Shell Wins Federal Approval To Drill For Oil Off Alaska Coast

Washington Post:

The Interior Department has given Shell approval to drill oil exploration wells in two leaseholds in the Beaufort Sea, which could lead to the first drilling in more than a decade in this area off the north coast of Alaska.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[TJCole]

Their about to begin poisoning the Catskills due to "Fracking Shale" for Natural gas even in our Watershed for NY City it's insane and they'll pollute wells..in the region as well highly toxic chemicals pumped deep into and around our Aquifer....

Horizontal drilling bad business...we'll poison our drinking water for the sake of some natural gas...!

Insanity..

[TxAggie]

"Their about to begin poisoning the Catskills due to "Fracking Shale" ?

They are about to drill and start producing perhaps? How do you know "their" about to begin poisoning, you don't do you? Do you not use gasoline and/or natural gas? I guess you like beef without cattle, eggs without having to put up with chickens? OIl and gas drilling is proven and safe, particularily in the US. Relax if your prediction is correct you can tell us how right you were. Of course if you are wrong I'm sure you will let us all know, right?

[TJCole]

I worked for Butterworth a top secret division of Exxon, I know..

Also I carried all the soundings of the off shore search for oil and gas off the north east coast from Maine to North Carolina there's tons of it, huge deposits of gas especially and transported them had them printed saw them before the engineers that would be less dangerous and toxic they used side ways or horizontal drilling and mix in toxic chemicals they don't even have to reveal and they are immune from the Clean Drinking Water Act...it's nuts and the poisoning and toxic plume can effect the water table or reservoir even years later...the shale mixes with and become a slush of poisons like a toxic soup..!

[MyTake]

And here is how SHELL won.

In June/08 you have a private international meeting and invite 135 of the most powerful and wealthy elite on the planet with invitations to key government personnel from around the globe. You have that 3 day meeting at Chantilly, Virginia.

You sit Queen Beatrix, largest shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell, beside David Rockefeller who might have a couple of shares in Exxon.

Then you sit the following people in front of them: Bernanke, Paulsen, Geithner, Summers to get some insider information on how far in debt the U.S. can go when the global financial meltdown takes hold. When a country is in debt, it is much easier to cut some good oil deals. Then you look around the room and see a half dozen Obama appointments-in-waiting who will get a message to Obama to appoint Salazar to DOI.

Salazar was an AG in Colorado during the time Shell & Chevron were corrupting MMS personnel with gifts and girls to gain oil shell leases.

So with all the players in place, oil and profits now rule the Obama administration as they have done with 4 decades of past administrations.

[TxAggie]

Gifts and girls to gain oil shell (do you mean "shale") leases? I don't think that is in the regs or in any seminars I have attended...

[IWW]

Hopefully, this will help our long standing economic hardship bareing hold to foreign oil.

"DRILL BABY DRILL" and don't get GREEDY.

[RTIII]

It won't.
.

[Porter90]

We need to understand how energy policy works. There's nothing wrong with drilling if they give the same subsidies and tax breaks for alternative and green energy technologies. Recently Obama gave alternative energy technologies a $3B boost in grants and loans for development and deployment of this technologies.

It is imperative that most of this technologies be developed. Even Tesla got $500M loan to deploy Model S and an electric SUV. A123 got $200M to build their battery plant in Michigan. I can go on. The government has to be even handed. The drilling for natural gas and oil is important in the interim because we need to boost our strategic oil reserves and maintain our dollar edge.

We would have developed alternative technologies to cut our needs by 30-40% causing more supply than demand resulting in lower crude prices.

For every gasoline car, there should be either an hybrid or CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) car so that we can use only american made energy and keep in the wealth here at home.

Please lets relax and see how they implement the Cap and Trade policy which gives excellent subsidies to solar. Homes should be built with solar shingles from 2010. Thats would immediately reduce carbon emissions. During the winter, you can use natural gas to heat the homes.

Please lets keep our eyes on the ball and not get distracted by a drilling rig in offshore Alaska.

[MyTake]

Sorry, that explanation does not fly.

The hydrogen economy is ready to go, but the Obama administration (Chu @ DOE) cut hydrogen fuel cell project funding. But the Congress and Senate immediately restored that funding and added more dollars.

Do you seriously think that the oil cartel are going to step aside gracefully for the hydrogen economy? Do you think they will install hydrogen gas pumps on their service station lots and have hydrogen fuel cell cars interfere with their massive profits.

And for your information, cap and trade transactions will be handled by a global network of ROTHSCHILD controlled banks. Now I wonder how that happened and you think Goldman Sachs is bad.

Solar and Wind power encouraged by the oil cartel to keep hydrogen off the landscape.

[Porter90]

Solar and wind are the closest we have to manna from heaven. Google Black Silicon, it has efficiency levels of 80-90%. This solar panels actually perform well within UV and Infra Red frequencies.

Now to wind, We have a company called Aura systems that at the moment working with the US Military on a 30KW generator that give peak voltage at low speeds. www.wepower.us are working with Aura for their 10KW generator which would transform the urban rooftops.

Hydrogen is a derived fuel because you can either get it from natural gas or electrolytic or frequency cracking of water. Now when you convert the energy from the hydrogen generated to energy, its gone forever. I can assure you that the wind will blow tomorrow and the sun will rise tomorrow.

This idea of bringing up some names or talking about some conspiratorial personalities does not cut it. I believe that our energy future is in our hand.

[RTIII]

Problems are:

1) There's not enough up there to be worth drilling - the reserves between Florida and Cuba are.

2) The wildlife up there may be permanently disturbed - it's too high a cost for not enough gain.

3) It does nothing to help get us off oil / fossil fuels.

4) We were promised otherwise by this administration.
.

[TxAggie]

You don't think perhaps Shell might have expended just a little effort and perhaps have sufficient knowledge and confidence in their geological work to risk billions of dollars? And to think you have spent zip and done nothing and you already know there is not enough potential to warrant the risk? Have you shared that with Shell?

[TxAggie]

We are not talking apples and oranges here. Incentives (or as you call them) encourage specific results, in the case of oil and gas if we need to encourage production it is a pretty sure thing that incentives will work. In the case of "green technology" how do you provide the same subsidies? You are comparing proven technology to in most cases wishful thinking? What is your stake in the deal?

[lightningbolt]

I'm going to keep saying this over and over again until people get it: We must make bribery (aka private campaign finance) ILLEGAL!!! Nothing will get solved, no progress will be made, and no change will come unless we get rid of bribery first. It doesn't matter what party is in power. As long as corporations have the ability to bribe elected officials, the government will work for those corporations.

[lightningbolt]

Big oil always wins. It's easy when they have the entire government in their pockets.

[TxAggie]

Absolutely, Barack certainly is aligned with the oil patch......

[niko73]

Listen folks, this is the only line that matters:

"The two leases were obtained by Shell in 2005 and 2007."

A lease gives the holder the LEGAL RIGHT to develop it. They "won" the right to drill when they were awarded the leases. Shell had valid existing rights by law. Sorry you don't like it, but we follow the rule of law in this country. I understand you are against drilling, but are you also against upholding rights afforded by law? Or do you just want to pick selectively which laws and rights you want upheld and which ones you don't? Thought so.

[horhay]

Really? We follow the rule of law selectively when the Bush/Cheney admin decided to invade Iraq for numerous lies, when we allow/condone torture, when we prop up a dictator that will do the corporatocracy's bidding.

No this is an ocean that they're drilling in, and it belongs to nobody. If anyone has a claim to it, it is the Inuits. It is home to an incredible amount of sea life. To pollute and destroy it for more oil & profits is like saying we just haven't trashed the earth & the oceans enough.

[TxAggie]

Sorry Bubba it belongs to the good ole USA under the OCS Lands Act. I guess you don't support the Most Dangerous Game and those folks that go out and steal the King Crabs from the Inuits either...

[KIVPossum]

Change you can believe in.

[niko73]

This comment, as well as the one below about Obama carrying out the desires of Bush are ridiculous. What, were you expecting Obama to shut down ALL oil and gas development in America? Are you joking? This is impossible, illogical and illegal.

What we want is RESPONSIBLE oil and gas development, something we did not see under Bush’s tenure. In my opinion, under Obama/Salazar, we're moving in that direction while still recognizing we need oil resources.

[KIVPossum]

Salazar is as big a joke as Geithner. You can not take people that are tied to the problem to solve the problem.

[TxAggie]

You really aren't paying much attention to the assualt on the oil patch by Obama and Salazar are you? While they may recognize the need for oil, they darn sure don't like it.

[jennylynn]

Looks like BO is carry out the desires of Bush.

[NWBrunette]

Nice change-thing you got going down, Barrack.

[fallingsky]

isn't this what you guys wanted,,, To drill on the leases already held ?

[jsarets]

These are new leases from 2005 and 2007.

[jsarets]

Why aren't they tapping our landfills for energy? Don't even need to drill.

Oh, right, these corporations make their money by buying enormously valuable property rights for next to nothing from the government, and then rapidly destroying the value of their own properties.

We have more than enough energy to power a transition to a sustainable economy stacked in neat piles on the surface, venting methane into the atmosphere just to release the pressure, when we could be using this anaerobic digestion process to satisfy a great deal of our energy needs.

We could build smaller facilities that work like landfills but process waste in batches or flows instead of long-term storage. These facilities could produce both methane fuel and urea fertilizer.

Coskata just started up a pilot facility in PA that will produce 50,000 gal/yr of ethanol from waste using a specialized strain of clostridium bacteria, and they're building a larger plant in FL.

Most of the stuff we throw away is energy to be made, and landfills are essentially gas fields.

[bannorhill]

50,000 gallons per year is about 18 cubic feet per day. Not much. You would use more fuel pumping it to a market than it would produce.

[whatbox]

Really?

http://www.region.waterloo.on.ca/web/region.nsf/97dfc347666efede85256e590071a3d4/24e859b0ad7370e585256f6a005d4690!OpenDocument

[TxAggie]

Who is "they"? What is stopping you from tapping the landfills?

[gunnergoz]

A great time to invest in oil spill cleanup companies.

[Archivist1000]

Sarah's new house!

http://www.stinque.com/2009/10/19/wealthy-person-builds-large-house/

[Watain]

Kick Awesome! Let’s fill up our tanks and drive all week.