Oil


A collapse in oil and gas leasing on federally-owned land in six Western US states is costing the US economy jobs and federal royalties as well as limiting access to domestic energy resources, a recent oil industry backed study says.

The number of new leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management is down 44% from the 2007-2008 period to the 2009-2010 period. There was a slight uptick in leasing activity in 2011, but the American Petroleum Institute, which released the study says that much of the leasing last year was double-counting and actual new leases hit a low last set in 1984. Keep reading →


The federal government is a major player in the renewable energy space through tax credits and other subsidies, but even as those fade it has a vital role to play through the scale of its fuel and energy purchases.

As the advanced biofuels industry prepares for an era of widespread commercialization matched by shrinking subsidies, leading executives from companies like Amyris and Gevo are laying out their priorities and plans for the coming year and beyond. Keep reading →


President Barack Obama will double down on his “all-of-the-above” energy strategy on Thursday when he announces the Interior Department’s new lease sale to make roughly 38 million acres available for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement comes as part of the president’s post-State of the Union trip through Las Vegas and Denver, where he’ll expand on the energy blueprint he laid out in his address on Tuesday night. In his State of the Union speech, he vowed “responsible development” of domestic oil and natural gas. Speaking at a UPS refueling facility in Las Vegas, the president will detail the terms of the June 20 lease from Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which could yield up to 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.


In his third state of the Union speech, President Obama kept energy as “pillar” of economic recovery and made natural gas the pivot point.

While endorsing an “all of the above” energy strategy, he added little new from the policies of the last three years, and no real surprises. Keep reading →


For the third year in a row energy played a central role in President Obama’s State of the Union address, with the president leaning hard this year on the twin themes of increased domestic oil and gas production and the need to invest more in renewable sources. “Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years,” said Obama. “Not only that — last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years.” Obama has indeed presided over a boom in domestic energy production since taking office. From 2008 to 2011 U.S. crude oil production has jumped 14%, going from 5.1 million barrels per day at the start of 2008 to nearly 5.8 million barrels per day currently, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.


The US will “dramatically” reduce its oil import dependency between now and 2035, with imports declining from 49% today to 36%, Energy Information Administration Acting Administrator Howard Gruenspecht said Monday in Washington, DC.

In 2005-6, imports reached their record, 60% of US consumption. Keep reading →


The Obama Administration, encouraged by environmental groups, has blocked yet another affordable energy project-the Keystone XL Pipeline. Add this to the unconscionable slowdown of leasing and production in the Gulf of Mexico, foot-dragging on production in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, blocks on offshore production in the Atlantic and Pacific, and continued prohibitions and impediments to production in non-park, non-wilderness areas of the Western U.S. and ANWR. For each one, the claim is that the production wouldn’t make much difference.

Well, the XL Pipeline would bring 750,000 barrels per day to our energy markets. Just this one pipeline would add nearly as much as the 800,000 to 900,000 barrels per day we import from Venezuela-our fourth-largest foreign supplier. One of the most fundamental and least controversial concepts in economics is that increasing supply reduces price. The impact on petroleum price is compounded by the host of petroleum-producing projects that have been blocked, delayed, and impeded by the Administration. These projects could add millions of barrels per day to the petroleum markets. Keep reading →


President Obama upped the ante with Republicans Wednesday, saying their “rushed and arbitrary” 60-day deadline for finding whether TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline is in the public interest was too short, and telling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to reject the project.

Obama specified his decision was not made on the merits of the 1,700-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada to a Nebraska terminal and then on to the Gulf of Mexico. The State Department said, “The Department’s denial of the permit application does not preclude any subsequent permit application or applications for similar projects.” Keep reading →


Chinese companies continue to “overpay wildly” for foreign energy investments but still can’t keep pace with growing consumption in China’s subsidized domestic market, Derek Scissors of the Heritage Foundation told the China Environment Forum in Washington last week.

Fuel prices are controlled and kept well below market in China, he said, so Chinese companies end up selling oil and gas into international markets whenever possible rather than sending the resources home. The government is promising reform but has set no schedule. Keep reading →


The first in a two-part series in which Breaking Energy asks a leading venture capital specialist about the intersection of two of the hottest parts of the economy today. Both are also are major contributors to hopes for increased hiring and accelerated tecnology innovation.

Q: What is the state of the venture capital industry, particularly in the energy sector, at the start of 2012? Keep reading →

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