Panama Has an Estimated 900 Million Barrels of Oil in Two Basins

- Panama Has an Estimated 900 Million Barrels of Oil in Two Basins

Monday, September 05, 2011
OilPrice.com
by Joao Peixe

Panama’s National Energy Secretariat has announced that 900 million barrels of oil have been detected at two basins in eastern Panama, representing a potential contribution to the Panamanian Treasury of $15 billion dollars over the next two decades at current oil prices.

Panamanian Energy Secretary Juan Manuel Urriola said that the Venezuelan firm OTS conducted the geological survey and detected the oil reserves in Panama’s Garachine-Sambu and Bayano-Chucunaque-Atrato basins in Darien province, which borders Colombia.

While the quality of the deposits’ oil has yet to be determined Urriola estimated their “commercial potential” at roughly $15 billion in taxes and royalties, based on OTS projected estimate of a per-barrel price of 100 dollars over the next 20 years, MercoPress news agency reported.

OTS recommended that in the bidding process the exploratory areas in the Garachine-Sambu and Bayano-Chucunaque-Atrato basins be divided into four geographical blocks per basin.

Urriola added that a bidding process for exploration rights and for determining the deposits’ quality and volume would begin before the end of the year.

Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli is promoting oil exploration because of Panama’s need to have its own indigenous energy resources in order to reduce the country’s dependence on oil imports, where recent high costs have caused local fuel prices to soar.

(Joao Peixe is a Deputy Editor OilPrice.com. The full article appears here.)

Oil & Gas Post

Promote Your Page Too
LINK

'Fracking' Has EPA Seal of Approval

- 'Fracking' Has EPA Seal of Approval

Thursday, July 14, 2011
Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
by Andrew P. Morriss

Natural gas is clean and cheap compared to other forms of energy. Over the last few years, U.S. and world natural gas reserves have soared - U.S. reserves are up by over a third - as we've discovered how to apply the technique known as fracking to unleash gas trapped in deep underground shale formations.

Fracking involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under pressure into underground formations, releasing the gas trapped there. Some of the material pumped in returns to the surface; some remains underground where it props open the fractures created in the formation.

The technique has been in use in the United States since the 1940s and it has been used around the world for decades in both oil and gas production. What is new is its effectiveness as methods are refined and the extent of the areas where it can be used cost effectively.

This has revolutionized America's energy picture. Shale gas made up just 1 percent of our gas supply in 2000; today it represents 25 percent.

In the early 2000s, plans were under way to build liquefied natural gas terminals to import natural gas from the Middle East. Today we are retrofitting our ports to allow us to export it. Natural gas prices have fallen to a quarter of their 2000 price, in large part as a result of this dramatic increase in supply.

As we discover new shale formations with recoverable gas, we face some difficult technical and legal issues. The liquid residue can pose risks to ground water and pumping pressurized liquid into the ground can affect neighbors' properties.

However, thus far fracking's dangers are mostly theoretical. Earlier this year EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson - certainly no friend to the hydrocarbon energy industry - told Congress that there had been "no proven cases where the fracking process itself has affected water."

"We have in place a national regulatory system to protect ground water and well developed principles of property law that protect neighbors," she testified. "We don't need more rules, just consistent application of those we have already."

Indeed, all forms of energy production involve side effects. Consider these examples:

• Wind and solar energy production require extensive use of rare earth minerals. Almost all of these minerals are imported from China where their production often triggers environmental disasters. The British Daily Mail's investigation into rare earth production for renewable energy earlier this year quoted Greenpeace China as saying "There's not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment."
• Ethanol poses serious threats to water in the Midwest, both from its water-intensive production draining aquifers faster than they recharge and from groundwater pollution from increased fertilizer use in growing corn.
• Nuclear plants require disposal of long term radioactive wastes. Coal plants emit both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases, while mining risks lives and the environment.

Unless we are willing to drastically reduce our energy use - and so diminish our access to energy-intensive goods like pharmaceuticals and computers - we cannot reject every advance in energy production.

And unlike renewable energy firms such as General Electric and Archers Daniels Midland, the natural gas industry doesn't have its hand out asking for subsidies. Making sure we do not shut down development of our natural gas reserves with ill-considered regulatory measures is critical to our energy future.

(C) 2011 Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.. All Rights Reserved

Oil & Gas Post

Promote Your Page Too
LINK

Williams Says It Has No Utica Drilling Plans

Williams Says It Has No Utica Drilling Plans

Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
by Elizabeth Skrapits, The Citizens' Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Beneath the deep-lying Marcellus Shale lies the even deeper Utica Shale, a rock formation that geologists say also has the potential to be rich in natural gas.

However, nobody is tapping into it in Northeastern Pennsylvania just yet, and the Utica remains largely unexplored in the rest of the state.

The state Department of Environmental Protection issued Williams Production Appalachia LLC a permit on Feb. 4 to drill deeper for its exploratory well on Route 487 in Sugarloaf Township, Columbia County, past the Benton Foundry.

The permit sparked rumors Williams planned to drill into the Utica Shale, but company spokeswoman Helen Humphreys says they're not true.

"I know that we are not going into the Utica Shale at all," she said.

The plan is to drill down past the Marcellus Shale to tap into the Onondaga limestone formation beneath, then go back up into the Marcellus, Humphreys said. The well has been drilled and the next step will be to hydraulically fracture it, but she said she didn't have a date for when it will be done.

A map issued by DEP on April 5 shows that, like the Marcellus, the Utica Shale runs completely through Northeastern Pennsylvania including Luzerne, Lackawanna, Wyoming and Columbia counties.

Although DEP keeps track of Marcellus Shale drilling permits, the Utica is still pretty much off the radar for the state agency.

"We don't have anything really identifying the formation in our system right now," said Dave English of the DEP Bureau of Oil & Gas Management. "Basically all we're tracking at this point in time is the Marcellus."

There have been permits issued for the Utica Shale -- although not many, and none in Northeastern Pennsylvania -- and there are several other shale formations being tested, English said.

Range Resources, the first company to drill a Marcellus Shale well in Pennsylvania, in 2004, is a pioneer in the state's portion of the Utica Shale as well.

Last year, the company drilled a productive well in Beaver County. Range Resources President and Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Ventura reported in an April 27 conference call the company is planning a second horizontal well in the Utica Shale later this year.

Copyright (c) 2011, The Citizens' Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Oil & Gas Post

Promote Your Page Too