The Resources Inventory
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Tropical cyclone Narelle stopped almost half of the global iron trade when it forced Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton to halt their shipments and close major ports in the northwest coast of Australia in the face of its growing power.
Rio Tinto had no choice but to shut down Dampier and Cape Lambert in Western Australia. The two ports account for more than 200 million tonnes of iron ore every year, 20% of the global trade.
Likewise, BHP Billiton, Fortescue Metals Group, and Atlas Iron were forced to close down the similarly-busy Port Hedland.
The cyclone season in Australia runs from November to April. The increasingly inclement weather tends to reduce supplies of iron ore, which in turn raises the price of the commodity sought out by steel mills in China, Japan, and South Korea.
The ports were not the only ones to batten down hatches in preparation for Narelle. Offshore oil and gas producers shut down the oil fields in the likely route of the oncoming storm. Apache Energy closed its Stag and Van Gogh fields.
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The State University of New York (SUNY) will soon close its discredited Shale Resources and Society Institute. The Buffalo-based university announced that it is terminating the institute after its failure to prove the credibility of its research, to consistently disclose its financial interests, and to ensure the presence of sufficient faculty.
The Shale Resources and Society Institute was investigating the hydraulic fracturing process. Back in May, it released a study that showed significant partiality towards the oil and gas industry. Critics promptly tore into the institute for its obvious bias.
SUNY President Satish K. Tripathi told the “university community” that faculty members should follow strict standards of academic integrity, intellectual honesty, transparency, and ethical conduct.
The Austin-based University of Texas at Austin is likewise investigating a fracking study that it released earlier in 2012. UoT had discovered that one of the professors who ‘fostered’ the study hid the fact that he was a board member of a gasoline company.
Government grants are on the decline, forcing academic research to rely more and more on corporate money that is accused of influencing its results.
Grassroots efforts accounted for recent investigations and the closure of controversial institutes like the Shale Resources and Society Institute. Professors, students, and several SUNY trustees had pressured the University to close its shale institute. The movement presented a petition with more than 10,500 signatures to support its cause.
SUNY English professor Jim Holstun was one of those who challenged the credibility of the Shale Resources and Society Institute. The signatories strongly insisted that their public university should not turn into a corporate mouthpiece.
The Shale Resources and Society Institute released a study that claiming that state regulation was making drilling for oil in Pennsylvania much safer. The study argued that the rules pending in New York would bring about the same benefits.
Howver, the local government watchdog group Public Accountability Initiative challenged some of the data and conclusions published by the study. The PAI also pointed out that the study’s lead authors directly conducted research for the oil and gas industry, and that they did not release full disclosure.
The PAI noted that John P. Martin, the study’s third author and the co-director of the Shale Resources and Society Institute, provided planning and public relations services for the oil and gas industry.
According to Dr. Tripathi, the now-closed shale institute brought a number of transparency issues to light. The State University of New York will be assembling a committee to discuss ways of strengthening policies for disclosing financial interests and sources of support in research going forward. Dr. Tripathi added that SUNY would continue to study energy and environmental matters.
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via The Mining Journal
According to resource industry exports, auctioning off the licenses in exchange of cash will drive operational costs upwards and stunt the growth of the industry, in particular that of coal seam gas. The state government, on the other hand, said that its plans were justified since mining companies had access to the state’s rich resources.
The auctions will start next week through a competitive cash bidding process of the petroleum areas to interested resource proponents – both domestic and international. Accordingly, the preferred bidder, will gain exclusive exploration rights to the land that was made available in the auction. The rights would still be subject to conditions, according to the Queensland government.
NewSat’s Terrestrial Backhauling”>Instrumentation in petrochemical industries are basically the following: flowmeters, the quantification of bulk fluid movement; pressure transmitters/sensors, which measure pressure, typically of gases or liquids; level meter; temperature instruments, where temperature is a physical property that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold; and analysis instruments, or “analyser”/”analyzer,” a person or device that analyses given data; etc.
The measurement of temperature is a vital part of instrumentation in petrochemical (chemical products derived from petroleum) industries. Resistance thermometers, also called “resistance temperature detectors” (“RTDs”), made up of platinum, a chemical element with the chemical symbol “Pt” and an atomic number of 78, are sensors used to measure temperature by correlating the resistance of the RTD element with the temperature. They are often used as they are more instructive and give a better response.
More oil and gas companies are turning to Africa for exploration now especially after Agri Energy acquired forty-nine percent of Statesman Africa. The latter company holds 75% of a huge Sudanese oil and gas block, which is over 100,000 square kilometers. According to exploration data, the onshore Block 14 is surrounded by multi-billion barrel oil producing provinces, and about 600 million barrels of lead.
Learn more about what is at stake in the African state via Proactive Investors
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