Oil Drilling

A few years ago, Occidental Petroleum Corp. executive Stephen I. Chazen sounded like a cryptologist out of a Dan Brown novel as he told investors that an oil bonanza awaited any outfit that could "crack the code" of California's seismically fractured underground. Occidental's engineers may have done it. The Westwood company revealed in July that it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil and natural gas in an undisclosed part of Kern County using techniques that the oil company's executives would rather not talk about.

A federal appeals court dealt a blow Friday to oil and gas industry efforts to allow drilling in the fertile energy-producing regions in the icy seas north of Alaska. The Bush administration had started to auction off leases in the Arctic waters along Alaska's coast, which are expected to produce billions of barrels of oil. But a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel in Washington ruled that the Interior Department had failed to properly assess the environmental impact of the leases.

A Texas oil company's campaign to drill the first new wells in 40 years off the California coast continues despite setbacks in both the Legislature and at a key regulatory agency. The measure, which passed the state Senate but failed in the Assembly in August, would authorize drilling from an existing maritime platform in state waters off the northern Santa Barbara County coast. Supporters now hope for action this fall. Boosters of the project say state government stands to get an estimated $14 billion in potential new money to run schools, build prisons and strengthen a tattered social-welfare safety net. But opponents say they worry about the possibility of an oil spill that could threaten the California coast, an internationally renowned tourism magnet.

Mexico's oil has long been a source of national pride. Now, with reserves dwindling away, President Felipe Calderon has floated a controversial initiative to rescue the government oil giant, Pemex: allow foreigners to help the company drill for oil. The debate over "energy reform" has split Mexico's political class, with the left threatening national civil disobedience to stop Congress from considering it and a key centrist ally of Calderon withdrawing its support.

Executives from the five largest oil companies told a House panel Tuesday that they were not responsible for record gas prices and defended the industry's record profits for 2007. The oil industry is cyclical and will experience ups and downs, J. Stephen Simon, an Exxon Mobil Corp. senior vice president, told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. These days, he acknowledged, "we are currently in an up cycle." Executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil Co.

A Houston oil company has agreed to shut down its offshore oil production off Santa Barbara County decades early in exchange for approval this year to drill into untapped undersea reserves and cash in on the nation's record oil prices. To sweeten the deal, Plains Exploration & Production Co.

When artist Robert Smithson assembled a massive spiral unfurling into the Great Salt Lake 38 years ago, there was no indication that this remote spot would be altered again by humans any time soon. Smithson's work, called "Spiral Jetty," became a world-renowned piece of art, its striking man-made pattern created amid isolation. Now art lovers fear it is threatened by plans to explore for oil a few miles offshore.

The environmental movement, only recently poised for major advances on global warming and other issues, has suddenly found itself on the defensive as high gasoline prices shift the political climate nationwide and trigger defections by longtime supporters. Opposition to offshore drilling -- once ironclad in places like California and Florida -- has begun to soften. Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida on Tuesday eased his opposition to new energy exploration off the coast.

For decades it has been a bipartisan political staple -- the jaunt to the beaches of Santa Barbara to profess opposition to oil drilling at the spot where a massive 1969 spill despoiled sea life and ocean waters, launching the modern environmental movement. With visits here and elsewhere, Republicans Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger used their environmental credentials to win the governor's office.

This town of 6,700 sits amid the richest oil fields in California, but nobody would mistake it for Dubai. There are no gleaming towers. Empty storefronts line its downtown streets. One of its two car dealerships recently folded, and a church recently went into foreclosure. To make more money, the city wants to move its eastern border 17 miles and annex an auto raceway under construction beside Interstate 5.