Natural gas production falls as operators cease drilling because of depressed prices making it uneconomic.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aqhTLXECUJTk

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Interesting and entertaining videos.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sandgrains/

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http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/06/11/100082885/?postversion=2007060406

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An interesting development.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31548588/ns/business-world_business/

I love cheese balls and found this recipe on the back of an Underwood Deviled Ham wrapper.  I haven’t tried it yet but the recipe sounds yummy, and Marilyn promises she’ll whip up one for Father’s Day.  I can hardly wait!

• 2 cans (4.25 oz. each) deviled ham.
• 1 (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
• 1 package (.04 oz.) dry ranch style dressing
• ½ cup diced tomato
• 2 cups (8 oz.) shredded Cheddar cheese
• ½ roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds

 Directions:

In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients except sunflower seeds.  Refrigerate until firm enough to handle.  Form into a ball and roll in sunflower seeds.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  Makes one large cheese ball.

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Our company having fallen into bankruptcy at the end of the last oil boom, Anne and I traveled to cities all over the United States, looking for a bank to lend us the money to bail us out of the situation.  We did not find a bank.  Like many oil companies, they were also going out of business right and left.

There were so many houses foreclosed in Oklahoma City that the FDIC had to open an office here.  Soon, they had a thousand employees working in the city.  We were not the only Oklahoma oil company in trouble.  Everyone was in trouble!

Our banking leads exhausted, we began looking for a "white knight" investor, someone that would inject some much-needed capitol into the company.  Anne and I did not know such a person but we knew someone that did.

Harold (at least this is the name I am giving him for this story) is from Alligator, Mississippi (I am not making this up!) and knows more people than the census bureau.  He is also a brilliant, self-taught geophysicist, and just a little shady.

A fiction writer with the world’s greatest imagination could never create a fictional character as interesting as Harold is.  If I were inclined to write a biography, I would write Harold’s biography because he is perhaps the single-most interesting person that I have ever met.  He knew a possible “white knight” in New Orleans so we headed south to make our pitch.

Harold booked us at the Monteleone Hotel, a wonderful place on Royal, just a block from Bourbon Street.  He had invited his new girlfriend as his latest marriage was already in the dumpster.  Harold was not good with relationships.  The next day after checking in, we took a taxi down Bourbon Street.

Mr. X (a very real person) lived in a million dollar shotgun house on the end of Bourbon Street.  A shotgun house, built in the 1700s so named because if you unloaded a shotgun at the front door, the load would exit the back door without striking a wall.  There is not much to a shotgun house but because of their location, they are worth millions of dollars - yes, even after Katrina.

Harold introduced us to Mr. X, a friendly man with dark Cajun hair and eyes and a long black moustache.  He had a manservant that I will call Hay-sus.  Hay-sus could not speak English but he knew how to mix drinks.  Mr. X started talking and we listened, and drank, all day long.  A one-time banker friend (surprise, surprise!) had apparently ruined Mr. X.  They were now bitter enemies.

Mr. X told us hours of interesting stories, but we never got a chance to state our case but he did take us back to the Monteleone for dinner.  He was allergic to seafood and did not like steak so we had enchiladas at the restaurant's Mexican restaurant.  There was a troupe of Mexican singers and Mr. X paid them probably a thousand dollars, at a hundred dollars a pop, to sing various Mexican songs.

Harold's girlfriend left sometime during the night (he was hell on relationships!) so we met at the Monteleone’s Carousel Bar the next day for drinks before flying back to OKC.  I got so drunk and disoriented that I could hardly walk out of the place.

Anne and I never found a “white knight” and our company’s bankruptcy stood, our hopes and dreams struck down like so many tin soldiers.  Thanks to Harold, though, we had an experience almost impossible to believe.  It is now but a memory and I am passing it on, albeit in an abbreviated version.

Someday I might write Harold’s story, but it should really go straight to the big screen because I’m positive it would break all attendance records.

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Studies show that it is possible to generate enough electricity to supply the world by wind alone, but it is still more expensive than burning coal or natural gas. A most interesting article.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1906507,00.html?cnn=yes

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A risky geothermal energy project in Switzerland, funded in part by Google (yes, Google!)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/energy-environment/24geotherm.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Gas field discovery in Norway.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPQH8ybXTHH4

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Amen!

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twiparch/090617/twipprint.html

            Since I have the best dad in the world, I thought that I would put up a few pics of him for Father’s Day.  My dad Jack will be 90 next month.

Fiction South

My wife Anne, like myself, was a boxing fan.  When she was alive, we often hosted fight parties for many championship-boxing events.  There was always lots of beer.  Our friend Ray immortalized in my story Chicken Fries would always bring brownies.

Dave, my friend who sold me my first motorcycle would bring his famous sausage balls.  Later, when times were tight, just Anne, Dave and I would get together for a fight.  One fighter we never missed was Mike Tyson.

Tyson, at the time, was still young and going through opponents like an Oklahoma tornado.  When scheduled to fight a no-name boxer, Buster Douglas, no one wanted to watch the likely one-round event except the three of us.

I do not remember much about the evening, or the fight, except that Buster Douglas connected with Tyson’s jaw and knocked him clean out.  I also remember Dave’s sausage balls.  This week, Dave was kind enough to send me his sausage ball recipe.  Here it is and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did.

Basic Version

3 cups biscuit mix (Bisquick or similar type mix)

1 lb. bulk sausage

½ lb. grated Cheddar cheese

Combine the sausage and cheese first, then add the Bisquick mix until the mixture will hold together, mix thoroughly with hands (or spoon, easier with hands), mixing is easier if the sausage is warmed slightly in a microwave first.  The amount of Bisquick mix used to hold the whole thing together will change as you change the type of sausage used.  Now, form mixture into balls (about a ping-pong ball size), a perfect ball shape is not important, in fact it is better if formed into odd shaped imperfect balls.  You can freeze you balls for baking later or bake now.  I like to bake now and freeze for heating later in microwave.

Place balls on non-greased bake/cookie sheet and bake in over at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, but check after 12 minutes.

That is the basic recipe, now for the Cajun version:

Cajun Version

3 cups biscuit mix (Bisquick or similar type mix)

1 lb. bulk sausage  (sausage can be any type you like, as long as it can be broken up and mixed with the other ingredients, I sometimes use hot sausage)

½ lb. grated Cheddar cheese (extra sharp cheddar cheese is the best to use)

From now on, you are on your own to add what ever floats your boat, some of my favorites are:

1 nice sized onion - chopped

Several cloves of garlic - chopped

I sometimes put several drops of Tabasco sauce on each ball before cooking.  It leaves a very nice red color on each ball and adds a good kick.  Note:  If while mixing, you are having drinks, or whatever, the Tabasco sauce goes on the Sausage Balls.  Enough said?

Then mix, bake as above and enjoy.

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I left Texas Oil & Gas in 1978, intent on becoming a successful independent oilman.  Practically broke, I had little more than the false bravado of a young man that had never tasted defeat, well, maybe a little.  My recent divorced following a seven-year marriage had left my ego slightly dented.  I was either too young, or too stupid - maybe both - to worry much about failure.

My first six months as an independent oilman, I went through every penny of my savings, meager though they were.  I got by, somehow, with a mortgage on my motorcycle - a Triumph Bonneville - and a thousand dollar loan from my new girlfriend.

To say that I succeeded because of perseverance would be a lie.  My departure from paycheck security exactly coincided with the Arab Oil Embargo of 1978.  Before 1979 ended, I was rolling in dough, and firmly convinced that I was the smartest geologist there ever was.  I was not merely a participant in the last oil boom; I lived and breathed it.

Do I have stories?  Well, let us just say I could write a book about it.  Here is just one story:

John, my partner from Mississippi, and I spent our mornings drawing maps.  At lunch, we would go to a watering hole named Over the Counter.  We often stayed until three or four in the afternoon, drinking scotch and whiskey.  Yes, we were living in that kind of world.  One such day after leaving OTC we found a man waiting at our office door.

“Someone told me you boys are prospect generators.  I am returning to Florida tomorrow and I need a deal.  Can you help me?”

We both shook our heads.  “We don’t have anything this moment.”

“Please, I’m a desperate man.  Surely you have an idea, or something.”

John spoke slowly, with a distinctive Mississippi drawl.  He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled napkin.  “Here’s an idea I was telling Eric about at lunch.”  He showed the structure map, drawn in faded ink on the napkin, to the stranger from Florida.  “This prospect is in Grant County.  This dry hole had 2 feet of porosity and this dry hole had a show of oil on a drillstem test.  I think you’ll find oil right here,” he said, pointing to an X near the center of the napkin.

The stranger pulled out his checkbook and proceeded to write us a check for a thousand dollars.  “If this lease is open, I’ll give you another four thousand dollars, and drill a well.  If it hits, I’ll assign you a 3.125% override.”

With that, he disappeared, with the napkin, down the hall to the elevator.  A week later we received a check in the mail for four thousand dollars.  The man’s company drilled the well and it came on for 140 BOPD, ultimately producing around 60,000 BO.

Yes, this is a true story and such was the rock and roll world of the last oil boom.  We thought that it would never end, but it did.  I was a multi-millionaire by thirty and dead broke by forty.  I came though the ordeal bent but not broken.

John became a lawyer.  I stuck it out, continuing as an independent geologist, sometimes making a big kill, but mostly barely surviving.  Along the way, I began putting my thoughts on paper, at first just to vent my frustrations.  I soon learned that I had a passion for the pen that has never abated.

Yes, I lived the last oil boom.  I can tell you stories you would not believe, and maybe someday I will.

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I, for one, am not complaining.

http://blogs.epmag.com/rhonda/2009/06/12/can-we-really-complain-with-70bbl-oil/

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Here is a moving illustration of volcanics associated with a subduction zone (plate margin). Very neat!

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I love this article

http://geology.com/press-release/depth-of-magma-formation/

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A Marcellus article for all of you shale explorers.

http://www.buffalonews.com/145/story/678233.html?imw=Y

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Wonderful lightning photos.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#25xbog/www.flixya.com/post/MysticBren/1418133/Stunning_Facts_About_Lightening/

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Good news for oil producers, bad news for motorists.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=asV5.QSY22iU

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An interesting article, especially if you live near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.njit.edu/news/2009/2009-224.php

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Natural gas poised to replace coal as predominant electricity producer in the U.S.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124502125590313729.html

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Geothermal energy is an often overlooked energy source.  Iceland uses it exclusively for its energy production, but do we have any such resources in the United States?

http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/2009/06/azgs-lead-role-in-building-national.html

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   Here is a pic I recently took of geologist Bill Sparks, famous for the productive Skinner and Red Fork Sand deposits that he found during his early career.

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There is always a festival of some sort in progress in New Orleans.  Years ago, wife Anne and friends Gary and Carroll flew to the Big Easy in late May for a few days of R & R.  Thomas, a friendly cab driver, picked us up at the airport.  He was so engaging that we hired him to drive us everywhere we went.

There was no Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest that weekend, only the New Orleans Tomato Festival – a party highlighted by fresh Louisiana tomatoes prepared in a multitude of ways.  One such way to prepare fresh tomatoes is Tomatoes Florentine, a simple and wonderful dish.  I found this recipe in the American Profile, a newspaper supplement included on Fridays with the Edmond Sun.

Reader Martha Wolf of Brighton, MI submitted this recipe to American Profile. Thanks Martha, it is wonderful.

Ingredients

• 1 (10-ounce) package frozen chopped spinach
  2 large tomatoes, cut into ¾-inch-thick slices
  ½ cup dry Italian-seasoned bread crumbs
  ½ cup chopped green onions (white and green parts)
  3 eggs, beaten
  ¼ cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
  ¼ cup grated Parmesan
  ¼ teaspoon minced garlic
  ½ teaspoon salt
  ¼ teaspoon dried thyme leaves
  2 to 3 dashes hot pepper sauce

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 13 x 9-inch glass-baking dish.
2. Cook spinach according to package directions. Drain well in a colander, pressing with paper towels to remove most of the liquid.
3. Arrange tomato slices in a single layer in prepared pan. Combine breadcrumbs, green onions, eggs, butter, Parmesan, garlic, salt, thyme and hot sauce in a medium bowl. Add spinach; mix well.
4. Spoon equal amounts of the spinach mixture on top of each tomato slice. Bake uncovered, 15 minutes. Serves 8.

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But are they caused by nearby drilling activity?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476331270108225.html

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The roller coaster ride of energy exploration and production continues.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=agZ4vkjbFVhE

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Oil demand increases signaling possible end of recession.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a0JQcQcnQLFs

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An interesting application for solar energy, and a possible answer to individual energy usage.

PNNL: Top Story.

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Important update from the EIA indicating result of reduced exploration for natural gas.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aU52fHgh22zY

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The oil business is either the world’s worst addiction or an incurable disease.  Nothing hurts more than learning that the prospect you tried for a year to drill is a dry hole.  Conversely, there are few things more viscerally satisfying than hearing oil pouring into a frac tank after perforating a zone about which you had doubts.

During the last oil boom, my wife Anne and I had a mom and pop oil company.  We had leased enough acreage to drill a single well but had taken options on the offset leases just in case we were successful.  The problem is our options were ready to exercise before we managed to raise the money to drill our first well.  When we finally raised the money, we had a week or so to make a decision that would cost many thousands of dollars if we guessed incorrectly.

We were looking for two elusive zones, the Misener and, or, the Skinner Sand.  Either zone a company maker, we had a lot riding on the well’s outcome.  We finally drilled the well and it was late at night when we pulled the final electric log to the surface.  Anne and I were heartbroken when we learned that the Skinner was structurally low and nonproductive, the Misener nonexistent.

We set pipe anyway because there is a massive carbonate in the well called the Mississippi Lime in the well bore that usually produces, albeit sometimes in less than commercial quantities.  A full moon lit the sky as Anne and I drove away from the location late that night.  Anne was sobbing softly.

“I can’t believe our first well is such a disaster,” she said.

“Don’t give on her just yet.  You never know what a Mississippi well will do until you frac it.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” she said.

Maybe I was.  Still, when we fractured the well a week later, it began producing 400 BOPD, along with lots of natural gas.  The well was a monster and we needed four oil tanks to handle its rate.  Unfortunately, I did not believe my own hype and had let the offset options expire.  Another company picked them up and eventually drilled four wells as good as ours.

We went on to drill thirty wells in Oklahoma before the oil bust finally caught up with us.  Our first well continued to produce, as did the others we drilled, but Anne and I were already on the outside looking in.

Somehow, we managed to survive and I have drilled many more wells since then.  I am still just as blown away when I drill a dry hole and just as elated when I hit a big one.  I don’t really know if it’s an addiction or a disease but I do know that I have a bad case of oil fever, and there is no known cure.

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A very interesting article.

Exploring the Deepest Part of the Ocean - Mariana Trench.

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My favorite pie has always been pineapple.  My mother would bake pineapple pie for me whenever I came home from college.  On holidays, I would have three, one from my mother and one each from my two grandmothers.  They were all good, but different.  While looking through some of Mother’s old cookbooks, I stumbled on her pineapple pie recipe.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

• 1 c. sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 4 tbsp. flour
• 2 egg yolks, well beaten
• 2 c. evaporated milk
• ½ stick butter
• 1 large can crushed pineapple, drained
• 1 tsp vanilla or pineapple juice

Combine sugar and flour in saucepan; add salt, egg yolks, milk and butter.  Stir until smooth; cook over low heat until thick.  Add pineapple and vanilla; remove from heat.  Pour into one 9-inch cooked pie shell.  Top with meringue.

Eric’s Web

An interesting article for all you diamond lovers out there.

http://geology.com/articles/gem-diamond-map/

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The energy see-saw continues.

Oil Companies Urged to Invest to Avoid Surge in Crude Prices - Bloomberg.com.

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An interesting article about Canada’s oil sands.

Technology seen key to oil sands: Chu | Green Business | Reuters.

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Anne and I were living in our third rent house since our company's bankruptcy.  It was a large house with a swimming pool and gazebo, but it was not ours.  I had continued to make a semblance of a living as a geologist.  The running joke during the 80s was McDonalds’ supposed motto: "All our geologists have master's degrees," referring to the fact that many skilled oil people took almost any job they could find following the 80s oil bust, cooking at McDonald's included.

Anne and I were not quite there yet.  The place we rented had a large backyard and a giant barbecue pit far larger than almost anyone could ever need.  The large metal pit provided a wonderful shelter that a pregnant mother cat had somehow found.  Days later, the mewing of kittens caught my attention.  When I crawled beneath the pit for a look-see, I discovered Whiskers and her eight kittens.

Anne and I retrieved the animals from beneath the barbecue pit and ensconced them in our laundry room.  All the babies were missing fur and our vet told us they had mange.

"They probably won't survive," he told us.

Already reeling from the weight of too much defeat, Anne and I weren't ready to hear his prognosis.  He gave us a formula, told us how to mix it and how to dip the kittens into it.  They cried whenever we dipped them and Anne cried whenever the kittens cried.  Somehow, they all recovered.  Yes, every last one of them!

We named the mother cat Whiskers.  She was a beautiful black and white cat with a patch of white on her chin that prompted the name.  Her kittens were all beauties and we gave them all away except one, a black kitty we named Hamlet.  As economic times grew worse, we left our large rent house and moved to a much smaller place - still a rent house.  It was adjacent to a large apartment complex and we soon had inherited three abandoned cats.

Things were bad in the oil patch.  Oil was trading for fifteen dollars a barrel and no one was drilling.  You could not give a prospect away!  Things turned worse when we learned Anne had lung cancer.  I had somehow managed to sell a prospect and we had purchased health insurance.  Thank goodness, because having cancer in this country without health insurance is a surefire way to die without treatment.  Anne got her treatment but lung cancer is almost impossible to beat.

"Please don't let me die in a rent house," she begged.

Anne and I were not getting rich but we had managed to staunch the flowing wound.  We had developed a relationship with a local bank and had managed to keep their confidence.  I knew with our severely damaged credit that we could never get a normal house loan but we had a friendly banker, a very religious man that did not base all his business decisions on the bottom line.  Going beyond the pall, he lent Anne and me the money to buy the house in which I still live.

We moved into our new house with the help of many close and valued friends.  Anne's health continued to worsen and I had little time for my kitties, or my dog Lucky.  Shortly after Anne died, Whiskers disappeared.  Somehow, I felt that she was not dead and I began driving past our old house, thinking she may have somehow wandered back there.  I know that this seems unlikely, but two years after Anne's death, I got a call from a woman that said she had my cat.  Dubious that the impossible might be true, I went to the house nearly three miles away and found Whiskers.

"I can see she's your cat," the woman said.  "She practically jumped into your arms and I've tried for three days to try and touch her."

It was Whiskers.  She was alive, a fact that I had somehow never doubted.  I took her home and fed her, and she remained with me for another three years.

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I love stories like this.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Dynamite sticks and gem stones.

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Oil “sneaks” past $67 per barrel.

Oil Rises to Highest Since November on China Manufacturing Gain - Bloomberg.com.

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