...Rubenstein | 3/23/2014 | | Contents: Intro 3 Shale Gas in Bulgaria 3 Overview 4 Mounting concern as production rises 5 Water Supplies 5 Surface impacts 6 Land 6 Water 6 Noise 7 Frack Quakes 8 Social acceptance 8 FRACKING IN BULGARIA 8 IS THERE A BUBBLE IN THE SHALE GAS INDUSTRY? 10 Diminishing returns 11 The drilling treadmill 11 Unsustainable prices 11 A shale bubble 11 Regulate or Ban? Movement Divisions 12 Bibliography: 13 Intro In the beginning of 2009, South-East Europe suffered several external shocks: an extended period of cold weather, disruption in natural gas supplies from the Russian federation and financial crisis. The disruption of natural gas supply from the Russian Federation was particularly devastating for all countries with gas infrastructure. The region is supplied with natural gas from Russia by three different itineraries and three sub-regions are served by three different sets of gas infrastructure (see Appendix 1). Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and FYROM are supplied by a system of transit pipelines from Ukraine. Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are supplied from Ukraine via Hungary, while Croatia is supplied via Austria and Slovenia. These three supply systems are not connected which in itself presents a problem. With nearly 98% gas import dependency, however, Bulgaria’s biggest issue is that all the its complete dependence on Russian gas and oil. While it is debatable, whether this issue has more internal...
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...rock excavation are discussed to provide awareness of the various concerns contractors should consider when planning rock excavation operations. Third, cost implications and scheduling considerations associated with rock excavation are analyzed from an estimating perspective. As a supplement to the academic discussion, findings from an interview with General Excavation, Inc. are presented to provide an actual contractor’s perspective on the topics discussed throughout this paper. The following information will provide an understanding of rock excavation and the various considerations (i.e. cost, local regulations, safety, etc.) contractor’s should have in mind when estimating and planning projects that involve rock excavation. The Rock Breaking Process When determining the proper method for excavating rock there are a few things you should consider. Determine how much rock you anticipate needs excavating. Is the rock solid? Is the rock easily accessible, how far below grade? Do the aesthetics of the rock matter in the end product? And is there any local regulations restricting particular methods? These are all questions that need to be answered before any rock excavation method begins. The traditional methods are ripping, drilling, breaking and blasting. Blasting is the controlled use of explosives to excavate rock and has been used for many years. When blasting a careful...
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... 2/5/2012 Chadron State College Abstract The purpose of this analysis is to focus on British Petroleum (BP) leadership as it relates to the 2010 Gulf oil spill and cleanup. One would think that a large corporation like BP would be penalized greatly from an oil spill of the magnitude. Once the announcement was made of the spill, BP leadership was quick to shirk responsibility and circumvent its safety policies and practices which led to one of the greatest man-made ecological disasters the world has ever known. Prior to the spill, the leadership values and culture at BP are obvious. Their focus was on reducing costs and meeting tight time-lines at the expense of safety. The former BP CEO resigned voluntarily. What leadership values or traits changed as a result of the disaster at BP? Did the new CEO set forth a path of leadership change or rather simply pacify the media? The Gulf oil spill forced a rapid increase in fuel prices in the country. In one quarter during 2010, BP earned enough profit to cover the expenses associated with the spill, including the associated litigation. One astonishing fact is that, upon exiting, the (supposedly) punished CEO was given a settlement of over 100 million dollars from BP. What leadership changes have occurred as a result of this tragedy? Not much, why? Limited financial consequences for BP have brought about very little change in leadership traits, leadership values, and ultimately leadership behavior. This has continued at...
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...dislocation.” Given that a crisis normally occurs without prior warning, it is therefore imperative that certain measures and procedures are put in place that can expedite a cure and thereby reduce the impact so that normality can be restored. For there to be effective crisis management, a robust risk management structure must be instituted within the organisation and must form an integral part of the ongoing corporate governance monitoring framework. A company should learn from previous incidents and incorporate preventative as well as curative measures into any risk assessment. The risk oversight function of the board has gained immense importance in the last few years, mainly due to the collapse of the financial sector in 2008. Today, risk management has become even more critical and challenging. Companies are now confronted with risks that are more complex, interconnected and potentially devastating than ever before. BP’s ostensible lack of consideration for the risks involved in exploration drilling contributed to large-scale disasters which, in turn, highlighted a catalogue of corporate governance failures. The repercussions have been multifold as liabilities in the form of cleanup costs and reimbursements for lost livelihoods continue to mount. Alongside this, shareholder confidence has waned considerably – BP share price suffered its lowest in fourteen years in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. The 2010 explosion was...
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...Baker Hughes INTEQ Oil Field Familiarization Training Guide 80912 Rev. B May 1996 Copyright © 1994 Baker Hughes INTEQ Baker Hughes INTEQ Training & Development 2520 W.W. Thorne Houston, TX 77073 United States of America 713-625-4415 This material cannot be reproduced in any manner or otherwise used in any presentation without the express written permission of Baker Hughes INTEQ Preface i Preface At Baker Hughes INTEQ, we have always prided ourselves on our people and their level of professionalism, experience, responsiveness and adaptability at the wellsite. It is at the wellsite, where time, money and effective operations separate INTEQ from its competitors. To keep this competitive edge, the company has a system for training, development and professional advancement for operations-based field personnel - takes our good track record and makes it even better. The training development program (IN-FACTS) provides a standardized career development path which utilizes a progression of both formal and hands-on learning, to turn potential into competitive advantage. It is the tool that enables field personnel to embark on a successful career within Baker Hughes INTEQ, Baker Hughes, and the oil industry. The training system is structured to provide an easily understood, orderly flow of learning experiences. These may or may not be in the same speciality, and allow our people to either concentrate in one area or to branch out into...
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...Leading the Rescue of the Miners in Chile Disaster struck on August 5, 2010. Thirty-three miners, drilling 700 meters (2,300 feet) below the surface, were entombed by a massive cave-in. They had been working in a medium-sized copper and gold mine beneath the moonlike wilderness of the Atacama Desert near the city of Copiapó, Republic of Chile (Chile), some 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of the country’s capital, Santiago. Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne had arrived in Quito, Ecuador, at 9 p.m. that same day with Chilean President Sebastián Piñera on a state visit. At 11 p.m., Golborne’s smart phone came to life with a message whose brevity spoke urgency: “Mine cave-in, Copiapó; 33 victims.” Golborne informed the president the next morning and flew on commercial air flights to Lima, Peru, and then to Santiago. He then took a Chilean Air Force (FACH) flight to Copiapó, and, from there, he was driven some 45 kilometers to the mine, finally arriving at 3:30 a.m. on August 7. Piñera, a business-friendly Chilean president inaugurated on March 11, 2010, had recruited Golborne, an engineer, entrepreneur, and corporate executive, to serve as Chile’s minister of mines. Golborne had served as chief executive of Cencosud S.A., a large retail firm, and under his leadership, the company had increased annual sales ten-fold, entered the Brazilian, Colombian, and Peruvian markets, and opened two new business lines, including financial William and Jacalyn Edgar Professor of Management...
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...Why Chinese mothers are superior There are numerous opinions about how to raise children ideally. Everyone want to do what is best for their children, but the description about how to do so, is extremely different from parent to parent. There has especially been quite a lot debate about how Chinese mothers raise their children compared to Western mothers. Many Westerns people describe the Chinese mothers methods of upbringing as strict, pushy and some times directly cruel. The article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” deals with these differences between methods of upbringing, written by the 48-year-old Chinese-American mother Amy Chua and it is thereby seen from her point of view. The author Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and has two daughters herself, whom she is raising very strictly with lots of rules and big demands. Chua claims that the way that Chinese mothers are upbringing their children, is superior compared to the Western mothers methods of upbringing. She underlines than in order to achieve success, the children must focus on certain priority areas, and therefore they are forced to give up other things. This is why her own daughters are not allowed to attend to sleepovers, choose their own extracurricular activities and they are demand to be the very best in every subject except gym and drama. This is only a few of the rules, which Chua’s daughters must live by. Chua underlines that one of the most important parts of upbringing in Chinese manner, is...
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...The Industry Handbook http://www.investopedia.com/features/industryhandbook/ Thanks very much for downloading the printable version of this tutorial. As always, we welcome any feedback or suggestions. http://www.investopedia.com/contact.aspx Table of Contents 1) The Industry Handbook: Introduction 2) The Industry Handbook: Porter's 5 Forces Analysis 3) The Industry Handbook: The Airline Industry 4) The Industry Handbook: The Oil Services Industry 5) The Industry Handbook: Precious Metals 6) The Industry Handbook: Automobiles 7) The Industry Handbook: The Retailing Industry 8) The Industry Handbook: The Banking Industry 9) The Industry Handbook: Biotechnology 10) The Industry Handbook: The Semiconductor Industry 11) The Industry Handbook: The Insurance Industry 12) The Industry Handbook: The Telecommunications Industry 13) The Industry Handbook: The Utilities Industry 14) The Industry Handbook: The Internet Industry Introduction Industry analysis is a type of investment research that begins by focusing on the status of an industry or an industrial sector. Why is this important? Each industry is different, and using one cookie-cutter approach to analysis is sure to create problems. Imagine, for example, comparing the P/E ratio of a tech company to that of a utility. Because you are, in effect, comparing apples to oranges, the analysis is next to useless. In each section we'll take an in-depth look at the different valuation techniques and buzz words...
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...already knew the standard procedure for jumping from a 33,000 ton oil rig: “Reach your hand around your life jacket, grab your ear, take one step off, look straight ahead, and fall.”1 This would prove to be important knowledge later that night when an emergency announcement was issued over the rig’s PA system. Williams was the chief electronics technician for Transocean, a U.S.-owned, Switzerland-based oil industry support company that specialized in deep water drilling equipment. The company’s $560 million Deepwater Horizon rig was in the Gulf of Mexico working on the Macondo well. British Petroleum (BP) held the rights to explore the well and had leased the rig, along with its crew, from Transocean. Of the 126 people aboard the Deepwater Horizon, 79 were from Transocean, seven were from BP, and the rest were from other firms including Anadarko, Halliburton, and M-1 Swaco, a subsidiary of Schlumberger. Managing electronics on the Deepwater Horizon had inured Williams to emergency alarms. Gas levels had been running high enough to prohibit any “hot” work such as welding or wiring that could cause sparks. Normally, the alarm system would have gone off with gas levels as high as they were. However, the alarms had been disabled in order to prevent false alarms from waking people in the middle of the night. But the emergency announcement that came over the PA system on the night of April 20 was clearly no false alarm. 1 Testimony from Michael Williams, The Joint United States Coast...
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...This work cannot be used without the author's permission. This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Sciences Research Network Electronic Paper Collection: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1706096 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN The BP Oil Spill as a Cultural Anomaly? Institutional Context, Conflict and Change Andrew J. Hoffman University of Michigan 701 Tappan Street, R4472 Ann Arbor, MI 48109 ajhoff@umich.edu 734.763.9455 and P. Devereaux Jennings University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2R6 CANADA dj1@ualberta.ca 780.492.3998 Forthcoming in the Journal of Management Inquiry October 2010 The authors would like thank Marvin Washington and one anonymous reviewer from the Journal of Management Inquiry for helpful feedback and encouragement in the writing of this article. 1 ABSTRACT This paper argues that the BP Oil Spill is, potentially, a “cultural anomaly” for institutional changes in environmental management and fossil fuel production. The problem as defined by the spill’s context, the potential solutions provided by the competing logics in that context, and the selection of problem-solution bundles through the fortuitous timing of events and more calculative efforts of institutional entrepreneurs within that context have come close to acting as a catalyst for deeper change; but not quite. For reasons we discuss, true change in our approach to handling issues related to oil drilling, oil consumption and environmental management have yet to occur. 2 ...
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...create drama through their plots, others create drama through various interjections and responses, and some create drama through their build up. Specifically, in regards to “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, the drama stems from the Wife of Bath as a character, and not as much from the tale itself. As a character, it is obvious that the Wife of Bath is a fierce woman with an I-don’t-give-a-shit type of attitude. She does what she wants and knows how to get her way: “And have this tribulacioun withal upon his flessh, whyl that I am his wyf. I have the power duringe al my lyf upon his proper body, and nought he.” (Chaucer...
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...will contain the spill. Company executives refused to comment on the accident for almost a week and refusing to acknowledge the extent of the problem. In addition, statements made to the press by high-ranking executives were often inconsistent and contained contradictory information making the press question the credibility and truthfulness of Exxon. After the Exxon Valdez ran aground, the company conducted all its communication from the small town of Valdez, Alaska. This area proved inadequate, having only limited communication capabilities. Exxon seemed unwilling to disseminate its information using any other method or location. But the biggest criticism the company received was the fact that CEO Lawrence Rawl waited nearly six days to make a public statement. And that he did not visited the scene of the accident until three weeks after the spill. Combined, these actions left the public with the impression that the Exxon Corporation did not take the problem seriously. The severity of the oil spill were thousands of birds, fish and animals died right away, including somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 seabirds, thousands of sea otters, harbor seals...
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...Business Ethics is Essential for the Modern Corporation In order to build a harmonious society, an individual should restrict his or her behavior by a certain moral standard. Similarly, ethics is extremely crucial in the business field. Basically, business ethics are ethical judgments related to what is right or wrong in business practice (Joseph, 2013). Specifically, a corporation should consider the influence of their operation in a society because the decision of a corporation to act ethically or unethically will influence the whole society positively or negatively. There is no doubt that pursuing maximized profits is a constant goal for every company. However, seeking the most profit should not be the only goal for business; benefiting society should also be considered. In other words, a company should have the awareness of a certain social responsibility to regulate its behavior which might endanger the public good and promote the development of society. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the ethical responsibilities of a modern corporation with its positive impacts on the environment, customers, employees, communities and society are considered a guiding principle for a sustainable and moral company in a market (Kotler & Keller, 2009). Indeed, the importance of CSR has been noticed by an increasing number of companies. Generally, working as a moral business can enable companies to attract and maintain customers, employees and investors. In the long term...
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...to 5.3 million barrels a day. This paper will investigate alternate energy and how the world is slowly gravitating towards that shift. Company Introduction In our economic day and age, there is a high reliance of oil and gas in everything used in daily task. From cooking, to driving cars and keeping warm during the winter season, it is one of the essential necessities in current modern time that keeps the human race thriving. It is used in the production of certain home and household materials. Gas is used in producing fertilizers and a wide range of industrial products, including plastics and polymers, textiles, paints and dyes. In this study there will be a focus on one-of-world’s largest oil companies – Exxon Mobil and examine the corporations’ economic value. What is Exxon Mobil? Exxon Mobil, as we have stated previously is one of the largest companies in the oil and gas industry. Exxon is the largest publicly traded international oil and gas company. It “engages in oil and gas exploration, production, supply, transportation, and marketing worldwide”(Hoovers, 2015). Apart from oil and gas, Exxon Mobil is also a petrochemical producer, products that produce petroleum. Exxon Mobil has slowly evolved from a marketer of kerosene in the...
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...PFII/2007/WS.3/6 Original: English UNITED NATIONS NATIONS UNIES DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS Division for Social Policy and Development Co-organizers Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Government of Khabarovsk Krai and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) INTERNATIONAL EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT KHABAROVSK, RUSSIAN FEDERATION AUGUST 27.-29, 2007 The Adverse Impacts of Oil Pollution on the Environment and Wellbeing of a Local Indigenous Community: The Experience of the Ogoni People of Nigeria Paper by LEGBORSI SARO PYAGBARA MOVEMENT FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE OGONI PEOPLE (MOSOP) OF NIGERIA Introduction Crude oil has had profound impact on the world civilization than any single natural resource in recorded history. Oil has become a very decisive element in defining the politics, rhetoric and diplomacy of states. This fact is adumbrated in a public lecture entitled “Oil in World Politics” delivered by a former secretary of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the late Chief M.O.Feyide, when he asserted that “All over the world, the lives of people are affected and the destiny of nations are determined by the result of oil explorations. Oil keeps the factors of the industrialized countries working and provides the revenues,...
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