“Beginning in late 1926, the rapid development of the large Seminole field in Oklahoma made the pendulum swing the other way. Voluntary proration was first tried with little success. Local producers appealed to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for compulsory action. Output of one‑half million barrels per day was driving prices down, which threatened many firms.”
Mandatory proration, a government intervention restricting open‑flow production to a predetermined “market demand,” began almost simultaneously in the sister oil states of Oklahoma and Texas in 1927. Other important oil states followed – except for California and Illinois that either practiced voluntary production cutbacks or none at all. [1]
California’s free-market position did not result from free-market ideology; it was the victory of integrated Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) over the dogged mandatory-proration lobbying of their non-integrated rivals.…
I have previously written about climatologist Judith Curry‘s continuing challenge to politicized climate science. “One plus the truth equals a majority,” I subtitled Part I back in May.
MasterResource has also covered Climategate, in which emails appeared that contained such statements as “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.” (Dr. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, May 30, 2008)
The Grand Dame of Climate Science is maintaining her prolific output at Climate Etc, which now includes energy- and policy-related commentary. Her posts, and guest posts by others, are increasingly multi-disciplinary, questioning not only the trumped consensus of physical climate science but also the postmodernist notion of preferable, competitive “clean” energy.…
“[T]hough the oil-market crash has put the nation’s energy boom on hold, some oil-technology companies are pursuing what they say will be a second American shale revolution … That belief lies partially in re-fracking — giving oil shale deposits a second blast of water, chemicals and sand — to get more oil out of depleted or underperforming wells. The process could be up to two-thirds cheaper than drilling a new well….”
– Collin Eaton, “Oil Firms Promise New Life for Shale,” Houston Chronicle, August 16, 2015.
The fossil-fuel era is new–and in all likelihood still young. In fact, compared to renewables, natural gas, coal and oil are the real ‘infant industries.’ Remember, for most of the last thousand years, and all of the time earlier, renewable energy (primitive biomass, falling water, wind, solar) held a virtual 100 percent market share; carbon-based energies have dominated only since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.…