Environmentalist Movie Funded by Oil-Rich Royalty

(BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff - image Matt Damon / AP) Matt Damon turned to oil-rich Middle East royalty to finance his film attacking domestically produced natural gas.

The environmentalist screed, Promised Land, received a chunk of its funding from the United Arab Emirates, an oil kingdom known for its lavish spending on man-made islands and the world’s tallest building, according to the Heritage Foundation.

The creators of Promised Land have gone to absurd lengths to vilify oil and gas companies, as Scribe’s Michael Sandoval noted Wednesday. Since recent events have demonstrated the relative environmental soundness of hydraulic fracturing – a technique for extracting oil and gas from shale formations – Promised Land’s script has been altered to make doom-saying environmentalists the tools of oil companies attempting to discredit legitimate “fracking” concerns. …
Promised Land was also produced “in association with” Image Media Abu Dhabi, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media, according to the preview’s list of credits. A spokesperson with DDA Public Relations, which is running PR for the film, confirmed that AD Media is a financier. The company is wholly owned by the government of the UAE.

An ever-growing market for domestic fracking threatens dependence on foreign oil from the likes of UAE and OPEC.

A strong global market presence for American natural gas could also work to the UAE’s disadvantage. The Arab nation ranks seventh worldwide in proven natural gas reserves. For instance, Japan’s energy imports are expected to rise significantly over the next five years. The country is currently a major importer of UAE natural gas. If it decided to import more LNG from the United States to accommodate its increased energy demands, it could deal a blow to the UAE economy. …
All of this suggests a direct financial interest on the UAE’s part in slowing the development of America’s natural gas industry. Pop culture can be a powerful means to sway public opinion. While Promised Land, like anti-fracking documentary Gasland, appears to inflate the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, it may have an impact on the public’s view of the practice.

Matt Damon is a longtime Democratic partisan. Though he has voiced criticisms of Barack Obama, he donated $4,600 in 2008 to then-candidate Obama. Damon also co-hosted a star-studded fundraiser for Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren in Hollywood that netted the “Native American” candidate $250,000.

This entry was posted in Progressive Movement and tagged Environmentalists, Fracking, Green Movement, Matt Damon, oil, Promised Land. Bookmark the permalink.

via freebeacon.com

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Green movement. It isn't just that the UAE is doing this for biz reasons (there are plenty of places that want to buy energy that don't care about Green Tech). The reason the UAE is doing this is for public relations reasons. America needs to be autonomous of this public relations culture on the surface that reveals hardline tyranny.
PS: wasn't it Mother Jones who showcased Carter's video of Romney? and what totalitarian regimes did Mother Jones Rep? For starters Muammar Kaddaffi. Why are we falling for this? Why is it offensive to shout out the truth?

30 Million Barrels of Oil from Reserves; Why now Obama?

bet that stimulus money is cranking too now. all for an election...

Why did Obama decide to release 30 million barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves? What is his true motive? Is this an attempt to spike his approval ratings, political posturing? Obama realizes people will be consuming more gas, driving as the summer months progress. Hasn’t retail gas prices been on the slow decline the past 3 week period? Increasing drilling permits in the US will not decrease oil prices but releasing a 2-3 day consumption will. I wonder if Peggy has the money to put gas in her car or pay her mortgage now? via themadjewess.wordpress.com

Obama Misleads Energy Facts:

Obama claims the glass as half empty without stating a correlative truth that the glass can fill itself.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com ....He just can't stop lying.
Each time Obama tells the truth, but the truth misleads. The final example towards the end of the video is the most interesting. Obama points out that America is two percent of the world's crude, but the potential is there for America to be Seventeen percent of the world's crude and therefor America could be completely self sufficient.

via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com 

Potential War over Sea Riches like Oil and Gas

The recent discoveries of massive gas fields off the coast of northern Israel, tantalizingly close to Lebanese coastal waters, has stirred cash-strapped Lebanon to accelerate efforts to begin its own oil and gas exploration.

Last year, a US-Israeli consortium discovered the Tamar gas field 55 miles off the coast of northern Israel, which contains an estimated 8.4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas – the largest natural-gas find in the world in 2009. Earlier this year, a field called Leviathan was discovered in the same area with an initial estimate of 16 trillion cubic feet of gas.

But there are likely more untapped fields; the US Geological Survey (USGS) said in March that the Levantine Basin, which includes the territorial waters of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and Cyprus, could hold as much as 122 trillion cubic feet of gas – and 1.7 billion barrels of oil.

According to the article, Lebanon is strapped for cash and heavily in debt--and would love to have access to these reserves, not to mention others that may be just waiting to be discovered. More to the point, it is not yet known whether the gas field extends into Lebanon's territorial waters.
However, that question is complicated by the fact that since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Lebanon and Israel have officially been at war and so the two countries have never sat down to establish agreed upon maritime borders.
As a result, Israel might claim the “right of capture”, according to which a country can extract oil or gas from its side of the border, even if those reserves extend into the territory of another country’s territory. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea does offer guidelines for establishing maritime borders, but Israel is not a signatory to the convention. In any case, again--this would require both sides to sit down and talk.
So we are left with Lebanese officials accusing Israel of stealing Lebanese resources, while Hezbollah threatens to use its weapons to defend them.
As for the UN, how much help can they be? The "Blue Line" the UN established in 2000 was not supposed to be a legal border, but just a way to measure the pullout of Israeli troops. It has become a 'border' only because the two sides cannot agree on the land border either.

via daledamos.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

4 billion barrels of oil offshore?

Who says Moses took us to the only country in the Middle East that doesn't have oil? It turns out that joke was wrong.

More optimistic reports continue to flow from the giant Leviathan energy field off the Haifa coast. Following previous higher estimates of gas and “signs of oil,” the latest report points to a potential of 4 billion barrels of “black gold.”
The ramifications of the discovery are immense. If the estimates materialize, Israel will become self-sufficient in energy, enjoy a boon of employment for engineers and laborers, and will become an exporter of gas and oil. The shekel, barring a conflict with Hizbullah or Iran, may become rock-solid, dropping the representative rate; Israel's shekel is now worth about 26.3 cents (3.8 shekels) to the dollar.
The announcement of the new estimates states that there is a 17 percent chance of finding reserves equal to 3 billion barrels of oil at a depth of slightly more than a mile undersea. The oil field is slightly beneath the mammoth gas reserves that already have been estimated to contain 13 trillion cubic feet of gas.
There also is an 8 percent chance that another 1.2 billion barrels exist at an even lower level. Earlier this month, oil reserves at Rosh HaAyin, east of Tel Aviv and bordering Samaria, were estimated to have a possible potential of 1.5 billion barrels of oil but that commercial quantities will be much lower, if at all. Israel's estimated oil consumption is slightly less than 100 million barrels a year.

So does this mean gasoline for our cars will cost less than $6 per gallon?

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

my resume is going to Israel

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Oil Profits are a ticking time bomb for the Left

a ticking time bomb for the Left’s overlapping coalition of environmentalists and welfare-state liberals:

Obama justified his decision to allow drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the southern Atlantic and some coastal regions of northern Alaska on the grounds that it would create jobs and serve as a "bridge" to the carbon-free Brigadoon we've long been promised. The reality is that his decision was entirely political. Aiming to win vital Republican support in the Senate for some kind of bipartisan cap-and-trade legislation, he lifted the ban where the polling was in favor of doing so. Sound science, energy policy and economics were the last things on his mind. On that, there's widespread consensus. Back when oil cost $140 per barrel, President George W. Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling. Once elected, Obama quietly reinstated it. Since then, Obama's Interior Department has been doing just about everything it can to slow, hamper and prevent oil and gas exploration in the U.S. and offshore. There's no reason to believe the administration won't keep doing that. Besides, Obama's announcement actually bans more promising oil and gas reserves from exploration than it opens up: nothing in the Pacific, nothing in the western Gulf of Mexico, nothing in southern Alaska.

via article.nationalreview.com and docstalk.blogspot.com

Budget Proves Obama LIED About Drilling For Oil In SOTU

We might not always agree on ways to reduce dependency on foreign oil, but at least we request our leaders to be honest with us about what they are going to do. Obama promised more transparency and he has become the public relations president = A chronic liar

During his State of the Union Address President Obama gave us hope that the US would finally tap its own resources to make us energy independent:

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies

Sadly like most of the promises coming from this President this pledge came with an expiration date. Only this expiration had a short window, only five days. When President Obama sent out his budget, it showed a decline in revenue from oil land leases, meaning he planned to be more restrictive in allowing off-shore-drilling than before.
Congressman Hastings issue this press release with the facts from the budget:

In the Presidents’ budget proposal released yesterday, the Administration is anticipating that revenue from new Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) leasing will decline over the next five years. The only way revenue would decline is if less of the OCS is offered for leasing for energy production.


“Despite what the President lead the country to believe in his State of the Union address, this budget proves that the Obama Administration has no intention of opening up new areas for offshore drilling,” said House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Doc Hastings. “In the summer of 2008 when gas prices were skyrocketing, the public demanded that both Congress and the President lift the decades-long ban on offshore drilling. Although there are now 500 million more acres available for offshore energy production, this Administration has deliberately decided to do even less than when the ban was in place. In fact, just days after taking office, this Administration went against the will of the people and reinstituted a defacto moratorium on offshore energy production by delaying the development of a new five-year OCS plan. As this budget shows, the decision not to develop our nation’s energy resources will cost millions of dollars in lost revenue and prevent the creation of a million new jobs throughout the country.”


The table below, included in the President’s FY 2011 budget, shows rents and bonuses from offshore energy production in the OCS falling from $1.5 billion in 2009, to only $413 million in FY2015. Bonuses are paid when a company obtains a new lease; rents are paid when a company holds the lease while conducting exploration.


The President’s 2013 estimate of $409 million is $123 million below the FY09 Bush Administration budget estimate for the same year – even though there was a Congressional moratorium in place at the time. This means that the Obama Administration’s current policies are more restrictive on offshore energy development than the previous moratorium.

(Source: White House FY 2011 Budget, pg. 198) 

via yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Colombia sees reserves rise

Colombia could add as much as 6 billion barrels of oil to its reserves over the next decade if exploration holds at the current pace and state-controlled Ecopetrol boosts recovery rates, a top energy official said today.

News wires Wednesday, 03 February, 2010, 23:27 GMT

Colombia's National Hydrocarbons Agency will auction nearly 200 oil and gas exploration blocks in June as part of a programme that began in 2004.

The sales are likely to boost proven oil and gas reserves from a current 1.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent as investment picks up into one of Latin America's fastest growing energy sectors.

"The optimistic scenario would be that we'd go to in excess of 6 billion barrels of oil between now and 2020 and that would bring us to a very comfortable position," agency director Armando Zamora said in Toronto during the first leg of a road trip to present the auction to Canadian investors.

He said the official goal was to add 4 billion barrels in the decade.

THE FALKLANDS:

Drilling set to get under way off Falklands

By David Telfer

Published: 03/02/2010

Desire Petroleum, the Aim-listed oil and gas explorer focused on the North Falkland Basin, said yesterday that two drilling slots using the Ocean Guardian rig had been assigned to Rockhopper Exploration.

The rig will be used on an upcoming exploration programme in the Falklands, and is expected to be in position mid-February after a two-month journey from the Cromarty Firth to drill the first well of the campaign on Desire’s Liz prospect, which has been mooted to contain up to 660million barrels of oil equivalent.

Following the Liz well the Ocean Guardian – a unit of Aberdeen-based Diamond Offshore Drilling (UK) – will go to Rockhopper to drill its Sea Lion and Ernest oil prospects.

Desire said advanced discussions continued with BHP Billiton which may lead to the group taking an early drilling slot, and so it was likely that Desire's second well would be the fourth or fifth well in the drilling campaign.

The timing of later Desire wells will depend upon results from Liz, Sea Lion and Ernest.

The Ocean Guardian is to drill a minimum of four wells for Desire.

Desire has said that independent analysis had concluded that it had more than 3billion barrels of oil equivalent of recoverable resources in its top 10 prospects.

The British Geological Survey has estimated more than 60billion barrels of oil may be in the Falklands area.

PAPUA:

BP is eying a new oil and gas exploration area in Indonesia's West Papua province near Tangguh to boost reserves, an official at the Indonesia energy ministry said on Wednesday.
"BP has an intention to explore oil and gas in a new area in Western Papua and it has submitted its request. We welcome their intention and we are now studying their proposal," Edy Hermantoro, a director at the ministry, told Reuters.
An official of BP's Indonesia unit confirmed the company intended to expand its area in West Papua but gave no further details.
BP Indonesia is the operator of the Wiriagar, Muturi and Berau blocks in West Papua, which together have combined reserves of 14.4 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas.
Another Indonesian energy ministry official, who declined to be identified, said proven plus probable and possible reserves in West Papua's Tangguh were estimated at around 23 trillion cubic feet of gas.

THE EARTH HAS NO SHORTAGE OF OIL - OR GAS.
PEAK OIL IS BS - A SCAM LIKE AGW.
OIL SHOULD BE $54/BARREL AND IT WILL BE SOONER THAN YOU THINK.

via astuteblogger.blogspot.com

Democrats finally Agree to Offshore Drilling... but with the Castro Bros.