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Monday, June 11, 2007
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Political Wire: "A new Gallup survey finds that 41% of Americans believe that creationism -- 'the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years' -- is true while 28% believe evolution -- 'the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life' -- is true. Meanwhile, another 24% believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle of the two theories."
"2008 pres"
6:46:26 PM 
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Governor Ritter's review of the BLM's report on potential oil shale development in Colorado is due tomorrow. The bureau extended the original deadline two weeks after a request from Colorado and Wyoming. From Colorado Confidential:
Local northwest Colorado town and county officials and the governor's office were "sworn to secrecy." The federal government report was still in its draft stages and it was too early to inform the public or press about its contents. The matter was very urgent, the U.S. government agency said, therefore local entities had a short turn around time to respond to this secret plan. Very short--weeks. Some Coloradan officials felt the pressure from the federal government was unnecessarily intense and their goals unrealistic.
The BLM release date for the oil shale SEIS plan is set tentatively for July 13. There will be a 90-day public review period.
"2008 pres"
6:19:47 PM
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Daily Kos: "As predicted, the no confidence vote on Gonzale didn't make cloture, with a vote of 53-38, with one voting 'present.'"
"2008 pres"
6:11:46 PM
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Political Wire: "A new CNN/WMUR poll finds Sen. Hillary Clinton pulling away from the pack in New Hampshire with 36% support, followed by Sen. Barack Obama at 22% and John Edwards at 12%. In the last two months, Clinton's support has grown by 9 points, Obama's has grown by just 2 points and Edwards has tumbled 9 points."
Political Wire: "Sen. John McCain's presidential candidacy 'clearly is struggling, and a just-completed Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll is not going to buoy his camp's spirits... Not only do Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson enjoy more support among GOP-leaning voters, but the Arizona senator finds himself in heated competition with the Don't Know category.'"
Pollster.com: "A new AP-Ipsos national survey nds: Sen. Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Barack Obama 33% to 21% in a national primary; former V.P. Al Gore runs at 20%, former Sen. John Edwards at 12%; former Mayor Rudy Giuliani leads Sen. John McCain 27% to 19%; former Sen. Fred Thompson runs at 17%, former Gov. Mitt Romney at 10%, and former Speaker Newt Gingrich at 7%."
Talking Points Memo: "New February 5th glut of primaries upends the strategies of the GOP Presidential candidates."
"2008 pres"
6:05:24 PM
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The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel: "Three months after additional U.S. troops began pouring into Baghdad in the most recent effort to stanch violence in Iraq's capital, military observers are fretting that the same problems that torpedoed last summer's Baghdad security plan are cropping up again. Violence is on the rise, Iraqi troops aren't showing up to secure neighborhoods, U.S. troops are having to revisit neighborhoods they'd already cleared, and Iraq's politicians haven't met any of their benchmarks. With expectations high in Washington for a September assessment from new Iraq commander Army Gen. David Petraeus, military officials in Iraq already are saying they'll need more time. One thing is already clear, however: The additional U.S. troops haven't yet had a major impact on reducing violence."
Captain's Quarters: "Earlier this year, the disputes over the strategy for Iraq could get boiled down to three directions: go big, go home, or go long. Today's Washington Post reports that the third option has begun to get the most traction in both DC and Baghdad, as the two governments look for the best way to fight terror while ending the appearance of an occupation."
"2008 pres"
6:53:37 AM
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Jesus' General: "In many ways, questions about public health are scientific in nature. Medicine is a science, after all, in which biological problems are discovered, diagnosed, and treated via the scientific method. Modern science has brought us a wealth of knowledge about how the body works plus important information about how to fix the body when it's broken, and thus also great improvements in both life expectancy and quality of life. The science of public health is indisputable -- but it's also not the whole story...
"2008 pres"
6:34:05 AM
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From Saturday's Rocky Mountain News, "U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar issued a challenge Friday to critics of the immigration reform bill he helped craft: If you don't like it, come up with something better. The Colorado Democrat still thinks he can breathe new life into the controversial measure, which took a big hit this week when it fell 15 votes short of the 60 needed to bring it up for final action."
"2008 pres"
6:05:31 AM
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From the Denver Post, "Presidential candidate Bill Richardson finds himself in an interesting political spot. Not among the three Democratic front-runners, he also is no longer considered squarely in the second tier of presidential hopefuls. He's somewhere in the middle, his black cowboy boots straddling the gap between the upper echelon and the also-rans."
Also from today's Denver Post, "Hundreds of people sported campaign T-shirts and shelled out big bucks Sunday to show their support for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the third presidential hopeful to visit the area since Thursday. Organizers estimated about 750 people were on hand for the private fundraiser at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, paying as much as $500 a head for the chance to see the senator and his wife, Michelle."
More coverage from the Rocky Mountain News. They write, "Sunday was Obama's second campaign stop in Colorado in less than three months. Unlike his Denver visit in March, where his campaign workers let a large portion of a crowd of 2,000 in for free, entry to this venue was more controlled. Attendees estimated the crowd at 400 to 500 people. And this time, reporters were not permitted inside."
The Denver Post reports, "On Saturday, [Rudy] Giuliani shook a few random hands - a guy wearing a New York Yankees jersey, a woman who yelled over TV cameras, 'I'm a New Yorker!' - after taking questions from reporters on Iraq, immigration and his name recognition in the West. The former New York mayor is en route to Los Angeles and just came from New Mexico. Saturday's fundraising dinner was initially supposed to be held April 16, the day of the Virginia Tech shootings. The mayor canceled events for a few days following the incident."
Political Wire: "Among Mormons, Mitt Romney's bid for president 'is both a proud sign of progress and a cause of trepidation,' reports the New York Times. 'Many Mormons here are rooting for Mr. Romney, a fellow church member whose success in business, Adonis looks and wholesome family tableau seem to them to present the ideal face of Mormonism to the world. Among the Republican front-runners, Mr. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, recently was the leader in campaign fund-raising; his candidacy is, for many Mormons, a historic moment of arrival...But even for the many Mormons who support Mr. Romney, the moment is fraught with anxiety because his candidacy is bringing intense scrutiny to their church, and could exacerbate longstanding bigotry.'"
Political Wire: "A new Center for Rural Strategies poll shows that concerns about the Iraq war, President Bush's job performance, and the economy have eroded Republican support among rural voters, creating opportunities for the Democrats in the 2008 presidential and congressional races."
Talking Points Memo: "Joel Achenbach has an interesting item today arguing that the extended presidential primary season has led the candidates in both parties to pander shamelessly, in order to offer more 'red meat' to their respective bases. I think Achenbach is only half right."
"2008 pres"
5:54:26 AM
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Here's a look at oil shale development from the Deseret News. They write:
Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates combined. That's not science fiction. Trapped in limestone up to 200 feet thick in the two Rocky Mountain states is enough so-called shale oil to rival OPEC and supply the U.S. for a century. Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., the two biggest U.S. energy companies, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are spending $100 million a year testing new methods to separate the oil from the stone for as little as $30 a barrel. A growing number of industry executives and analysts say new technology and persistently high prices make the idea feasible. "The breakthrough is that now the oil companies have a way of getting this oil out of the ground without the massive energy and manpower costs that killed these projects in the 1970s," said Pete Stark, an analyst at IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colo., research firm. "All the shale rocks in the world are going to be revisited now to see how much oil they contain."[...]
Energy providers are investing in shale oil production because the reserves are large enough to generate higher returns than smaller fields in Oklahoma and Texas, where output is declining after eight decades. Shale is also a more attractive investment than new U.S. refineries, which Shell and Chevron say may lose money as rising use of crop-based fuels such as ethanol lowers domestic gasoline demand. Exxon says it isn't interested in building new fuel plants in the U.S. because the company expects North American fuel consumption to peak by 2025...
In the high desert near Rifle, Colo., Shell engineers are burying hundreds of steel rods 2,000 feet underground that will heat the shale to 700 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which Teflon melts. The heat will be applied for the next four years to convert the hydrocarbons from dead plants and plankton, once part of a prehistoric lake, into high-quality crude that is equal parts jet fuel, diesel and naphtha, the main ingredient in gasoline.
Chevron, which helped build the Saudi Arabian energy industry when it struck oil in the kingdom in 1938, plans to shatter 200-foot thick layers of shale deep underground, said Robert Lestz, the company's oil-shale technology manager. Rather than using heat to transform the shale into crude, Chevron plans to saturate the rubble with chemicals to convert it. The method will reduce power needs and production costs, Lestz said in a May 24 interview. Using chemical reactions to get oil from shale also means fewer byproducts such as ash and fewer greenhouse gases, he said. Chevron scientists are working with researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to determine which chemicals work best for converting shale to crude oil. Shell's heating technique amounts to "a brute-force approach," said Lestz, who is based in Houston.
Raytheon Co., the maker of Tomahawk missiles and the first microwave ovens, is developing a process that would use radio waves to cook the shale.
Exxon Mobil, based in Irving, Texas, plans to shoot particles of petroleum coke, a waste by-product of oil refining, into cracks in the shale. The coke will be electrically charged to create a subterranean hot plate that will cook the shale until it turns into crude...
Shell, based in the Hague, estimates it can extract oil from Colorado shale for $30 a barrel, less than half the recent price of about $66 for benchmark New York futures. Shell's process includes surrounding each shale field with an underground wall of ice. The so-called freeze walls are to prevent groundwater from swamping the heating rods and to protect the local water supply from contamination as the organic material in the rocks turns to oil, according to Terry O'Connor, the Shell vice president in charge of the company's Colorado shale project.
"2008 pres"
5:08:35 AM
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The Greeley Tribune "reg" is running a short article about the price of uranium and Powertech's proposed in-situ mining project up in Weld County. From the article:
Keith Kohl, editor of EnergyandCapital.com, said in his latest report that the price of uranium has increased from $20 a pound in 2005 to a current level of $120 per pound. He does not see that upward trend to stop any time soon. "I expect uranium to top $255 a pound by the end of 2008," Kohl said in the report. Kohl said the price is being driven by a demand for nuclear power. Only 60 percent of the requirements of the world's nuclear power is being supplied. About 16 percent of the world's electricity is supplied from 440 nuclear generators. But Kohl said there are 29 new reactors under construction and another 66 are being planned. Japan intends to add 11 more by 2010, and China hopes to add 24-30 by 2020, he said. The supply-demand balance for uranium, he said, is tighter than any other major commodity. Energy and Capital, an online journal dedicated to energy, said finding highly concentrated deposits of uranium in large quantities is difficult. More than 50 percent of all the uranium produced from mines comes from Canada and Australia.
In Weld, Powertech plans to use a method called in-situ recovery, a process that mining companies say is safer than traditional operations. The process is done by injecting a bicarbonate solution that will mobilize the uranium. Blubaugh said Powertech's drilling should be a couple of hundreds of feet deep and will create some noise but not as much as an oil-drilling site, which drills thousands of feet below ground level. There are, however, residents in Weld who have said that process will destroy their drinking water. They have organized to protest any mining operations.
Uranium mining in Weld: Uranium mining is not new to Weld County. Uranium test sites were done in 1979 in the Grover and Keota area -- According to Carol Shwayder's book on Weld County history, the Wyoming Mineral Corp. of Fort Collins operated a leaching plant at the site; A year ago, Powertech Uranium Corp. bought the mineral rights to the 5,780 acres of land from Anadarko Petroleum Corp. Blubaugh said the company before Anadarko -- Rocky Mountain Energy Co. -- tested sites in northern Colorado and found uranium deposits throughout.
"2008 pres"
4:46:15 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 1:01:36 PM.
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