No, No, No, You Can't Drill Here No Mo'

Hey Nancy, how many jobs does this cost us?

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to announce today that 77 parcels of land which were up for lease in Utah to oil companies for exploration will be withdrawn.

This follows the usual storyline. President Bush opened up the area for exploration, the environmental groups swooped in and started filing lawsuits, finally found a sympathetic judge, and now 110,000 acres are once again off limits.

The Bush administration conducted the lease sale in December, but environmental groups went to court to block the winning bids encompassing roughly 110,000 acres near pristine areas such as Nine Mile Canyon, Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument.

Just before Bush left office last month, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina issued a restraining order on the lease sales, postponing the final transactions until he could hear arguments on the merits of the case.

You do understand that the Democrat approach to America's energy problems is not to make us energy independent, but rather it is to reduce us to a zero energy consumption country. They are going to do this by passing ridiculous legislation in congress which will impose impossible emission standards on businesses and power manufacturing plants along with autos, draconian so-called CAFE standards, using their proxies in the courts and in the environmental movement to tie up any attempts to conduct exploration and recovery of any fossil fuels as well as blocking the construction of nuclear and coal power plants.

I long for the day when other states quit selling energy to California so that a permanent blackout descends upon the state and maybe, finally, those ignorant dunces in Hollyweird, along with their environmental goofballs who all worship at the Temple of the Goracle, will finally get a clue.

30 Years of American Energy Policy in 3 Minutes

Glenn Beck once again does the job that average Americans won't, or something like that. This is really no surprise to the vast majority of us, and you could probably put together a similar video in regards to Social Security, Medicare, Immigration, and Tax Reform. Every election cycle the same horror stories and after the elections the same results. Nothing!
Can we pleeeeeze get some fresh blood up in CONgress? Folks that did not know FDR personally. Maybe people who were not charter members of AARP. Keep the Iraq Vets for Congress in mind this election cycle. Adopt a anybody but the incumbent mentality.
Anywhere here is your video, enjoy!

No Energy Plant For You, Georgia

Yup, the enviro wackos win another one.

The construction of a coal-fired power plant in Georgia was halted Monday when a judge ruled that the plant's builders must first obtain a permit from state regulators that limits the amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

Fulton County Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore 's decision overturned a ruling that allowed the construction of the $2 billion Longleaf Energy Plant, which would become Georgia's first new coal-fired plant in more than two decades.
Environmentalists said the decision marks the first time that a judge has applied a U.S. Supreme Court finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant to emissions from an industrial source.

Just add this one to the growing list of why you pay so much at the pump. All this week, we have brought you stories of one sort of energy or another being squelched by the enviro-Nazis, whether because of prairie chickens or some other environmental concern. Do you get the hint that the oh so compassionate tree huggers are trying to kill you with their kind of kindness? They seem hell bent on making humans become a member of the endangered species list.
It wasn't enough that last summer while Georgia was going through a drought in the Atlanta area that we were being forced to send water downstream to Florida to ensure the survival of mussels, a program that is still ongoing, but now they have any sort of energy production for this country squarely in their crosshairs. Liberals and Dems are working hard to cause you pain, only so that they can then tell you "they feeeel your pain" while retreating to their multimillion dollar, energy-hogging, Countrywide "sweet deal"-financed mansions to eat arugula salad while scheming to take oil company profits or, worse yet, make them a part of the government so that they will have even more money to spend on their grand, doomed-to-failure, social experiments.

The plant is expected to create more than 100 full-time jobs and give millions of dollars in tax revenues to Early County, where almost a quarter of the 12,000 residents live in poverty. It would power more than a half-million homes through utilities in Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

Of course, this cottage industry in America, environmentalists supported by zealous lawyers and activist judges, is becoming the perfect storm for the destruction of America's economy. What communism and Al Queda terrorists couldn't do now seems to be at the mercy of these activists.

Nilles said he and other environmental attorneys are preparing similar challenges to delay about 30 coal plants now in active litigation. "The issue is now teed up from Nevada to North and South Carolina," he said.

And of course the big boogie man is Al Gore's make-believe best friend and partner in crime, global warming.

"It's a scandal that energy companies are still trying to build coal plants even though they cause global warming," she said. "I can't be more thrilled. It's a huge ruling. This is a new day in the United States, and I'm thrilled."

Get Ready For More Congressional Hearings

Last week's socialist circus performances by Schmuck Schumer (Moron-NY) and Kameraden Madame Maxine Waters (Moonbat-CA) may well be soon eclipsed after they become aware of this. Bring it on.

Energy giants smell windfall from sulphur

A Kazakh worker pours liquid sulphur at the Tengizchevroil refinery. Large quantities of crude oil is produced at Chevron’s Tengiz project
An ugly waste product of oil refining has been transformed into a golden windfall for energy companies as demand for fertilisers drives the price of sulphur to unprecedented levels.

For decades oil refiners have struggled to shift stockpiles of the yellow chemical, which is used to make sulphuric acid, essential in the manufacture of fertilisers. Food shortages and higher grain prices are boosting demand for fertilisers, and in only a year the price of sulphur has risen more than tenfold from $50 a tonne to $500 a tonne, according to ICIS, the chemicals-pricing service.

The extraordinary surge in the price of sulphur is expected to generate windfall profits for some oil companies, notably Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, as well as Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Aramco and Adnoc, the Abu Dhabi national oil company.

“Shell is one of the most-efficient producers of sulphur,” Barry Clarke, a sulphur market analyst for Pentasul, said. Shell produces about 3.5 million tonnes of sulphur, much of it from its Canadian oil sands business, and its cost, Mr Clarke reckons, is merely the rail freight cost of getting the sulphur to a port, about $25 a tonne.

Mr Clarke agrees that sulphur, once a burden, could earn the oil industry billions this year. “It’s going to show up in the earnings of companies,” he said.

Congressional hearings to be announced in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

The price is expected to rise further with spot cargoes changing hands for as much as $700 a tonne. Demand for metals is also keeping sulphur bubbling, as sulphuric acid is used in the mining industry to leech metal from ore.

So large was the sulphur surplus a decade ago that mountains of the chemical were being formed, notably in Kazakhstan, where high-sulphur “sour” crude oil is produced in large quantities at Chevron’s Tengiz project. A spokesman for Chevron confirmed that the stockpiles were beginning to erode as the company was finding demand for more than the annual output from the Tengiz field.

“Last year we sold a record 2 million tonnes,” he said. “We sold 126 per cent of production.”

Chevron wants to raise output to 3 million tonnes, further levelling its stockpiles, and Shell has recently developed a separate global business, based in Canada, to market its sulphur output.

Patrick Romeo, general manager of sulphur marketing for Shell, said that the market was undersupplied. The reason for the extraordinary price surge, he said, is that sulphur producers cannot respond to price increases and produce more. Sulphur output is purely a function of the amount of “sour” crude oil and sour gas that is processed by refineries. Mr Romeo said: “There is not much you can do about producing more sulphur. We are trying our best to put everything we have in stock into the market.”

The cost of sulphur and phosphates, another essential fertiliser ingredient, is sparking protests from politicians in developing countries, such as India, where the Government subsidises fertiliser to keep costs down for poor farmers.J.S. Sarma, secretary to the government department of fertilisers in India, said that prices were abnormally high and not justified. “I would not be honest if I said that it is not putting a strain on [India’s] financial resources,” he said.

The estimated cost to the Indian Government of the fertiliser subsidy is $22 billion (£11 billion), more than double last year’s figure.

According to Pentasul, the world produces about 47 million tonnes of sulphur annually, but the world’s ravenous demand for food is telling the sulphur market that 49 million tonnes is needed. Meanwhile, the opening of new mining projects adds further pressure on demand, creating huge price spikes.

Shell is confident that the price surge is temporary, and the company is developing products, such as sulphur-based concrete, anticipating a future surplus. It said: “There will be more sulphur in the market in the longer term and it will be overproduced as the world uses more unconventional oils, such as oil sands. Unconventional oil means more sulphur.”

Desperate to find a link to global warming climate change further perpetuate his hoax, al-Gore was unavailable for comment.

Via TimesOnline

Supply and Demand? What's That?

Stop the presses! This just in: the laws of supply and demand still work.

'Huge' oil field found off Brazil

A huge natural gas field has been found a short distance off Rio de Janeiro's coastline, Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, says.
The company believes the new field, Jupiter, could match the recently discovered Tupi oil field in size.

Tupi is thought to be one of the largest fields discovered in the past 20 years.

A lot of crude oil is probably there, too.

Petrobras estimates Tupi contains between five and eight billion barrels of light oil.

The bottom line is the world's known oil/gas reserves just got a lot bigger, while a lot of the world is still yet unexplored for these resources.

So, as the price of energy rises around the world, the higher price/profit motivates further exploration. The higher prices bring into play possible deposits that previously were not economical to tap.

Now they are.

So rather than fermenting our corn fields into fuel, maybe we would be better served searching for more oil instead.

Regardless, it's amazing how the free market provides solutions to problems, every time it's tried.