US To Auction 24 Million Acres for Oil, Gas Exploration in Gulf of Mexico

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said on Friday it would auction in August 23.8 million acres offshore Texas for oil and gas exploration in a bid to ramp up domestic production.

The area is expected to produce economically recoverable hydrocarbons of between 116 million and 200 million barrels of oil and between 538 billion and 938 billion cubic feet of natural gas, the bureau has estimated.

BP’s Stunning Warning: “Every Oil Storage Tank Will Be Full In A Few Months”

It was just last week when we said that Cushing may be about to overflow in the face of an acute crude oil supply glut.

“Even the highly adaptive US storage system appears to be reaching its limits,” we wrote, before plotting Cushing capacity versus inventory levels. We also took a look at the EIA’s latest take on the subject and showed you the following chart which depicts how much higher inventory levels are today versus their five-year averages.

Trillions of dollars worth of oil found in Australian outback

With the direction radical environmentalism is taking the Western world, if not mothballed, any prospective oil is more likely to go to China than to domestic markets that would normally relieve internal economic constraints.

The discovery in central Australia was reported by Linc Energy to the stock exchange and was based on two consultants reports, though it is not yet known how commercially viable it will be to access the oil.

Regime security, not national security, is dominant priority in Beijing and Moscow

If a breakout of the escalating Syrian conflict or an Israel/U.S. military attempt to halt Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons sets off even a 200-day regional conflict, it would be catastrophic for the Chinese economy.

Han Xiaoping, chief information officer of the China Energy Resources Net, recently warned China’s estimated reserve of only 110 million barrels would last only 46 days if there were a Persian Gulf closure. China’s dependence upon imported crude is far greater than the United States’ with some 40 percent coming from the Gulf. But only a declining 11 percent actually comes from Iran, the rest from the Arab states now unsuccessfully lobbying China to help defuse the Syrian timebomb and halt Iran’s nukes.

Full article: Regime security, not national security, is dominant priority in Beijing and Moscow (World Tribune)