http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/11/19/landrieu-relents-on-lew-did-she-get-a-deal-on-drilling/
WSJ Blogs. Washington Wire–Political Insight and Analysis From The Wall Street Journal’s Capital Bureau
* November 19, 2010, 12:49 PM ET
Landrieu Relents on Lew. Did She Get A Deal on Drilling?
By Siobhan Hughes
How much did Sen. Mary Landrieu really get in return for dropping her opposition to Jacob Lew’s nomination to run the White House Office of Management and Budget? So far, it’s not clear.
Mr. Lew’s confirmation to the job late Thursday was made possible by Ms. Landrieu’s agreement to drop the hold she’d placed on his nomination as part of a battle with the Obama administration over offshore drilling. The Louisiana lawmaker blocked Mr. Lew’s bid to replace departed budget director Peter Orszag to protest the administration’s moratorium on new deepwater oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The moratorium is officially ended, but oil and gas industry executives are still concerned that the Interior Department is enforcing what some lawmakers call a “permitorium” – acting so slowly on new drilling permit applications that it amounts to a ban.
Ms. Landrieu said she freed Mr. Lew’s nomination after getting commitments that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar “will outline the path forward so that permits will be issued and the people of Louisiana can get back to work in this vital industry.” A Landrieu spokesman declined to elaborate.
Jim Noe, the general counsel of Hercules Offshore Inc. (HERO) and the head of a coalition of shallow-water drillers, said he understood that the U.S. Interior Department had agreed to issue five shallow-water drilling permits this week and to approve a flurry of new permits next week.
But Kendra Barkoff, an Interior spokeswoman, said that Interior’s offshore drilling agency continues to review permits on a case-by-case basis, on their merits. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has approved 15 permits to drill new shallow-water wells in the Gulf of Mexico and had six shallow-water permits pending as of Nov. 18. No permits to drill exploratory and development wells in the deep waters have yet received regulatory approval.
Mr. Noe also said that he expected the Interior Department to indicate its commitment to offering new leases in 2011 to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Interior Department has been expected by the industry to cancel a March 2011 lease sale because it only recently started to conduct an environmental review of the sale and this kind of review can take about six months to complete. The Interior Department has remained silent on its plans.
The conflicting versions of events suggest continued negotiations on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which currently accounts for 30% of domestic oil production. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appears in Louisiana on Monday to address the industry.
_______________________
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10927553/1/obama-budges-on-offshore-drilling.html
The Street: Obama Budges on Offshore Drilling
By Eric Rosenbaum 11/19/10 – 09:05 AM EST
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Oil drillers in the Gulf of Mexico received a positive signal on Friday with the confirmation of Jacob Lew as President Obama’s new budget chief.
Lew’s confirmation as White House budget chief had been held up by the Louisiana Senate power tandem of Sens. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) and David Vitter (R., La.), who wouldn’t budge on the budget chief unless the Interior Department relented on its slow road to new offshore drilling permits.
The drilling ban was implemented after the BP(BP) Macondo oil spill.
The White House has maintained all along that the drilling ban has not hurt the Gulf economy greatly, and the industry has overhyped the issue. The White House issued a report earlier in the fall with data it said backed the case that the drilling ban was more or less benign, though Obama did end up lifting the ban early.
Even though the White House had lifted the ban on new drilling in October, oil and gas companies have complained that the permitting process has become a bureaucratic nightmare.
Oil players including BP oil-spill partner company Anadarko Petroleum(APC) have said all along that they were ready to go the second the offshore drilling ban was lifted, but even with the ban eliminated, oil and gas companies are venting frustration over the long arm of the government.
It’s having an impact not just on administrators trying to get permit applications through the government, but leading to comments from oil and gas drilling company CEOs about a permitting process that could impact earnings for quarters to come.
__________________________________________
http://www.lakestevensjournal.com/county-state/article.exm/2010-11-19_call_for_study_of_gulf_fisheries_after_new_oil_spill_report_finds_risks_ignored
Lake Stevens Journal: Call For Study of Gulf Fisheries After New Oil Spill Report Finds Risks Ignored
Lake Stevens, Washington
Published on Fri, Nov 19, 2010 by Soundbite Services
The science is in, and it finds BP and its contractors failed to learn from “near misses,” and made risky decisions that contributed to the oil well blowout and spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Those findings are in an interim report out this week that was requested by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Fisheries scientists, like Aaron Adams, director of operations with Florida’s Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, say the report is a good step as Salazar strengthens oversight of offshore drilling. He hopes the government’s next move is to conduct similar science-based studies of the Gulf’s fisheries to help safeguard them for the future.
“We know so little about the natural resources of the Gulf of Mexico, that if we put an oil rig, or do deep sea mining, or anything else, we don’t know if we put that in a particular location if it’s gonna severely impact part of that $140 billion fishery.”
Adams hopes the oil spill continues to motivate government agencies like the U.S. Department of Interior and the National Marine Fisheries Service to collaborate on a plan to assess and manage Gulf resources. He says as it stands right now there are big gaps in available data.
“There is no comprehensive map of habitat available in the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, we don’t even know what’s available for the fish to live and reproduce in the Gulf.”
He notes it is common for companies to roll as much as 20 percent of profits into research and development to stay viable, but nowhere near that kind of investment is being put in to Gulf research.
Adams is particularly interested in continuing impacts from the spill on the tarpon fishery and their migration range between Louisiana and Florida.
“A lot of the oil and the dispersant remains in the system, and since tarpon live up to eighty years, those effects may take a while to occur, but they’re also going to be long-term.”
He adds there’s little data available on tarpon, despite their cultural importance and estimated $6 billion value as a fishery.
Content provided on behalf of Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. Contact: Andrea Keller Helsel, 202-320-784, andrea@wcfnd.org
________________________________
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704312504575618852339002996.html
Wall Street Journal
_______________________________
New York Times blogs: U.S. Oil Imports Shrink, Yet Worries Loom
November 19, 2010, 10:00 am
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Good news on the energy security front?
According to some October statistics released by the American Petroleum Institute, the United States imported 10.75 million barrels of oil a day last month, a decrease of 133,000 barrels a day from October 2009.
That decline may seem small, and indeed that is equivalent to only about one-eighth of what the country imports from Saudi Arabia every day. But from a security and economic point of view, some say that it’s a step in the right direction, particularly given that gasoline demand for the month was actually 0.6 percent higher than last October.
And it looks even better when you consider that imports from the Persian Gulf are declining by a faster rate than total imports. (Canada is the No. 1 source of imports, with Mexico coming in second.)
The reason the country can import less oil is that it is producing more domestically. The institute reported that crude oil production in the United States in October rose to 5.5 million barrels a day, the highest level since 2003. This reflects a continuation of another trend: domestic oil production has been increasing since 2009, the first year in nearly two decades that showed a rise.
Time to celebrate? Perhaps, but of course there is a cost. The increase in domestic production comes mostly from deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, a focus of attention since the BP disaster this spring and summer. Deepwater exploration has slowed since the accident and spill, and domestic production may level off over the next couple of years.
Unless, of course, production onshore increases — and that would depend on more hydraulic fracturing in new oil fields in North Dakota, Texas and Colorado that sit amid shale rock. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting water and chemicals into the ground, and some environmentalists worry about the possibility of contaminating underground water supplies.
There is always Arctic drilling in Alaska to take up the slack, however, and Shell has plans to start drilling in the Beaufort Sea. Then again, the Obama administration doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to move forward with Arctic offshore drilling, given concerns over the recent gulf spill and polar bear habitat.
The United States can always import more from Canada, which is almost like not importing at all, some would argue. But then that means more refining of synthetic oil from oil sands, which have a larger carbon footprint than your average barrel from Saudi Arabia.
It gets complicated. Good news in the energy patch can mix with a downside, and bad news can still be really bad. Better walk to work tomorrow.
An earlier version of this post said the petroleum institute reported that crude oil production in the United States in October rose to 5.5 billion barrels a day; the correct number was 5.5 million.
Special thanks to Richard Charter