Giving the Canadian oil easier access to the Gulf means the glut in the Midwest goes away, making it more expensive for the region, but it would increase the amount of that oil available to global markets.
Supporters say the pipeline would create tens of thousands of jobs and potentially lower oil prices in the U.S. because of ensured access to oil supplies from a stable, local source.
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Instead of hectoring speculators, perhaps Mr Lieberman should be hounding Mr Ghanem and the leaders of other oil-rich countries to allow foreign oil firms more access.
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It was a desire to keep the oil cartel's market power in check during the oil-price shocks of the 1970s that led western oil companies, denied access to the bounties of the Gulf, to begin extracting oil from the North Sea, Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.
New fracking methods are transforming oil and gas extraction productivity, providing access to at least 167 shale oil and gas field deposits that are distributed among several states.
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Unlike Uzbekistan, neither Tajikistan nor Kyrgyzstan, the two poorest former Soviet republics, has reliable access to oil or gas.
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Likewise, ExxonMobil has access to oil fields and refineries in many foreign countries.
That estimate does not include all manner of subsidies doled out to the fossil-fuel industry, ranging from cheap access to oil on government land to the ongoing American military presence in the Middle East.
The drilling companies typically acquire leases with landholders who have access to oil and mineral rights below their land by using a landman (either an employee of the company or an independent agent), who offers a fixed price per acre for the right to drill, plus a royalty percentage of the value of the produced hydrocarbons.
In this case, India might argue that it needs access to Iranian oil to maintain adequate energy stockpiles.
One such stock is Newpark Resources ( NR), a Texas-based provider of drilling fluids, temporary worksites and access roads for oil and gas drillers.
Cazalot says he'd trade some of Marathon's 55% stake in the proposed second plant to those countries for access to their oil and gas fields.
Both pieces of legislation tie into the second objective of giving the state more direct access to the oil windfall while giving Petrobras a monopoly in pre-salt production.
French judges investigating misuse of funds in 1989-93 by Elf , then a state-run oil company, were denied access to papers detailing bribes paid to foreign firms to win contracts.
Meanwhile, the energy for everything else--offices, factories, homes and data centers is 85% supplied without oil, and most of it is delivered as kilowatt-hours. (Only a vanishingly 2% of electricity is generated by oil.) Once you connect automobiles to the electric grid, you access a trillion-barrel-of-oil-equivalent energy infrastructure almost entirely fueled by domestic sources: coal, uranium, natural gas and hydro dams.
It will not have access to the excess oil revenue that it typically taps for additional spending during the course of a budget year.
Last month, the US tightened its sanctions on Iran, restricting the country's access to its own oil revenues and imposing financial restrictions against Iran's state-run media.
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If the United States no longer needs access to Middle East oil under any foreseeable circumstances, then the priority Washington assigns to the region will plummet.
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When operational it will give the West access to the region's oil and gas through a pipeline that avoids Russia.
While their overall overseas footprint is still small compared with that of big international oil companies, these companies are expanding with access to cheap credit through China's state-owned banks.
But the government has proved capable of responding to such crises, Vandewalle said: Authorities were able to disarm the militia that took over Tripoli's airport on June 4, forced attackers out of the prime minister's office and removed protesters who had blocked access to a state-owned oil company.
In exchange for some hefty financing, China will eventually gain access to roughly 400, 000 barrels of oil per day.
But in a statement to the stock exchange on Friday, Faroe said extensive modelling since then had confirmed "relatively poor oil quality, smaller than expected resource size and limited access to infrastructure".
But Iranian oil production will decline as sanctions bite and the country loses access to equipment and expertise.
According to a 2009 Congressional Research Service report on unconventional gas shales, directional drilling (sometimes referred to as horizontal drilling) allows for access beyond the area below the drill to both oil and gas reserves in locations inaccessible to conventional drilling, including to difficult to reach offshore reserves.
That underscores the likelihood that with dwindling access to the global financial system, and an EU oil embargo looming, Iran will turn oil into its currency.
Oil producers would seem to be the ones most likely to sell oil and drive prices down, but some of them also have access to physical supplies, key to any real manipulation.
It certainly behooves us in the meantime, however, to preserve, wherever possible, for our own use domestic and offshore oil reserves owned by American companies and others to which we have reliable access.
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All this, it is feared, will dent the profits of big oil and mining firms, stoke inflation and imperil the West's access to resources that it needs just as much as China does.
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