
Some perspective is certainly needed here: the amount of water used to produce oil in California is, in fact, dwarfed by the amount used for agriculture. But the thing is, the state can’t make any fully informed decisions about whether or not to include oil development in water cuts because no one knows exactly how much water the California oil industry is using in the first place. That all changes on April 30, however.
Last September, Governor Brown signed into law SB 1281, which requires companies to make quarterly reports to state regulators at the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) detailing the source and volume of water — whether fresh, treated, or recycled — used during oil development processes, including extreme oil extraction methods like fracking, acidization and steam injection. The first set of data required to be reported to DOGGR under SB 1281 is due at the end of the month.
Required reporting on water usage is an important first step in devising an effective water conservation plan for drought-wracked California, Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, tells DeSmogBlog.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Secret Papers Reveal Lawson’s 1981 Plot to Use Army Against Oil Workers
Secret Papers Reveal Lawson’s 1981 Plot to Use Army Against Oil Workers
Lord Lawson asserts that his attack on climate change policy is motivated by deep concerns for the working classes – fears environmental measures will cost jobs and undermine prosperity.
Environmentalists claim that Lawson is acting in the interests of the oil industry even if he is not directly funded by any oil companies.
A secret government document published today after 34 years hidden in the archives provides new evidence that Lawson when a cabinet minister acted in the interests of the oil companies – but not their workers.
Lawson proposed his top secret LEADBURN plan to the Cabinet on 10 November 1981 which suggested declaring a national state of emergency within a week and confirmed 12,500 British troops had been placed on notice to move in order to keep fuel supplied and break a national strike.
The document – released for the first time by DeSmog UK – is marked “confidential” and is headlined, Cabinet, Oil Tanker Drivers: Contingency Measures, Memorandum of the Secretary of State for Energy.
Fuel Shortages
The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) had called for an “all-out strike” demanding an 11 percent pay rise for its members working for BP, Shell, Esso and Texaco.
A meeting of the Civil Contingencies Unit (CCU) was called on 4 November with ministers agreeing “preliminary steps to bring forward plans to protect essential services from fuel shortages.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Much Longer Can OPEC Hold Out?
How Much Longer Can OPEC Hold Out?
OPEC has been the most talked about international organization among investors, analysts and international political lobbies in the last few months.
When OPEC speaks, the world listens in rapt attention as it accounts for nearly 40 % of the world’s total crude output. With its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, one of the mandates of 12- member OPEC is to “ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers, and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry.” (Source: opec.org).
However, OPEC has been in the line of fire from the western world in light of its stance of not reducing the production levels of its member nations (excluding Iran). Most view this as a strategy to squeeze the American shale production and other non OPEC nations.
All is not well for OPEC
Simply put, the world has too much oil at the moment which has resulted in the reduction of price levels from approximately $100 to $50 a barrel, and OPEC (as well as US shale producers) has a major role to play in this supply glut. With the decline of average annual crude prices, OPEC earned around $730 billion in net oil export revenues in 2014 (Source: EIA), a big decline of 11% from its previous year. The EIA even predicts that OPEC’s net oil exports (excluding Iran) could fall to as low as $380 billion in 2015.
Related: Media Spin On Oil Prices Running Out Of Fuel
With the huge reduction in its revenues and growing discomfort among its members such as Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria over its current production levels, is OPEC really getting weaker?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Four Years After Greenpeace Sting: PR Firm Dumps Oil Lobbyists
Four Years After Greenpeace Sting: PR Firm Dumps Oil Lobbyists
Perhaps you heard the good news – the world’s largest public relations firm, Edelman, justspun off an advertising subsidiary so that it could show a commitment to not aiding the denial of climate change science. The Guardian explains how API’s contracts with Edelman were so massive–tens of millions of dollars–that it was up to 10% of the PR giant’s income.
For years, Edelman has managed multi-million dollar contracts with the American Petroleum Institute (API), using its Blue Advertising subsidiary to help API run commercials selling fantasies to people: that oil and gas are our only viable, plentiful, “AMERICAN” sources of energy.
In the saga that led Edelman to dump the lobbyists at API, Greenpeace had a small role to play: we infiltrated a commercial shoot, run by Edelman’s Blue advertising arm for API. The commercials were to be called “Vote 4 Energy,” casting the illusion of mass popular demand for more oil and gas drilling (and more pollution, more climate change, and more government giveaways to prop it all up).
After being dressed up in a button-down, plaid orange shirt–I’m not sure what look they had in mind for me–I was put in front of the camera and told to repeat lines back. This despite the casting call for “REAL PEOPLE not Actors!” Huh.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Five Poll Results That Will Cause Oil Execs Some Headaches
Five Poll Results That Will Cause Oil Execs Some Headaches
Alberta Oil magazine just published its National Survey on Energy Literacy, the culmination of 1,396 online interviews of a representative sample of Canadians conducted by Leger.
The results are particularly interesting coming from Alberta Oil, a magazine destined for the desks of the energy sector’s senior executives and decision-makers.
Summing up the survey’s findings about “The Issues,” Alberta Oil editors write that opposition to energy projects is “not just for West Coast hippies anymore.”
Indeed. There are quite a few nuggets in the survey’s findings that are probably causing a headache or two in Calgary’s corner offices this week. We round up the Top 5.
1) Opposition to the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline is just as serious as opposition to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline — if not more so, according to the survey. What’s more, the more highly educated citizens are, the less likely they are to support Trans Mountain or Northern Gateway. Hmph, maybe the anti-pipeline crowd isn’t all unemployed hippies after all?
2) Fewer than one-in-ten post-secondary graduates find oil and gas industry associations credible and trustworthy when it comes to carbon emissions. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given that industry associations like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers have fought new greenhouse gas regulations and successfully lobbied to weaken Canada’s environmental laws.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California Regulators Allowed Oil Industry To Drill Hundreds Of Wastewater Injection Wells Into Aquifers With Drinkable Water
California Regulators Allowed Oil Industry To Drill Hundreds Of Wastewater Injection Wells Into Aquifers With Drinkable Water
The fallout from the ongoing review of California’s deeply flawed Underground Injection Control program continues as new documents reveal that state regulators are investigating more than 500 injection wells for potentially dumping oil industry wastewater into aquifers protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act as well as state law.
Last July, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered anemergency shutdown of 11 wastewater injection wells in California. In October, nine of the wells were confirmed to have been illegally dumping wastewater into protected aquifers.
Now a letter from Steve Bohlen, the State Oil and Gas Supervisor for California’s Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), sent to the EPA on August 18, 2014 but just revealed via a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that the problem is much more widespread than previously disclosed to the public.
A copy of the letter was shared with DeSmogBlog by the Center for Biological Diversity. “EPA has confirmed to us and to the San Francisco Chronicle that Steve Bohlen’s list shows 532 wells believed to be injecting into protected aquifers,” according to Patrick Sullivan, a spokesperson for the CBD.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Book review: “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. Really?
Book review: “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. Really?
I first heard about Alex Epstein’s book ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’ via an unsurprisingly fawning review over at the SkeptEco blog. Its premise is so ludicrous that normally I wouldn’t read it, never mind review it. There is no “moral case for fossil fuels”, just as there was no “moral case for slavery” in 1860. But given the alarming rise, in the US and elsewhere, of the climate sceptic/pro fossil fuel lobby (witness, for instance, Sen. James Infoe’s ludicrous attack on climate science in the US Senate recently) it feels important to look a bit closer at the arguments presented here.
Epstein recently started something called the ‘Center for Industrial Progress’, and lectures on the need to keep fossil fuels as a key driver for the economy. At other times he can be found, among other things,defending child labour or arguing that animals have no rights. He likes to paint himself and the fossil fuel industry as the misunderstood underdogs, holding the line against the far more influential “greens”. He’s a curious character, as can be seen in this video of him standing in the middle of the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the Peoples’ Climate March in New York last year, heckling them with inane comments like “you know, your clothes are fracked!”
“As you read this”, he writes, “there is a real, live, committed movement against fossil fuels that truly wants to deprive us of the energy of life”. This painting of the oil industry as the good guys, as the misunderstood heroes being undermined by uninformed idiots (i.e. you and I), is the first, but by no means the last, place where Epstein parts company with reality.
He bemoans the fact that fossil fuel companies “have had to fight daily for permission to empower billions of people”. Try telling that to the communities in Ecuador affected by the oil spills for which Chevron was fined $19 billion, people in Richmond, California who live in the shadow of the Chevron refinery which exploded in 2012, communities living near mountaintop removal coal plants, people living near fracking sites, or First Nation people living near the Tar Sands in Alberta. He continues:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
16% of oil and gas firms thinking of job cuts: Mercer survey
Canadian industry harder hit because production and exploration more sensitive to falling price
A survey of oil and gas companies throughout North America indicates a major pullback underway in the industry as they cut capital spending and reduce hiring in response to low oil prices.
The survey, by human resources company Mercer, indicates 44 per cent plan to cut back on capital spending and 32 per cent will reduce their search for new talent for their companies in 2015.
The results of the survey are a sharp contrast to a year ago in the oil and gas industry, when finding employees with the right skills was a priority and 66 per cent of firms said they were on the lookout for new hires.
“Most organizations in one way or another are looking for reductions in expenses,” Graham Dodd, Mercer’s energy and natural resources energy leader for Canada, told CBC News.
He said firms are moving from thinking about cuts to putting them into place as they “adjust to the new reality of $45 oil.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Strikes: The Latest Threat Facing US Oil Industry
Strikes: The Latest Threat Facing US Oil Industry
Workers are on strike at nine oil refineries and chemical plants around the United States in the largest such job action in 35 years.
Members of the United Steelworkers union (USW) who are employed by more than 200 US oil terminals and pipelines as well as refineries and chemical plantsstruck the nine facilities on Feb. 1 after negotiations with several oil companies failed to end in an agreement on wages, safety and benefits. The contract covers 30,000 hourly workers.
The negotiations had begun Jan. 21 with a settlement deadline at midnight, Jan. 31. The USW had rejected five offers by the companies lead negotiator, Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant representing several large oil companies operating in the United States, including Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp.
Related: Chevron Responds To Eight Week Drop In Rig Count By Slashing Jobs
“Shell refused to provide us with a counter-offer and left the bargaining table,”USW International President Leo Gerard said. “We had no choice but to give notice of a work stoppage.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Shell Cuts $15 Billion of Spending as Profit Misses Expectations
Shell Cuts $15 Billion of Spending as Profit Misses Expectations
(Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc will cut $15 billion of investment over the next three years as the crash in oil prices saw fourth-quarter profit miss forecasts.
Shell, the first of the world’s largest oil companies to report earnings following the slump in crude to a five-year low, will review spending on about 40 projects worldwide, Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said today in an interview.
“We see pressure on our investment program,” van Beurden said on Bloomberg TV. “It’s a game of being prudent but at the same time not overreacting.”
Profit excluding one-time items and inventory changes was $3.3 billion in the quarter, up from $2.9 billion a year earlier, Shell said today. That missed the $4.1 billion average of 13 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Shell shares dropped as much as 4.4 percent in London and traded at 2,067 pence at 10:17 a.m.
The global industry is scurrying to respond as oil below $50 a barrel guts cash flows. Statoil ASA, Tullow Oil Plc and Premier Oil Plc have delayed projects or cut exploration spending. BP Plc has frozen wages and Chevron Corp. delayed its 2015 drilling budget. By cutting spending, companies aim to protect returns to investors.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Bearishness Continues Among Oil Industry Experts
Bearishness Continues Among Oil Industry Experts
The business world is full of sometimes conflicting theories about what caused the plunge in oil prices during the past seven months, and how low that price will go. But Goldman Sachs seems to have come up with a unified theory.
It began late in the afternoon of Jan. 26 when Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told the CNBC television program “Closing Bell” that he expected the average price of oil, now around the $45 range per barrel, to fall further, perhaps as low as $30 per barrel.
“My view is we’re probably in the lower, longer view,” said Cohn, a former oil trader. “We could definitely get down to $30.”
On the same day, Jeff Currie, Goldman’s chief commodity analyst, issued a research paper saying the demand for oil is slowing down in emerging economies, including China, meaning that the price of crude will stay low for a long time, and may never return to the prices they fetched 10 years ago.
Related: Increasing Demand For Refined Products Will Increase Oil Prices
In fact it was Currie who predicted that the price of oil would exceed $100 as it did a decade ago. Now, though, he points to a more recent element in the equation: the surge in shale oil production by the United States.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Oil Industry Withdraws From High Cost Areas
Oil Industry Withdraws From High Cost Areas
The oil industry is pulling back from some marginal areas of operation, slashing jobs and spending, and retrenching in the face of the ongoing slump in oil markets.
Signs of a shrinking footprint are beginning to pop up across the globe. Norway’s Statoil has let three of its exploration licenses expire in Greenland, an acknowledgement that exploring in frontier lands no longer makes sense with oil at $50 per barrel. Not too long ago, Greenland was hyped as an unexplored and pristine new oil region. The excitement was enough to fuel a bit of an independence movement within Greenland to pull away from Denmark.
Statoil also put an end to negotiations with Lundin Petroleum over building an oil terminal in Norway’s far north. Building an Arctic terminal would aid the development of several offshore oil and gas fields in the Barents Sea, where the companies each have made several discoveries.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘Failure of Conscience’: Groups Urge Congress to Fund Social Well-Being, Not Fossil Fuel Industry
‘Failure of Conscience’: Groups Urge Congress to Fund Social Well-Being, Not Fossil Fuel Industry
Diverse coalition launches calculator to measure cost of fossil fuel subsidies
A coalition of environmental and social justice groups has come together to declare collective disgust with the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary subsidies for the oil and gas industries when that same money could be used to improve the lives of millions if spent on social services, renewable energy investments, healthcare, and education.
The coalition includes Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, People for the American Way, and Oxfam America, among others. As part of its effort, the coalition has launched a Fossil Fuel Subsidies Tradeoff Calculator, a tool which breaks down both the government’s giveaways to the oil industry into smaller brackets, such as tax credits for manufacturers and fossil energy research programs, and the social programs that could benefit from those subsidies instead, like school lunches and veteran healthcare.
“Leaving the social safety net in tatters and keeping Big Oil on the dole is not just a failure to prioritize. It is a failure of conscience,” said Lukas Ross, climate and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, one of the organizations in the coalition. “In the face of record inequality, crumbling infrastructure, and looming climate disruption, it is time for Congress to think hard about the government spending we need and the corporate welfare we don’t.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Crude harvest: selling Mexico’s oil – Special series – Al Jazeera English
Crude harvest: selling Mexico’s oil – Special series – Al Jazeera English.
Against the backdrop of Mexico’s ever-widening gap between rich and poor, growing violence, and stalled economy, President Enrique Pena Nieto has passed a series of economic reforms.
Under these reforms, Mexico’s oil, which was expropriated from foreign interests 75 years ago, is now for sale to private, international companies.
The reforms are the most divisive the country has seen in a century. Thousands are protesting against them, saying the new regulations could bring the nation to a tipping point as organised crime and violence would spiral out of control.
When it comes to big business and drilling for oil, Mexico’s farmers are the most vulnerable.
Twenty years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which opened Mexico up to trade with the US and Canada, led to the collapse of agriculture, and paved the way to the privatization of oil.
The operations of Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Pemex, have never been entirely transparent, and communities have been crippled by oil disasters. For instance, in October 2013, the state of Tabasco experienced its worst oil disaster when a drill site exploded and burned for 55 days, contaminating the surrounding land and water. Villagers closest to the site say they are suffering from health problems and have lost their livestock. They say Pemex has never accepted responsibility for the accident, nor has it offered any compensation.
