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Bush Administration Rule Makes It Harder for Congress to Block Oil and Gas Drilling

Posted by Gray Ghost on Friday, December 05, 2008 7:43:06 AM
The Associated Press reported today that the Bush administration is trying to make it tougher for Congress to block mining and oil and gas drilling on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management, which manages 258 million acres of federal property, stripped from its regulations Thursday a provision that gives two Congressional committees the power to compel the Interior Secretary to temporarily place public land off limits to mining and oil and gas development.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), top candidate for interior secretary under President-elect Barack Obama, attempted to employ the little-used provision for the first time in more than 20 years earlier this year in an effort to halt uranium mining near the Grand Canyon. The House Natural Resources Committee passed a measure to block the mining 20-2, but the Interior Department has yet to issue an emergency withdrawal, saying there were not enough Republicans present for a quorum. According to Grijalva, "the last-minute change was part of a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid complying with the resolution."
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Alaska's North Slope Contains Deposits of Frozen Natural Gas

Posted by Gray Ghost on Thursday, November 13, 2008 8:30:35 AM
The National Society of Professional Engineers just sent its members a report concerning the following: "Frozen crystals packed with concentrated natural gas and buried 2,000 feet below the permafrost on Alaska's North Slope could become the next major domestic energy source." This study was released on Wednesday, November 11, 2008, by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The study finds that in the North Slope, frozen methane-and-water crystals known as hydrates contain as much as 85.4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. "That's enough to heat 100 million homes for as long as 10 years," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said. The interior secretary added that, "globally, hydrates have more potential for energy than all other fossil fuels combined. ... This can be a paradigm shift."
 
Government research is beginning to show that it may be possible to extract hydrates using depressurization, a technique used to get at more conventional fuel sources. Steve Rinehart, a spokesman for British Petroleum in Alaska said that, "boring into the ground may be enough to change the pressure to extract it. ... Or the pressure could be changed by pumping."
 
Although there are tremendous hydrate deposits in Arctic regions, they also exist in the deepwater regions of the Gulf of Mexico, an area where there are existing natural gas pipelines. (Though much of the government research into hydrates has taken place in Alaska, it might be cheaper to consider the Gulf of Mexico first.)
 
I wonder how long this information concerning Alaska has been known? (Another point for my "conspiracy theories"?) You can read the news article at:
 
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The Marcellus Ridge Natural Gas Field

Posted by Gray Ghost on Friday, September 26, 2008 8:07:41 PM
In 2002, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) made a hugh discovery in a 54,000 square-mile swath (stretching from West Virginia to New York) in the Appalachian Mountains. Geologists call this area the "Marcellus Ridge". The drawing below indicates the area of this ridge:
      
 
 
These geologists have conservatively estimated that the Marcellus shale contains 168 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in place and optimistically suggests that the amounts could be as high as 516 trillion cubic feet. The U.S. currently produces roughly 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year from our existing wells. Due to the age of most of the existing natural gas wells, this number (i.e., 30 trillion cubic feet) is dropping.
 
The technology exists to easily recover 50 trillion cubic feet of gas from the Marcellus Ridge, thus keeping the U.S. production up. If this recovery is realized, the Marcellus Ridge would be considered a "Super Giant" gas field (the geologists' words, not mine).
 
Why then, you might ask, has no one really heard about this news? Well there are two reasons. First, in most states, geologic surveys are released to the public almost instantly. In Texas, for example, a survey must be released in 60 days or less. In Oklahoma and Nevada there are similar laws. However, in Pennsylvania (where the majority of this field is located) the information doesn't have to be made public for a full five years.
 
Second, guess who is playing "fast and loose" with this knowledge? If you guessed Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Democrat Party, then go to the head of the class.

My "so called conspiracy theories" are starting to multiply. 
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