Houston doctors say they may have found a way to destroy HIV

By LEE MCGUIRE
KVUE News

HOUSTON -- There is real hope that what’s happening in a Houston lab might lead to a cure for HIV.

AP

Researcher holds test tubes with separated HIV infected blood

“We have found an innovative way to kill the virus by finding this small region of HIV that is unchangeable,” Dr. Sudhir Paul of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston said.

Dr. Paul and Dr. Miguel Escobar aren’t talking about just suppressing HIV – they’re talking about destroying it permanently by arming the immune system with a new weapon lab tests have shown to be effective.

Ford Stuart has been HIV positive for 15 years. He’s on a powerful drug cocktail that keeps the disease in check.

“I’m on four different medications. Three of them are brand new, and it’s the first time that I’ve ever been non-detectible,” Stuart said. “I’m down to about – just for the HIV – about nine pills per day, five in the morning and four at night.”

But Stuart knows HIV mutates, and eventually it will learn how to outsmart his medications.

“The virus is truly complex and has many tricks up its sleeve,” Paul said.

But Dr. Paul thinks he’s cracked a code.

“We’ve discovered the weak spot of HIV,” he said.

Paul and his team have zeroed in on a section of a key protein in HIV’s structure that does not mutate.

“The virus needs at least one constant region, and that is the essence of calling it the Achilles heel,” Paul said.

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That Achilles heel is the doctors’ way in. They take advantage of it with something called an abzyme.

It’s naturally produced by people, like lupus patients. When they applied that abzyme to the HIV virus, it permanently disarmed it.

“What we already have in our hand are the abzymes that we could be infusing into the human subjects with HIV infection, essentially to move the virus,” Paul said.

Basically, their idea could be used to control the disease for people who already have it and prevent infection for those at risk.

The theory has held up in lab and animal testing. The next step is human trials.

Meanwhile, every day in Houston, three people are diagnosed with HIV.

The doctors still need funding to launch human trials. In the world of HIV research, that’s often where things fall apart.

“Clinical trials are very expensive,” Paul said.

“That is the worry of the researcher. This is what nightmares are made of – that after 30 years of work, you find it doesn’t work,” Paul said.

But so far, it is working.

“This is the holy grail of HIV research, to develop a preventative vaccine,” Paul said.

“If we can get the viral loads down to a manageable level, that will preclude the need for these conventional drugs,” Escobar said.

Still, even if everything goes well, it’s at least five years before the research could help people with HIV.

The doctors know people like Ford Stuart are waiting.

“There are so many people struggling with the disease because it affects not only your body, but also your psyche, how you perceive yourself,” he said.

If nothing else, the research is promising for the tens of millions waiting for a cure.

Neocon, Perle exploring Iraqi oil business

Published

by

Dan Graeber

Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, write Susan Schmidt and Glenn R. Simpson for The Wall Street Journal.

Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents.

It would involve a tract called K18, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, according to documents describing the plan.

Gas Cities LLC, a joint venture between Dana GasDana GasLoading… PJSC, the Middle East’s first and largest regional private-sector natural gas company, and its partner Crescent PetroleumCrescent, announced that the 461 million square foot site for the Kurdistan Gas City has been officially assigned by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), for development by Gas Cities LLC, following extensive surveys that have been completed on potential sites within the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The groundbreaking ceremony of the Kurdistan Gas City will take place on the 21st of September, 2008, a joint statement read.

The U.S.’s Energy Information Administration projects that crude oil prices will average about $127 a barrel in 2008 and $133 in 2009, up from the $72 average in 2007. With the world’s third largest proven reserves, and production having finally returned to 2.5 million barrels per day, Iraq’s revenues will surely be greater than in past years. Iraq is expected to draw $70 billion in oil revenue this year alone, and its government has announced plans to further increase oil production.

One of the first things Iraq will need to do is upgrade its equipment used for oil production, writes Daveed Gartenstein-Ross for the Middle East Times.

The Iraqi Oil Ministry says oil exports in June amounted to 58.1 mn barrels, a 4.3 per cent decline from the previous month.

Sunday’s statement says it sold for US$123 a barrel and yielded US$7.141 bn. It adds that 43.6 mn barrels were exported through the south and 14.5 mn from Turkey’s port of Ceyhan. No reason was given a reason, but exports through Basra’s ports were suspended for a few days last month because of sandstorms, The Economic Times of India reported.

Reports that a number of international oil companies are on the brink of signing contracts with Iraq have prompted a furious reaction in certain parts of the media and on Capitol Hill. The deals have been widely characterised as no-bid contracts, implying that Big Oil has somehow used its political clout to muscle in on Iraq and renewing suspicion that the whole US intervention in Iraq was primarily a grab for natural resources, Raad Alkadiri reports for Gulf News.

Foreign firms are reluctant to invest in the country’s service contracts which the Oil Ministry is currently negotiating, the Iraqi daily Azzaman reported.

Iraqi oil officials say they doubt whether any of the firms expressing a willingness to sign service contracts will start work in earnest once they win the deals.

Generally, foreign majors are not as keen to enter into oil service deals unless they have some form of guarantee that they will be given preferential treatment with more lucrative contracts concerning the development of new fields.

The government is not constitutionally authorized to sign development deals but it has the right to strike service deals with foreign firms.

Diamonds May Have Jumpstarted Life on Earth

By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor

One of the greatest mysteries in science is how life began. Now one group of researchers says diamonds may have been life's best friend.

Scientists have long theorized that life on Earth got going in a primordial soup of precursor chemicals. But nobody knows how these simple amino acids, known to be the building blocks of life, were assembled into complex polymers needed as a platform for genesis.

Diamonds are crystallized forms of carbon that predate the oldest known life on the planet. In lab experiments aimed to confirm work done more than three decades ago, researchers found that when treated with hydrogen, natural diamonds formed crystalline layers of water on the surface. Water is essential for life as we know it. Also, the tests found electrical conductivity that could have been key to forcing chemical reactions needed to generate the first birth.

When primitive molecules landed on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds in the atmosphere of early Earth, a few billion years ago, the resulting reaction may have been sufficient enough to generate more complex organic molecules that eventually gave rise to life, the researchers say.

The research, by German scientists Andrei Sommer, Dan Zhu, and Hans-Joerg Fecht at the University of Ulm, is detailed in the Aug. 6 issue of the American Chemical Society's journal Crystal Growth & Design. Funding was provided by the Landesstiftung Baden-Wurttemberg Bionics Network.

Another theory, called panspermia, holds that life on Earth arrived from space, as organisms rained down inside tiny meteors or giant comets.

The new research does not conclusively determine how life began, but it lends support to one possible way.

"Hydrogenated diamond advances to the best of all possible origin-of-life platforms," the researchers contend.

Scientists discover 'world's first bird' that lived 235million years ago

From Dailymail.co.uk

Palaeontologists have unveiled an extraordinary prehistoric 'flying' reptile which lived 235 million years ago.

The kuehneosaurs glided through the subtropical forests of Europe using scaly 'wings' that could carry it distances of more than 30ft.

Experts say the lizard-like reptile, which grew up to 2ft long, used extensions of their ribs to form large gliding surfaces on the sides of their body.

The scientific community is united in the belief that birds descended from reptiles 50 million years later making the kuehneosaurs the world's first 'bird'.
Kuehneosaurus

The kuehneosaurs glided through forests 385million years ago

The long-extinct species was first unearthed in the Britain by Archaeologists in the 1950s, but until now their aerodynamic capability had not been studied.

Their rudimentary 'wings' were always assumed to be some form of flying adaption, but scientists at the time lacked the necessary technology to test the theory.

But earlier this year, experts from Bristol University investigated both types of kuehneosaurs found in the UK - kuehneosuchus and kuehneosaurus - for the first time.

The team built lifesize models of the creatures and used techniques usually employed to test prototype aircraft - including a wind tunnel - to discover their amazing flying ability.

Their pioneering findings, published this week by the Paleontological Association, have turned the history of winged flight on its head.

Today German palaeobiologist Koen Stein, who led the study, said: 'We didn't think kuehneosaurs would have been very efficient in the air. But all the work up to now had been speculation.

'So we decided to build models and test them in the wind tunnel in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Bristol University.

'Surprisingly, we found that kuehneosuchus was aerodynamically very stable. Jumping from a tree, it could easily have crossed 9m (29ft) before landing on the ground.'

The species, which inhabited the warm late Triassic period from 235 to 200 million years ago, was first discovered in the UK inside an ancient cave system near Bristol.

Both types of kuehneosaurs lived 80 million years before the largest dinosaurs of the Jurassic period, and 50 million years before the earliest known bird, archaeopteryx, which lived in what is now southern Germany.

Mr Stein and his colleagues used a number of different materials to reconstruct the creatures' scaly wings, which they then tested using specialist aerodynamic equipment.

Aerospace engineers suspended the models in a wind tunnel and passed a jet of hot air over the models' bodies.

This gave experts a detailed idea about the air flow over their wings, and the distance they would have glided from tree-top to tree-top in search of food and to escape larger predators. But Mr Stein admitted the task wasn't always straightforward.

He added: 'We also built webbed hands and feet, and had an extra skin membrane between the legs on the models, but these made the flight of the animals unstable, suggesting they probably did not have such features.'

Mr Stein, who now works at the prestigious Institute of Palaeontology at Bonn in Germany, carried out the research with Colin Palmer, Pamela Gill and Michael Benton from Bristol University's Department of Earth Sciences.

Department head Professor Michael Benton said: 'Palaeontologists are keen to understand how all the amazing animals of the past operated, and by collaborating with aerospace engineers we can be sure that model-making and calculations are more realistic.'

Are big bets by speculators driving up oil?

From USATODAY.com

Speculation about whether speculators are to blame for the superspike in oil prices is in overdrive.

Now that it costs $100 to fill up big SUVs, an Agatha Christie-esque whodunnit featuring finger-pointing lawmakers and suspected speculators is gripping this oil-obsessed nation in search of someone to blame.

Anyone who drives a gas-powered vehicle or runs a business that uses oil — and is experiencing financial distress — can't help but wonder: What's causing prices to go up so much?

In the early 1970s, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was Public Enemy No. 1, thanks to its oil embargo, which caused gas shortages in the USA and long lines at the pumps.

But today's energy crisis is different. OPEC insists there's plenty of oil. There's no queuing up at gas stations. And Congress is pointing fingers at an altogether different villain: financial speculators.

"When I began to see wild swings in gas prices, I was suspicious of mischief in the markets," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who recently introduced an updated version of a bill dubbed the PUMP Act, or Prevent Unfair Manipulation of Prices Act.

The proposed legislation aims to close regulatory loopholes that enable speculators to manipulate and artificially inflate the price of energy.

Efficient market purists disagree. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia all insist that free-market forces are at work. They cite the Economics 101 concept of supply and demand as the main reason a barrel of oil has surged above $140, up nearly 50% in 2008.

Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Alaron Trading, sums up this thesis best: "You can argue that the economic fundamentals for oil are as strong as they have ever been in mankind's history." He cites robust demand from emerging economies around the world, a growing belief that future oil supplies will be tight, and the ability of foreigners to buy oil cheaply because of the steep drop in the value of the U.S. dollar.

Still, the search for a culprit is not surprising given how far and how fast oil prices have risen. Oil prices are now higher than the record set in the late '70s, adjusted for inflation. The oil rally is now bigger than the Nasdaq composite's run during the Internet stock bubble, Bespoke Investment Group says. And the energy sector is now the second biggest by market value in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, at 15.6%, three times larger than it was at the Nasdaq top in March 2000, says S&P.

The financial fallout is hard to ignore. Oil's rise has caused a sharp drop in stock prices, made it harder for average Americans to make ends meet, forced U.S. automakers to rethink their emphasis on gas-guzzling SUVs, and put domestic airlines on a death watch.

That's why Congress is on the offensive. Lawmakers are holding what seems like daily hearings to figure out what's going on in the futures markets where the price of oil is set. They have introduced a flurry of legislation designed to curb speculation. They are also working to boost the manpower and financial resources of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the USA's top commodities cop, to help it better monitor and detect questionable trading practices. The CFTC has 447 full-time employees, 50 fewer than at its inception in 1976.

Stupak has cited statistics showing that speculators account for roughly 70% of energy trading, up from 37% in January 2000, on regulated U.S. exchanges. However, the CFTC says that number is flawed because it includes trades by investors, not deemed as speculators, for the purpose of hedging and risk management.

"Speculation is not illegal, but that does not mean it isn't hurtful," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., at a Senate hearing last Tuesday addressing the role of speculation on energy prices. He plans to roll out an anti-speculation bill after July 4.

"Speculators," added Lieberman, "are moving enormous amounts of money into commodity markets for the obvious purpose of making more money. But in doing so, they are artificially inflating the price of fuel futures and causing real financial suffering for millions of people."

Some lawmakers contend that oil prices would tumble sharply, perhaps to $60 a barrel, if speculators were banned from commodities markets. They suspect — but have yet to prove — that illegal market manipulation is inflating a commodities "bubble." The CFTC acknowledges that it started a nationwide probe in December to investigate possible illegal activity in the oil futures market.

But without full knowledge of who all the players are and how big their positions are in the oil futures market, both regulators and politicians admit it's tough to prove their suspicions. "At this point, we simply don't know what role speculation or manipulation is playing in price increases," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, said in a recent statement.

Some energy experts say singling out speculators as scapegoats is misguided.

Market forces are to blame for the bulk of the run-up in energy prices, says Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultant Ritterbusch and Associates. He points to a massive demand surge from China and India. The falling value of the U.S. dollar also deserves blame. Oil is priced in dollars, which makes it more affordable for foreigners paying with stronger currencies. He also cites a lack of investment in energy infrastructure and supply constraints.

Ritterbusch also says the Iraq war, rumblings of an Israeli-Iran dispute, and political upheaval in Nigeria have increased uncertainty about future oil supplies. The lack of good investment alternatives (stocks are down 13% this year, and long-term U.S. government bonds are yielding around 4%) has prompted big investors to divert more capital to better-performing assets, such as oil.

"Commodities such as oil, grains and metals have become the new kids on the block," says Ritterbusch of the influx of buy orders into the market.

So what exactly are lawmakers screaming about? And how are they proposing to fix it?

Congress has pinpointed two major areas of concern. One is the rise in energy prices they say is resulting from fresh cash being invested in commodities. The second issue involves regulatory loopholes that allow speculators to operate in relative secrecy, outside the purview of U.S. federal regulators. A closer look at the two:

Impact of index funds.

Much of the controversy surrounds massive investments in commodity-based index funds by pension funds and hedge funds in search of diversification, better returns and protection against rising inflation. Since 2004, assets in index funds that track a basket of commodities have jumped from $30 billion to $180 billion, says S&P. The popular S&P GSCI commodity index has a 70% weighting in energy-related commodities.

The emergence of commodities as an "asset class" — no different than stocks or bonds — is causing concerns. Big institutions have decided to boost their long-term, buy-and-hold portfolio weightings in commodities. In March, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), the largest U.S. pension fund, said it may increase its commodities exposure to $7.2 billion from less than $1 billion by 2010. These funds are being branded as speculators because they have no intention of taking delivery of oil, unlike airlines or trucking firms.

In testimony before the Senate in late May, hedge fund manager Michael Masters said investments in all funds tied to oil futures have risen to $260 billion, from $13 billion in 2003. This massive cash infusion, he noted, has coincided with higher energy prices.

It is akin to investors' chasing returns as they did during the tech stock boom, says Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial. "Higher oil prices destroy demand for actual barrels of oil, but higher prices also encourage more investors to chase performance and put more cash into commodities."

But Merrill Lynch commodity analyst Francisco Blanch says there is "no evidence" that index money is responsible for rising prices. He says gains for commodities that are not linked to indexes, such as coal, rice and steel, have posted bigger returns than oil. And orange juice, tin and platinum have enjoyed big gains after dropping out of the biggest commodities index.

Many analysts say the only way speculators can artificially increase prices is by hoarding oil and taking supply off the market. But there is scant evidence that is occurring.

Still, lawmakers and regulators are proposing potential position limits on big investors. Lieberman's upcoming bill would restrict commodity investments by institutions that invest through index funds. CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton says if his agency's study of commodity index trading, which will be sent to Congress on Sept. 15, shows that index players are creating a negative economic impact, new rules and controls might be required.

Impact of loopholes.

A major roadblock for U.S regulators is that they have not had oversight of all futures trades tied to U.S. crude oil. The CFTC has regulatory and data-gathering powers over trades placed on the New York Mercantile Exchange, or Nymex. But it has not had the power to regulate or investigate trades involving U.S. oil futures that originate in an electronic futures exchange based overseas.

An estimated 30% of U.S. oil futures trades are executed abroad, mainly in London on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. The problem: Those trades, which are not subject to the same position limits or reporting requirements as New York-based trades, fly under the CFTC's regulatory radar. It's called the London Loophole. This loophole raises the specter of, say, a hedge fund purposely driving up prices on a foreign exchange to influence the price of futures contracts traded in the USA.

That's about to change. A number of bills circulating on Capitol Hill, including the PUMP Act, would give the CFTC regulatory authority to police foreign trades involving U.S. futures contracts. The CFTC has also established new conditions that require traders using the London-based ICE exchange and other foreign exchanges to trade U.S. oil futures to abide by the same rules that apply at Nymex.

The CFTC "needs to have a complete picture," said CFTC's Chilton. It can't just "have an eye only on what goes on in New York."

To limit market access and make it more expensive for speculators to buy oil futures contracts, some Democrats in Congress propose to boost margin requirements to 50%, which is what stock investors pay. Currently, traders need to put down 5% to 7% in cash to buy a futures contract. That means a trader can control $10 million of future oil contracts by putting $500,000 to $700,000 down, says Daniel Clifton of Strategas Research Partners.

A report from TrimTabs Investment Research predicts oil prices would "collapse" if the margin requirement were raised to 25%. The CFTC and Nymex both are against raising margin requirements, saying it would cause business to move overseas.

Gull Island buzz: 200 years of oil from Alaska’s North Slope?

By Alan Bailey

Along with a surging interest in fuel-efficient automobiles and biking to work, the legend of Alaska’s Gull Island, a speck of land four miles or so offshore the North Slope in the middle of Prudhoe Bay, seems to have an uncanny ability to appear when the United States is facing soaring oil and gasoline prices.

Back in 1981 when crude oil prices hit unimaginable highs in excess of $30 per barrel, a letter from U.S. Rep. Bob Stump of Arizona popped into the mail bag of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in Anchorage, Alaska.

“I have been contacted by several constituents concerning the recent allegations of a massive oil find off the North Slope on Gull Island. Those allegations range from a business cover-up to a giant federal conspiracy to perpetuate our energy crisis,” Stump said. “I would appreciate any information that you can offer me that will aid with my correspondence with these constituents.”

Some of Stump’s constituents had presumably been reading a book called “The Energy Non-Crisis,” written by sometime Baptist missionary Lindsey Williams and published in 1980. Williams’ book included a description of the Gull Island field.

And, as oil prices started climbing in 2006, this time past $60 per barrel, Williams told a meeting of the Midwest Concerned Citizens group in Kansas City about how the fabulous Gull Island field could supply the United States with oil for 200 years. Gasoline prices could drop to just $1.50 per gallon if only the U.S. government and the oil companies were to open the spigots on the vast, undisclosed North Slope oil reserves, he said.

North Slope chaplain
Williams said that in the 1970s Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. had given him a position as chaplain for people working on the northern section of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the camp at Prudhoe Bay. He said that Alyeska became so pleased with his success in counseling workers that they gave him executive privileges on the North Slope, thus enabling him to sit in on board meetings held by company executives.

Williams said that in 1976 he stumbled across the discovery of a vast oil field penetrated by an exploration well drilled on Gull Island by ARCO. He said that at the time of the discovery he had attended the management meeting in ARCO’s North Slope base camp, in which the “top eight oil company men of the world” had confirmed the find. But ARCO refused to make public the Gull Island discovery and the field has remained a closely guarded secret ever since, Williams said.

Williams outlined the field’s characteristics in a second edition of the “The Energy Non-Crisis.” The Gull Island field has a 1,200-foot thick pay zone and an area four times the size of the giant Prudhoe Bay field, he said. He said that three wells drilled from Gull Island had encountered the field, as did a well at East Dock. All wells drilled in an area extending 40 miles to the east of Gull Island had struck oil, thus demonstrating the huge areal extent of the field, he said.

And now, with oil prices moving through $130 per barrel, a flood of Internet chat has appeared on the subject of the supposed government and oil industry Gull Island secret — at the time of writing this article a Google search for “Gull Island” resulted in multiple pages of hits. Although some Web sites question Williams’ claims, many seem to view the claims as evidence of government manipulation of the price of oil and a cover-up of the real status of world oil reserves.

“The public needs to demand the opening of the Gull Island oil field,” appears as a call in some sites.

And Petroleum News has heard of congressional staffers in Washington, D.C., asking questions about the truth behind the Gull Island story.

One Internet site quotes an official in Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas expressing concern that Gull Island might explode because of excessive amounts of underground oil, thus causing an environmental disaster (hint: the url for the Web site begins with the word “sirsatire”).

Three wells
So what are the facts concerning oil drilling at Gull Island?

There have been three wells drilled from the island. And, although these wells were tight at the time of the drilling, the data from the wells are now in the public record. Williams’ supposed Gull Island field discovery presumably relates to the Gull Island State No. 1 well, completed and suspended by ARCO in 1976.

In a response to Rep. Stump’s 1981 letter AOGCC Commissioner Harry Kugler set the record straight on the two Gull Island wells that had been drilled at that time (Gull Island State No. 3 wasn’t drilled until 1992). The Gull Island No. 1 well tested 1,144 barrels of oil per day in “the equivalent of the North Prudhoe Bay (Permo-Triassic) reservoir,” while the Gull Island No. 2 well tested 2,971 barrels of oil per day from the Lisburne, Kugler said.

“We do not believe the evidence from these two wells indicates a massive new oil find,” Kugler said. “Additional wells will have to be drilled and additional studies made before the economic feasibility of developing these known reservoirs is determined.”

Geologist Peter Barker didn’t sit in on senior oil company executive board meetings, but he did sit the Gull Island No. 1 well in 1976 (“sitting a well” is geologist speak for monitoring and interpreting the geologic evidence from a well while the well is being drilled). The objective of the Gull Island drilling was to test a deep structure on the north side of a geologic fault, to the north of the Prudhoe Bay field, Barker told Petroleum News July 7. The drilling proved disappointing, he said.

“There was an (oil and gas) trap there but there wasn’t an economic quantity of oil,” he said.

However, the drilling team did recover a beautiful core sample from the Ivishak formation, the main reservoir rock in the Prudhoe Bay field. Because Gull Island is closer to the inferred source of the sand that constitutes the Ivishak sandstone, the sandstone is coarser grained at Gull Island than in the Prudhoe Bay field, Barker said.

Barker said that the drilling results were extremely confidential at the time of drilling — the critical data display instrumentation was even covered, to prevent unauthorized viewing of data. “We ran it as a very tight hole,” he said. “… There was no information that got out of there.”

In fact, the electric well logs were taken off the North Slope in a very secure manner and were unlikely to have even been seen in ARCO’s North Slope camp, Barker said.

Long-time Alaska geologist David Hite also sat the well briefly and told Petroleum News that only ARCO personnel were allowed on the rig and rig floor. If necessary, one expert from the mud logging company was allowed to come in to troubleshoot the mud logging, Hite said. And Barker recalls the expert having to determine, without being allowed to see the instrumentation, why the gas detectors failed to signal gas as the well penetrated the Sag River formation, the uppermost reservoir rock at Prudhoe Bay. It turned out that mud from the well had formed a dam, blocking new mud from reaching the detectors, Barker said.

Ken Bird, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist and an expert on North Slope geology, provided Petroleum News with some geologic perspective on the Gull Island drilling.

“Three directional wells have been drilled from Gull Island in Prudhoe Bay to different subsurface targets, all of which tested different geologic ‘prospects’ in and beyond the northern boundary of the earlier discovered Prudhoe Bay oil and gas accumulation,” Bird said.

The Gull Island State No. 1 well drilled a faulted block of rock known as a horst and recovered oil from a very thin, 9-foot-thick interval at the base of the Shublik formation, Bird said. Gull Island State No. 2, completed in 1977, was deviated to the southeast to delineate the gas cap of the previously discovered Prudhoe Bay field and the underlying Lisburne oil pool, he said. The Gull Island State No. 3 well drilled in 1992 targeted a Cretaceous horizon in an area between the two older wells but proved to be a dry hole, Bird said.

Since 1980 at least four oil pools, the West Beach, Niakuk, Point McIntyre and North Prudhoe pools, as well as Prudhoe Bay satellites, have been delineated and developed in the area immediately around the Gull Island wells, Bird said. The four pools in the immediate Gull Island area are all currently in production: According to Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas 2007 annual report, Point McIntyre had a cumulative production of 395.6 million barrels of oil at the end of 2006, with 164 million barrels of remaining reserves. The other three pools are much smaller than Point McIntyre.

“Both the geologic evidence and the small area not yet developed into oil fields around the Gull Island wells preclude the possibility of a giant oil accumulation,” Bird said.

But the Gull Island legend seems to persist. And just to cap it all, used versions of Williams’ book “The Non-Energy Crisis” have appeared on Amazon.com as collector’s items — on July 7 three copies were listed with prices ranging from $1,299 to $1,499.

Maybe there’s money to be made from Gull Island after all.

Fiat Empire

Obama Economic Controller Is A Skull and Bones Member

By Webster Tarpley

Austan 'The Ghoul' Goolsbee, Yale '91

OBAMA'S TRIFECTA: FOREIGN POLICY LINE IS RUN BY TRILATERAL FOUNDER ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI -OBAMA''S WIFE LINKED TO COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

WASHINGTON DC -- Barack Obama's top economics adviser is a member of the super-secret Skull & Bones society of Yale University, of which George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and John Kerry are also members, reliable sources confirmed tonight. Goolsbee is widely reported to have told Obama not to back a compulsory freeze on home mortgage foreclosures to help the struggling middle class in the current depression crisis, as demanded by former candidate John Edwards. Hillary Clinton has advocated a one-year voluntary freeze on foreclosures. Obama has offered counselors to comfort mortgage victims as they are dispossessed, citing the 'moral hazard' of protecting the public interest from Wall Street sharks.

By adding the infamous Skull & Bones secret society to his campaign roster, Obama, who bills himself as the candidate of change and hope, has attained a prefect trifecta of oligarchical and financier establishment backing for his attempt to seize the nomination of the Democratic Party for 2008. Obama's main overall image adviser and foreign policy adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, and the mastermind of the disastrous Carter administration. Obama's wife Michelle is reputed to be closely linked to the Council on Foreign Relations. Behind the utopian platitudes dished up by the Illinois senator, the face of the Wall Street money elite comes into clearer and clearer focus.

George Will, in an October 2007 Washington Post column saluted Goolsbee's "nuanced understanding" of traditional Democratic issues like globalization and income inequality; he "seems to be the sort of fellow -- amiable, empirical, and reasonable--you would want at the elbow of a Democratic president, if such there must be," wrote the arch-oligarchical apologist Will.

From Wikipedia: 'Austan D. Goolsbee is an economist and is currently the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is also a Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation[1], Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Panel of Economic Advisors to the Congressional Budget Office. He has been Barack Obama's economic advisor since Obama's successful U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois. He is the lead economic advisor to the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.'

Man works himself to death

From CNN.Com

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A Japanese labor bureau has ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest in a string of such findings in a nation where extraordinarily long hours for some employees has long been the norm.

The man who died was aged 45 and had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's blockbuster Camry line, said Mikio Mizuno, the lawyer representing his wife. The man's identity is being withheld at the request of his family, who continue to live in Toyota City where the company is based.

In the two months up to his death, the man averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month, according to Mizuno.

He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the pivotal North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006. The man's daughter found his body at their home the day before he was to leave for the United States.

The ruling was handed down June 30 and will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, Mizuno said Wednesday.

An officer at the Aichi Labor Bureau on Wednesday confirmed the ruling, but declined to comment on the record.

In a statement, Toyota Motor Corp. offered its condolences and said it would work to improve monitoring of the health of its workers.

There is an effort in Japan to cut down on deaths from overwork, known as "karoshi." Such deaths have steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987.

Last year, a court in central Japan ordered the government to pay compensation to Hiroko Uchino, the wife of a Toyota employee who collapsed at work and died at age 30 in 2002. She took the case to court after her application to the local labor bureau for compensation was rejected.

Man gets 35 years for stinky feet slaying

From CNN.com

HOUSTON (AP) -- A man was sentenced to 35 years in prison for stabbing his roommate to death after an argument in their Houston apartment about stinky feet.

The Harris County District Attorney's Office says 23-year-old William Antonio Serrano was sentenced Tuesday to 35 years in prison. He pleaded no contest to murder.

Authorities say 21-year-old Noel Quintanilla-Vaquero complained last October that Serrano's feet had a foul odor. They say Serrano responded to the insult by grabbing a knife and stabbing Quintanilla-Vaquero several times.

The men allegedly had been drinking.

Court documents indicate Serrano initially claimed self-defense.

The Iraq War Was About Oil, All Along

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Bill Moyers Journal.

Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator.

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Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil.

Alan Greenspan said so last fall. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." He elaborated in an interview with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first Gulf War."

Remember, also, that soon after the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told the press that war was our only strategic choice. "We had virtually no economic options with Iraq," he explained, "because the country floats on a sea of oil."

Shades of Daniel Plainview, the monstrous petroleum tycoon in the movie, "There Will Be Blood." Half-mad, he exclaims, "There's a whole ocean of oil under our feet!" then adds, "No one can get at it except for me!"

No wonder American troops only guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior in Baghdad, even as looters pillaged museums of their priceless antiquities. They were making sure no one could get at the oil except ... guess who?

Here's a recent headline in The New York Times: "Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." Read on: "Four western companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power."

There you have it. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq. And on the wings of no-bid contracts -- that's right, sweetheart deals like those given Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater. The kind of deals you get only if you have friends in high places. And these war profiteers have friends in very high places.

Let's go back a few years to the 1990's, when private citizen Dick Cheney was running Halliburton, the big energy supplier. That's when he told the oil industry that, "By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

Fast forward to Cheney's first heady days in the White House. The oil industry and other energy conglomerates were handed backdoor keys to the White House, and their CEO's and lobbyists were trooping in and out for meetings with their old pal, now Vice President Cheney. The meetings were secret, conducted under tight security, but as we reported five years ago, among the documents that turned up from some of those meetings were maps of oil fields in Iraq -- and a list of companies who wanted access to them. The conservative group Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club filed suit to try to find out who attended the meetings and what was discussed, but the White House fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep the press and public from learning the whole truth.

Think about it. These secret meetings took place six months before 9/11, two years before Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq. We still don't know what they were about. What we know is that this is the oil industry that's enjoying swollen profits these days. It would be laughable if it weren't so painful to remember that their erstwhile cheerleader for invading Iraq -- the press mogul Rupert Murdoch -- once said that a successful war there would bring us $20-a-barrel oil. The last time we looked, it was more than $140 a barrel. Where are you, Rupert, when the facts need checking and the predictions are revisited?

At a Congressional hearing this week, James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who exactly twenty years ago alerted Congress and the world to the dangers of global warming, compared the chief executives of Big Oil to the tobacco moguls who denied that nicotine is addictive or that there's a link between smoking and cancer. Hansen, whom the administration has tried again and again to silence, said these barons of black gold should be tried for committing crimes against humanity and nature in opposing efforts to deal with global warming.

Perhaps those sweetheart deals in Iraq should be added to his proposed indictments. They have been purchased at a very high price. Four thousand American soldiers dead, tens of thousands permanently wounded, hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled Iraqis plus five million displaced, and a cost that will mount into trillions of dollars. The political analyst Kevin Phillips says America has become little more than an "energy protection force," doing anything to gain access to expensive fuel without regard to the lives of others or the earth itself. One thinks again of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. His lust for oil came at the price of his son and his soul.

Artificial DNA Could Power Future Computers

By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor

Chemists claim to have created the world's first DNA molecule made almost entirely of artificial parts.

The finding could lead to improvements in gene therapy, futuristic nano-sized computers, and other high-tech advances, the Japanese researchers say.

DNA, popularly illustrated as a double helix, holds the blueprints of life and controls what every living organism becomes and how it functions.

Scientists have tried for years to develop artificial versions of DNA in order to take advantage of its amazing information storage capabilities. Already, DNA has been harnessed to create simple electronic circuits.

DNA uses just four basic building blocks, known as bases, to code proteins used in cell functioning and development. Other researchers have crafted DNA molecules with a few artificial parts.

But Masahiko Inouye and colleagues at the University of Toyama used stitched together four entirely new, artificial bases inside the sugar-based framework of a DNA molecule, creating unusually stable, double-stranded structures resembling natural DNA, they say.

Like natural DNA, the new ripoffs were right-handed and some easily formed triple-stranded structures. "The unique chemistry of these structures and their high stability offer unprecedented possibilities for developing new biotech materials and applications," the researchers said in a statement.

The breakthrough will be detailed in the July 23 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"The artificial DNA might be applied to a future extracellular genetic system with information storage and amplifiable abilities," the researchers write.

Eight dead as canoeists sucked into turbines

By CNN.com

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) -- Divers pulled six bodies out of the Sava River and fought strong currents Friday to search for five other people still missing after two canoes were crushed running over a dam in southeastern Slovenia.

Mayor of the local town, who also is a member of parliament, was reportedly among the victims.

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Three people managed to swim ashore after their boats crumpled, overturned and capsized but two of them died Friday in the hospital, raising the death toll to 8, according police spokesman Robert Perc. The third survivor remained hospitalized.

The accident happened late Thursday, when two large canoes decided to run over a dam under construction near Sevnica, a town 56 miles (90 kilometers) southeast of the capital of Ljubljana. At that section, the dam, part of a hydroelectric plant, is currently built only to about the height of the water.

The trip -- ominously dubbed "The Final Descent" -- was organized by local officials and all participants were Slovenians. It was to be the last ride down that section of the river, which will soon be blocked by the hydroelectric plant.

Two other canoes -- part of the four-boat excursion -- left the river before reaching the site.

Slovenian TV journalist Goran Rovan, who had been in one of the safe canoes, told the state-run news agency STA that the other canoes capsized and broke apart when they hit the whitewater passing through the dam gates. The occupants fell into the river and were sucked by the rapids into the underwater tunnel leading to the generator turbines.

TV in Slovenia showed chilling footage Friday of the canoes entering the dam, followed by the sound of screams. Then the kayaks broke up, overturned and capsized.

Rovan said people rushed over and managed to help the two who had reached the shore, but could do nothing more because of the river's dangerous currents. He told STA that almost none of the victims wore life vests.

Police divers raced immediately to the scene, but the rescue operation was hampered by the river's strong currents. More than 15 divers combed the river Friday, trying to find survivors or bodies. A police helicopter flew over the area, while police, civil protection and fire services swept the river banks.

Prime Minister Janez Jansa rushed to the site early Friday, declaring the accident a "great tragedy."

"[Rescuers] are doing everything that is humanly possible," he said.

Economics Minister Andrej Vizjak denied speculation that the dam could have been better secured or blocked. He told STA that those in the canoes had clear security instructions.

"Some of them did not respect [the rules] and decided to take a dangerous descent," he said, calling the accident the "consequence of a wrong human decision."

The Slovenian parliament canceled its Friday session. A member of parliament was reported to be among the victims.

Energy experts puzzled over oil prices

By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer

MADRID, Spain - As crude soared to a new record, the head of the International Energy Agency declared that the world was in the grip of an "oil shock," and the president of OPEC acknowledged he could not say whether prices would flatten out or continue to soar.

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The comments by IEA chief Nobuko Tanaka, OPEC chief and Algerian Energy minister Chakib Khelil and other industry leaders at the 19th World Petroleum conference reflected the concern surrounding record oil prices that seem ready to spike higher.

An IEA report released at the conference confirmed what most consumers fear: that supplies of oil will remain tight, whether for cooking fires in the poorest countries or powering cars and cooling or heating homes in the richest. And that's despite record prices and reduced demand as costly crude dampens the world's oil hunger.

Reflecting the world's oil price doldrums, light, sweet crude for August delivery rose 97 cents to settle at a new high of $140.97 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices at one point rose as high as $143.33, just 34 cents shy of Monday's trading record.

"We are clearly in the third oil price shock," declared Tanaka, comparing the effects to periods of soaring prices in the 1970s and 1980s.

But he suggested there is less of a likelihood of a quick fix this time.

"Those price peaks forced consumers into saving oil" and oil companies to look for new wells, said Tanaka, but now "the biggest energy savings have been made (and) ... the easy oil outside (of) a few countries has been found."

His agency's report said the world's estimated daily oil needs would rise from 86.87 million barrels this year to 94.14 million barrels in 2013 — less than anticipated in its 2007 report because of skyrocketing prices.

The energy agency predicted producers would be able to meet world needs — but noted that supply will exceed projected demand only by a daily 2 million barrels, a relatively thin cushion.

Tanaka said that tight supplies despite a price surge that would normally lead to increased availability came as a "shock."

His comments reflected the high-level bedevilment at the meeting about what is causing prices to sizzle.

In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, earlier this month, the kingdom said it would add 200,000 barrels per day in July to a 300,000 barrel per day production increase it first announced in May, raising total daily output to 9.7 million barrels. Production increases normally check prices, but the market has shrugged off the Saudi gesture and set several new records since.

Khelil, the OPEC president, offered no solace to consumers.

"We are very uncertain about the oil prices since it's highly volatile and we don't really know whether it is going to be stabilizing or going to lower levels," he told delegates. "But everybody agrees that oil prices are too high."

"There is a lot of uncertainty about demand," Khelil said. "Consequently there is a lot of uncertainty about the decision of investing" the tens of billions of dollars needed to make additional crude and refined supplies available.

He identified the main driver of prices as the weak U.S. dollar and the linked subprime crisis in America; geopolitical tensions, and increased emphasis on U.S. bioethanol production which he suggested diverted production of diesel and led to shortages.

Urging the world to brace for a "really big reshuffle" in energy expectations, Christophe de Margerie, CEO of French energy giant Total SA, said he expected oil production to plateau in just 12 years at 94 million barrels a day — less then 10 million barrels more than available now. And he warned the forecast was optimistic.

"We will have to fight against the natural decline of (present) oil fields," he told the same forum Khelil attended. "It will not go smoothly."

Producers and refiners in the Spanish capital are also looking to find answers not only on how to ensure stable supply, but also on doing it in a way that minimizes emissions of the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming.

Still the primary concern at the meeting was over availability and prices that have been bouncing from record to record over the past few months — a worry echoed by de Margerie.

Consumers worldwide "expect a better environment," he said. "But they expect first access to energy."

Is White House Blocking Search for Bin Laden?

By MARTHA RADDATZ

The Pentagon has drafted a secret plan that would send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but the White House has balked at giving the mission a green light, The New York Times reported today.

New leaked reports have exposed U.S. covert operations in the Middle East.

The Bush administration, which has seven months left in its term, gave the go-ahead for the military to draw up the plan to take the war on terror across the Afghan border and into the mountains of Pakistan where bin Laden is believed to be hiding, according to the newspaper.

Intelligence reports have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a network of new training camps, and the number of recruits in those camps has risen to as many as 2,000 in recent months from 200 earlier this year.

Although the special forces attack plan was devised six months ago, infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies and among White House offices have blocked it from being implemented, the Times reported.

The Bush team would like to leave office next January having put bin Laden, the man behind the Sept. 11 attacks, behind bars or in his grave.

But sending U.S. forces into Pakistan would be controversial and risky. The rugged mountain area is populated by bin Laden sympathizers, hurting the chances that such a raid could succeed. It would also trigger a diplomatic outcry from the Pakistani government.

The United States has conducted a series of aerial drone attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, killing several key Qaeda figures and narrowly missing bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, in one strike. But an attack earlier this month killed several Pakistani border guards instead and has made Pakistan less willing to allow U.S. strikes on its territory.

The Taliban of Pakistan, who are close al Qaeda allies, have grown alarmingly stronger in Pakistan's lawless border areas and threatened the regional capital of Peshawar last week.

Pakistan's new coalition government, which has made a series of truces with the militants in recent months, was forced over the weekend to launch an offensive to push the militants back from the outskirts of Peshawar.

Pakistan called the operation a success, even though none of the heavily armed militants in the area were reported killed.