Proposed US Environmental Protection Agency regulations directed at refiners could put several US refiners out of business and place others at a significant disadvantage to overseas petroleum product manufacturers, American Petroleum Institute officials warned.Bottom iine: increased costs; "modest" returns on investment; costs passed on to consumer.
“At the same time, data suggest that the environmental benefits would be modest,” API Regulatory and Scientific Affairs Director Howard Feldman told reporters during a Feb. 10 teleconference.
API spent much of 2011 opposing an out-of-cycle proposal that would have imposed more stringent ozone standards, and EPA subsequently withdrew, he said.
Currently, API is concerned with proposed Tier 3 gasoline rules, greenhouse gas emission rules, and new sources performance standards for refiners, the third phase of EPA’s tailoring rule, and the boiler maximum achievable controllable technology rule, Feldman said.
If your mineral acres are included in a spacing unit and a producing well is drilled anywhere in that spacing unit, your acres are now "held by production" if that well produces oil.I'm not sure if that has been made clear in early posts.
Total: 17.4 million acre-feet/yearOne of the things that I find frustrating in mainstream media is that they deal in numerators and not denominators. We always hear how much water is necessary for fracking, but mainstream media never provides the percent that water represents compared to other industries and other needs.
Agricultural: 13.9 million acre-feet/year (85.5%)
Municipal and industrial: 1.2 million acre-feet/year (7.4%)
Total All Others: 1.2 million acre-feet/year (7.1%)
Breakdown of "All Others" (selected):
Recreation: 923K (5.6%)
Hydraulic fracturing: 14K (0.08%)
Snowmaking: 5K (0.03%)
But the shale gas push [in Poland] is about more than energy. Poland wants to break its reliance on Russian energy and reduce Moscow's power over Europe. That is one reason why Warsaw has welcomed U.S. oil majors such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Conoco and Marathon, even though it risks igniting tensions with Russia.I really don't care about the geo-political issues here. What is most interesting to me is that it is American technology being bought and it is CVX, XOM, COP, and MRO that are being emphasized.
"If this thing comes true, if the American technologies deployed here at some point are really able to produce this gas, then this means a winning situation for the whole of Europe really," Radzieciak said in an interview in his small office filled with sports trophies, banners from local teams and a large map of Poland on the wall. "It would create more competitiveness on the gas market, which is now dominated by Russia, and one side would not be able to force anything unilaterally anymore."
The article is much longer and goes on with several "pearls."The U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo triggered a recession and led to lines at gasoline stations.Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years. The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal. Methanex Corp. (MX), the world’s biggest methanol maker, said it will dismantle a factory in Chile and reassemble it in Louisiana to take advantage of low natural gas prices.
And higher mileage standards and federally mandated ethanol use, along with slow economic growth, have curbed demand.
The result: The U.S. has reversed a two-decade-long decline in energy independence, increasing the proportion of demand met from domestic sources over the last six years to an estimated 81 percent through the first 10 months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the U.S. Department of Energy. That would be the highest level since 1992.
One last thought on the Bloomberg article linked above. First there was the Internet boom..then we had the huge housing boom and now it's going to be the energy boom. We are going to look back at this time the same way we did for those booms.
It's where all the jobs and innovation will happen for the next decade. The energy boom is spread across the whole country...everyone can get in on this boom no matter where you live, California to NY.I wonder if Obama will take credit like AL gore did with the internet? [Comment: he alreadyhas -- The 2012 State of the Union address.]
Maybe this was obvious but now it's all very clear...this is the countries next major boom...the golden years of energy for our country.
