What is a wild bird worth? Does it matter whether it is a Bald or Golden Eagle, of which here are few, or ducks and pelicans, of which there are enough (as least the ducks) so that hunters may shoot them for dinner. Does it matter how they meet their demise? Is a bird drowned
An Oil and Gas Rorschach Test
There is a “Rorschach” way to examine your thinking about the controversy over fossil fuels and global warming.
Psychologists use the Rorschach test to examine a person’s personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It’s been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially disorganized thinking as evidenced by disorganized speech. Try this on yourself.
Here is
Four Horsemen of the Environmental Apocalypse
In the Book of Revelation, the really scary guys were the four horsemen. Now, as then, some would have you believe that the end times are upon us. This time it is because of fracking. Is it really? Absent from many discussions about oil and gas drilling are fairness and objectivity. In their place are
Gasland II, Rebuked
Gasland II made its villainous debut this week on HBO. It‘s more egregious than the first in that it not only repeats disproven scenarios, but adds new ones that are equally misinformed. I complain about these injustices as a hobby, so
Different Takes on the President’s Climate Change Policy
We begin with a tribute to global warming of a different sort.
For those not yet overexposed to reports on President Obama’s climate change policy announcement, I offer this reasonably objective factual summary of the highlights from the Washington Post (rather than the platitudes underlying many reports). A link to the text of the President’s
President to Unveil Energy Policy
Politico and other sources report that President Obama promised a crowd of supporters in northern California recently that he would unveil his climate change strategy sometime soon. What it might look like is unknown. It has been suggested that the policy will revolve around EPA pollution sources like power plants.
It is reported that there
Oil and Gas Bills Passed By Texas Legislature
Co-author Travis Booher
The regular session of the 2013 Texas Legislature is over and now it’s time to assess the damage. Bills significant to the oil and gas industry, and their fate, are as follows:
HB 100 – Forced unitization: Failed. Regardless of your opinion of the merits, this was no surprise.
SB 108 –
The Fracking Debate is Not Unique to the United States.
I spent the better part of last week surrounded by foreigners … which is to be expected because I was in a foreign country, the Netherlands to be precise. Looper Reed has joined First Law International, a consortium of select, highly-rated law firms in over 45 countries, assembled to give businesses in one country,
Is the Oil and Gas Industry Undertaxed?
The short answer is no, according to the American Petroleum Institute. The API compared oil and gas to other industries in terms of profit margin and effective tax rate. The oil and gas industry-wide profit margin is 7.3%, which is lower than manufacturing (8.6%), computers and peripherals (9.7%), pharmaceuticals (16.0%) and beverage and tobacco
A Look at Two Approaches to Oil and Gas Regulation
This is a tale of two regulatory schemes.
First, there is the federal way, and I’m not making this up: In my last post we learned that if the BLM, when preparing its PRMP/FEIS (which in some incomprehensible way is different from a PRMP/EIS, but which nevertheless includes an RFD) which is issued by an