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Latest Geology Headlines

Pemex Makes Third Ultra-Deep Find at Mexico Gulf Maximino Field

Petroleos Mexicanos, the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, made its third ultra-deepwater discovery on the Mexican side of the Perdido basin in the Gulf of Mexico. Tests at the Maximino field where the crude was found are still being made and volumes are being assessed, Luis Ramos, a strategic planning manager at the Mexican state-owned oil [...]

Ohio’s well data shatters shale oil hopes

U.S. hopes for a new shale oil bonanza in Ohio, joining the prolific Bakken and Eagle Ford plays that have raised production to 20-year highs, were shattered on Thursday by the first hard evidence that the Utica formation was primarily gas-prone. Just two years ago, the Utica had the global oil industry buzzing as companies [...]

Israel Appears to Have More Natural Gas

Operators of two large Israeli natural gas fields said Thursday that another offshore field under exploration shows promise. The Karish field, off Israel’s northern coast, contains “significant signs of natural gas,” according to a statement from Delek Group Ltd., whose subsidiaries also control the large Tamar and Leviathan fields along with U.S.-based Noble Energy Inc. [...]

USGS: New Insight on GOM Gas Hydrates

Scientists have returned from a 15‑day research expedition in the northern Gulf of Mexico with the best high-resolution seismic data and imagery ever obtained of sediments with high gas hydrate saturations. The expedition and the data and imagery collected resulted from long-standing cooperation between the U.S. Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and [...]

New Wyoming Lithium Deposit could Meet all U.S. Demand

The U.S. currently imports more than 80% of the lithium it uses, with the silvery metal winding up in batteries from cell phones to electric cars. According to a United States Geological Survey publication on lithium, “The only commercially active lithium mine in the United States was a brine operati on in Nevada. The mine’s [...]

Dr. Sami Alnuaim: Global oil reserves

As a result to the comments/discussion I had received in relation to the article that I wrote and was published in this column two weeks ago under the title: ‘The Falsehood of Peak Oil Theory’, I would like to further clarify my opinion by defining the term “Hydrocarbon Reserves” as per the official definition of [...]

Bakken recoverable oil estimates are growing again

An oil-rich region of the north-central United States holds more than twice the recoverable crude supplies estimated just five years ago, a government study released Tuesday said. The Bakken Formation and Three Forks Formation — which span parts of Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota — together hold about 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically [...]

Feds triple estimates for recoverable natural gas in plains states

A new US Geological Survey study found that not only is the amount of the natural gas in the upper plains states of North and South Dakota and Montana three time larger than previously reported but that there was twice as much oil in there too. Here’s the study. It summarizes its findings as: Using [...]

Tapping the Promised Land: Can Israel Be an Energy Giant?

One day in August 2009, a geologist named Yuval Bartov sank a drill into the ground southwest of Jerusalem, pulled up a cylinder of rock and, in the same motion, turned the world upside down. The rock contained oil, something that Israel has never had. The oil did not happen to be in liquid form, [...]

What If We Never Run Out of Oil?

New technology and a little-known energy source suggest that fossil fuels may not be finite. This would be a miracle—and a nightmare. As the great research ship Chikyu left Shimizu in January to mine the explosive ice beneath the Philippine Sea, chances are good that not one of the scientists aboard realized they might be [...]

Strong quake hits China; 102 dead, more than 2200 injured

Earthquake of magnitude 6.6 strikes China’s Sichuan province * More than 2,200 injured, 147 seriously * Earthquake epicentre near Ya’an city * Tremors felt in provincial capital, Chengdu A strong 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit a remote, mostly rural and mountainous area of southwestern China’s Sichuan province on Saturday, killing at least 102 people and injuring [...]

Major 7.8 Earthquake Strikes Iran Leaves “Hundreds Dead”

It was only a week ago that Iran was shaken by a major 6.1 earthquake, striking just 100 km away from the Busher nuclear power plant: a location so “opportune” some, so inclined, saw in this phenomenon anoter demonstration of the HAARP’s capabilities. Those same people will then hardly be surprised to learn that moments [...]

Peak Oil: Tar Sands To The Rescue—Not!

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Kjell Aleklett: The IEA now considers that conventional crude oil production reached its maximum in 2008 and that it will decline by 2035. We, the IEA and IHS CERA all agree that crude oil production from currently producing fields is declining by 0.4 Mb/d per year and [...]

Do We Have Enough Natural Gas?

While we are currently experiencing a glut of natural gas that has brought the price down from around $13 to around $3 per million BTUs, there are questions as to how long our natural gas supplies will last. The debate that has caught people’s attention is over whether we should export natural gas, as LNG [...]

BP Doesn’t Need Large Acquisition to Replace Reserves

BP PLC (BP BP.LN), which has recently completed a $38 billion divestment program in efforts to streamline the company and bolster its financial position, doesn’t need a large acquisition to replace naturally declining reserves, the company’s top bosses said Thursday. Instead, BP has a pipeline of around 45 potential high-quality upstream projects it can develop [...]

Iraq Raises Oil Reserves To 150 Billion Barrels

Iraq has raised its estimated proven crude oil reserves to 150 billion barrels from 143 billion barrels, with more oil discovered in oil fields being upgraded by international oil companies and from a new oil field in southern Iraq, the Iraqi oil minister said Wednesday. “The calculations that we have carried, indicated that our oil [...]

Israel’s Natural Gas Finds Win the World’s Notice

Israel’s visiting guest this week is not a head-of-state. But he is just as important. It is Noble Energy’s Chief Executive Charles Davidson, whose company is working with government and business there to commercialize huge natural gas deposits. The point of the Texas-based oil captain’s appearance is two-fold: He and his Israeli contemporaries will be celebrating the [...]

Art of the Anthropocene: The Bakken

The Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana has helped spark a “peak oil is dead” meme in the media and elsewhere. There are reasons to believe that this latest fad is as overblown as the peak oil frenzy was in the mid-2000s. But one thing is clear: The Bakken is a big producer of oil. [...]

Darwin Well Comes Up Dry

Repsol’s Darwin well in the Norwegian zone of the Barents Sea has come up dry, its co-partner in the well Faroe Petroleum reported Monday. The Darwin frontier exploration well (designated 7128/11-1) is located on the Veslemøy High in the frontier western part of the Barents Sea with 50 miles to the southwest of the recent [...]

Qatar Finds First Natural Gas Deposit in 42 Years, Minister Says

Qatar, the emirate with the third- largest global reserves of natural gas, found a deposit with 2.5 trillion cubic feet of the fuel, its first discovery since uncovering the world’s biggest gas field 42 years ago. State-run Qatar Petroleum, Wintershall AG and Mitsui & Co (8031) plan to develop the reservoir in a 544 square-kilometer [...]

Fossil and Nuclear Fuels – the Supply,Outlook – from Energy Watch Group

Since 1998 when the oil geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère published a widely discussed survey article “The End of Cheap Oil” in the journal “Scientific American”, the concept of peak oil and the present state of oil depletion are part of any serious analysis of the future oil supply potential. However, recently various publications [...]

‘Red Lenin’ leads Russia’s oil revolution

To find the cradle of Russia’s coming oil revolution, look no further than “Red Lenin”. This is the name of the oilfield in West Siberia that is at the cutting edge of efforts to harness Russia’s vast reserves of unconventional crude, and engineer the same kind of shale boom that has changed the face of [...]

New book with latest from Colin Campbell

Since 1998 when the oil geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère published a widely discussed survey article “The End of Cheap Oil” in the journal “Scientific American”, the concept of peak oil and the present state of oil depletion are part of any serious analysis of thefuture oil supply potential. However, recently various publications suggest [...]

Peak Oil: Madness

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from William James more than a century ago: The most significant characteristic of modern civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present, and all the power of science has been prostituted to this purpose. We’re spending countless hundreds of billions of dollars each year to extract [...]

Chevron Announces Oil Discovery in Deepwater U.S. Gulf of Mexico

hevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) has announced an oil discovery at the Coronado prospect in the deepwater U.S. Gulf of Mexico. The Walker Ridge Block 98 Well No. 1 encountered more than 400 feet (122 m) of net pay. The well is located approximately 190 miles (308 km) off the Louisiana coast in 6,127 feet (1,868 [...]

The Best Places To Find Oil Are The Oldest Places

It’s an old oilfield maxim: The best places to find oil are in spots where it’s already been found. It’s proving true time and again in the North America oil business as small and large operators strike renewed bonanzas in West Texas, Oklahoma and other parts once perceived as past their prime. Of course, an oilfield’s [...]

Pemex’s Proven Reserves Gain for Second Year After Discoveries

Petroleos Mexicanos, the state- owned company, posted a gain in its proven reserves for a second year, supported by discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore. Mexico’s reserves rose 0.4 percent to 13.868 billion barrels as of Jan. 1 from 13.81 billion a year earlier, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said today on the [...]

Depletion: The one word oil optimists refuse to utter

With the media is awash in stories telling us how much oil is being discovered around the world, there is one word which the optimists quoted in these stories refuse to utter: Depletion. The simple fact is that depletion never sleeps. It starts as soon as a well begins production and goes on 24 hours [...]

Spain Gas Resources Estimated at 70 Years Domestic Demand

Spain, which imports about 99 percent of its natural gas, has enough prospective resources of the fuel to satisfy current demand for 70 years if shale is developed, according to a trade group for oil and gas companies. In what it called the most comprehensive study to date, the association said today in Madrid that [...]

Methane hydrate flow established off Japan

Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp. (Jogmec), Tokyo, said it has produced methane from methane hydrates during tests of a well drilled in about 1,000 m of water offshore the Atsumi and Shima peninsulas of Japan. The well, operated by Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., produced methane by depressurization of hydrates in a layer 270-330 [...]

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