The BP blowout reaction a couple years ago put a lid on oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico that has yet to be fully lifted.  With oil over $100 today and the projections on prices looking scary for the economy and average Americans, a little good news is very welcome. A midsize oil explorer and developer company called McMoRan has been working in shallow Gulf of Mexico waters, close to shore, but drilling very deep.  For years McMoRan has been ignored.  Until:Chevron, the Big Oil Giant out of California caught on to the…

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U.S. supermajor Exxon Mobil said it invited 50 school girls to its headquarters in Texas for its 9th annual program meant to encourage more women to pursue engineering. The company said that while women make up about half of the U.S. workforce, only around 14 percent of those jobs were in the field of engineering. The program, Exxon explained, was part of a multi-million dollar effort launched through its philanthropic arm, the Exxon Mobil Foundation. The initiative, Exxon officials explain, is meant to show school girls that engineering was…

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The debate in the West over “who lost China” resonated in 1949 as the Nationalist forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek began their withdrawal to Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, and Mao’s forces — who had allowed Chiang’s Kuomintang forces to bleed dry in the war against Japan — consolidated control of the bulk of the coun-try. Now, of equal importance, is the strategic debate which should be held: who, in the West, lost Africa? Western media focuses on the drama of the Middle East, which, for the US, is…

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Crude oil prices this week reached their highest level since last April. What will that mean for U.S. consumers at the gas pump? The first question to be clear on is which crude oil price we’re talking about. Two of the popular benchmarks are West Texas Intermediate, traded in Oklahoma, and North Sea Brent. Historically these two prices were quite close, and it didn’t matter which one you referenced. But due to a lack of adequate transportation infrastructure in the United States, the two prices have diverged significantly over the last year. My…

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In the bad old days of the “evil empire” the USSR functioned as largely autarkic economic state, dealing with the outside world on its own terms. But seduced by Western “hard currency,” in the early 1970s the USSR, despite Washington’s distress, began energy exports to Europe despite the objections of successive U.S. administrations. The situation has continued to now, but the Russian Federation does not own and subsequently control, its most valuable transit assets, the skein of Soviet-era pipelines across…

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Our world is a ‘funk’—again over global oil price spikes caused by concerns about conflict between Iran and Israel drawing the US into a war, the continuing agony of Greek debt and its euro contagion, worries that China may have deeper economic problems than thought that will drag the global economy back into recession.  In other words, situation normal. But the situation is not normal in the US since we are in the midst of the primary election season and spiking oil prices is seen as a perfect excuse to hammer the president…

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There are a couple of controversial items that have made it into the mainstream press recently that seem to have stirred a little controversy, and which are worth at least a mention. The first was the Opinion piece in the WSJ back in Januuary in which 16 scientists wrote that there was no need to panic over Global Warming. They note, in their letter: Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments…

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