I recently attended the annual conference of the Energy Council, which took place September 17-20, 2015 in San Antonio, Texas.\u00a0 Governor Greg Abbott gave welcoming remarks to the group.<\/p>\n
Mr. Matthew Rose, Executive Chairman of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad gave the opening address and talked about the importance of the rail industry in moving energy products such as crude oil and how the regulatory challenges faced by the industry have reduced coal shipments.\u00a0 (Note:\u00a0 the Alaska Railroad\u2019s freight business has been cut by 50% since 2005 due to decreased shipments of coal and refined fuel products at the now closed Flint Hills refinery)<\/p>\n
Other speakers during the conference included Mr. Todd Staples, from the Texas Oil and Gas Association.\u00a0 His message was how important it is to communicate the value in terms of jobs and economic development that oil and gas brings to communities, as well as working under the toughest environmental requirements in the nation.<\/p>\n
Mr. Haley Curry, Vice President External Affairs for the South Texas Energy and Economic Roundtable reviewed the importance and strategies for engaging stakeholders in the process of developing energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Mr. Don Armijo of the Marine Well Containment Company discussed well containment for deepwater drilling and the latest improvements.\u00a0 Efforts are underway to improve current capabilities and training efforts.<\/p>\n
Dr. James Griffin, Professor of Economic and Public Policy talked about the world oil market and the effects of supply disruptions anywhere in the world on oil prices, and the impacts of high oil prices on inflation and employment.\u00a0 Professor Griffin supported relaxing the ban on exports of crude oil from the United States and easing restrictions or limits on exporting natural gas as a vital step for achieving energy security.<\/p>\n
Dr. Griffin\u2019s presentation was particularly interesting to me since one takeaway was that the world oil market is one large \u201cbathtub\u201d of supply from which the world buys oil and a supply disruption anywhere in the world will send prices shock waves world-wide.<\/p>\n
While currently experiencing a shale oil boom, that trend is expected to only last about a decade.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alaska\u2019s Arctic offshore area is estimated to hold as much as 25 billion barrels of oil and 120 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.\u00a0 It takes about a decade to develop offshore fields.\u00a0 Taking a long term view and planning for the future, it is in our national interest to start exploring and getting our Arctic oil into production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently attended the annual conference of the Energy Council, which took place September 17-20, 2015 in San Antonio, Texas.\u00a0 Governor Greg Abbott gave welcoming remarks to the group. Mr. Matthew Rose, Executive Chairman of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad gave the opening address and talked about the importance of the rail industry in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3993"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3998,"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993\/revisions\/3998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bertstedman.com\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}