Gore gets a cold shoulder

Steve Lytte
October 14, 2007

ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

At his first appearance since the award was announced in Oslo, Mr Gore said: "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing."

Mr Gore shared the Nobel prize with the United Nations climate panel for their work in helping to galvanise international action against global warming.

But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.

During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.

He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.

"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said.

He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html

Some Inconvenient Truths For Gore

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, October 11, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Junk Science: Al Gore's documentary on climate disaster has been ruled a work of fiction by a British judge. In legal terms, his global warming hysteria has been assuming facts not in evidence.

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Gore has long insisted that the debate over disastrous and imminent climate change induced by man-made global warming is over. A unanimous scientific "consensus" had formed, and the only doubters were "deniers" who also believe the moon landings were filmed on a movie lot in Arizona.

The British government apparently believed this, making Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" part of the British secondary school curriculum. The greenies were happy, if for no other reason than convincing impressionable children and future voters is easier than defending their theories before award-winning pioneers in the field.

Stewart Dimmock, a school governor in Kent, said the government's decision amounted to brainwashing of children. Justice Michael Burton of the High Court in London, while agreeing warming is man-induced, also supported Dimmock's view that "(Gore's film) is not simply a science film . . . but that it is a political film."

Burton ruled that the film could be shown to British students, but only on the condition it be accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance Gore's "one-sided" views. Burton documented nine major errors in Gore's film and wrote that some of Gore's claims had arisen "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration."

The first error Gore made, according to Burton, was in his apocalyptic vision of the devastation from a rise in sea levels caused by melting polar ice caps. Gore's claim of a 20-foot rise "in the near future" was dismissed as "distinctly alarmist." Burton wrote that such a rise could occur "only after, and over, millennia" and to suggest otherwise "is not in line with the scientific consensus."

As we have noted, the scientific consensus is that sea levels might rise anywhere from 7 inches to 23 inches, but it would take a century for that to occur. Even the latest IPCC report suggested that it would take a thousand years of higher-than-historic temperatures to melt the Greenland ice sheet, the basis of Gore's claim.

On Gore's claim that the loss of Mount Kilimanjaro's snows was due to climate change, the judge said the scientific community had been unable to find evidence of a direct link. In fact, it found the opposite.

In 2002, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson reported that from 1953 to 1976, a period of global cooling that had some predicting a new ice age, a full 21% of Kilimanjaro's main glacier disappeared. It was caused not by man-induced warming, but by deforestation.

Burton said Gore's suggestion that the Gulf Stream that warms the North Atlantic would shut down also was contradicted by the IPCC's assessment that it was "very unlikely" to happen.

Burton also ridiculed Gore's claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for ice melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court said it was aware of were four bears that died following a storm.

There is no word from Gore on whether he thinks Judge Burton was paid off by Big Oil, drives an SUV or thinks the moon landing was fake. For Gore, it's an inconvenient truth that in its first court case, the Industrial Revolution was put on trial and found not guilty on at least nine counts.

 

"The First Oilwell in the United States of America" and How $80 Seems Cheap
By Robert Gaston

Dateline... Titusville, Pennsylvania; the year is 1854.

Oil was selling at $40.00 a barrel, (that's $18,000 at todays prices!) .

At that time there were no oilwells. Oil was skimmed from springs, off ponds, and creeks where it collected. Oil had only a few uses; axle grease for wagons, adhesive, caulk for boats, illuminating lamp fuel (kerosene), and some medicinal use.

Dr. F. B. Brewer, a Titusville physician, visiting his professor of surgery at Dartmouth College, had showed him, as a curiosity, a sample of oil skimmed from a spring on land belonging to his family. The professor in turn showed the sample to another Dartmouth graduate, George Bissell, a New York lawyer. In an amazing excercise of productive creativity, lawyer Bissell wondered if the oil could be used for lamp fuel in place of the standard and cheapest illuminant, whale oil, the supply of which was getting no longer adequate. Benjamin Silliman, a Yale University chemistry and geology professor analyzed Bissell?s sample and declared it could be refined into excellent kerosene.

Bissell immediately leased the land on Oil Creek containing the spring, thus becoming the first Petroleum Landman, and interested some New Haven bankers in backing a company that would try to develop oil in quantity, thus becoming the first Oil and Gas Promoter. This company, Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, was the first oil company in the USA.

Bissell, being the creative sort, happened upon a picture on a patent medicine circular, illustrating a wooden tower housing machinery used to drill salt wells. Samuel Kier, a Pittsburgh salt-works owner, had found a profitable use for the nuisance rock-oil that came up with the brine by bottling and selling it as " Kier?s Petroleum or Rock Oil Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers. A Natural Remedy Procured from a Well in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 400 feet below the Earth?s Surface". This competed, although probably less favorably, with the cocaine and alcohol and laudenum based "curatives" on the market at the time. Now who would you consider to be a better salesman? The guy who sells people powerful narcotics in order to feel better or someone who talks people into drinking petroleum?

If oil could be found indirectly as a result of drilling for salt, Bissell wondered, why not use the same method to find oil directly? It did not occur to the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company promoters that any special talent would be required to drill such a well, otherwise they would probably not have selected so unlikely a manager as Edwin L. Drake, a railroad conductor.

Mr. Drake, was commissioned by Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company as a "Colonel", with the thought that it would lend dignity to the project. This was the first time that fraud was used to secure investment in the oil patch.

Drake immediately hired William A. "Uncle Billy" Smith, a sprightly old blacksmith, knowledgeable about salt wells and salt works, who set about building a 35 foot high wooden derrick and equipment housing. The Drawworks were homemade and the rig was powered by a small 6 or 8 horsepower steam engine, and a tubular marine boiler called a "Long John". This was the first dedicated oilrig.

Uncle Billy became the first toolpusher. He worked for Drake about three years and then retired. He took with him the first string of tools from the Drake well and preserved them for us to see today and are on exhibit at a museum on the site of the well. The tool string consists of the rope socket and sinker bar, jars and temper screw, the reamer, some bits and a couple of sand pumps (bailers).

Uncle Billy and his two sons kept the well drilling while "Colonel" Drake supervised and fished (for real fish) and played Euchre with the storeowners in Titusville, thus becoming the first "company man".

People in Titusville referred to the operation as a foolish venture, a "folley?, or "Drake?s Folley", after all, who had ever heard of drilling into the ground for oil?

Soon problems arose, water coming into the hole caused the crew to spend more time bailing out water than drilling. One year had gone by and the well had only been drilled to 40 feet and had cost $2,490.00, (thus leading, I suppose, to the the first day rate contract!). The New Haven backers, unable to sell more stock refused to send Drake another dollar, although he assured them he had finally solved the drilling difficulties.

The assets were then leased to the Senneca Oil Company of New Haven, which, until then had been bottling Oil for "medicinal" purposes.

Drake continued as drilling supervisor.

Drake lined the well with pipe to a point below the water entry, thus shutting off the flow of water and continued to drill through the pipe. Drake was no longer an imposter! He had earned a real title?that of inventor?and this ingenious idea would be adopted by all drillers after him. This was the first use of casing in an oilwell.

On Saturday afternoon August 26, 1859, Uncle Billy reported to Drake that the well had been drilled to a depth of 69 ½ feet.

The drilling was shutdown on Sundays and on this particular Sunday, while Uncle Billy was tidying-up around the rig, he happened to look down the hole. He noted with irritation that water had seeped into the hole and was up within 10 feet of the top. He sent the bailer down to start bailing it out, but when the bailer was pulled from the hole it was dripping with oil.

Uncle Billy hurried to town and slyly did not tell Drake why he wanted him to come to the wellsite.

"Look there!" Uncle Billy said. "What do you think of this?"

The mystified Drake looked down the hole. "What?s that?" he asked (remember... the first "company man").

"That?s your fortune," Uncle Billy said gleefully.

The crew set about to complete the well to produce the oil that had been found. Two inch copper tubing was run into the well and since the flow was small, Drake and Uncle Billy rigged up a pump. This increased the production to 35 barrels of oil a day. With oil selling for $40.00 a barrel this started a flurry of activity. Speculators rushed to drill wells up and down the creek, thus the first cornershooters.

Wells were drilled, some using the simplest equipment, and found oil that gushed as much as 1000 barrels per day.

Soon the countryside was pockmarked with wells and in two years time this forest of wooden derricks had sucked so much oil from under the Pennsylvania landscape that the price was down to 10 cents a barrel, given that there really wasn't a market for thousands, much less millions of barrels of oil at that time. The new oil industry nearly died before it started. However the glut was not to continue, as Americans and Europeans were finding more and more new uses for this plentiful product.

With America?s emergence from the War Between the States, the demand for petroleum products increased and the country was headed for economic boom times.

www.bigoilfields.com

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The discovery of oil in the Edwards formation of south-central Texas in the year '22 was the starting gun for a brand new trend of exploration and development. Credited with this trend is Edgar Byram Davis (1873 - 1951), who pioneered the Edwards, and to the many other prospectors who carried Edwards exploration from the Sabine to the Rio Grande. Later gas discoveries in the Edwards established substantial reserves and additional exploration opportunities until today.

The discovery of oil in the Edwards formation opened a chapter in the history of the oil business, which was as important to Central Texas as were the great discoveries at Spindletop for the Gulf Coast, Yates for West Texas, C. M. "Dad" Joiner's No. 3 Daisy Bradford well for East Texas. As in all the above cases, oil and gas discoveries in this province shot local lifestyles upward, from hard-scrabble farming in the country and subsistence living in local towns to more comfortable and professional lifestyles, that even broached, in some cases, luxury.

After the initial excesses of the boom days had subsided, cultural improvements and progress characterized local community life, and both the countryside and urban centers have continued to enjoy the benefits first introduced to the area by Mother Oil. As was the case throughout the oil patch, hundreds of ranchers were able to keep their land in the family and prosper through the risk-taking and efforts of these great wildcatting pioneers and their modern brethren, rather than suffer seeing their hard-earned assets disappear through foreclosure into the maws of banks and financiers during and after the Great Depression. The economic impact cannot be underestimated throughout the main productive trend, extending from Caldwell to Webb County, a distance of 165 miles and will continue way into the future, so long as politicos and other assorted rascals leave well enough alone.

The story of oils discovery in the Edwards, like all oil and gas plays, is laced with doubt, disappointment, dogged persistence, and fabulous success. It had its inception in the mind of a man guided by a firm "FAITH", as he would always insist it be spelled. Although this interesting man passed to his heavenly reward in October 1951, he attained the status of a legend. Even while living, his retiring attitude and deeply religious nature caused most to regard him as a man of mystery. This remarkable individual who first discovered oil in the Edwards was Edgar B. Davis, late "Citizen of Luling".

The saga of Edgar B. Davis should live because it stands out as a unique story in the annals of the oil industry. Unlike the typical oilpatch stories that commonly abound of swashbuckling promoters discovering oil by sheer luck, of "poorboy" wildcatters spending their last dollar to bring in an elusive gusher, Edgar B. Davis stands out as a contrast to the common rough and ready lot of the typical oilpatch. Davis was a member of an old New England family, reared with all the luxuries of the prosperous gay nineties. He had traveled the world, associated with royalty, played golf, excelled at bridge, loved music and art. Admitting to no church affiliation, he nevertheless considered himself "Steward of the Lord," ordained to improve the lot of his fellow man.

This extraordinary individual left a promising business career at 35 years of age as co-founder and sales executive of the Walkover Shoe Company of Brockton, Massachusetts, in an effort to improve his poor health on a world tour. In Singapore, he met a Dutch rubber plantation manager who induced him to interest the United States Rubber Company in cultivating rubber trees in Sumatra.

This proved to be a highly successful venture for Davis and resulted in his acquiring $4,000,000.00 in rubber company stocks and cash, a huge fortune in those days. Upon his return to New York he declined an attractive offer to become president of the United States Rubber Company, because he felt the job would confine his activities too much. Instead, he betook it upon himself, at the age of 50, to transplant himself from his luxurious New York lifestyle to the impoverished farming community of Luling, Texas. Without Eva Gabor. His immediate mission in doing so was to salvage whatever could be retrieved from a $75,000 investment in a shaky wildcat venture made by his elder brother and some associates. The record is hazy if the promoter was named Haney. Little did he realize where his decision to leave "the City" would lead.

A true entrepreneur, fascinated by the idea of prospecting for oil, and imbued with the impassioned desire to bring prosperity to the inhabitants of his newly adopted home community, he acquired the interests of his brother and associates and dedicated himself wholly to his newfound task of salvaging his wildcatting interests.

The first step led him to assume the lease obligations of the Texas Southern Oil and Lease Syndicate in the Luling area. This syndicate had assembled leases covering most of what are now the Salt Flat and Darst Creek fields as well as about 85 percent of the Luling field. Many of these leases had to be dropped for lack of finances, but the Luling block was retained on the basis of a fault exposed in the San Marcos River and the mapping of an inlier of lower Wilcox against it. The discovery of the fault is credited to Vernon E. Woolsey; and additional work by him, Carol E. Cook, Roy A. Dobbins and others resulted in definition of the lower Wilcox inlier on this up-to-the-coast fault. The Syndicate drilled its first well in 1920 on the Thompson lease in the George C. Kimball survey, Caldwell County. It was abandoned as a dry hole in the Buda Limestone, 150 feet above the Edwards, but shows of oil and gas in the Eagleford provided encouragement for additional drilling.

Davis named his new enterprise, organized March 18, 1921, the "United North and South Oil Company, Inc.", as a Yankee gesture of friendship toward the unrepentant parochial planters of this Southern community. After taking over the holdings of Texas Southern Oil and Lease Syndicate, he spudded a well on the Cartwright farm, about a quarter mile closer to the surface fault trace than the Syndicate's Thompson dry hole. It had a small show of oil in the Edwards, as did the No. 2 Cartwright drilled about 500 feet up dip, although both were plugged as dry holes. On May 5, 1921 the No. 3 Cartwright was spudded and was plugged as a dry hole on June 16. The Cartwright No. 4 soon followed at a nearby location and was also dry. Adding to the injury, the No. 2 Thompson proved to be a failure as well.

At this point, a desperate Davis sought out the great clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. In a trance, Cayce described the underground geological structure in detail for Davis. The resulting discovery, made on the basis of Cayce's revelation, also flew in the face of accepted geological wisdom of the time. As Humble's (now Exxon-Mobil) chief geologist, Wallace E. Pratt, a skeptic when it came to looking for oil around faults, put it,

"the hazards of exploration in faulted territory are already widely appreciated."

But, then, Pratt had not consulted Edgar Cayce!

On the basis of Cayce's advice, Davis made a seventh location on the Rafael Rios 126 acre farm in the John Henry survey. The well was spudded June 19, 1922 and, on the hot afternoon of August 9, 1922, a depressed if not totally discouraged group of three United North and South people, Edgar Davis, Agnes Manford and W. F. Peale, sat watching the hypnotic rotary grinding away at 2,100 feet. Just as Peale, at the wheel of their car, was about to drive away, Miss Manford is reported to have pointed and shouted (in a most undignified way): "Look, Boys, Look!"

A black column was rising from Rafael Rios No. 1; the crew was scattering. The column was rising higher, higher, like an aroused giant black snake. Miss Manford and Peale quickly piled out of the car as the black column rose higher, rising above the crown block and began to spray the black, greasy stuff of which dreams were made (and of which environmental lawsuits are made today).

Peale and Miss Manford were a bit hysterical. For the charming bachelor who had furnished so many pleasant evenings at cards or talk; for the employer of Peale who had never looked back, never faltered, never lost his beatific smile; for the strange man who seemed half of the present material world and half of the heavenly world to come, they were overjoyed.

And Davis himself? That gentle smile grew a bit more expansive perhaps; he was quieter, if anything, and he retained that ever-present dignity. Yes, the foreordained had come to pass, the Lord, through the instrument of Edgar B. Davis, had achieved another objective, and in the end Davis, drenched with oil, reminded his employees that he must go to town.

To Luling went the oil-spattered trio and when the giant Davis was asked if he wanted to go to the hotel to change clothes.

He said, "No, first to Mackey's Drug Store."

At Mackey's, they called for J. R. Mackey, who had been sure Davis was chasing a "will-o'-the-wisp" and had said so publicly many times. Mackey came out, stared, threw up his hand and said with awe,

"The drinks are on me. Anything you want. Anything!"

Thus the story of Luling is, in a way, the story of Edgar B. Davis, who would walk into a fiery furnace if his Lord ordered, yet belonged to no church, who is Luling's godfather, but who, at age 77 had never married; the Yankee who had walked with princes and kings, but who spent his happiest years among the descendants of Rebels who loved him.

On August 10, 1922, the Luling boom began, gaining momentum slowly at first, because oilmen were skeptical of Edwards production. Magnolia Petroleum Company (later Mobil and today Exxon-Mobil) came forward with an offer to buy 1,000,000 barrels of oil in the ground at 50 cents a barrel. Davis and his associates accepted quickly and used the $500,000 to finance early development of the Luling field. Extension of the discovery area 1.6 miles northeast was established on March 13, 1923, by the Caldwell Oil Company No. 1 Hardeman, which made gas. In May 1923, Royal Oil Company completed a well for over 1000 barrels a day on their 40 acre W. H. Tabor lease, later acquired by Grayburg Oil Company. This extended the field 2 ½ miles northeast of the Rios No. 1 discovery well. The rate of drilling increased after these extensions, and many wells were completed with initial production of 1000 barrels a day or more.

By December 1924, the field had 391 producing wells, and by the end of 1926, the total number of wells had increased to 502.

In the spring of 1926, display advertisements appeared on the financial pages of several well-known newspapers stating that the Luling Field properties of the United North and South Oil Company were for sale. It is reported that several major oil companies considered the deal and made offers, but probably because the production was from limestone, and the fact that many of the fabulous Mexican fields of the same type were suddenly beginning to make salt water, no trade was immediately consummated. The Magnolia Petroleum Company, having bought the first production from the field and with pipeline facilities in place, eventually met the advertised price of $12,100,000. The deal was consummated on June 11, 1926, on a basis of half cash and half in oil as produced.

That should have been the end of the saga of Edgar B. Davis. The man, at age 56, had more money than any man would ever need. But the strange New Englander recognized something that not many men do, an obligation to those who help them make fortunes. And the benevolent, unusual visionary went about it in a most unusual way. First he announced a barbecue to which Luling, Caldwell County, Guadalupe County, former employees, friends over the world and well…. practically everyone… were invited. He bought a herd of beeves, all the soft drinks in central Texas, imported entertainers from New York and purchased and cleared 100 acres of land white with cotton at harvest time for the jubilee.

"Come one, come all", advertised Davis. And pretty near everyone did, or so it seemed.

The most conservative estimates placed the crowd at 15,000 while others looking at the sea of faces, swore not less than 40,000 were there. And the 15,000 or 40,000 were not only fed but also electrified with excitement.

Every employee drew a bonus. Those who had been with him one year drew 25 percent of total salaries paid them to date; two years brought 50 percent; and four years, 100 percent. Five men on his firm's management committee received checks for $200,000 each.

A couple of million was the conservative cost to Luling's benefactor for bonuses alone. But there was more to come: A $50,000 golf course later built on that $150,000 cleared cotton patch, a $50,000 black athletic clubhouse, a $150,000 total endowment for upkeep of both.

Something bigger was on the mind of the town's benefactor who later put into writing approximately what he said that day and which reveals the magnificent obsession of the man.

"Believing that the kind and generous Providence, who guides the destinies of all humanity, directed me in the search for oil…" he wrote, and believing that the wealth which has resulted has not come through any virtue or ability of mine, but has been given to me in trust; and desiring to discharge in some measure the trust which has reposed in me; and in consideration of the opportunity which the resources of Texas gave me; and of my interest in the welfare of the citizens of the City of Luling, Caldwell, Guadalupe and Gonzales Counties;… and realizing the evils of the one-crop system ; and the hope through experimental work in diversified crops of aiding the tillers of the land to secure a larger return for their labor…" With such a promise the man who had something of the ethereal in him proceeded to establish the Luling Foundation for the benefit of agriculture with $1,000,000.

Much has been written about Edgar B. Davis and far more could be written if the man of mystery had left written records or if he had communicated more freely with his associates.

One regrets to reveal that Fate proved cruel in the end by removing the great man from the scene, on October 10 1951, before the United North and South Development Company was able to realize the second vast fortune Edgar B. Davis had dreamed about. His complete saga when it is written will reveal a depth of "FAITH" totally undeterred by difficulty.

*"FAITH"
The use of "FAITH" is in deference to Edgar B. Davis who always capitalized the word in his writing.


Addendum:

In writing the story of Edgar B Davis, the old Wanderer unwittingly perpetuated two myths that now need to be corrected. Some of us write without letting the facts stand in the way of a good story.

The first concerns Davis consulting the great clairvoyant Edgar Cayce.

From Riley Froh’s book “Edgar B. Davis: Wildcatter Extraordinary”, is this about Cayce:

Some time in 1921 a singular oil exploration crew arrived in Luling composed of a young businessman, David Kahn and his “clairvoyant” friend

Edgar Cayce. To locate oil, Cayce went into a trance; spoke in detail of the underground oil structure, while Khan took notes. In this manner they supposedly located first Luling and then the Oil reservoir. With three thousand acres under lease, the pair entered upon frustrating drilling operations that depleted their funds.

David Khan met Davis shortly thereafter in Fort Worth or New York, where Khan related his psychic information to Davis.

That Davis put much stock in such chance conversations is doubtful, but he was interested in psychic phenomena. In 1929 he was attempting to get in touch with Cayce, and he did meet the clairvoyant in the thirties and had several interpretations of his life related while the seer was in a trance.

The second concerns The Rios No. 1 discovery well, blowing out and spraying Davis and his group with oil. This happened not at the Rios well but at Merriweather No. 2, where oil blew out over the top of the derrick and sprayed Davis’ group and their car.

Now it seems the story is more truthful although less sensational.

Editors Note:

I watched my father chase the Cayce Myths in San Saba ,County spending over 3 million dollars in the early 70's to drill wells through granite searching for the elusive Rocky Creek field where Cayce believed the "Mothers of All Fields" was located. To date no commercial production has been found in San Saba.

From Time Magazine in 1949






In Hollywood, an oilman quipped: "When you see a group of movie people talking on the set, you don't know whether they're discussing an oil well or a movie."

Oil was on Hollywood's mind. Moviedom's tax-bitten stars thought they had found a sure—or almost sure—way out of their troubles in the high tax brackets. If they struck oil, they could deduct 50% to 75% of the drilling expenses from their income, and later deduct 27½% of their annual gross from the well, as "depletion." Moreover, they could sell the well later and pay only a long-term capital gains (25%) tax on the profit. If the well was dry, they could write off the whole cost as a loss, thus cut down taxable income. Though many a hopeful had hit nothing but sand and salt, from Texas to Utah last week a handful of luckier stars had struck it rich.

Black Gold. Near Wichita Falls, Tex., Gene Autry's sixth well, begun a fortnight ago, had come in handsomely. The drillers had struck oil at 5,000 ft. The well gushed 1,200 barrels the first day, settled down to a tidy daily flow of 1,000 barrels. (Autry owns equal shares in the claim with two Texas wildcatters.) Last week drillers started a seventh well, planned to drill some 20 more on Autry's property.

Jimmy Stewart reported a steady 800 barrels a day from his No. i well, brought in at 4,180 ft. near Vernal, Utah, last fortnight. Stewart and his partners (among them: Continental Airlines' President Robert Six; Howard Hughes's ubiquitous agent, Johnny Meyer; and General Aniline & Film's Chairman Jack Frye) had risked $75,000 on a tip Meyer got from a geologist who had previously tipped Meyer and Frank Sinatra to another payoff site (Sinatra's "Crooner No. i" well in Wyoming).

Star Dust. In Texas' Scurry County, on a 1,700-acre tract leased by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, drillers brought in a 1,000-barrel well, their second in two months. Hope and Crosby and their two Texas partners promptly began drilling two more. Near by, Don Ameche, who had leased 21,600 acres with three Chicago partners, had put up $200,000 to sink a wildcat. Just east of the small town of Rotan, Tex., where he had leased 1,500 acres, Randolph Scott and his partner found oil sands at 5,700 ft., hoped to be producing "within three weeks."

Not all of Hollywood's wildcatters had been so lucky. Directors John Huston and Mervyn Le Roy, and Actor Dennis O'Keefe and several oilmen recently sank $194,000 into a 10,500-ft. dry well near Inglewood, Calif. Even those who had made strikes would not necessarily turn them into profits; they still had the problem of operating the well and marketing the oil. As one California oilman put it: "I can give you an oil well which is actually producing a good amount of oil, and bet you'll go broke if you don't know what you're doing. The stars . . . don't know enough about the business . . ."
From Time Magazine in 1949

www.bigoilfields.com

Why are oil prices rising?

 This time of year prices usually drop.  Temperatures are moderating, kids are back in school so travel is down and there were some power outages in Port Arthur refineries last week.

Could it be some oil traders are speculating on the news that Iran is doing a crazy Mohammed  again? Could it be Israel of the US is going to do something about the Syria-North Korea reports of Nukes?

A hurricane isn't going to raise oil prices fast, but a war would.

Keep your tanks filled and your energy budget flexible. It might keep you out of long lines in the near future.

Not Bad







All the oil has been discovered or produced inTexas, right? Wrong , Prius Breath! For the last 2 weeks transports have been lined up picking up oil at the rate of 300-600 barrels an hour from a newly drilled well near the Mexican Border in South Texas. The well is only about 6000 feet deep and information hasn't been released yet.

 

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- The $100-a-barrel oil that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said would prevail by 2009 may be only a few months away.

Jeffrey Currie, a London-based commodity analyst at the world's biggest securities firm, says $95 crude is likely this year unless OPEC unexpectedly increases production, and declining inventories are raising the chances for $100 oil. Jeff Rubin at CIBC World Markets predicts $100 a barrel as soon as next year.

``We're only a headline of significance away from $100 oil,'' said John Kilduff, an analyst in the New York office of futures broker Man Financial Inc. ``The unrelenting pressure of increased demand has left the market a coiled spring.'' New disruptions of Nigerian or Iraqi supplies, or any military strike against Iran, might trigger the rise, Kilduff said in a July 20 interview.

Higher prices will increase revenue for energy producers from Exxon Mobil Corp. to PetroChina Co., while eroding profit at airlines including EasyJet Plc and railroads such as Union Pacific Corp. The U.S. and other oil-importing nations risk accelerating inflation, while higher energy costs threaten to restrain growth.

Benchmark crude oil futures ended last week at $75.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 51 percent since mid- January and twice the level of early 2003. A record number of options have been sold that give the buyer the right to buy crude oil at $100. The contracts, covering 50 million barrels, only pay off should oil go above the target price. September crude futures fell 89 cents to $74.90 at 11:16 a.m. in New York today.

Goldman's View

Arjun Murti, a New York-based Goldman Sachs analyst who covers oil producers and refiners, roiled markets in March 2005 with a report saying prices could touch $105 a barrel during a ``super spike'' period because demand was stronger than anticipated. Price swings might also go as low as $50, Murti said at the time.

Currie, Goldman's global head of commodities research in London, is predicting that oil prices will probably touch a record and stay at unprecedented levels for months or years. The all-time high for Nymex crude futures is $78.40 a barrel on July 14, 2006.

``Ultimately, the key to the outlook going forward is when will Saudi Arabia ramp up production,'' he said in an interview. ``If you have a situation in which inventories globally get drawn to critically low levels, the volatility in this market is likely to explode, which significantly increases the probability of $100 oil.'' Oil might slip to $73.50 if OPEC were to start producing more now, he said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is scheduled to next meet in September. No members have called for a gathering before then. A decision to raise output at that time would lead to greater supplies toward the end of the year.

Accelerating Demand

The failure of near-record fuel prices to restrain global oil demand growth is what concerns Rubin, chief strategist at the brokerage unit of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Toronto.

``Prices have doubled, and demand is alive and well and accelerating,'' Rubin said in a July 18 interview. ``The argument that rising prices would choke demand and bring increased output is falling to the wayside.''

A National Petroleum Council study led by former Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond, released last week, predicted a growing gap between production and demand for oil and gas during the next two decades. As recently as 2005, Raymond said oil prices had probably peaked and dismissed the possibility that supply and demand could not be brought back into balance.

``There are questions about whether the oil industry can keep up with demand,'' U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said last week, commenting on the Petroleum Council report.

Gasoline Sales Rise

Gasoline pump prices averaging more than $3 a gallon across the U.S., the consumer of 25 percent of the world's oil, haven't dented sales. Deliveries of gasoline were a record 9.23 million barrels a day in the first half of this year, according to a July 18 report from the American Petroleum Institute in Washington.

``It appears that high prices are acceptable to the American consumer,'' said Robert Ebel, chairman of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ``People want the house with a yard and white-picket fence so they are moving further and further out of the cities. They have to just get up earlier and drive further.''

Outside the U.S., demand increases are being led by India and China, where growing economies mean more cars and trucks and more factories that burn oil and gas.

Consumption between now and the end of the year will increase by 3.6 million barrels a day because of seasonal shifts. The rise is equal to the daily production of Kuwait and Oman combined, and it comes after OPEC twice in the past year cut production to support prices.

Rising Costs

The cost of finding and pumping oil is rising steadily, convincing analysts such as Rubin and Deutsche Bank AG chief energy economist Adam Sieminski that higher prices will last. Shortages of deepwater drilling ships and rigs has pushed daily rents to records, and the skilled workers needed to run rigs, weld pipes, pilot vessels, fix refineries and build oil-sands projects command ever-higher wages.

``Three years ago we were calling for $30 oil, then $35 and then $40 oil,'' said New York-based Sieminski, who last week raised his forecast for the average price of oil in 2010 to $60 a barrel from $45.

``I've gotten tired of increasing these forecasts in $5 increments,'' Sieminski said in an interview. ``Something has happened. Costs have continued to escalate, and the geopolitical situation has gotten worse.''

The $60-a-barrel forecast for 2010 is 15 percent higher than the average analyst forecast, Sieminski said. The projection probably will turn out to be too low, he said.

Oil prices could triple in three months to more than $200 a barrel, given the right circumstances, according to Matthew Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co., a Houston investment bank.

`Still Cheap'

``Oil is still cheap,'' Simmons said. ``In the 20th century, with a few exceptions, oil was almost free. The only exceptions were during 1973, 1979 and when Iraq invaded Kuwait.''

Prices rose in 1974 after an oil embargo that followed the Arab-Israeli war and from 1979 through 1981 after Iran cut oil exports. The average cost of oil used by U.S. refiners was $35.24 a barrel in 1981, according to the Energy Department, or $79.67 in today's dollars.

While crude oil prices are approaching the records they set at this time last year, not everyone is convinced $100 crude will happen. From their peak, oil futures began a six-month slide. They got below $50 on Jan. 18 before rebounding.

``The risk parameters are somewhat different than a year ago, however the overall situation is similar,'' said Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York who correctly predicted a year ago that oil prices were at a peak. ``We've priced in a shortage that is not evident yet.''

Pickens' Opinion

A pullout from Iraq may be the event that pushes oil to $100 a barrel, according to Boone Pickens, the Dallas hedge fund manager who has joined Forbes Magazine's list of billionaires because of his bullish bets on energy prices. Pickens predicted a year ago that $100 oil would probably occur by now. Today he is looking for $80 within six months, and he says growing chaos in Iraq would be a bad sign. ``That could run prices pretty high,'' he said.

Goldman Sachs's Currie also notes similarities to a year ago, with global inventories at about the same level and U.S. government data showing an increasing bet on higher prices.

``At face value this market is strikingly similar to a year ago,'' Currie said. ``What is different? Supply is down a million barrels a day, demand is up a million barrels a day. The market is in a deficit.''

 

WASHINGTON, July 20 Technology to draw oil from rock in Rocky Mountain states and other unconventional sources is getting another look from companies and the government as the demand for energy increases and supply tightens, especially in the United States.

Oil was more than $78 per barrel Friday, nearing an all-time high. According to a National Petroleum Council report, commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and released this week, demand will exceed supply by 13 million barrels per day by 2030.

One potential major source of domestic oil is found in shale rock in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Interest and experiments rose and fell with the oil price spikes during the 1970s to early 1980s and have risen once again.

"It's an enormous resource," said Daniel I. Fine, an MIT research affiliate. The area was protected for the future with the creation of the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserve in 1912. "It was understood that one day we would use it at a time when the technology and economics would be right," Fine added.

The oil found in these rocks is called kerogen, organic matter containing hydrocarbons that must be converted to oil and gas. It's unclear how much oil may eventually be produced, but the United States holds 60 percent of the world's shale.

On-site experiments to heat and extract the kerogen are starting on 160-acre tracks leased by the Bureau of Land Management. The 10-year research development & demonstration leases are intended "to test and demonstrate what are considered state of the art methods of recovering shale oil," BLM spokeswoman Heather Feeney said. They can be converted to commercial leases for oil shale after demonstrating commercial production capacity and a BLM review.

Shell is probably the leader in the field, said Jeremy Boak, project manager for the Colorado Energy Research Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. Shell expects to extract from 3.5 to 5 barrels for each barrel of energy used, Boak said, by heating the rocks underground for three or four years, after which the oil seeps through cracks so it can be pumped out. It's relatively efficient, he explained, because it partially refines the kerogen underground and brings it to the surface as fuels requiring little processing: naphtha, diesel and kerosene.

Chevron has partnered with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to recover oil from shale formations in Colorado's Piceance Basin. Fine explained that it will use explosives underground to fractionate the shale, then inject a critical fuel, which creates a hot gas and allows extraction. The need for water and on-site production will have a heavy impact on the environment, however.

Raytheon, known for numerous military technologies, has developed the use of radio frequency, or RF, technology with contributions from partner Critical Fluids Technologies.

John Cogliandro, program manager for Raytheon's oil from shale technologies program, said the new technology is powerful and environmentally responsible. Since it doesn't use steam or heat the actual rock, there's no residue that might enter groundwater supplies, he said.

RF heats much more uniformly and quickly through radiation that targets the hydrocarbon molecules. Cogliandro added that critical fluids release and move the oil, so that the oil seeps through cracks in the shale and is pumped to the surface.

Fine said Raytheon's technology is an advance over earlier microwave feasibility tests -- dating back to the 1980s -- because it heats the shale rock more quickly and it is easier to control while deploying smaller, cost-effective equipment.

Global Resource Corp. uses microwaves to extract oil from shale. While previous microwave tests didn't experiment with different wavelengths, GRC is using a continuing microwave system with variable frequencies. Operating in a vacuum, the microwave frequencies gasify, then condense the hydrocarbons, which turn into gas and liquid oil, said a GRC spokesman.

GRC is using the technology to reinvigorate older wells as well as draw oil from tires, petroleum-based plastics and automobile shredder residue. The company has patent-pending numbers for seven different technologies, and both the U.S. Energy Department and the state of Pennsylvania have given GRC a capped well for experimentation.

GRC CEO Frank Pringle said interest is growing, despite skepticism about the technology: "I know what my process can accomplish, but there's a lot of prejudice against us."

Raytheon is seeking to license its know-how to energy companies that are better able to apply the technology in the field. Oil companies experimenting with shale have shown significant interest in Raytheon's technique, but Cogliandro doesn't think they'll abandon current approaches.

"You'll see a lot of pilot projects out in the field being tested. They are going to find where certain technologies work best and then they'll analyze the economics of each," Cogliandro said.

Cogliandro has also received samples of oil sands, or "heavies," from Oklahoma and Texas on which to test the technology. Raytheon's methods had been tried successfully with Canada's tar sands and should work with the heavier oil sands, he said.

Both Raytheon and GRC say their technologies use one barrel of oil's worth of energy to produce 4.5 barrels of shale oil compared to one barrel for 3.5 barrels using older methods.

Boak said these technologies will have to prove how they can do as well or better than the newest techniques in the field.

"The big question for shale oil and heavy oil processing is how far you can make those waves reach out into the rock," said Boak. He emphasized the importance of field tests given the uncertainty in geological formations. GRC said the microwaves can be used as far down as can be drilled.

If the technology leads to commercial viability, only limited investment in refinery extensions and pipeline spurs will be needed because the industry can make use of existing regional refineries.

www.bigoilfields.com

 

Undeveloped Domestic Oil Resources Provide Foundation For Increasing U.S. Oil Supply An analysis by Advanced Resources International, Arlington, VA, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy The report, Undeveloped Domestic Oil Resources: The Foundation for Increasing Oil Production and a Viable Domestic Oil Industry, provides an estimate of total undeveloped and future technically recoverable domestic oil resources in the United States. Undeveloped domestic oil resources still in the ground total more than one trillion barrels. The resource includes undiscovered oil, "stranded" light oil amenable to CO2-EOR technologies, unconventional oil (deep heavy oil and tar sands) and new petroleum concepts (residual oil in reservoir transition zones). This assessment originally examined the resource potential for applying state-of-the-art CO2-EOR technologies in only six basins/areas of the United States.  It did not include the additional resource potential outlined in the ten basin-oriented assessments, or the recoverable resources from residual oil zones,  as discussed in related reports issued by DOE in February 2006.  Accounting for these, the future recovery potential from domestic undeveloped oil resources by applying EOR technology is 240 billion barrels, boosting potentially recoverable resources to 430 billion barrels.    Report [865KB PDF]   DOE Fact Sheet [80KB PDF] Updated Table of U.S. Oil Resources [65.3KB PDF]

 

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — The headline on the newspaper that state Rep. Bernie Buescher keeps in a box at home captures the allure of the vast petroleum riches under the rolling hills and arid mesas north of this western Colorado city.

"Oil Shale Development Imminent," the paper reads. That edition of the defunct Grand Junction News, Buescher notes, was published at the dawn of the 20th century.

More than a hundred years later, instability is roiling world oil markets, and Americans are paying $3 a gallon for gas. And oil shale fever is again rising in the geologic region known as the Piceance Basin, part of the Green River Formation that stretches across the rugged plains of northwestern Colorado and parts of Wyoming and Utah.

There is no dispute that a thousand feet below the isolated ranch country here on Colorado's western slope lie almost unimaginable oil riches. It's locked in sedimentary rock — essentially immature oil that given a few million years under heat and pressure would produce pools of oil easy to extract.

The Energy Department and private industry estimate that a trillion barrels are here in Colorado — about the same amount as the entire world's known reserves of conventional oil. The entire Green River Formation might hold as much as 2 trillion barrels.

Pushed by the Bush administration and legislation from Congress last year, and spurred by oil prices above $70 a barrel, the energy industry is mobilizing to unlock the secret of oil shale. As it has before, oil shale holds out the hope of a USA no longer dependent on foreign oil.

Testing a new approach

In a remote area of Rio Blanco County, nestled between dusty ridges covered with sagebrush and pinyon and juniper trees, Shell Oil is engaged in a multiyear test of a new technology for extracting the oil. Previous efforts that were uneconomical and environmentally destructive entailed mining the rock, crushing it and heating it above ground to release the oil.

Shell's new process involves sinking heaters deep underground, cooking the rock at 700 degrees and recovering the oil and natural gas with conventional drilling.

For a decade, Shell has been ramping up its research on private property here. It is also one of a handful of companies vying for research and development leases on larger tracts of federal land nearby. That could lead to full-scale development across 1,200 square miles of western Colorado.

Early results are promising, says Terry O'Connor, a vice president in the oil giant's unconventional resource division. But, he admits, "no one has been able to develop oil shale on a commercially sustainable basis." Shell has four more years of research here before it will know if it has the answer.

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was less cautious at a tour of Shell's test site Wednesday: "This is not pie in the sky. It's real this time."

Such talk has swept this region before, most memorably in the wake of the energy crisis of the 1970s. Longtime residents remember how it ended on May 2, 1982 — "Black Sunday" — when Exxon abruptly canceled its $5 billion Colony Shale Oil Project, laid off more than 2,000 workers and left a trail of home foreclosures and economic distress.

Now, said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who accompanied Domenici on the tour, "we have a tourism-based economy on the western slope, and we will not do anything ... that will endanger that sustainability." Though oil shale has "great potential," Salazar said, "there's also great risk."

A RAND Corp. study last year for the Energy Department said that "the prospects for oil shale development are uncertain," though new technology could make it competitive with conventional oil. Producing 3 million barrels a day — about 15% of U.S. consumption — "is probably more than 30 years into the future," the study said.

Among the possible negative effects cited by RAND were large scale land disruption, air pollution, a large population influx in a rural area, and a huge demand for water in a region where it's scarce and, as Salazar said, "as precious as oil."

Randy Udall, of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency that promotes energy conservation in Carbondale, Colo., pointed out another drawback: the huge demand for electricity to cook the shale. "To do 100,000 barrels a day ... we would need to build the largest power plant in Colorado history."

'We ... need to get it right'

This region's bitter experience with the boom-and-bust of oil shale was on display Thursday as Domenici and Salazar held a hearing before an overflow crowd at the city auditorium here.

Outside, critics hawked T-shirts urging "Go Slow on Oil Shale." Inside, state and county officials said they welcome energy development but worry about the costs of providing roads, housing and other needs if a new boom arrives.

"Most of us agree it's time for the development of oil shale," said Russell George of Colorado's Department of Natural Resources. "But we really do need to get it right."

A letter from 17 county and city officials noted, "When oil shale is mentioned on the Western Slope of Colorado it is discussed as an industry that brought our economy and communities to their knees."

And Buescher, the Democratic state legislator, thought of that ancient newspaper headline. "They may be able to make it work," he said, "but I'm skeptical."

USA TADAY

  

Oil Shale Reserves

Oil Shale Reserves: Stinky Water, Sweet Oil
A Daily Reckoning White Paper Report
By Dan Denning

You won't think much of Rio Blanco County if you ever drive through it. In fact, unless you take a right turn off
Interstate-70 West at Rifle, head north on Railroad Avenue and then west on Government road to Colorado state highway number thirteen, odds are you'll never even step foot in Rio Blanco County.

But even if you keep heading west toward Grand Junction, through the town of Parachute and the shuttered oil shale
refineries from the 1970s, you'll see the Book Cliffs geologic formation on your right. For miles and miles. It's
a bleak landscape. Almost lunar. At first glance, it's the kind of land you'd never want to explore, much less settle
down in.

Oil Shale Reserves: America's Strategic Future

In the small world of geologists, though, the region is well-known. In fact, you might even say it's the single
most important patch of undeveloped, unloved, and desolate looking land in America. But you'd never guess this
particular corner of the Great American Desert may play an integral role in America's strategic future just by looking
at it. You'd never guess that the whole stretch of brown, red, and orange land contains enough recoverable oil and
gas to make you forget about the Middle East for the rest of time.

There are places in Rio Blanco County like Stinking Water Creek, named after the smelly mix of oil and water the first white settlers found there, that tell you oil's always been around the Rocky Mountains. It's just not always been easy to find. It's one thing to find oil that bubbles out of the ground in liquid form. It's quite another to drill a thousand feet down, and encounter oil locked up tight inside a greasy rock.

The first seeping pools of oil were discovered in Western Colorado as far back as 1876, the year the state entered the Union. But exploration didn't get serious until drillers settled in the town of Rangely in Rio Blanco County.

By 1903, thirteen different drillers had come and gone in Rangely. According to the local museum, the only six wells that actually struck oil were producing just two to ten barrels of oil a day. Hardly a Spindeltop, the gusher that launched the Texas oil-boom on January 10th, 1901, and immediately began producing 100,000 barrels per day.

The energy reserves of the Piceance Basin, upon which Rio Blanco County sits, contain massive petroleum reserves of a very unusual nature: Oil shale.

Oil Shale Reserves: A Congressional Legacy

Most of the nation's oil sha