Archive for January, 2009

By Wesley Loy
A partial truce was reached Tuesday in the bitter legal battle for control of a rich but dormant North Slope oil and gas field, as state officials reversed course and gave Exxon Mobil Corp. permission to proceed with a drilling campaign.

Exxon and its partners had been on lockout status after regulators took away their leases on state land in the 106,201-acre Point Thomson field due to lack of development over three decades.

Hoping to hang on to its leases, Exxon last year rolled out a plan to drill wells this winter and start producing by 2014 — a plan state Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin rejected, saying he couldn’t trust Exxon to carry it out.

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“After rising more than 20 cents in the past month, gas prices seem to be stabilizing,” AAA Oregon spokeswoman Marie Dodds said. Oregon’s average for regular unleaded dropped four-tenths of a cent in the past week to $1.96 while the national average fell three-tenths of a cent to $1.84, she said.

In Eugene-Springfield, the average fell a little less than a cent, to $1.98.

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MIDLAND, Texas – In the West Texas oil patch, they can see the downturn coming at them from miles away like a pickup truck kicking up a dust cloud on the horizon.

With crude dropping below $40 a barrel from a high of around $150 over the summer, oil and gas companies in the Lone Star State are cutting back on drilling, the layoffs are beginning, and the boom of the past few years appears to be drawing to a close.

The boom may not necessarily give way to a bust. But the days of plentiful jobs, big paychecks and shiny new pickups and SUVs seem to be numbered.

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