CHRIS KAHN, - The Associated Press
Stephan: And the profits just keep rolling in. When you're a dealer, and your customers are addicts, there is rarely a bad day.
NEW YORK — The major oil companies continue to climb back from the recession, with higher fuel prices driving up earnings.
After setting record profits in 2008, the oil industry tanked last year as the global economic downturn induced a dramatic drop in oil and natural gas prices. On Thursday, Exxon Mobil Corp. said it earned $7.56 billion in the second quarter, its best result since the last three months of 2008. Royal Dutch Shell Group posted a 15 percent gain in net income. A day earlier, ConocoPhillips said net income nearly tripled in the April-June period.
Chevron Corp. reports its quarterly results on Friday.
The jump in profits comes as oil companies wait out a ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that is scheduled to last until Nov. 30. Shell took a $56 million charge for idling its rigs while Exxon halted work on an appraisal well and suspended operations at one of its Gulf platforms.
But their operations are so vast that the impact is likely to be minimal. And both remain committed to drilling in deep water around the globe, including the Gulf. Exxon continues to explore the deep waters off countries like Indonesia and the Philippines.
‘Slight delay […]
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STEPHANIE PAPPAS, Contributor - LiveScience
Stephan:
For one out of four women, orgasm during sex is an elusive goal. According to a new report, medical science isn’t doing enough to ensure these women find satisfaction between the sheets.
The paper, published online ahead of print in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, reviews 101 studies on female orgasm disorder, a condition in which women have difficulty reaching climax or can’t orgasm at all. Despite the fact that inability to orgasm is the second most common female sexual complaint after lack of desire, and orgasm is one of the top 50 reasons we have sex, treatments for the disorder are inadequate, the authors conclude.
‘We’re not doing enough research,’ said Waguih William IsHak, a psychiatrist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the lead author of the paper. ‘There are a lot of great clinicians who work with patients using therapy, but when it comes to medications, it’s all trial and error.’
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To qualify as a disorder, anorgasmia, or the […]
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LIZ SLY and RAHEEM SALMAN, - The Los Angeles Times
Stephan: We have spent a trillion dollars on this war and this is what our tax dollars bought. Are you happy with this outcome? I sure as hell am not. I see little real progress in Iraq, and I keep seeing hungry American children, a failing school system, bankrupt jobless, broken infrastructure, lousy cell phone service... and the list goes on. We had no money to help, but we had plenty of money to squander.
BAGHDAD — Insurgents briefly raised the black flag of Al Qaeda in Iraq over a mostly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday during a brazen assault that killed 16 people and laid bare Iraq’s fragility as the withdrawal of U.S. troops accelerates and the country’s political crisis deepens.
Ten of the dead were from the security forces, four were members of the U.S.-allied Sunni militia Awakening, and two were civilians, according to the Ministry of Interior. In addition, at least 14 people were injured, and police said the casualty toll could rise as sporadic clashes between security forces and gunmen continued into the night.
The deaths of the seven soldiers and three policemen in Baghdad brought to 17 the total number of Iraqi security forces killed in incidents nationwide Thursday, underscoring the vulnerability of the security forces as U.S. troops are in the process of drawing down to a total of 50,000 by the end of August. Two Iraqi soldiers died in car bombings in Fallouja, four were killed in a suicide bombing north of Tikrit, and a policeman was shot dead in Mosul.
But it was the ferocious midafternoon battle in the former insurgent stronghold of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad that was […]
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Thursday, July 29th, 2010
DAVID SHEPARDSON, - Detroit News
Stephan: This is partially good news. Note the disparity, however, in how the money is distributed. Do you think it might be possible that the petroleum industry, seeing a large pot of tax payer money coming down the pipe, put the fix in? I think so, am I getting to cynical?
WASHINGTON — The White House endorsed a plan by Senate Democrats to spend $4 billion boosting natural-gas-powered vehicles and another $400 million on electric vehicles.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told a group of reporters in his office today that the administration backed plans by Senate Democrats to spend money to offer rebates for compressed natural gas vehicles and additional electric vehicle efforts.
‘The Senate bill has natural gas and electric vehicle components that the president certainly believes are important to continuing progress we’ve made,’ Gibbs said, saying the president will discuss the Senate Democrats’ energy bill on Friday in Detroit.
The $15 billion also includes provisions on oil spill liability and drilling, and home efficiency measures.
As a candidate in 2008, President Barack Obama called for 1 million plug-in hybrids by 2015 and he has backed a number of efforts to speed electric vehicles, including $2.4 billion awarded last August in battery and electric vehicle grants.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, said she had pushed to get electric vehicle funding in the Senate Democrats’ bill. Reid initially last week didn’t have it in his measure.
‘Natural gas is a good short-term bridge,’ Stabenow said in an interview. ‘When the initial bill had natural gas only, […]
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Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Stephan: All of this just, when seen in the context of the BP Gulf Catastrophe, and a dozen other oil spills, as well a Chernobyl combine to scream at us to make the Green Transition. Do we have the will to do so? I'm not sure any more.
Three blistering fires are blazing through Wyoming’s scenic Powder River Basin, but firefighters aren’t paying any attention. Other than a faint hint of acrid odors and a single ribbon of smoke rising from a tiny crack beyond the nearby Tongue River, a long look across the region’s serene grassland shows no sign of trouble.
That’s what makes the three infernos, and the toxins they spew, so sinister. Their flames are concealed deep underground, in coal seams and oxygen-rich fissures, which makes containment near impossible. Shielded from fire hoses and aerial assaults, the flames are chewing through coal seams 20 feet thick, spanning 22 acres. They’re also belching greenhouse gases and contaminants, contributing to an out-of-sight, out-of-mind environmental hazard that extends far beyond Wyoming’s borders. ‘Every coal basin in the world has fires sending up organic compounds that are not good for you,’ says Mark Engle, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who studies the Powder River Basin, ‘but unless you live close to them you probably never see them.’
A surprising number of us live close to them. According to a review by the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Enforcement and Reclamation, more than 100 fires are burning […]
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