Oil Drilling // Current

To Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill”, Alaska natives reply: “Chill, baby, chill”

Call her “the other Sarah” from Alaska. Like former Gov. Sarah Palin, Sarah... more

JacquesHalle
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6 days ago
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2 comments

"Houston we have a problem" Official Selection for the Austin Film Festival

Houston We Have A Problem is about America's voracious appetite for oil from the... more

Houstonproblem
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1 month ago
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1 comment

"Houston we have a problem" Official Selection for the Austin Film Festival

Houston We Have A Problem is a feature documentary about America's voracious appetite... more

Houstonproblem
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1 month ago
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1 comment

No More "Drill Baby Drill" In Utah!

Salazar said at a media briefing that 17 parcels were approved for drilling and eight... more

atomiclegion
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1 month ago
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3 comments

Who says were running out of oil?

Apparently business is boomin. Who would've thought? latimes.com ENERGY Oxy... more

HowardRourke
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2 months ago
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No drilling in America's Arctic!

For thousands of years, the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean have nurtured irreplaceable species including polar bears, whales and seals, and a unique human culture. But in the next few weeks, the Obama administration will make a series of crucial decisions that could determine whether America's Arctic will survive and thrive or be sacrificed to destructive and dangerous oil and gas drilling.

At stake are the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas--the Polar Bear Seas, home to 1 in 5 of the world's already diminished polar bear populations--as well as the rich fishing grounds of Bristol Bay. During the last eight years, the oil and gas industry and the Bush administration pushed hard to open these fragile waters to industrial-scale oil and gas exploration and drilling.

The rush to drill ignored the fact that the Arctic is probably the least-understood region on Earth and that the most basic scientific research is lacking to guide decisions that could alter the Arctic ecosystem forever. An oil spill in icy waters would be a disaster we have no idea how to clean up.

The Arctic is ground zero of the global warming crisis. Its seas, its wildlife and its people are already suffering the harmful effects of a warming world. Extracting more oil and gas would not only directly damage the Arctic ecosystem, but burning those fossil fuels will make global warming worse, while doing nothing to meet the nation's need for clean energy.

Now is the time to urge President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to treat America's Arctic as a national treasure and put the brakes on irresponsible oil and gas drilling. Let them know that the Arctic's places, species and people are too precious to allow further oil and gas activity without a comprehensive, science-based plan to protect the region's unique wildlife and the people whose culture and livelihoods depend on them.

Until September 21, Secretary Salazar is asking for Americans' opinions on a Bush-era plan for selling Arctic oil and gas leases. Soon he also will decide whether to permit Shell to drill in the Arctic Ocean in 2010 and whether to defend a Bush-era sale in the Chukchi Sea that offered the pristine area to oil companies without complying with environmental laws.

Secretary Salazar should throw out the Bush-era leasing plan and cancel the illegal Chukchi Sea leases. He should call a "time-out" on all new oil and gas activity in the Arctic Ocean--including pending drilling plans--until he develops a science-based, comprehensive approach to managing the region that will ensure a legacy of a healthy, living Arctic for future generations.

These upcoming decisions present the Obama administration with the opportunity to chart a new course for the Arctic. Please take a minute to urge them to do so.For thousands of years, the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean have nurtured irreplaceable... more

JanforGore
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3 months ago
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2 comments

US Funds OFF SHORE DRILLING!

In Brazil. We still can't use our "renewable resources"....yes OIL is... more

nobamayomama
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3 months ago
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3 comments

Palin questions Obama sending $2 billion to Brazil

While it does not seem to bother the Democrats in Congress that Obama is sending $2... more

ladybugaz
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3 months ago
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Mechanical Tick

biting, adhering, sucking from its host. soon to be plucked.

stephenthomson
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4 months ago
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Mechanical Mosquito

biting, sucking, extracting from its host. awaiting the slap.

stephenthomson
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4 months ago
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After Sabotaging Own Oil Wells, Exxon Faces $1 Billion in Fines

O, those oil companies; they sure do love to play dirty. And the biggest US oil company, Exxon Mobil, has just got caught with its hand in the well--the oil well that it purposefully sabotaged so no other company could use, that is. The Texas General Land Office has just revealed that Exxon "maliciously" destroyed its own oil fields so that no one else would be able to tap them--and it's getting slapped with a $1 billion fine for the crime. And wait till you hear what they did to the wells--and what that fine will go towards cleaning up.

It's not pretty. In fact, it's pretty disgusting. According to Bloomberg:

Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the land office that oversees oil leases that help fund Texas schools, asked the Texas Railroad Commission to conduct hearings into an alleged 1990s program at Exxon Mobil of plugging abandoned wells with trash, sludge, explosives and cement plugs. The barriers made it impossible for other producers to revive the wells, Patterson said in a statement he gave to Bloomberg News yesterday.

So that's an environmentally offending twofer--it both further degrades the area around the wells, and wastes the ever more scarce natural resource that had already been drilled for exploitation. On the bright side, I guess it's a bit of petrol that won't get burned . . .
So why the spiteful rampage? It seems Exxon had a bit of a falling out with one of Texas's most prominent oil families, the O'Connors.

From the 1950s to the late 1980s, the O’Connors earned more than $40 million in royalties on crude and gas pumped from 121 wells that Exxon Corp., as the company was then known, and a predecessor, Humble Oil & Refining Co., drilled on the family’s land near Corpus Christi, according to court filings.

The relationship between Exxon and the family deteriorated in the late 1980s, when the company’s request for a reduction in the 50 percent royalty rate was rebuffed, court documents showed. Exxon said the field was no longer profitable and began shutting wells, a process that concluded in August 1991, the documents showed.

After Exxon packed up and left town, the O'Connors decided to tap the rest of the oil from the partially sapped fields.

Two years later, Emerald Oil . . . agreed to lease from the O’Connors one-third of the area formerly operated by Exxon. When Emerald drilled into the plugged wells to revive production, drill bits collided with cement, severed pipes and explosive charges normally used to perforate rock formations, Patterson said.

Bad form indeed.O, those oil companies; they sure do love to play dirty. And the biggest US oil... more