The Strangest Thing -- I Had A Dream -- I Dreamt President Obama Honored An Oilman With A Medal -- October 1, 2014

It's been a long day. I did a lot of blogging. Swimming. Then a small Omaha steak dinner. Then started watching No Country for Old Men. Drowsy. Started to nod off. Then got a call from our younger daughter. Long phone call. Nodded off. Dreamt that President Obama honored someone with an energy medal of some sort. Woke up. Caught a second wind, as they say. Turned No Country for Old Men back on; can't skip all the trailers, so had to sit through all that again. While waiting to get through all this checked in on Rigzone. Saw this story. Went outside to see if hell had frozen over. Then checked the calendar to see if it was April 1.

Rigzone is reporting:

As the U.S. drilling boom helps drive global crude prices to two-year lows, the Obama administration has awarded the country's first medal for energy security to oil historian and business founder Daniel Yergin.

Yergin, 67, received the Schlesinger Medal for Energy Security from Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a ceremony on Wednesday.

The annual award is named after James Schlesinger, who in 1977 became the first U.S. energy secretary.

Yergin advised Schlesinger as the country went through an oil price shock resulting from the Iranian revolution. Since then he has given advice to every administration, including President Barack Obama's.

Yergin co-founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates in 1982, a consulting company later bought by IHS, which now has 650 global energy researchers. His books on the history of energy include "The Prize" and "The Quest."

"Energy to me combines everything from geopolitics and how nations behave to technological innovation and entrepreneurship," Yergin said in an interview before receiving the medal. "It's a great window to look at the world."

He now urges U.S. policymakers to lift a 40-year ban on crude oil exports, saying a glut of crude would choke the boom if the action is not taken.

Congress passed the ban after the Arab oil embargo stirred fears of an energy shortage. Yergin is also working on a new book about the changing balance of world power, with a focus on energy.

The North Dakota and Texas shale boom has helped make the United States far more energy-secure than in 2008, when oil hit a record price of $147 per barrel, compared with $95 today. But Yergin warned in the interview that companies and policymakers should brace themselves for change.

Gonna go back to sleep. Heck of a dream. I want to see how it ends.

I also dreamt that they're going to start drilling in France again. LOL. Rigzone is reporting:

Sustainably high oil prices have lured small oil explorers back to Alsace, the cradle of the French oil exploration industry that gave birth to corporate giants such as Schlumberger.

The activity near the Rhine on the German border does not amount to an oil boom. The region provides 1 percent of French oil production, which is just under 2 percent of European output.

Nonetheless, 13 wells are pumping, two exploration permits have recently been granted and more are being reviewed by the French administration. "For us, Alsace was a sleeping beauty," said Stephane Touche, whose company Millennium Geo-Venture holds the two recent exploration permits and has applied for five more.

Among its advantages, the region's oil reserves are already completely mapped and are very close to the surface. Oil leaks have long provided a favourite mud-bath playground for wild boars in the Alsatian forest.

Oil production in Alsace started in the 18th century and peaked in the 1920s, when more than 650 wells and four refineries supplied 5 percent of French oil needs and provided work for 3,000 people around Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, 50 km north of Strasbourg. In that era, the Schlumberger brothers carried out the first electrical well log and created the company. 

Much more at the link.