Thomko Petro Chemical Blog

Nigeria and Big Oil are engaged in a power struggle over profits.

The country is withholding nearly $1 billion from Shell, in a bid to re-negotiate existing profit-sharing agreements.

Shell states that 95% of profits from its joint venture go to the Nigerian federal government - but Nigeria believes that it has been shortchanged by the oil majors.

Shell also claims that the government is failing to come up with cash to deal with gas flaring from oil facilities.

Anger in local communities at the pollution caused by the gas flaring - along with the inability of local and national governments, as well as oil firms, to provide basic infrastructure in the Delta has prompted protesting youths to regularly invade and occupy vital facilities.

The latest invasion took place on Friday and disrupted production, which is running at well below capacity.

Source: Guardian UK - Shell's future in Nigeria in doubt

Addressing ongoing food riots around the world — in places as disparate as Haiti, Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan — has shot to the top of the World Bank's crisis agenda.

International leaders met last weekend to discuss spiking commodity prices — up 40% in 2008 — and to ring the alarm for international aid. Heeding the call, President Bush released $200 million in food aid on Tuesday.

The grave situation, felt most acutely in the developing world, has been fueled by several factors. The world population continues to grow while arable land mass decreases; more land is being cultivated for biofuels, not crops; and a changing climate has disrupted traditional growing patterns. (CN)

Read Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/worldbusiness/15food.html?ref=world

Companies that use the testing process is only growing, and it includes much more than the petro-chemical industry.

Although there is growth all over the Golden Triangle with the expansion of refineries like Motiva and Total, there's a slight bump in the road.

The Industrial Alliance says more and more potential employees are failing drug tests and can't work for the expansion projects.

Some drug screening agencies say companies are calling daily, wanting to have their employees screened.

Rob Bittle is the owner of Advantage Drug Testing in Beaumont. He says his business is booming since the announcement of several refinery expansions in South County. In fact, he says his company has grown more than 300 percent.

But with that growth, comes a problem with finding enough employees to pass the tests. Out of every fifty, eight people will fail. "We do see them and see people denied access and unfortunately they lose their jobs.

This doesn't allow us the number of people we need to build and maintain facilities, according to Mark Viator, a facilitator with the Industrial Alliance.

The Southeast Texas economy at a deficit. "With a current workforce of about 13 to 14 thousand  another 14 thousand. needed. Every employee that walks through the gates must take a drug screening.

"Delivery people, supply people, supply houses, sub contractors, special skills and services, engineers are all required to be drug screened," says Bittle. "They have a responsibility to the community, environment, their employees, their equipment, to make sure people are fit for duty. Not taking drugs. A responsibility and trust the industry is not willing to break."

Drug screening agencies say the number of companies that use the testing process is only growing, and it includes much more than the petro-chemical industry.
 
http://www.kfdm.com/news/says_25751___article.html/drug_people.html

CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela is rerouting oil to China that had previously been sent to a U.S. refinery co-owned by its state oil company and Exxon Mobil Corp., Venezuela's oil minister said Friday.

Rafael Ramirez said Exxon has stopped ordering crude for a refinery in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette as legal wrangling between the Irving, Texas-based company and Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, continues.

"Everything went to China," Ramirez told reporters.

PDVSA and Exxon are locked in a fierce legal battle over compensation for the 2007 nationalization of a jointly owned heavy oil project in Venezuela's Orinoco basin.

Ramirez vowed last month that PDVSA would meet its existing contracts with Exxon, including continued shipments to Chalmette. The refinery processes about 190,000 barrels a day, but does not depend exclusively on Venezuelan crude.

International Herald Tribune

In a mode that could clearly say: “I told you so”, critics of America’s involvement in Iraq are now saying that the U.S. Administration sent the troopers there for one primary reason.

To shore up a reliable source of crude oil that would keep flowing into American storage facilities, and hence into American citizens gas tanks for at least another 15 to 20 years.

With Iraqi petroleum reserves estimated to be at least 10% to total world supply, and if major American oil companies like .Exxon-Mobil and Amoco controlling the pumping of oil in most of Iraq, then it would be a win-win situation

Unfortunately,  things didn’t work out the way we wanted them to. Now that Iraqi and US forces are staging an operation against Shiite militiamen in the oil rich Iraqi city of Basra.

Maybe this explains why so many top American officials have made so many “surprise visits” to Iraq in this 2008 election year.

Ever since the invasion of March, 2003, production and exports of Iraqi crude oil have been beset by a combination of old production equipment in bad repair, as well as countless incidents of sabotage by Iraqi insurgents and foreign elements who simply do not want Iraqi oil to fall into the hands of “The Great Satan”,

Five years later and 4,000 American soldiers lay dead, this precious resource seems even more distant from American and other Western automobile gas tanks.

Israel, who once feared possible attacks from Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, called WMD’s for short, now fear another oil rich country, Iran,

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has often called for Israel to be “wiped off the face of the map”.

Oil is now fetching more than $100 a barrel, and the U.S. Dollar is even weaker than currencies like the Israeli Shekel.

It appears that the time has come for some serious stock-taking in regards to just why American forces went into Iraq in the first place, instead of simply letting Saddam Hussein and his cronies remain there as a possible buffer against the real world enemy – .

http://www.onejerusalem.com/2008/03/26/the-oil-war/

Thanks to the weakened dollar, the United States has jumped ahead of France, Britain and other European countries as a cheaper place to do business.

 In 2006, the United States ranked seventh, trailing several other G7 countries. This year, with the dollar at record lows against the euro, only Mexico and Canada are cheaper.

 Mexico, which is new to the study, was cheapest overall. It was added to incorporate a major trading country that is a party to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Among the larger cities, the cheapest in which to operate were Puebla, Guadalajara and Monterrey, all in Mexico.

In the United States, the cheapest places were Atlanta, Tampa, Fla., and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The San Francisco Bay Area was the most expensive in the nation, edging out New York for that dubious distinction. London, Frankfurt, Germany, and Manchester, England, were all more expensive than San Francisco.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

You might lose some sleep when you find out what's really inside your mattress-memory foam or not.

The place where you spend one-third of your life is chock-full of synthetic materials, some potentially toxic.

Since the mid- to late '60s, most mattresses have been made of polyurethane foam, a petroleum-based material that emits volatile organic compounds that can cause respiratory problems and skin irritation.

Formaldehyde, which is used to make one of the adhesives that hold mattresses together, has been linked to asthma, allergies, and lung, nose, and throat cancers. And then there are cotton pesticides and flame-retardant chemicals, which can cause cancer and nervous-system disorders.

In 2005, Walter Bader, owner of the "green mattress" company Lifekind and author of the book Toxic Bedrooms, sent several mattresses to an Atlanta-based lab. A memory-foam model was found to emit 61 chemicals, including the carcinogens benzene and naphthalene.

There is no proven health risk from the substances in mattresses, however, mostly because tracking their long-term effects is virtually impossible.

Heather Stapleton, an environmental chemist at Duke University, says there's simply not enough data to determine whether low levels of these chemicals will eventually make people sick. "It's the dose that makes the poison," she says. "If they're not getting out, maybe it's not a problem-but we don't know. There are plenty of lab studies that show that these compounds are harmful. It's just a question of what levels people are exposed to."

Still, more and more consumers are seeking out mattresses made of natural latex, organic cotton batting, and organic wool. Sales of California-based Vivètique's latex mattresses have increased by 40% annually for the past five years-they now comprise 45% of the company's total sales. And they are even sold by discounter 1-800-Mattress.

Read more at ENN - Should You Ditch Your Chemical Mattress?

Continental Airlines, Boeing and GE Aviation have announced plans to conduct a biofuels demonstration flight in the first half of 2009 in an effort to identify sustainable fuel solutions for the aviation industry.

Continental is the first major U.S. carrier to announce plans to highlight technological advancements in sustainable biofuels that can help to further reduce carbon emissions.

The biofuel flight will use a Boeing Next-Generation 737 equipped with CFM International CFM56-7B engines. CFM is a 50/50 joint company of General Electric Company and Snecma (SAFRAN Group).

In the months leading up to the flight, Continental, Boeing and GE will work together and with an undisclosed fuel provider to identify sustainable fuel sources that don't impact food crops, water resources or contribute to deforestation, and which can be produced in sufficient quantities to support a pre-flight test schedule that includes laboratory and ground-based jet engine performance testing to ensure compliance with stringent aviation fuel performance and safety requirements.

As part of a broader industry effort, Boeing and other industry thought leaders, including airlines and engine manufacturers, are helping to guide the aviation sector toward sustainable biofuels produced through advanced biomass conversion technologies and processes that have the potential to reduce greenhouse gases throughout their lifecycle.

For more information, visit www.continental.com, www.boeing.com or www.ge.com

While surfing the net, I ran across this article - which is more important sex or the economy? It seems that this week sex was more important than the economy - at least according to the news media - twisted minds - CT

Americans missed the news on Monday that the cost of crude oil hit $110 a barrel, and then fell back to $109.

How is it that this news headline was missed? Well, the news media was too obsessed with soon to be ex New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's sex scandal with a 22 year old prostitute, and pushed the price of oil headline to the back pages.

Sex always sells in America, but we all need to keep our eye on what is really important. While Spitzer's sex life makes a great gossip item, how does that really impact our lives compared to the continued price of oil which is causing gas, food and the cost of products to continually rise each month? Spitzer is a wealthy man, but I doubt that he is paying any of our bills - so is this really the most important story in America right now? Of course not!  But we always seem to get preoccupied with matters and people that have no real impact in our lives, while letting the really important issues slide off our radar screen.

This next presidential election is one of the most important elections in American history, and let's face it - our economy is in the pits - and this obviously effects every American in some way or another.

So, I suggest the media get back on track to what is really important, and put the Spitzer story on the back pages while reserving front page for real news stories.  

Read full article at Daily News Tribune

By the way - A lot of people who don't live like most of us "average" Americans are out of touch about the price of oil and gasoline, because their pocketbooks are not affected. Like in a recent press conference the president showed his ignorance of gasoline prices when he was obviously caught off guard, and appeared to be somewhat shocked by $4.00 a gallon prices quoted by one journalists. Guess the president doesn't know about some people in Alaska paying far more than $4.00 a gallon right now. I bet they could care less about the governor's sex life. See previous posting Oil Rich Alaska Poor Struggle to Heat Homes

GENEVA (Reuters) - Car makers are becoming more optimistic that European authorities will grant them more time to meet proposed limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from their vehicles -- a major point of contention between them.

As part of an effort to cut emissions linked to global warming, the European Commission has drafted tough legislation to reduce CO2 emissions from cars, with steep fines on manufacturers that fail to comply.

View Complete Article at ENN

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, plans to become an expert in another, cleaner field of energy by investing in solar power, the country's oil minister said in an interview released Sunday.

"For a country like Saudi Arabia - one of the most important sources of energy to look at and to develop is solar energy," Ali al-Nuaimi told French oil newsletter Petrostrategies.

He added: "One of the research efforts that we are going to undertake is to see how we make Saudi Arabia a centre for solar energy research and hopefully over the next 30 to 50 years we will be a major megawatt exporter. In the same way we are an oil exporter, we can also be an exporter of power."

Nuaimi said that Saudi Arabia was also set to invest in carbon capture and storage programmes to develop technology allowing carbon dioxide to be extracted from the atmosphere and stored underground.

"There are a lot of countries that are willing to cooperate with us," he said.

Source: Energy Daily

This shameful mess with toxic trailers is enough to anger and disgust anyone, but today I was shocked to find out that these toxic trailers were made right here in good old Indiana. And one of the makers is Gulf Stream! How can one of the largest RV makers in the U.S. be responsible for toxic trailers? The Indy Star says they will stay on this story, so I will definitely report more later  - CT

Indiana is one of the top five states for manufactured home production. It makes about 60% of the country’s recreational vehicles.

Now it comes to light that trailers made by three Indiana companies have higher levels of formaldehyde than other trailers being used by Hurricane Katrina victims, the CDC said in a new report.

Formaldehyde, a colorless gas emitted from many construction materials, can cause breathing problems, itchy eyes and rashes. The gas is also a suspected carcinogen.

The three companies are:
Gulf Stream Coach, Inc., the largest privately held RV maker in the U.S., based in Nappanee, Indiana
Pilgrim International, Inc., based in Middlebury, Indiana
Keystone R.V. Co., based in Goshen, Indiana

According to the report "each showed statistically significantly higher levels of formaldehyde than the other travel-trailer strata combined.”

Source: Indy Star

The CDC's report on FEMA trailers and formaldehyd is on the Web
at www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehhe/trailerstudy

While Alaska has lots of oil money, residents of many remote villages are living with a cruel irony - they cannot afford to heat their homes because their fuel bills are 2 - 3 times the national average.

U.S. nationwide home heating fuel averages $3.30 a gallon, but averages $4.30 a gallon in Alaska - and in the remote villages the cost is $9 a gallon. Gasoline is now averaging just over $3 a gallon nationally, but averages $4.54 in Alaska, and jumps to $7 a gallon in the remote areas!

The cost of shipping oil to the remote areas of Alaska by plane or barge is steep - despite the state's vast oil wealth. Most of the oil must be shipped as crude to the West Coast to be refined, and then sent back to Alaska.

The state's lawmakers are looking at offering hundreds of dollars in rebates to help remote villages offset their home heating bills - but they only have a short time to address this issue before the legislative session ends - and Hugo Chavez steps in to embarrass them once again.  

It seems in the past Chavez has been far quicker to come to the aid of Alaska's remote village residents. Last year Venezuelan oil company Citgo donated $5 million of free heating oil to poor communities in Alaska.

Arctic Village is one such community where fuel has to be flown in because this remote community is hundreds of miles off the normal roadways, and this village cannot be reached by barge. The residents in these areas depend on fuel to travel by snowmobile, ATV or boat to hunt and fish.

Alaska's state revenue will benefit a surplus of $3 -$4 million this year because of high oil prices, along with a recent hike in oil taxes. But lawmakers are looking at a steady 6% drop in production at the North Slope oil fields.

So it's a choice between giving some of that money as rebates to the poor, or keeping some of the surplus which will help tide the state over until the North Slope project is finished - but that's at least 10 years away.

Tell that to Ed Littlefield, a Vietnam veteran who suffers from diabetes, lives on disability, and looks for wood to chop so he can heat his home. He's gone without fuel for days. He says, " Everybody hates Hugo Chavez, but we thank him for the fuel that lasted about 3-4 months last year".

Republican Bill Thomas represents nearly 50 small communities in the state's southeast panhandle, he suggests a $500 payout to state residents, at a cost of about $360 million that would be paid from the profits of the state's oil wealth savings account - a $38 billion Alaska Permanent Fund.

But fellow lawmakers do not want to touch the earnings fearing Alaskans would perceive it as a raid on the fund that pays them an annual dividend - $1,654 for nearly every man, woman and child last year.

Other lawmakers caution against putting money into assistance programs that will just have to be cut in the leaner years, along with giving the perception of Alaska as a free loader state with "cash giveaways" - especially after the infamous "bridge to nowhere" federal earmark.

So while the lawmakers quarrel about what to do, residents may still have to depend on Venezuela this year to help them heat their homes and provide fuel for transportation.

Source: AP

Iraqis face the dire prospect of losing up to $200bn of the wealth of their country if an American-inspired plan to hand over development of its oil reserves to US and British multinationals comes into force next year.

A report produced by American and British pressure groups warns Iraq will be caught in an "old colonial trap" if it allows foreign companies to take a share of its vast energy reserves

The report is certain to reawaken fears that the real purpose of the 2003 war on Iraq was to ensure its oil came under Western control.

The Iraqi government has announced plans to seek foreign investment to exploit its oil reserves after the general election, which will be held this month. Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proved oil reserves, the third largest in the world.

According to the report, from groups including War on Want and the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the new Iraqi constitution opened the way for greater foreign investment.

Negotiations with oil companies are already under way ahead of this month's election and before legislation is passed.

Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraqs-oil-the-spoils-of-war-516400.html
________________

Bob Malone, chairman and president of BP America, said: "BP is growing its wind power portfolio in the US and the Sherbino wind farm in Texas is the latest example of that growth. Wind power is one of America's most abundant natural resources and we believe that turning wind into electricity should be a major part of the nation's drive to increase the use of alternative energy and reduce carbon emissions."

BP Alternative Energy announced that it has started the phase one construction of its 10,000 acre site in West Texas in a joint venture with NRG Energy.

By the second half of this year Sherbino Wind Farm is on schedule to be operational, and is expected to generate enough electricity to power 225,000 homes.

Another wind project, Silver Star I Wind Farm is also expected to be on line this year.

About BP Alternative Energy/BP America

BP Alternative Energy, launched in November 2005, combines all of BP's interests in low and zero-carbon energy including wind, solar, hydrogen power with carbon capture and storage, natural gas-fired power generation, biofuels for low carbon transport and distributed energy for emerging markets. BP Alternative Energy is one of the leading wind developers in the US and has portfolios in Europe, Asia & Latin America. BP's US wind portfolio includes the opportunity to develop almost 100 projects with a potential total generating capacity of 15,000 MW.

Iran Opens Oil Bourse to Sidestep U.S. Sanctions

I previously posted about the opening of Iran's kish island bourse, and awhile ago did a posting on Iran backing off the U.S. dollar reserve in favor of other currencies - particularly the euro - CT  

Iran opened an exchange for crude and petrochemicals Sunday, an effort that encourages private investment in the nation’s prominent energy sector.

The primary trade currency used by the bourse will be the euro, thereby establishing a euro-based oil marker if successful. Iran first floated the idea of trading oil in several years ago, but a weak dollar has breathed new life into the concept.

http://www.moneymorning.com/2008/02/19/iran-opens-oil-bourse-to-sidestep-us-sanctions/

This Friday, Feb 22, marks one year since the U.S. managed to pressure the Iraqi cabinet to pass an oil law that the U.S. concocted to allow foreign multinational oil corporations unprecedented and undue control over Iraqi oil for the next 30 years.

With international support, and with the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions leading the way, the parliament has so far resisted passing the law.

Workers in Iraq still have no labor law and unions are illegal. The government has used this fact to tell the Oil Workers Union they do not exist and they will not recognize their leadership in the protest against the oil law. Worse, Iraqi union leaders have been killed and threatened with arrest in their fight for labor rights and to keep their oil under their control.

In Iraq, the on-going war and occupation has led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, widespread devastation, relentless insecurity and crippling poverty. Foreign oil companies are scrambling to use this opportunity to secure access to massive profits from Iraq’s large untapped oil reserves at the expense of the Iraqi people.

The occupation of Iraq serves to protect these interests while U.S. military bases are built nearby to guard the oil fields. As well, the Bush Administration has tried to push the Iraqi Parliament to pass a law that would give foreign oil companies unprecedented control over Iraq’s oil resources.

The Iraqi cabinet, under pressure from the US, passed this law one year ago on February 23, 2007. The Iraqi Parliament has so far resisted pressure to pass this oil law, but the pressure is by no means over.

The U.S. should have no role in pressuring Iraqis to privatize control of their oil while occupying their country. The Iraqi people are held in a military occupation by over 160,000 foreign troops. We support the Iraqis in their call for resisting the oil law and foreign contracts while under occupation!

Endorsing Organizations: Oil Change International, US Labor Against the War, No War No Warming, Code Pink, VotersForPeace, After Downing Street, Grassroots America, Hands Off Iraqi Oil, War on Want, Platform, and ConsumersForPeace.

I fully agree with this article. It is a serious conflict of interest for this country, and big oil to go about the business of privatizing Iraqi Oil while occupying the country. Iraqi oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi People - CT
 

Source - After Downing Street

Iran Opens Oil Bourse to Sidestep U.S. Sanctions

Iran opened an exchange for crude and petrochemicals Sunday, an effort that encourages private investment in the nation’s prominent energy sector. See our previous posting Iran Kish Island Opens Oil Bourse

"The bourse provides an economic opportunity for Iranians, other countries, and foreign customers,"
The primary trade currency used by the bourse will be the euro, thereby establishing a euro-based oil marker if successful. Iran first floated the idea of trading oil in euros several years ago, but a weak dollar has breathed new life into the concept.

Iran Opens Oil Bourse to Sidestep U.S. Sanctions

The space shuttle Atlantis touched down shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, and this gave a window of opportunity for the U.S. Navy at approximately 10:30 a.m. yesterday to shot down the satellite.

The Pentagon reports that the USS Lake Erie fired a single shot and hit the crippled satellite about 133 nautical miles over the Pacific Ocean.  

On February 20, Space.com posted an interesting article - this was prior to yesterday's actions by the Navy.

The former assistant defense secretary says the U.S. Government had other motives, and doesn't buy the Pentagon's stated reasons of the toxic hydrazine fuel posing a risk to people on the ground.

Former assistant secretary of defense Philip Coyle stated, "the spy agency doesn't want some part of the satellite to fall into the wrong hands," said Coyle, now a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information. "I don't think that's being emphasized enough as a motivation for NRO to want this thing to be shot down."

In order of importance to the NRO, Coyle named two other reasons for the attempted shoot-down:

"Number two, poke the Chinese, because we're showing them not only that we can shoot down a satellite in a test without creating a lot of debris like they did. But we're also showing them we can do it any place in the world, because we're doing it from the ocean," Coyle said, referring to a similar satellite destruction by the Chinese.

"And a third reason is to show off our missile-defense capabilities such as this, though this is much easier than hitting an enemy warhead." Warheads move more erratically and are much trickier targets than a predictably moving satellite.

Read more of this article - Military's Motives Questioned in Shooting at Satellite from Space.com, and view two video's of the shoot down

YouTube Videos of the Satellite Hit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGGsGqO8dss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhdHkoal31o