WorldOil

International: Worldwide drilling

A very mixed bag of data exists from countries outside the US. Some regions are doing very well, and some others are going to have a rougher time this year. And for all the activity and all the technical progress made over the last couple of decades, some of the issues that were problems in the US 30 years ago are still problems today. Parts of US President George W. Bush’s State-of-the-Union speech last month sounded very much like the original energy outline of former President Gerald Ford, when he took office in 1974. Bush’s call for reducing gasoline usage, cutting US reliance on Middle Eastern oil and stepping up domestic oil production could very well be mistaken for the original US agenda of the 1970s. Some of the old, familiar trends of the mid-1970s have resurfaced. One of these is the influence of OPEC.