Oil Reserves

Only gasoline prices nearing $4 a gallon could accomplish this political feat: bringing together congressional Democrats and Republicans to support a halt to oil deliveries for the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. With fuel costs becoming a crucial election-year issue, members of both parties -- separately -- pitched their ideas Wednesday for bringing down prices.

Exploratory oil wells drilled off Brazil's coastline indicate the presence of a vast pool of crude that could propel this nation into the top tier of world energy producers. The oil field highlighted last week by state-controlled oil company Petrobras lies in "ultra-deep" waters beneath an unstable layer of hot salt, presenting technological challenges that are sure to be ultra-high cost.

Iran's top leader said Saturday that the country's oil and gas reserves eventually will dry up and defended the drive to produce nuclear fuel, asserting that it was the only way to avoid dependence on the West for energy. "Oil and gas reserves won't last forever. If a nation doesn't think of producing its future energy needs, it will be dependent on domination-seeking powers," state television quoted supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying.

As California becomes increasingly reliant on oil from elsewhere, state and federal officials are trying to figure out how to get enough energy to the West Coast if disaster strikes. The need became clear in August, when corroded BP pipelines threatened to halt supplies from an Alaskan oil field that fed West Coast refineries.

Venezuela's state oil company said a U.S. petroleum engineering firm certified that a block in the country's Faja del Orinoco region contains 28.7 billion barrels of oil. The study by Houston-based Ryder Scott estimated the total amount of oil in the Carabobo 3 block, Petroleos de Venezuela said in a statement. The block may have proved reserves of 5.7 billion barrels, based on the expectation that 20% of the oil in the deposit can be recovered, the statement said.

Chinese state-controlled oil company CNOOC Ltd. said Monday that it agreed to pay $2.3 billion for a 45% stake in a Nigerian oil field in its first major investment since its failed bid to take over Unocal Corp. last year. The deal adds to a multibillion-dollar string of foreign acquisitions by Chinese oil companies, which are aggressively pursuing energy supplies to fuel China's booming economy.

Output at Mexico's most important oil field has fallen steeply this year, raising fears that wells there that generate 60% of the country's petroleum are in the throes of a major decline. Production at Cantarell, the world's second-largest oil complex, in the shallow gulf waters off the shore of Mexico's southern Campeche state, averaged just over 1.8 million barrels a day in May, according to the most recent government figures.

U.S. proved crude oil reserves last year rose for the first time in three years and natural gas reserves had their biggest annual increase since 1970, the government's top energy forecasting agency said Tuesday. Crude oil reserves jumped 1.8% in 2005 from the year before to 21.76 billion barrels and natural gas reserves soared 6.2% to 204.4 trillion cubic feet, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

A judge in Anchorage has blocked part of a federal lease sale of oil-rich land on the North Slope, but the government said it could still sell sections outside an area environmentalists want to preserve for migratory birds and calving caribou. The original sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska would have included the Teshekpuk Lake area, which sits above 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil, federal estimates say.

The United States' emergency fuel tank -- the Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- is months away from reaching its target amount of crude oil. The milestone is significant because it gives the country a larger energy-security blanket than ever to call upon in the event of a supply disruption. But the stockpiling of 700 million barrels of oil, which is scheduled for completion by the end of August, also could bring some immediate relief to the global energy market, analysts say.