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Geology News
Oil and Gas Current Events

E-Fuel Corporation has developed a miniature ethanol refinery system which will give people the opportunity to make their own gasoline substitute in their backyards. The machine will convert water, yeast, and sugar into ethanol fuel which can then be pumped right into an automobile. They claim that the $10,000 machine would “pay for itself” in the long run for many owners.

The 13 country members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped about 31.87 million barrels per day in April. That’s about 350,000 less than they pumped in March. Much of the drop was attributed to production problems in Nigeria.

Exxon declared force majeure on the contractual obligations for its Nigeria production in late April because of a worker’s strike. Exports from their facilities resumed last week. (Force majeure is a clause in many contracts that frees a company from liability when an extreme event beyond their control prevents them from fulfilling the obligations of that contract.)

Map of Vietnam

Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation, PetroVietnam, a state-run oil company, is partnering with Japan’s Idemitsu Kosan Company and Kuwait Petroleum International to build a $6 Billion refinery in Thanh Hoa Province, about 125 miles south of Hanoi.

Lots of people are bashing the large oil companies because they are making a profit at a time when oil prices are high. Here is someone singing a different tune. An Exxon retiree is “thankful to Big Oil”.

With oil prices over $100 per barrel and flirting with all time record highs, Exxon announced that their production will not grow at all through 2012. The company’s plans for exploration are extremely conservative and instead Exxon has big plans to buy back stock.

Russia has a greater ability to determine the course of oil prices than Exxon or Saudi Arabia. Their struggling banking system and run-away inflation will determine their ability and desire to produce oil.

British Columbia Map.

A report in The Vancouver Sun says that oil jobs are quite dangerous in British Columbia. The injury rate there is about 1/2 of the provincial rate, however, the severity of injuries and duration of off time are much worse.

Bolivia typically exports a lot of natural gas to Brazil and Argentina. However, now as the South American winter is approaching, lower than expected production levels have forced Bolivia to cut its exports. Now Brazil and Argentina face shortages when gas is needed for space heating.

The price of gasoline hit $4.00 per gallon in some cities recently. That has politicians looking for ways to cut the cost. These include: dropping federal excise tax, stopping additions to the US strategic reserve (to lower demand) and calling for less restrictive drilling in protected areas.

This article details the activities of some of the many oil company and contractor workers who are doing the on-site labor of searching for oil in the Arctic. Cold temperatures, snow, and small personal quarters are all part of the job when you are working on Alaska’s North Slope.

A photo gallery accompanies the article

Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, America’s top car dealer, says that the biggest lie in the country is to say that you care about global warming and advocate for the price of gasoline to go down. This article explores some of the benefits of high gas prices and why current prices have not resulted in the same conservation efforts that were seen when oil prices spiked in the 1970’s.

Oil prices are flirting with record high levels and some believe that the price could go a lot higher - perhaps as high as $180 per barrel. The reason that this might happen is that Mexico, Russia and Nigeria are too short of cash to develop new fields faster than their existing production rate is falling.

Royal Dutch Shell is scaling down its North Sea operations where well yields are declining and costs are increasing. About 180 jobs will be cut. Shell employs about 8500 people in the UK.

People in San Francisco are now paying $4 per gallon for unleaded self-serve regular gasoline. An All Things Considered article and podcast explore this issue.

The United States national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline hit a record high of $3.556 according to a AAA / Oil Price Information Service survey of retail stations. Part of the recent sharp price increase has been caused by refiners switching from winter grade gasoline to a more expensive, but less polluting, summer grade.

Although the recent USGS report on Bakken Formation Oil did not give details for Saskatchewan, the rock unit and an oil production potential extends northwest from the active areas in Montana and North Dakota.

More then 50% of the oil industry workforce is between 50 and 60 years old and jobs are hard to fill. The Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association is trying to stimulate student interest in the oil and gas industry by preparing an educational toolkit for teachers that features numerous oil and gas industry jobs.

The use of corn for ethanol production has drawn many farms into indirect competition with energy production companies. This diversion of farm capacity to the energy sector leaves fewer farms to produce food, putting upward pressure on food prices and ties the price of food to the price of oil.

Here’s a source of printable polar coordinate graph paper that can be used to plot things like joint and fracture orientations, current directions, fossil orientations or any type of data that is collected in degrees. These are .pdf files that you can easily download and print. Bookmark it for easy access when you need it.

The value of oil and the value of the dollar are related in a number of ways. If the value of the dollar falls then one would expect to need more dollars to buy a barrel of oil. An article at the Geotimes website tracks the history of oil prices related to the dollar and the Euro and explores their relationships.

Brian Romans has a summary of the USGS fact sheet on the Bakken Formation petroleum reserves. He also has some commentary on the different categories of reserves and what what those numbers really mean.

USGS Fact Sheet on Bakken Formation Oil

Wyoming is a top producer of coal, oil and natural gas. It is also a state that has a lot of pristine land. These often come into conflict as explored in this New York Times article.

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota.

We recently updated our geology jobs page adding links to over 200 employers, headhunters and articles relevant to the job market for geologists. If you know anyone looking for earth science employement or anyone who advises geology students we invite you to share the URL with them.
http://geology.com/jobs.htm

The Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana could yield up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil in the near future. This estimate is not the amount contained in the shale - it is just the amount that could be extracted using current technology. Industry officials believe that North Dakota will set a new record for oil production this year.

USGS Fact Sheet on Bakken Formation Oil

The North Pacific right whale is the world’s most endangered species of whales, with an estimated remaining population of only 50-100. The Bush administration has proposed to allow oil and gas drilling in the whales’ critical habitat off the Alaskan coast.

Early this year researchers surprised everyone with a resource estimate for the Marcellus Shale beneath Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and surrounding states. They estimated that the Marcellus might contain more than 50 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. That volume of natural gas would be enough to supply the entire United States for about two years and have a wellhead value of about one trillion dollars!

Researchers have announced that they are now able to directly convert plant cellulose into a liquid containing many chemical compounds found in gasoline. The “green gasoline” is made from sustainable resources like switchgrass and poplar trees, leaves almost no carbon footprint, and can be used in existing engines, making it an attractive alternative to corn ethanol and soy biodiesel fuels.

It’s a Great Time to Be a Geologist! Starting salaries for geologists in the petroleum and mineral sectors are over $80,000 and there are far more positions than qualified people to fill them.

Husky Energy Company’s White Rose platform in the North Atlantic was threated by icebergs. Most of the crew was evacuated and production was shut in as a precaution. A few crew members remain on the platform so that production can be turned on immediately when conditions improve - or the platform can be disconnected from the ocean floor if conditions get worse.

There are a number of territorial disputes that have brewed in the Arctic for a long time but which are moving closer to political or perhaps military confrontations. All of this is over the enormous oil, gas and other resources that are thought to exist beneath the Arctic Ocean floor.

Geology.com Article: Who Owns the Arctic?

Arctic Oil & Gas, a Las Vegas company has filed a claim with the United Nations to act as the “development agent” of Arctic seabed oil and gas. Some are laughing about this claim but others are shocked that it might work.

Geology.com Article: Who Owns the Arctic?

Here is an article in The Canadian Press that quotes a number of energy executives who recently attended an oilsands conference. They comment on the pros and cons of carbon storage and reveal a lot of different perspectives.

With hybrid cars gaining popularity, even companies like Hummer and Lamborghini are designing “greener” vehicles. This article touches briefly on some of the new concept cars.

The price of crude oil approached $108 in New York - up about 80% in the past year. Several opinions on what is driving the price are given in this article.

The North Sea has yielded enormous quantities of gas and oil. Now many of the wells are starting to play out. However, before they are abandoned it is possible that they could be recycled as carbon storage sites.

The United States Department of Energy allocated nearly $600 million to purchase oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This GEOTIMES comment explores this question.

Gazprom is a state-owned Russian company and the largest producer of natural gas in the world is getting involved in Persian Gulf gas. In contrast to the harsh climates and remote locations of their northern Russia fields, exploration and development of gas in the Persian Gulf is very easy. Other gas producers are making ties with Iran to develop this gas.

The price of oil hit an intraday high of nearly $104 and surpassed the inflation-adjusted record set back in April of 1980.