Decades

The place many consider the birthplace of the modern U.S. environmental movement, California’s Santa Barbara County, is considering changing its decades-long opposition to renewed offshore drilling along its stretch of Pacific coast, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The five-member county Board of Supervisors Tuesday will consider writing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ask for a change of state policy against drilling.

Likening it to the transformation of the bodybuilding industry more than three decades ago, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said environmentalists and the environmental movement have improved their image, and they are getting more help and respect as a result. The former world bodybuilding legend and movie action figure made the comparison at a United Nations (UN) meeting in New Zealand via satellite last Tuesday.

Likening it to the transformation of the bodybuilding industry more than three decades ago, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said environmentalists and the environmental movement have improved their image, and they are getting more help and respect as a result. The former world bodybuilding legend and movie action figure made the comparison at a United Nations (UN) meeting in New Zealand via satellite Tuesday.

Quicksilver Resources Inc. has increased its position in the emerging Horn River Basin of northeastern British Columbia, which is considered one of the most promising new natural gas shale plays in Canada.

In a state where the per-capita energy use has stayed essentially flat for more than three decades, California regulators Thursday expanded utility ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs for major private-sector energy utilities. Low Income Energy Efficiency (LIEE) programs along with a one-year pilot program to merge energy and water conservation efforts were approved in separate actions by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

Congress should look to natural gas as a backup if the technologies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are not fully developed and commercialized in the decades ahead, a report commissioned by the National Gas Council (NGC) said last Wednesday.

Congress should look to natural gas if the technologies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are not fully developed and commercialized in the decades ahead, a report commissioned by the National Gas Council (NGC) said Wednesday.

ExxonMobil Corp. expects to ramp up more than 20 new global oil and natural gas projects in the next three years that at their peak will add 1 MMboe/d to the producer’s base volumes. Scheduled U.S. start-ups between 2008 and 2009 are the Piceance Tight Gas Phase 1 project in the Rocky Mountains, the deepwater Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the Golden Pass LNG [liquefied natural gas] import terminal near Sabine Pass, TX.

President Bush Tuesday lifted the ban on drilling in the Bristol Bay area in the North Aleutian Basin of Alaska and the 181 South area in the Central Gulf of Mexico, giving the Interior Department the option to offer producers leases in these areas as part of its five-year oil and natural gas leasing program for 2007-2012. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne also announced an increase in the royalty rate for most new federal deepwater oil and gas leases to 16.7% from 12.5%.