Phil Taylor
The New York Times
3/4/2011
Republicans and oil-state Democrats are challenging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s comments this week that oil and gas production in the United States has increased even as permitting for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico remains at a virtual standstill.
While Interior on Monday issued the first deepwater drilling permit since BP PLC’s April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf, drilling proponents remain critical of the pace of approvals and argue that regulatory uncertainty has stifled new applicants.
Salazar, who appeared in Senate and House hearings this week to defend Interior’s fiscal 2012 budget, sought to quiet the criticism with data indicating oil and gas production has risen over the past five years and that oil imports have dropped by 10 percent over the same time frame.
“I would ask both Republicans and Democrats on this committee to take an honest look at what we have done over the past two years,” Salazar told the House Natural Resources Committee yesterday. He cited expanded development opportunities both onshore and offshore and pointed to 29 oil and gas lease sales by the Bureau of Land Management in 2010 that have opened 41 million acres for development.
But those number belie the most recent forecast by the federal Energy Information Administration that oil production in the Gulf is expected to decline by 250,000 barrels per day over each of the next two years due in part to the moratorium placed on deepwater drilling and the subsequent slowdown in the issuance of new permits…
The article continues at The New York Times
H/T Verum Serum
Related: Breaking Up With OPEC
We are in the middle of world events that may result in the eventual break-up of the ‘Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC), which is an intergovernmental organization of twelve developing countries, made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela (See Chart). OPEC is considered a cartel with most of its members controlled by varying forms of essentially autocratic system of governments.
The start of the break up may have been on September 10, 2008, when the Saudis walked out of OPEC negotiating session in Vienna where the organization voted to reduce production. Although Saudi Arabian OPEC delegates officially endorsed the new quotas, they stated anonymously that they would not observe them. One of their delegates was quoted as saying “Saudi Arabia will meet the market’s demand. We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil. The policy has not changed.”
The U.S. imports crude oil from many other countries, but three OPEC members are still among the top five of countries from which we directly receive shipment of that precious commodity. Here is how they rank per the latest report from the EIA…
Update: RedState (Blame the Democrats for High Gas Prices) links to this newspaper article from August 2001.
Update 2: Salazar appeals to court in attempt to delay movement on Gulf drilling permits. The Interior Secretary is fighting back against a court order to act on permitting oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/#ixzz1FyA2rrg0
