Interior Boss Says No to Drilling on 8 Utah Parcels

Eight of the 77 oil and gas lease parcels sold during a December auction that a saboteur wrecked and a federal judge later halted will be off limits to drilling, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has decided. Allowing development on the 7,670 public acres near Canyonlands and Arches national parks, Desolation Canyon and Nine Mile canyon could harm critical sage grouse habitat with little obvious benefit to oil and gas development, concluded a 39 page analysis released Thursday.

During a Washington news conference, Salazar said 52 parcels would be held back pending further study and 17 would be allowed back at upcoming auctions. Drawing from the report compiled by an 11 member team from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and Forest Service who examined more than 103,000 acres from the ground up Salazar scolded the Bush administration for allowing the Dec. 19 auction in Salt Lake City to go forward.....read the entire article.

Reasons To Be Bullish On Crude Oil

With crude oil prices dropping on lower demand there seems to be crude bulls coming out of the woodwork. Why? There are plenty of reasons.....

Reason One.....
It appears that the recent OPEC production cuts are starting to be effective.

Reason Two.....
With Hamas rocket attacks on Israel finally being responded to, natural gas controversy in Europe and civil war in Nigeria the geopolitical front is having an obvious effect.

Reason Three....
The Bush administration and the current Energy Department has begun scheduling the purchase of crude oil over the next few months to replace oil drawn from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves during last years hurricane season. This could add up to 25 million barrels this year alone.

Reason Four...
The Chinese government has announced that it will be buying another 19 million barrels for the own reserves over the next few months. They will also complete the next phase of construction on storage facilities adding another 170 million barrels of storage capacity.

For now the trend has shifted sideways to higher for crude oil. But ultimately, regardless of all of these reasons to be bullish, the U.S. and now the Chinese consumer remains in the driver seat, literally.