Money Flowing Into American Oil and Gas From Overseas

We hear very little about the large investments foreign companies are making in oil and gas exploration and production activities in the United States.  I don't know why this is not talked about much in the news, but during these difficult economic times, we Americans should be grateful.
Peter

Big overseas investors supply momentum for North American shale growth

 

July 5, 2012

Don Warlick, Warlick International
Entities outside the US and Canada are funding a surprisingly large share of development in unconventional oil and gas plays -- and that trend should continue.
Typically these are IOCs (international oil companies), state-backed investment groups or other foreign-based entities investing not only for financial gain but also to acquire technical knowledge about unconventional oil and natural gas development that can be applied in undeveloped shales in their own countries. In return US and Canadian energy companies receive funding to develop important shale plays and establish new reserves.

These investments are significant -- in a recent analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 191 M&A deals worth $187 billion were announced in 2011. That was an increase over 2010 which had 196 deals worth $139 billion. The average deal in 2011 was $979 million (up more than 38%, on average over 2010).
Who is making these investments? Companies based in France, China, Japan, Spain, South Korea, Norway and Australia are among recent investors making financial commitments. Some examples:

Continued here: http://www.ogfj.com/articles/2012/07/big-overseas-investors-supply-momentum-for-north-american-shale-growth.html

Oil and Gas Industry Creates Jobs: America Should Be Proud And Thankful

Let's look at the bright side of things in America: the oil and gas industry.  During these unusually hot summer days I wonder how many people understand how the electricity is generated that powers their air conditioners enabling them to live so comfortably.  The same applies to heating in the winter, and the abundance of food made available to us year-round.  The source of these wonders is mostly oil and gas and coal.  And of course the production of these commodities creates jobs, which creates taxes, which pays (at least partly) the government's bills.  Let's take some time to be thankful for the oil and gas industry and all the people making this possible.
Peter

Oil and Gas: America’s Brightest Job Spot

by Robert Bradley Jr.
July 5, 2012

source: http://www.masterresource.org/2012/07/brightest-jobs-oil-and-gas/

“For many American families, struggling to make ends meet in the jobless recovery, energy development is an answer to a prayer. The fact that the oil and gas boom has been done without taxpayer subsidies—and despite reactionary public policies at the federal level and in some states (such as New York)—means that more economic opportunity is on tap.”

In this so-called “jobless” recovery, aka the Great Recession, an estimated 20 million American workers are unemployed or underemployed. One out of every two college students cannot find work in their chosen fields. Competition for well-paying jobs is likely to become even tougher when thousands of men and women in uniform return home from Afghanistan and look for ways to support their families.

Although many U.S. industries have been reluctant to hire new workers due to political and economic uncertainty, the oil and natural gas industry is booming worldwide. Jobs are available on offshore rigs, at service companies that support energy production activities, and onshore where technologies are unlocking energy supplies from impermeable rock deep underground.

Hydraulic fracturing, directional drilling, and 3- and 4-D computer modeling, among other high technologies, are helping to produce oil and natural gas from shale formations that once were believed to be too difficult or too expensive to tap. In the process, they are creating jobs at large and small companies in dozens of states. In the bigger scheme of things, this renaissance means that the hydrocarbon energy era has an open-ended future.

In North Dakota, where drillers are producing crude oil from the Bakken Shale, workers are finding jobs offering wages that are significantly higher than the national average. Truck drivers are being paid $80,000 a year to start. Some workers on oil rigs are being paid six figures. And yet many jobs are going begging. According to the mayor of Williston, “A lot of jobs get filled every day, but it’s like for every job you fill, another job and a half opens up.” In April, North Dakota had a jobless rate of 3.0 percent, the lowest in the country.

In Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region, tens of thousands of jobs have been created, opening opportunities for unskilled laborers to obtain training and earn excellent wages. According to the state’s Department of Labor and Industry (Center for Workforce Information and Analysis), jobs for drill operators are expected to grow by nearly 85 percent this year, while the job growth rate otherwise in Pennsylvania is projected to be less than three percent.

The expansion of the oil and natural gas industry is also occurring at Texas’s Eagle Ford, Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale, Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale and other energy-rich rock formations. Taken together, they are increasing domestic energy supplies, making energy more affordable, and spawning subsidiary investments in the private sector creating additional jobs.

A steel plant in Ohio is adding 200 jobs to produce more drill pipe. A new ethane plant in Texas, which will use natural gas to produce plastics, is expected to generate 400 jobs. Frito-Lay is purchasing natural gas-powered trucks to deliver consumer products around the country. New cleaner-burning gas-fired power plants are being built to replace old coal-fueled electricity generating facilities. (But expect coal-fired power to improve its technology too to remain competitive in many respects.)

These jobs are being created by companies, not the federal government. And they are based on “made in the USA” technologies that have the potential to greatly increase nation’s energy security and alter the world’s balance of power. As U.S. oil and natural gas supplies increase, some experts believe American energy independence is on the horizon.

Philip Verleger, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, believes the United States could be energy self-sufficient in the next 10-plus years and could become a net energy exporter.

Yet, some environmental groups are reluctant to embrace this good news scenario. They see domestic energy’s success as a threat to their green agenda. In their continuing push to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, they are working to stop hydraulic fracturing, shut in oil and natural gas wells, and in the process, slow or stop progress.

Their strategy is to promote fear of hydraulic fracturing worldwide. Concerns over groundwater contamination have prompted France and Bulgaria to ban fracturing and other countries are considering moratoria. Yet, despite efforts to find a link between fracking and drinking water pollution, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigations have found no credible evidence to support the claim
.
Energy experts believe the reluctance of other countries to develop their shale resources is giving the United States a market advantage, prompting interest in exporting liquid natural gas (LNG) from the Gulf Coast. Italy, Lithuania, and Poland are building terminals to accept LNG imports, and LNG imports to the European Union are expected to grow by nearly 75 percent by 2035. Energy expert Daniel Yergin calls Europe “an obvious market” for U.S. LNG.

The home-grown energy renaissance could become a major reversal of fortune, wiping out 40 years of worry over U.S. reliance on foreign energy sources. According to an analysis by Wood Mackenzie, it also could create an additional one million jobs by 2018 if the government opened more onshore and offshore areas to exploration and development.

For many American families, struggling to make ends meet in the jobless recovery, energy development is an answer to a prayer. The fact that the oil and gas boom has been done without taxpayer subsidies—and despite reactionary public policies at the federal level and in some states (such as New York)—means that more economic opportunity is on tap.
—————-
Note: An earlier version of this op-ed appeared in The Hill (Washington, DC

Fast Pay-Out For Shale Wells

It looks like these wells have a fast pay-out, with the majority of revenue coming within the first five years of production.  That may not make everyone happy, but I think investors like it.  However, with such low current natural gas prices, most operators are just leaving the gas in the ground for the time being.
Peter

Production Profiles: Shale Play WellsJuly 2, 2012 | Energy Information Administration
The EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2012 report includes information about projected average production profiles for shale gas wells in major United States shale plays by years of operation.


Thanks to geology.com for the link.

Huge Economic Impact Of Eagle Ford Shale, Largely Unknown Outside Of Texas

Much of this development and its significant economic impact is due to the combination of the relatively new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.  Amazingly, the oil and gas industry derives very little positive recognition from these feats, including equally important oil and gas development plays like the Marcellus Shale in the northeastern U.S., the Barnett Shale in north central Texas, the Haynesville Shale in northwestern Louisiana, and the Bakken Formation development in North Dakota.

The environmental lobbyists and global warming scare-mongers have been so effective with their propaganda they have managed to effectively squelch these great achievments and largely hide them from the American public.  As some might say, "go figure", are they with America or against her?
Peter

Eagle Ford Shale Generated More Than $25 Billion in Revenue for South Texas in 2011

UTSA projects the shale to create 117,000 jobs by 2021

Source: http://ccbr.iedtexas.org/

Click to Downlaod the Eagle Ford Shale Impact Report

Written by Christi Fish
Associate Director of Media Relations, The University of Texas at San Antonio

SAN ANTONIO, May 9, 2012 – Development of oil and natural gas in the Eagle Ford Shale contributed $25 billion in total economic output to the region in 2011, according to a study released today by the Center for Community and Business Research at The University of Texas at San Antonio Institute for Economic Development (UTSA).
"The Eagle Ford Shale has proven to be one of the most important economic engines in the state," said Dr. Thomas Tunstall, director of the UTSA Center for Community & Business Research, and the study’s principal investigator. "In 2011 alone, the play generated over $25 billion in revenue, supported 47,000 full-time jobs in the area, and provided $257 million in local government revenue."
The study also concluded that in 2011 shale development:

• Paid $3.1 billion in salaries and benefits to workers;
• Provided more than $12.6 billion in gross regional product;
• Added more than $358 million in state revenues, including $120.4 million in severance taxes;
• And spurred a triple-digit sales tax revenue increase in various local counties.
  

  Download the Eagle Ford Shale Impact Presentation

"We view the Eagle Ford activity as an economic opportunity of a lifetime," said Mario Hernandez, president of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation. "The key goal is the increase in investment and jobs. And if the communities will partner with the private companies that are creating these jobs, it can be a win-win for everybody."

The increased revenue from the Eagle Ford Shale is rebuilding local communities. New schools and new hospitals are being built, and new training programs have been launched to maximize hiring from the local workforce. The study projects the creation of approximately 117,000 full-time jobs by 2021.

View the video recording of the Eagle Ford Shale Impact Presentation and Study Release from May 9, 2012

HUGE Numbers For Apache..

67,000 drilling locations in Texas and Oklahoma alone!  That ought to keep a lot of people busy for a long time.  These so-called "resource plays", which are basically low porosity and permeability rocks containing oil and gas that become economic to produce because of the combined technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. 

These are truly revolutionary developments in the history of the oil and gas industry.  It amazes me how few people are aware of the significance of this.  Try to grasp the magnitude of the numbers Apache is throwing around in the following article.  To say the least, it looks like "Peak Oil" has been pushed into the future.  Make your plans accordingly.
Peter

Apache Details Liquids-Rich Identified Resource Inventory

9.2 billion net barrels of oil equivalent, 67,000 drilling locations in Permian and Anadarko
New U.S. resource plays: 580,000 acres in Mississippian Lime, 300,000 acres in Williston Basin
48 Tcf net sales gas in British Columbia's Liard Basin

RELATED QUOTES

Symbol	Price	Change
APA	85.42	+2.45

HOUSTON, June 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Apache Corporation (NYSE, Nasdaq: APA) today released new, detailed resource estimates of its oil- and liquids-rich portfolio, including substantial Permian and Anadarko basin holdings, recently acquired acreage in the liquids-rich Mississippian Lime and Williston Basin resource plays, and significant new plays and oil exploration prospects in Canada, Argentina, Alaska and Kenya.
"For Apache, this is the time to drill more wells: We have captured a vast, liquids-rich resource base and drilling costs are declining," said G. Steven Farris, Apache's chairman and chief executive officer. "By remaining committed to Apache's historical focus on returns and preserving our conservative financial structure – which means living within our cash flow – our portfolio is positioned to continue to deliver long-term growth and value for our shareholders."
Resource estimates released Thursday at the company's annual investor day include:

• Apache, the second-largest producer and acreage owner in the Permian Basin of West Texas and eastern New Mexico, has identified approximately 34,500 drillable locations with an estimated net resource of 3.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (Boe).
• In the Anadarko Basin in western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, Apache has identified approximately 32,500 drillable locations primarily in the Granite Wash, Cleveland, Tonkawa and Marmaton formations with an estimated net resource of 5.4 billion Boe.
• In northern British Columbia, Canada, Apache has validated an outstanding new shale play in the Liard Basin with net estimated sales gas of 48 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (8 billion Boe) across 430,000 acres held with a 100-percent working interest.
  The resource estimate at Liard is based on recent drilling, test results and earlier well control points. "The D-34-K well is one of the best shale wells we've seen in any play," Farris said. "Our analysis indicates that the formation characteristics are remarkably consistent across this large basin."
• In Argentina, Apache estimated that its 450,000-acre position in the Vaca Muerta oil shale has a net potential recoverable resource of 800 million Boe.

New exploratory oil prospects include:

• Apache has built a 580,000-acre (net) position in the Mississippian Lime play in Kansas and Nebraska with an inventory of 7,200 potential locations and an estimated resource potential of 2 billion barrels of oil.
• Apache assembled a 300,000-acre position (net) in the Williston Basin in Daniels County, Montana, with more than 1,900 potential locations and potential resource of 1 billion barrels of oil.
• In Alaska – where this year Apache plans to drill its first well – the company has identified 1.3 billion barrels of oil of yet-to-be-found potential.
• In Block L-8 offshore Kenya, Apache has identified eight prospects with net potential of 1.4 billion barrels of oil. Apache expects to commence drilling its first well in the deepwater block in the third quarter.

"Apache has captured the largest inventory of liquids-rich drillable locations in our history, including additional upside potential from exploration activities in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, Egypt and Australia," Farris said. "We are well-positioned to deliver long-term profitable growth with our balanced portfolio, focus on rate of return, and prudent financial structure."

About Apache

Apache Corporation is an oil and gas exploration and production company with operations in the United States, Canada, Egypt, the United Kingdom North Sea, Australia and Argentina. Apache posts announcements, operational updates, investor information and copies of all press releases on its website, www.apachecorp.com.

D-Day

"During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history." - Stephen Ambrose, D-Day, page 577

D-Day, Of Sand, Beaches, Rocks, Geology, And Men And Women Who Love Them

Such bittersweet memories.  On this day in 1944 the ground invasion of France and the long-awaited liberation of Europe began.  France would be freed of Nazi (socialist) domination forever, right?

But this is a tribute to those who sacrificed.  My own father Andy Smith, came across Omaha beach, not on D-Day, but later, as a young infantry Lieutenant with the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, part of  the 2nd Armored Division.  His unit was the first to enter liberated Paris but a short time later, in August of 1944, the first into Germany, and stopped the German advance during the Battle of the Bulge.

And then there are bittersweet memories of (for me) beaches and sand, from Lake Michigan, to the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys, the Mediterranean.......so many beaches, so much sand, so little time.  But then there is geology, and the study of sand, and rocks.  No living sedimentary, stratigraphic, or sedimentology geologist will not have known, read, or studied with Dr. Earle McBride of the University of Texas, wonderfully highlighted in the following article.  Every geologist who has looked at sand grains under a microscope will appreciate and relate to the following story.

I owe so much to my father, Mr. McBride, sand, and geology.  As with the Earth, what goes around comes around, and life goes on.  The sun rises and the sun sets, the tide goes out and the tide comes in, and rocks tell the story to those who learn to listen.  Today let's say a quiet "thank you" and remember.
Peter

Tiny remnants of war found in Omaha Beach sand

By Corrie MacLaggan | Reuters – 20 hrs ago

 

 

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  A glass bead with divots and scratches …
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  LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks), landing …
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  Current-day Omaha Beach in France …
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  Earle McBride is pictured by his …
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  US Army soldiers recover the remains …
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  Shrapnel grains and an iron bead, …
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  American troops watch activity …
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  LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks), landing …
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2nd Armored Infantry Division Patch

Andy Smith, athlete, soldier, coach, teacher.... Redstone, Colorado, 1986

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - When Texas geologist Earle McBride visited Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, in 1988, four decades after D-Day, the visible remnants of the Allied Forces' invasion there had long ago vanished.

But he and a colleague would later discover the history of the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy's beaches - which marked a turning point in World War Two - lingered in the sand in the form of tiny pieces of shrapnel only visible under a microscope.

It wasn't a discovery that McBride and colleague Dane Picard of Utah set out to make during their tourist visit to Omaha Beach, where U.S. forces suffered their greatest casualties in the assault against heavily fortified German defenses.

"We didn't think about, ‘Hey, there should be shrapnel here?'" said McBride, 80, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas who retired in 2005 but still goes to his office five hours a day to study rocks.

But the geologists did what long ago became their habit when they visit a beach anywhere in the world: they put a bit of sand in a plastic bag and took it home.

McBride didn't fully analyze the sample for more than two decades. Finally, in retirement, he made a slide of the sand by using blue-dyed epoxy to bind the grains together.

On a recent day in his tiny office at the Austin university where he taught for 46 years, McBride showed a visitor what he found. Under a microscope, rounded grains - quartz, feldspar, clam and oyster shells - were visible, along with jagged-edged grains.

"You see how angular that grain is?" he asked. "It's an anomaly - if it had the same origin and history, it should have been well-rounded, too."

A different light source on the microscope revealed that the jagged-edged grains had a metallic sheen and a rust-colored coating, and when McBride held a magnet to some of the sand, the angular grains proved to be magnetic.

McBride suspected the jagged grains were shrapnel, and he used a scanning electron microscope to verify his hunch. It showed the grains were iron with a bit of oxygen from rust.

He also found the sand included small spherical iron and glass beads, which he and Picard believe were formed by munitions explosions in the air and sand.

"It's a detective story," McBride said. "Sand has an exciting history."

He said it's not surprising that shrapnel was left on the beach. Rather the surprise is that it remained there decades later, long after the wrecked ships, tanks and aircraft were gone.

But the shrapnel won't be in the sand forever, he and Picard wrote in Earth Magazine last year.

"The combination of chemical corrosion and abrasion will likely destroy the grains in a century or so, leaving only the memorials and people's memories to recall the extent of devastation suffered by those directly engaged in World War II," they wrote.

The research by McBride and Picard - a professor emeritus at the University of Utah - was published in the September 2011 edition of The Sedimentary Record, a scholarly journal.

"It was a great approach," said Xavier Janson, a research scientist at the University of Texas and an editor of the Record. "It was using a geological tool that you usually use to understand where sand grains come from, but instead, it was used to understand what happened on this beach."

For McBride, the discovery is an example of why he still finds passion in his lifelong work studying sedimentary rocks, the ones most commonly found on the earth's surface.

The latest project on his desk is a 450-million-year-old rock from Utah roughly the size of a softball; he's trying to reconstruct the history of how it formed and where its grains originated.

The earth is old, McBride said, and "all I can do is work on one little chunk of the history of sandstones. As we say, so many rocks, so little time."

(Reporting By Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Eric Walsh)

source of article: http://news.yahoo.com/tiny-remnants-war-found-omaha-beach-sand-165332327.html#