Peak Oil Nutter Claims Looking Peaky

A report by the consultancy Deloitte shows that exploration activity in British waters and other parts of the North Sea is booming. According to its analysis, drilling on the UK's continental shelf rose by 86 per cent in the second quarter of the year, compared with the same period in 2009, as companies' access to capital improves and their appetite for risk hardens.

The Deloitte report was published a day after Oil & Gas UK, the body which represents the industry's interests in Britain, revealed that members were preparing to spend up to £6bn on new developments this year, and that capital expenditure could reach as much as £60bn in the next decade as companies look to tap somewhere in the region of 70 new oilfields.

[...] Earlier this week, Premier Oil, the biggest partner in the four-field Catcher complex located about 100 miles south-east of Aberdeen, said the site may contain up to 300 million barrels of oil. Premier has been steadily increasing estimates of the amount of oil it believes it can recover – raising it this week to 100 million barrels from its previous bet of 80 million.

While Premier's upbeat prediction will give a boost to its shareholders, its estimates are a drop in the ocean compared to how much oil still lies beneath the seabed. It is a common perception that the North Sea is finished, but while some 40 billion barrels of oil and gas have been produced so far, an estimated 25 billion more barrels are still to come.

Analysts believe this could generate £2bn in extra revenue for the Exchequer. The previous Labour administration was criticised for making the North Sea by far the most highly taxed part of the economy with its own special rate of 50 per cent, rising to 75 per cent on production from older fields.
Continues www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news...

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Note this is no thanks to the past and present dipsticks in authority i.e. 50-75% tax. The only factor is chance. Oil price has finally made drilling economically feasible despite the tax deterrent and the politically and financially expanded disaster in the Gulf (see below and here) has oil companies looking elsewhere.

One has to wonder why drilling on land hasn't been pursued. Regardless, it means that UK gas and oil supplies will soon be secure independent of financial suppliers DESPITE the local government and the eco fascist EC ecotards.

It is to successive governments' shame that chance has caused this to happen rather than good housekeeping. Oil exploration should have been encouraged 15 years ago with tax breaks but probably criminals in authority were more intent on lining their and the banks' pockets than national interest. Private financial arrangements with foreign suppliers may be in the equation too given policians' proclivity to lie and steal.

As for the Falklands, "Rockhopper Exploration one of the four companies operating with Falkland Islands government licences reported last Friday that samples from its recent discovery on the Sea Lion prospect in the North Falkland basin have been confirmed as medium grade crude."

Continues en.mercopress.com/2010/07/03/rockhopper-...

Still waiting for news from the S. Falklands.

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Political and financial chicanery in the BP oil spill.
Vid 1
Vid 2
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Transcript of Kindra Arnesen’s testimony at Gulf Emergency Summit
This is the testimony of Kristen Arnesen’s testimony, the video keeps being taken down. Please share and save. Copied from Project Avalon, thanks to their volunteer transcribers.
“Thank you. OK, I’m not usually a speech-giver. So, you guys try to bear with me; I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.
To explain to you where I live, I am indeed the one on the very end. I am at Point 5 on Highway 23 in South Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Keep in mind through what I have to say, that I am the mother of a five-year-old little boy and an eight-year-old little girl who look like their dad.
That being said, when this first happened, I really didn’t know what to do, who to ask questions to, who was going to give us answers.
The first day we were introduced to anyone from BP, they came into our building and said: BP does business right. Yeah! Can you believe that? BP does business right and we’re here to take care of everything, folks. Well, 61 days later, that’s a joke, to say the least.
Just to give you guys kind of a perspective of where I’ve been: Four weeks ago, I stood up at a town hall meeting and I indeed did pin down all involved and I had them stuttering by the end of their speech. At any rate, I was invited the following week to go behind « enemy lines ». They gave me, of all people, security clearance to go into the base of operations meetings in Venice, Louisiana.
8 A.M., open door invitation to sit like a fly on the wall. Can you believe it? It’s really going on.
They also gave me security clearance to go into the Homeland Incident Command Post which is over the entire region of Louisiana. I’ve been in Coast Guard planes all the way out to the site itself.
Helicopters. Boat rides. I have been everywhere anybody could ever want to go to really get an inside look as to what’s going on.
Now, I want to start by telling you guys that I am not at all impressed. Someone told me this morning that they thought I had crossed over. Well, I picked a team a long time ago. My father was a commercial fisherman and my husband’s a commercial fisherman. Every man that I’ve even known, loved, and respected is on the water. They’re good men.
At any rate, for the past week I’ve heard in the ops meeting: We need to cut cost. Yes, that is what they said, that they need to cut cost. I almost came out of my chair the first time I heard it. But I’m trying to stay where I am because someone has to be on the inside overlooking and seeing as to what’s going on around. That being said, where I’ve seen cutting costs is quite unfortunate. What we call, in Venice, what they call…
blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/05/kin...

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News of the other enemies of society

Primary school forced to turn off wind turbine after bird deathsA primary school has been forced to switch off a £20,000 wind turbine because it keeps killing passing seabirds.
The rotary blades on the 30ft (9m) structure have struck at least 14 birds in the past six months.
The turbine, at Southwell Community Primary School, Portland, was installed 18 months ago thanks to a grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
It provided six kilowatts of power an hour, but its performance was overshadowed by the number of birds killed - far higher than the one fatality per year predicted by the manufacturer.
Headteacher Stuart McLeod was even forced to come into school early to clear up the bodies before his young pupils spotted them.
Continues www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/7870929...

The wind con continues despite its farcical elements being exposed with increasing regularity. Bird deaths in the tens are used to support an oil drilling moratorium attempt by Obama yet no mention is made of wind turbine kill rate and destruction of habitat.
Bird and bat kills, link1(100,000), link2 (9,500), link3 (75,000 - 275,000 birds) link4 (16,000)

Sweden is destroying habitat (forest) for over 1000 giant turbines here.
Denmark ditto here:
In the northern region of Jutland called Thy, Denmark is forcing people off of their land (“Kelo” is apparently Danish for “Kelo”) and — wait for it — preparing to clear-cut fifteen square kilometers of forest, and eventually thirty, in order to put up more of the bird- and job-killing monstrosities.
These giant windmills are not even intended to fill an energy gap for the Danish economy. No, they are to be onshore experimental versions of massive new off-shore turbines — with the facility to be rented out to wind mavens like Siemens.
The argument they are forwarding for doing this is not just the typically risible claim that this is necessary for the environment. After all, “[the] deforestation will create an increase of 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of the CO2 emissions of 100,000 people per year.”
They are also forwarding the argument that this must occur in order to create Danish jobs.
Of course, “creating jobs,” to the extent such mandates can do this (as they are typically net job killers), appears much more necessary after the state first made it difficult for the private sector to do such things. Denmark enforced what methods, and what quantity of those methods, are acceptable for producing electricity. It always turns out that the acceptable ways are inefficient, intermittent, and expensive. Which sort of explains the need for mandates.
Employers, who pass taxes and other costs along until they can’t, leave for less inane political and economic environments.

Wind farms are a black hole for public money and there are only negative benefits for the climate (no decrease in fosfuel use, increase in CO2 emissions), wild life (kills and habitat loss) and especially the public considering the huge increase in energy costs plus e.g the billions from tax receipts and borrowings that go to providing past 100% subsidies for offshore farms and infrastructure.

Of course there are huge benefits for private investors and banks that lend money to the government to give as subsidies. Wind energy is a major contributor to the national debt, inflation, bank and private investor profits.

There will never be a public enquiry into the reasons for avoiding due diligence (cost benefit report) before the wind energy scam was implemented nor why it is continuing. Because too many in positions of importance have their crooked fingers in the pie.