As part of Task 1 in Advanced Technologies for Stripper Gas Well Enhancement, Schlumberger Data & Consulting Services (DCS) joined with two Appalachian Basin producers, Great Lakes Energy Partners, LLC, and Belden & Blake Corporation to develop methodologies for identification and enhancement of stripper wells with economic upside potential. These industry partners previously provided us with data for more than 700 wells in northwestern Pennsylvania. Phase 1 goals of this project were to develop and validate methodologies that can quickly and cost-effectively identify underperforming wells with remediation potential. We enhanced and streamlined our software and are using it with Microsoft's{trademark} Access and Excel programs. During the last quarter of 2002, Great Lakes provided us with additional data for approximately 2,200 wells located in their Cooperstown field situated in northwestern Pennsylvania. We identified approximately 220 potential remediation candidates and Great Lakes personnel reviewed this list for viability and selected more than twenty five wells to be reworked. Approximately fifteen wells have been successfully reworked as of year-end 2004. This field provided a rigorous test of our software and analytical methods. We processed all the information provided to us including the Cooperstown data. Great Lakes also provided supplemental data listing the original …

This report summarizes a quarterly report of the advanced technologies for stripper gas well enhancement during July 1 to September 30, 2004.

The proliferation of corporate affiliates in banking, finance, and commerce has figured in discussion of several policy issues, including how to protect against (1) losses incurred by affiliated companies; (2) anticompetitive “tying” of bank and nonbank financial services; and (3) misuse of financial data of consumers. This report outlines the nature and evolution of affiliates, primarily from a regulatory perspective. It provides background for discussing financial issues involving corporate affiliates.

In this second year of the grant, we have made good progress toward our goals of elucidating the basic materials response to repeated laser pulsing. This work includes both computer simulation and experimentation, as we now describe.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Ohio Coal Development Office (OCDO) have recently initiated a project aimed at identifying, evaluating, and qualifying the materials needed for the construction of the critical components of coal-fired boilers capable of operating at much higher efficiencies than current generation of supercritical plants. This increased efficiency is expected to be achieved principally through the use of ultrasupercritical steam conditions (USC). The project goal initially was to assess/develop materials technology that will enable achieving turbine throttle steam conditions of 760 C (1400 F)/35 MPa (5000 psi), although this goal for the main steam temperature had to be revised down to 732 C (1350 F), based on a preliminary assessment of material capabilities. The project is intended to build further upon the alloy development and evaluation programs that have been carried out in Europe and Japan. Those programs have identified ferritic steels capable of meeting the strength requirements of USC plants up to approximately 620 C (1150 F) and nickel-based alloys suitable up to 700 C (1300 F). In this project, the maximum temperature capabilities of these and other available high-temperature alloys are being assessed to provide a basis for materials selection and application under …

This report deals with broader issues in U.S. relations with the Caribbean and does not include an extensive discussion of Haiti and Cuba. U.S. policy toward these Caribbean nations is covered in two CRS products: CRS Report RL32294, Haiti: Developments and U.S. Policy Since 1991 and Current Congressional Concerns, and CRS Report RL32730, Cuba: Issues for the 109th Congress.

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This project investigated aspects of the development and utilization of compact XUV sources based on fast capillary discharges and high order harmonic up conversion. These sources are very compact, yet can generate soft x-ray radiation with peak spectral brightness several orders of magnitude larger than a synchrotron beam lines. The work has included the characterization of some of the important parameters that enable the use of these sources in unique applications, such as the degree of spatial coherence and the wavefront characteristics that affect their focusing capabilities. In relation to source development, they have recently completed preliminary work towards exploring the generation of high harmonics in a pre-ionized medium created by a capillary discharge. Since ions are more difficult to ionize than neutral atoms, the use of pre-ionized nonlinear media may lead to the generation of coherent light at > 1 KeV photon energy. Recent application results include the first study of the damage threshold and damage mechanism of XUV mirrors exposed to intense focalized 46.9 nm laser radiation, and the study of the ablation of polymers with soft x-ray laser light.

Federal spending has changed, both in size and composition over the last 40 years. Total federal spending is now a larger percentage of the economy (as measured by gross domestic product — GDP) than it was in 1965 (19.8% of GDP vs 17.2% of GDP). Mandatory spending (generally spending that result from laws other than appropriations acts, such as Social Security and Medicare), has grown substantially, both as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of total spending to become, today, the largest component of federal spending. Mandatory spending, without significant changes to the programs composing it, will continue growing as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of total outlays into the future.

The objective of this program is to develop a system to both monitor the vibration of a bottomhole assembly, and to adjust the properties of an active damper in response to these measured vibrations. Phase I of this program, which entailed modeling and design of the necessary subsystems and design, manufacture and test of a full laboratory prototype, was completed on May 31, 2004. The principal objectives of Phase II are: more extensive laboratory testing, including the evaluation of different feedback algorithms for control of the damper; design and manufacture of a field prototype system; and, testing of the field prototype in drilling laboratories and test wells. As a result of the lower than expected performance of the MR damper noted last quarter, several additional tests were conducted. These dealt with possible causes of the lack of dynamic range observed in the testing: additional damping from the oil in the Belleville springs; changes in properties of the MR fluid; and, residual magnetization of the valve components. Of these, only the last was found to be significant. By using a laboratory demagnetization apparatus between runs, a dynamic range of 10:1 was achieved for the damper, more than adequate to produce the …

Energy supplies and prices are a major economic factor in the United States, and energy markets are volatile and unpredictable. For both these reasons, energy policy is of frequent interest to the Congress. This report presents a statistical view of the supply and consumption of various forms of energy. After an introductory overview of aggregate energy consumption, the report presents detailed analysis of trends and statistics regarding specific energy sources: oil, electricity, natural gas, and coal. A section on trends in energy efficiency is also presented.

Environmental protection concerns span a wide variety of issues, including clean air, water quality, chemical security, and environmental aspects of other major issue areas such as transportation and defense. This issue brief provides an overview of key environmental issues that are receiving or may receive attention in the 109th Congress. The sections on specific issues contain references to more detailed and extensive CRS reports on the subjects covered.

This report provides information about the Federal Pension and Retirement Benefits on Former Presidents, and explains various benefits, such as salary, Secret Service protection, mailing privileges, and travel expenses.

This report gives information related to Gasoline prices and also discusses Policies and Proposals.

On August 19, 2004, three operators [employees of Washington TRU Solutions Central Characterization Project (CCP)] and one Health and Safety Technician [(H&ST), an employee of the University of California (UC)] were working in the mobile characterization unit, known as the Mobile Visual Examination and Repackaging Unit (MOVER). The unit, which was located in the Decontamination and Waste Treatment Facility (DWTF) Yard, uses a glovebox to repackage Transuranic (TRU) drums. Work was in progress on the last set of drums to be repackaged. Work had been completed on a TRU drum that was on its way out of the unit. Work had begun on a 0.6-plutonium-equivalent curie (PE Ci) TRU container. During the bag-in process for the 0.6-PE Ci container, operators encountered contamination measuring 6,000 counts per minute (cpm), or approximately 12,000 disintegrations per minute (dpm) on the exposed area of the drum port. The operators decontaminated the exposed, contaminated area of the drum port, and this exposed area was swiped again. The area was declared clean. During bag-out of the previous drum, operators noticed that the retaining band was not tightened optimally; therefore, the retaining band was replaced with a new one on this drum. The three operators and LLNL …

This report describes the work performed during the fourth year of the project, ''Investigating of Efficiency Improvements during CO{sub 2} Injection in Hydraulically and Naturally Fractured Reservoirs.'' The objective of this project is to perform unique laboratory experiments with artificially fractured cores (AFCs) and X-ray CT scanner to examine the physical mechanisms of bypassing in hydraulically fractured reservoirs (HFR) and naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR) that eventually result in more efficient CO{sub 2} flooding in heterogeneous or fracture-dominated reservoirs. In Chapter 1, we worked with DOE-RMOTC to investigate fracture properties in the Tensleep Formation at Teapot Dome Naval Reserve as part of their CO{sub 2} sequestration project. In Chapter 2, we continue our investigation to determine the primary oil recovery mechanism in a short vertically fractured core. Finally in Chapter 3, we report our numerical modeling efforts to develop compositional simulator with irregular grid blocks.

A series of experiments was conducted to investigate the combined utilization of high-harmonics fast-wave (HHFW) and neutral-beam injection (NBI) auxiliary heating in National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) plasmas. A modest increase of the total stored energy coincident with a near doubling of the neutron production rate is observed when NBI heating is added to HHFW in L-mode plasmas. An increase in the core electron temperature is also observed. On the other hand, essentially no stored energy augmentation nor neutron production rate enhancement is observed when applying HHFW during the ''H'' phase of NBI-driven H-mode plasmas. Spectroscopic measurements of the edge carbon line radiation indicate an unpredicted ion temperature increase, suggesting that edge effects are reducing the amount of HHFW power reaching the plasma core.

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Omnibus appropriations acts have become a significant feature of the legislative process in recent years as Congress and the President have used them more frequently to bring action on the regular appropriations cycle to a close. Following a discussion of pertinent background information, this report reviews the recent enactment of such measures and briefly addresses several issues raised by their use.

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Palestinian education reform is seen to be a key element in the PalestinianIsraeli peace process. Many observers frequently have expressed concern that the Palestinian Authority (PA) education curriculum incites a younger generation of Palestinians to reject Israel, Judaism, and the achievement of peace in the region. Furthermore, some analysts and policymakers maintain that Palestinian education reform is not only important for Israeli-Palestinian peace, but also for broader U.S. interests in the region. From their perspective, a diverse, balanced curriculum may serve as a benchmark towards greater peace, democratization, and the development of a vibrant civil society in the Palestinian Territories.

We present a measurement of the top pair production cross section in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. We collect a data sample with an integrated luminosity of 194 {+-} 11 pb{sup -1} with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. We use an artificial neural network technique to discriminate between top pair production and background processes in a sample of 519 lepton+jets events, which have one isolated energetic charged lepton, large missing transverse energy and at least three energetic jets. We measure the top pair production cross section to be {sigma}{sub t{bar t}} = 6.6 {+-} 1.1 {+-} 1.5 pb, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.

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The Richtmyer-Meshkov instability is a fundamental fluid instability that occurs when perturbations on an interface separating gases with different properties grow following the passage of a shock. This instability is typically studied in shock tube experiments, and constitutes a fundamental example of a complex hydrodynamic flow. Numerical simulations and models for the instability growth and evolution have also been used to further elucidate the physics of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability. In the present work, the formally high-order accurate weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) shock-capturing method using a third-order total-variation diminishing (TVD) Runge-Kutta time-evolution scheme (as implemented in the HOPE code [68]) is applied to simulate the single-mode Richtmyer-Meshkov instability with reshock in two spatial dimensions. The initial conditions and computational domain for the simulations are modeled after the Collins and Jacobs [29] single-mode, Mach 1.21 air(acetone)/SF{sub 6} shock tube experiment. The following boundary conditions are used: (1) periodic in the spanwise direction corresponding to the cross section of the test section; (2) outflow at the entrance of the test section in the streamwise direction, and; (3) reflecting at the end wall of the test section in the streamwise direction. The present investigation has three principal motivations: (1) to provide additional validation of …