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Strange Bedfellows Unite to Pressure Oil Giants
Alison Raphael, OneWorld US
Americans -- from nonprofit groups to the Rockefeller family -- are starting to fight back against the petroleum industry, which is earning record profits as consumers face spiraling gas prices.

Co-Op America, with around 70,000 members, has launched a campaign aimed at forcing ExxonMobil to invest more of its profits into exploring alternative energy sources, while another group seeks to change the priorities of the powerful American Petroleum Institute.

Ahead of this month's ExxonMobil stockholders meeting, 66 of 78 adult heirs of John D. Rockefeller, who founded the company's predecessor, Standard Oil, supported four resolutions aimed at making the oil giant hew a more environmentally friendly and forward-looking line.
(15 May 2008)

In Colorado, an unlikely alliance against drilling
Josh McDaniel, Christian Science Monitor
the growing opposition to gas extraction among Republicans in Colorado.
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Karl Van Calcar’s passion is elk hunting, and he likes to do it the hard way: by longbow. Bowhunting requires mimicking elk calls well enough to convince a bull elk he is being challenged for his herd of females. When Mr. Van Calcar is convincing, and everything goes right, the reward is an angry, 700-pound animal with massive antlers looking for a fight.

But these days Van Calcar is the one who’s got his blood up - about what’s happening to his favorite hunting ground, a 200-square-mile plateau that stretches from the western edge of the Rockies to the Utah border. The reason? Extensive oil and gas drilling that, he says, is ruining the rugged Roan Plateau with too many roads and rigs.

Van Calcar grew up a conservative Republican and a proud member of the National Rifle Association. But the avid hunter says he’s become disillusioned with the Bush administration’s embrace of the oil and gas industry. He changed party affiliation before the 2004 election.

... He and other local hunters have formed an alliance with fishing and conservation groups to halt the administration’s plans to open up a part of the Roan Plateau that has been off limits to drilling. In late 2007, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decided to begin offering drilling leases on 70 percent of the Roan Plateau Planning Area (RPPA) - a 73,000-acre island of wilderness in a sea of industrialized energy extraction.

The coalition’s fight is part of a rising opposition of sportsmen to the effects of energy development - a force reshaping Colorado politics and altering environmental politics across the West.
(14 May 2008)
Dramatic photo at original.

Just Like Building the Alaska Pipeline - Underwater
Byron King, Agora Financial
Subsea Drilling TechnologyThere are more people in metropolitan Houston than in all of Norway. But the Norwegians have one key advantage over most Houstonians. Norwegians have been navigating the world since it was flat. They know something about sailing and working at sea. And the Norwegians have been drilling in the North Sea for 60 years or so.

In the image above, note how subsea systems have evolved - 1970’s massive oil platforms have given way to subsea well completions…

Now the Norwegians are ready to take it to the world. And the world is going to buy Norwegian goods, because some of that stuff is just too good not to own. Here is an example…

Norway’s StatoilHydro

Norway has many outstanding firms that set world standards in the offshore business. One company is StatoilHydro (NYSE: STO), a recent merger of the state oil company Statoil and Norsk Hydro. At the recent Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, StatoilHydro received an award for its work in developing a massive gas field in the North Sea, called Ormen Lange.

Ormen Lange lies under waters between 2,500-4,000 feet deep. Statoil drilled 24 wells to recover 70 million cubic meters of natural gas per day and pipe it all dozens of miles ashore to a facility in Norway. Then the gas gets piped through a 48-inch pipeline under 725 miles of North Sea to Britain. Easy, right? Ummm. No.

Think of it in terms of building the Alaska Pipeline - underwater.

Everything about Ormen Lange is big and impressive. The water is deep. The drilling is difficult under the furious North Sea. The bedrock geology is tricky. Producing gas requires complex machinery be installed on the seafloor. There are long pipe runs, with some pipe lying on the seabed at 35 degree angles.

Moving the natural gas to England is a world-class feat in and of itself, through the longest subsea pipeline in the world.

Still, in the global scheme of things, Ormen Lange is just one project in this world. And there are dozens more like it in the offshore realm. The capital expenses for new energy projects are gigantic. Everything costs big bucks now. Prices are rising for steel, cement, equipment, machinery, cost of capital, labor (if you can find trained labor). The numbers are mind-boggling. How mind-boggling? In one talk, our buddy Matt Simmons mentioned it will cost $100 trillion over the next seven years to fund the energy projects the world needs.

Until we meet again,
(15 May 2008)