We picked the wrong horse

At least that’s the way it appears, as another West African oil company with substantial interests in the Gulf of Guinea, the long-maligned Hyperdynamics (HDY, I think) hit $5.35 at the close today. 

I wrote about its trajectory three or four months ago when it was below $2, and got the usual flak from the usual suspects.  Now, as I was once before, my advice has been well-validated by the share price.

 

Send me a check and I’ll send you more advice!  :)

ERHC Energy Gets 6-Month Extension on Block 2 Development

ERHC Energy has announced that it's gotten a 6-month extension on its efforts to develop the as-yet unproducing Block 2 offshore Nigeria concession in the Gulf of Guinea's Nigeria and Sao Tome Joint Development Zone, a stock tip letter has reported.

Here's the report:

ERHC reports extension of Exploration Phase I in JDZ Block 2
EBR Staff Writer
Published 14 October 2010

ERHC Energy, a US based oil and gas firm, said that the Joint Development Authority (JDA) has approved a six-month extension of Exploration Phase I in Joint Development Zone (JDZ) Block 2.


The extension will enable the operator of the block, Sinopec, to complete all studies needed for further exploration.

Last month, ERHC supported Sinopec, ERHC's technical partner, in applying to enter into Exploration Phase II pending the completion of the studies.

Instead, agreement was reached with the JDA to further extend Exploration Phase I to enable completion of the studies before commencement of Phase II.

A similar decision to extend Exploration Phase I in JDZ Blocks 3 and 4 was reported in September.

ERHC has 22% interest of JDZ Block 2, 10% interest of JDZ Block 3 and 19.5% interest of JDZ Block 4.

It's hard to say whether another 6 months will make a difference in Block 2, which at one time was highly prospective and sought after by ExxonMobil, Chevron and other suitors of the JDZ joint ministerial council that made the block awards.

The positive element of this news if that ERHC brings the resources of Sinopec to the table in this effort. If the oil is there, as believed, Sinopec has the resources to find it. Let's hope, for investors' sake, that they do!

UPDATE: Investors Warned to 'Stay Away' From ERHC;Placement Agent Says Deal Will Close Oct. 12

A stock tipster today told investors to "stay away" from ERHC Energy shares after the company sold $2 million of its stock at a $0.08 offset to Wednesday's share price, putting "massive" pressure on the stock. The deal is set to close Oct. 12.

Immediately below is the Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010, stock tip. An Oct. 8 update from the brokerage that handled the deal follows:

ERHC ENERGY INC. (OTCBB: ERHE) – Management has announced that they have done an agreement with an institutional investor for the purchase of approximately $2.0 million of common stock at a price of $0.22 per share from ERHE. The arrangement price is less than the last day closing price of $0.29. This news has put massive pressure on the stock and it has declined sharply by 12% to trade at a price level of $0.26. Investor should expect more pressure and further decline in the ERHE price is inevitable. Investor should stay away from ERHE and look for better opportunity in other undervalued stocks available in the sector.

Shares of ERHE closed off 13.45% at $$0.251 on Thursday, down $0.039 on an unremarkable 373,441 shares, according to Scottrade

We got an update on this transaction this Friday morning from the firm that handled the placement. Here's what they had to say:

Rodman & Renshaw handles ERHC Energy USD2m stock placement
Posted on: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 02:44:12 EDT

Symbols: ERHE, ERHEE

Oct 08, 2010 (M2 EQUITYBITES via COMTEX) -- 8 October 2010 - Rodman & Renshaw LLC, part of Rodman & Renshaw Capital Group (NASDAQ: RODM | PowerRating), served as the exclusive placement agent for ERHC Energy Inc's (OTCBB: ERHE | PowerRating) USD2m (EUR1.4m) stock sale, the Houston-based oil and gas firm said on Thursday.

The company has agreed to issue to an institutional investor 9,090,910 common shares at USD0.22 per share. In addition, ERHC Energy will issue warrants, entitling the investor to buy shares of the company, which would result in extra gross proceeds of USD1.9m, if the warrants are fully used. The five-year warrants have an exercise price of USD0.28 per share.

ERHC Energy will use the money from the offering, which is part of an existing shelf registration, for general corporate purposes, including potential acquisitions.

The transaction is expected to close around 12 October.

Comments on this story may be sent to info@m2.com.

ERHC Gets More Times to Expolore Blocks 3 and 4

Good news for investors in a press release today from ERHC:

Sep 30, 2010 09:10 ET

ERHC Energy Inc. Announces the Extension of Exploration Phase I in JDZ Blocks

HOUSTON, TX--(Marketwire - September 30, 2010) - ERHC Energy Inc. (OTCBB: ERHE), a publicly traded American company with oil and gas assets in the highly prospective Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa, today announced that the Joint Development Authority ("JDA") has approved a 6-month extension of Exploration Phase I in Joint Development Zone Blocks 3 and 4. The extension will enable the contracting parties to complete all studies needed for further exploration in the Blocks.

Earlier this month, ERHC supported Addax Petroleum, ERHC's technical partner and the operator of JDZ Blocks 3 and 4, in applying to enter into Exploration Phase II pending the completion of the studies. Instead, agreement was reached with the JDA to further extend Exploration Phase I to enable completion of the studies before commencement of Phase II.

"To date, there has been a tremendous amount of work carried out to update volumetrics of the resources, analyze geochemical samples, interpret sample analysis and reevaluate play concepts, but more time is required to conclude the study program," said ERHC CEO Peter Ntephe. "ERHC acknowledges the commitment and efforts of the Operator as well as the continued support and cooperation of the JDA."

The outcome of a similar dialogue between the contracting parties and the JDA on JDZ Block 2 is expected shortly.

ERHC has 22 percent interest of JDZ Block 2, 10 percent interest of JDZ Block 3 and 19.5 percent interest of JDZ Block 4. The contracting parties' commitments on Exploration Phase I of JDZ Blocks 2, 3 and 4 were successfully met with the drilling of five wells in the three blocks between August 2009 and January 2010. All the wells were completed within time and according to budget. Natural gas was discovered in at least three of the wells. Information about each of the Blocks is available at www.erhc.com/jdz.

Meanwhile, friendly rival HYPD (HDY), the feisty independent startup that has been struggling for years to develop prospective waters south of ours, has soared in recent days. The stock was selling in the $0.50 range just a year or so back, and is now in the $2.20 range.

Nigria's State Oil Co. Is Insolvent, BBC Reports

13 July 2010
Last updated at 18:47 ET

Nigeria state oil firm NNPC insolvent, says minister

Nigeria is a crude oil producer and exporter, but must import refined fuel Nigeria's state oil firm is insolvent, unable to pay debts of $5bn (£3.3bn), a government minister has said.

Junior Finance Minister Remi Babalola said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had asked for help to cover its debts and fund its operations.

But the NNPC denied the claim and said the government was not paying its own debts to the firm.

The company controls more than half of oil assets in Nigeria - one of the world's biggest exporters.

"NNPC is insolvent as current liabilities exceeded current assets by 754bn naira ($5bn; £3.3bn)," Mr Babalola said at a government finance meeting.

He said the NNPC owed about $3bn (£2bn) to Nigeria's Federation Account, which distributes oil money to varying levels of the country's government.

Oil accounts for about 85% of Nigeria's government revenues.

Subsidised petrol

The NNPC rejected Mr Babalola's claim and said it was able to meet its financial obligations.

"We cannot be classified as insolvent when we have healthy cash flow and we can pay for our crude and product import obligations," said NNPC spokesman Levi Ajuonuma.

NIGERIA'S CHEAP PETROL
Continue reading the main story Price capped at 65 naira ($0.44; £0.29) a litre
Subsidy costs $4bn (£2.6bn) a year
He said the Nigerian government owed the company more than $7bn (£4.6bn) in subsidies "which if reimbursed would enable the NNPC to offset the... debt being owed the Federation Account Allocation Committee".

The NNPC is plagued by mismanagement and corruption, says the BBC's Caroline Duffield in Lagos.

Although Nigeria is a major crude oil producer, it must buy almost all the petroleum products it uses on the international market because its own refineries are insufficient and dilapidated.

The NNPC buys refined petrol at international prices and sells it on to local marketeers at a big discount because Nigerians see cheap petrol as their birthright, says our correspondent.

The cost of capping petrol prices at just 65 naira ($0.44; £0.29) a litre is reportedly at least $4bn (£2.6bn) a year.

Correspondents say the subsidy also fuels smuggling and corruption.

Previous attempts to increase petrol prices have led to massive strikes and a government U-turn.

In May, China agreed a $23bn (£15bn) deal to build four new oil refineries in Nigeria.

President Goodluck Jonathan has promised to tackle corruption in the oil industry. He has sacked some officials from the NNPC and ordered an audit of the firm's accounts.

There is also legislation currently before the parliament which would bring sweeping reforms to Nigeria's oil and gas industry.

Tampa Picked As GOP Convention Site

Click to Play

Tampa's city leaders reacted with jubilation Wednesday when they learned the city would host the 2012 Republican National Convention, bringing with it 3,000 jobs and $175 million in spending. As Joe Shea of the American Reporter points out,, the Florida Republican Party is in turmoil and the convention may be a way to unify it..

How To Burn The Oil Spill - Really!

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
Volume 8, Issues 11-12, 1983, Pages 929-930
Hydrogen: Today, Tommorrow and Beyond
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
doi:10.1016/0360-3199(83)90117-9 | How to Cite or Link Using DOI
Copyright © 1983 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Cited By in Scopus (0)
Permissions & Reprints

Combustion technology of oil mixed with hydrogen produced from water in situ


References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

T. Ohtaa and S. Kiyohara*
Hydrogen Energy Research Laboratories, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan
*Oriental Terminal Products Inc., Yokohama, Japan
Received 10 March 1983. Available online 11 August 2003.

Abstract
Two methods have been developed which can burn oil in the presence of water. The first method burns hydrogen. The hydrogen can be produced from water by d.c. electrical energy generated by a thermoelectric device composed of multistage semiconductor thermocouples attached to the side wall of a conventional oil burner. The second method reforms oil with a high temperature water vapour jet. The generated hydrogen is burnt in situ with the residual oil vapor. Combustion with water has two merits: (1) the combustion temperature becomes higher resulting in a higher efficiency of the heat exchanger, and (2) near perfect combustion of oil can be achieved minimizing soot.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
Volume 8, Issues 11-12, 1983, Pages 929-930
Hydrogen: Today, Tommorrow and Beyond

Our Deepest Condolences

   ERHC On The Move, and it readers, convey to the President, Government and people of Nigeria our deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences upon the death of President Umaru Yar'Adua.

   With you we, too, felt that he was a bright hope for Nigeria's future and a man who could lead his country out of the morass and mire of corruption and instability in which it has long foundered.

   At the same time, we extend to President Goodluck Jonathan our best wishes and great hope that his tenure as President will be marked by the completion of his predecessor's unfinished tasks and the adoption of greater goals for the future.

   It is our wish, President Jonathan, that the Nigerian people may embrace your presidency and help you to guide it to greater levels of achievement and the fullest rewards of democracy.

Most sincerely,

Joe Shea
Editor

For You, Mr. President: 2 Technologies That Can Quickly Save The American Economy

President Barack Obama at a Town Hall meeting in North Carolina this week challenged his audience and the inventors of the United States to alert him to any technologies of an alternative kind that have the promise of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil.

I know only too well that alternative technologies are working and available now, or need just a small amount of help to become alternatives to the products that are suffocating our planet and driving the violent global strategies of superpowers and oil companies alike.

Here is a comprehensive discussion of two that are ready to go, Mr. President

There is one, and only one, answer to America's burgeoning national debt, now in the many trillions of dollars and seemingly impossible to repay. There is a way - and also a means - and both can be summed up in one word each. The first is prosperity.

What happens when individual American suddenly once again have cash in their pockets, jobs to go to, and money in the bank? If the prosperity endures for any length of time, debt begins to fall as tax revenues grow. So what is the word that is going to make that happen? Well, there was a different word that made it happen in the Clinton Administration: Internet.

The Net exploded on the world scene in 1994, when a clever man by the name of Tim Berners-Lee created the first Internet browser, called Mosaic. With the advent of Mosaic, email - pretty much the only widely accessible function then - were overtaken by the advent of Internet graphics.

With HTML encoding, such as I do by hand for every edition of The American Reporter (we don't use anyone's templates) the power of the Internet immediately began to emerge. By the turn of the century, revenues from all Internet operations closed in on $1 billion. By the end of the past decade, advertising revenues alone reached $23 billion.

But even in 1999, according to an otherwise flawed report by the University of Texas McCombs School of Business in Austin, jobs traceable to the Internet had gone from the dozens in 1993 to 2.67 million by 1999. Oh, what a little invention can do!

Because of the Internet, President Bill Clinton could leave a $127 billion surplus in 2001 for the Bush Administration to squander (it was all gone by 2003). By 2005, Bush was running a budget deficit of $519 billion, according to Bloomberg News. So the question becomes, "Where can President Obama find another Internet?" He doesn't have to look far. But he may have to ignore the Dept. of Energy.

That's the second word: energy. Back in 1988, "cold fusion" and its discoverers, the late Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and English chemist Dr. Martin Fleischmann, were being tarred and feathered for their claims by both the media and fellow scientists. A "60 Minutes" segment in November 2009 would later rehabilitate them and their theory, which now has been replicated at least 2,000 times.

But in April 1989, one observer was just a few steps outside the fray. Soon he, too, would be disparaged, but never on the same scale. His name is Dr. Randell C. Mills, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who'd been encouraged by a mentor there to study bioengineering at nearby MIT. Some of our readers were not yet born when Drs. Pons and Fleischmann were branded as fools, so let me recount a little of what happened.

On March 23, 1989, the day before the 10.8-million-barrel Exxon Valdez oil spill on the pristine shores of Alaska's Prince William Sound, Pons and Fleischmann held a press conference. Even as a number of universities and other laboratories rushed to claim the same achievement first, they told the press in Salt Lake City that they had produced "tabletop" or "cold" fusion, i.e., that they had harnessed the power of the sun. And not in a hugely expensive magnetic bottle, as physicists expected to do some day, but in a couple of plain glass vessels on a laboratory countertop in the chemistry building at the University of Utah.

Pons and Fleischmann declared that during simple electrolysis, using palladium as the anode and deuterium, or heavy water, as the electrolyte, the reaction to an electric current was demonstrably emitting far more energy in the form of heat than conventional chemistry could account for.

For five years starting in 1983 they had labored to do this, and just as other labs threatened to beat them to a patent, the university, Fleischmann says, pushed them to held the press conference in advance of publication of their paper on the topic in the obscure but peer-reviewed Journal of Electromagnetic Chemistry. The story was a huge one, making headlines across the entire world; the Valdez story was on the front page with it.

The irony in that has escaped most historians, but they together created a tale of breakthrough and disaster that could be a great tragedy, if well-told, because in the seeds of cold fusion is the death of Big Oil.

But the Pons-Fleischmann claim was more immediately and profoundly threatening to a group of well-funded physicists whose careers were buttered with tens of billions of dollars in federal funding for their fruitless hot fusion projects, such as the Tokomak reactor. To date, none of this funding - perhaps $50 billion worth so far - has produced a working hot fusion reactor or saved an American consumer a single cent. Return on $50-billion investment: zero.

The advent of a simple, cheap, competing technology, if it were allowed to stand, would be absolutely ruinous, these men knew. They didn't wait to publish, either. Instead, with a poor understanding of what occurred in Utah, they rushed through attempts at replication. Instead of the lengthy times needed to allow the palladium lattice to absorb a high ratio of deuterium, they invariably tried to get the reaction the Utah scientists did quickly and easily - and it didn't happen. NASA scientists later criticized the would-be replicators harshly for flawed and "hurried" experiments.

Meanwhile, new billions of taxpayer dollars were in the pipeline for all kinds of hot fusion studies and projects. Their spokesman was Bob Park, the president of the American Physical Society and a columnist for the society's prestigious scientific journal, Physical Review. His "What's New" column relentlessly attacked cold fusion and its discoverers, and later Randell Mills. According to the Village Voice, he actually lied on at least one occasion about Mills' work. And his column told the world acupuncture didn't work, that Jesus Christ was an "itinerant healer," and - ever the breathless insider - that the North Koreans couldn't build an ICBM - on the day before they successfully launched one.

By early May, just weeks after they announced their discovery, Dr. Park and the APS took their anti-cold fusion show on the road. On May 9, less than two months after their announcement, Malcolm Browne of the New York Times wrote, "Top physicists directed angry attacks at Dr. Pons and Dr. Fleischmann, calling them incompetent, reciting sarcastic verses about their claims and complaining that they had refused to provide details needed for follow-up experiments. A West European expert said 'essentially all' West European attempts to duplicate cold fusion had failed." He was one of hundreds of science writers who felt betrayed and embarrassed by their initial reports, and some - like Thomas Maugh of the Los Angeles Times, who first report I read, would never touch the subject again.

The denunciations came as Dr. Pons was actually in Washington, getting ready to meet with President George H.W. Bush and ask for $25 million for further study of cold fusion. Very quickly, long before any serious effort at replication could be mounted, the tide was turned. It was awful to watch, especially for those whose hopes for a pollution-free future had risen so far. Later, when a new patent had already been published in the Gazette of the U.S. Patent Office, a "poison pen" call from Bob Park to friends at the patent office got the patent grant to Mills reeled back in and then denied.

By himself, Park has probably saved the oil industry twice, and cost Americans countless billions of dollars in cheaper energy costs they could have enjoyed. But more about that shortly.

One scientist who joined Park in denouncing the hydrino theory of Randell Mills, way back in 1999, was physics Nobelist Dr. Steven Chu. Today he is Secretary of Energy. Despite the validation of cold fusion - now called LENR, for Low Energy Nuclear Reaction - and the laudatory revelations of the November 2009 "60 Minutes" piece and groundbreaking presentations at the March 26, 2010, convention of the American Chemical Society, Chu is not parting with money for more research. The Dept. of the Navy and a private form had to finance the latest study.. But Mills has not sought government or Wall Street equity money, and has raised $71 million on his own.

Chu and Park have one thing in common: the craftiness to disable the rise of a new scientific theory just at the point when the public might demand action to implement it and save them from the endless billion of expense that go to fuel and electric power. Park's lightning strike on Pons and Fleischmann came just as a meeting with the President was about to give them the green light; Chu's came just as Randell Mills was ready to take public his plan to change the way the world used the energy of hydrogen.

"It's extremely unlikely that this is real, and I feel sorry for the funders, the people who are backing this," Chu told the Wall Street Journal's Dow Jones News Service in 1999, when Mills results' were being validated by America's national laboratories, major universities and NASA.

But scientists are catching up with these two deft dodgers. At the March 26 meeting of the American Chemical Society, for instance, Michael McKubre, director of SRI International's Energy Research Center in Menlo Park, Calif., told National Public Radio's "Science Friday" program about an American company in Israel, Energistics Technologies, has recently demonstrated a 25-fold increase in energy after putting 40 Joules of heat into their cold fusion process and getting 1.47 megaJoules out.

"We're seeing thousands or tens of thousands of times more energy than can be explained by any form of chemistry that I'm familiar with," McKubre told NPR. "If you could do that every time with cheap materials and no dangerous byproducts, that is a practical technology. That is commercializable, just there," he said.

As impressive as they are, the Energistics results from a cold fusion process pale in comparison to those from Mills' hydrino reactors. The inventor of the hydrino process rejects quantum mechanics and its relativistic in favor of concrete, classical physics that yield hard, clear, testable numbers. That has divided and re-divided the world of physics as some have hardened their position against Mills, some have moved from skeptical to undecided, and others have joined his camp.

But Mills already has 20 working 50- and 75-kilowatt reactors at his plant in Cranbury, N.J. (not far from where both Einstein and Edison worked), and big-name venture capitalists have so far backed him to the tune of $71 million. You might coin a new adage" in the field of high-energy physics: "One working self-regenerating reactor is is worth all the theories of quantum and classical physics combined."

The former CEO of Westinghouse and a former USAF chief of staff sit on his company's board. Meanwhile, the relativistic theories of quantum mechanics have met their match in Mills' unified model of classical and quantum theory, in that his devices work - and have about $700 million in contracts awaiting roll-out. The latest came from a sprawling Italian multinational, the RadiciGroup, which ordered a 750MW hydrino reactor to power all the Group's industrial and corporate facilities in a deal announced on March 19.

So what is the savior of the economy? Either, or both, cold fusion and hydrino reactors, have much but certainly not all in common. Both could - by virtue of their relatively low cost and cheap materials, as well their lack of need for fuel other than water, not to mention their emission-free operation - transform our manufacturing base, our employment picture, our state and federal tax revenues - and our lives and burdens - almost overnight. These are technologies that work now and can be implemented now. With real leadership in Washington, we could be self-sufficient in energy two years from now, and free of fossil fuels in a decade.

And like the Internet once did, they can save the American economy this time for good. And now there is a greater imperative than there has ever been to adopt and fund them: without such a boon, we will become bankrupt nation, unfathomably deep in debt to China and other trading partners. Those in power have a hard, cold choice: take what the good Lord has given us in these new technologies, and abandon those that have polluted this lovely planet, or die as other civilizations have, in debt, desolation and disgrace. Those are choices that separate the real patriots from the flingers of rhetoric and defenders of the status quo.

Too many people presume that putting the oil industry out of business would be a terrible thing. That's not true. With a new source of electricity that is pretty close to free, hundreds of thousands of small businesses would spring up overnight, both to replicate the technology under license and to develop new applications for it. In turn, that would stimulate jobs for hundreds of thousands of well-educated engineers and millions of people who will assemble these devices from newly-manufactured parts.

Hydrino vehicles, according to the latest "concept car" from BlackLight Power, Mills' company, will get 1,500 miles on a single liter of water. Not only would automotive design soon be back in a big way, but motorists - not needing any more fuel than 50 gallons of water for the life of the car - would have tens of billions of extra dollars in their pockets as they put the automakers back to work, and add billions to that from cheap residential electric and heating costs.

Just two words: Energy" and "prosperity." The economy, sans Big Oil, will renew and replenish itself overnight if the vast inventive capacity of America is allowed by the Obama Administration to put itself to work again. Even Republicans could vote for that.

250 Million HHO PEM Generators Needed For Hydrino Engine Market

Not much detail is visible, but this small hydrogen generator is in use now on 20 hydrino reactors running at BlackLight Power's headquarters in New Jersey. Photo: BlackLight Power Co.

2:41 AM, March 23, 2010 -- For HHO developers, the hydrino cell stack from BlackLight Power Co.will mean a market just in the United States for 200 million standard automobile hydrogen PEM cell generators, and perhaps another 50 million for ships, trains, planes, rockets, buses, trucks, heavy equipment and everything else that requires fuel to move.

But hydrino engines, which may be in limited production now, and their marriage to HHO PEM cells might take a decade to perfect, but California's Chava Energy expects to have a prototype within a year and to marry it to a hydrino-like cell stack a year or so later. Imagine Henry Ford's first vehicle, the product of years of tinkering before it began rolling off the assembly line, which Ford also had to invent: that is the scale of the challenge to HHO PEM cell developers who want to link up with hydrino cars.

The hydrino cars basically consist of a transmission, electric motor, engine control system, a CIHT cell stack (where hydrinos are created) and a hydrogen generator.

There is no carburetor nor fuel injection system except for injecting output from the onboard hydrogen generator into the hydrino cell stacks. Because it will be somewhat lighter - and not perhaps not as balanced due to the placement of components - its frame may have to be far stronger than most are now because there's so little space taken up by components under the hood.

The weight of the 200-liter cell stack is about 440 pounds, half that of a conventional engine, requiring just a one-liter water reservoir; no conversion is needed, as that liter of water will provide sufficient electricity to power the electric motor for 1,500 miles.

The cell stacks will be regenerated by the hydrino fuel. The tires are conventional, as are the dashboard and accessories.

The hydrino CIHT stack is expected to cost about $4,600, the transmission $2,000, control electronics $1,800, and electric motors $1,400. All in all, before the frame, dash, trunk, seating and steering components, the car will cost developers about $9,800 each and a basic model could sell in the $15,000-16,000 range.

To see a representation of the concept car, go to the BlackLight engineering presentation and scroll to the very last page (Page 14). If you would like to order an engine, please contact me at hydrino@hhogames.com.

I suspect a large number of orders will be needed to add to the company's focus, which is now primarily on large hydrino reactors, for which they have more than $600 million in pending contracts and $71 million in private investments.

Using PEM Generator, Cars With Hydrino Power Get 1,500 Miles Per Liter Of Water, Company Says

4:18 AM, March 21, 2010 -- Hydrino-powered vehicles will travel 1,500 miles on a single liter of water when coupled to an on-board hydrogen generator, which would use just 1% of the power consumed by the Toyota Prius, the BlackLight Power Co. said in engineering papers released March 19.

Here's the precise if a bit complicated language of the paper issued this past Friday:

The typical reaction of hydrogen (H₂) to molecular hydrino (H₂1/4) releases 50 MJ/mole H₂. Since water has 55 moles/liter, one liter supplies 2.75 billion Joules of energy. Considering comparables, the Toyota Prius consumes on average 250 Wh of energy per mile (9x10⁵J / mile). Thus, the BlackLight Power Vehicle (BLPV) of comparable size can travel 3,000 miles per liter times the chemical to motive power conversion efficiency. The closest device to the CIHT cell is a fuel cell. Most fuel cells are better than 50% efficient. At this minimum expected efficiency, a vehicle of comparable size powered by a stack of CIHT cells theoretically travel 1,500 miles per liter of water wherein an on-board electrolysis unit can provide the hydrogen fuel using 1% of the electrical output. Alternatively, a 20-liter 100 atm hydrogen tank provides a range of 2,500 miles.

What BlackLight is saying is that their vehicle would produce many times more energy out of the hydrogen than a Prius gets out of its batteries, and when converted into energy efficiency, yields a cross-country trip fueled only by a half gallon of water.

The hydrino engine would weigh about 440 pounds and the total cost with all controls would be about $9,800. But it will never need fuel or electrical recharging, meaning no hydrogen filling station or gas station would be required to run it.

Here is what the company actually says:

[T]he size and weight of an appropriate power plant are certainly permissive of motive applications. A 200-liter cell could deliver 200 kW or 267 HP and weigh only 200 kg, about half the weight of an internal combustion engine (ICE) of the same power. The projected cost of the CIHT stack is a very competitive $4,600. Considering the cost of the control electronics, $1,800, electric motors, $1,400, and transmission, $2,000, the total cost of $9,800 is comparable to the cost of ICE and its drive train of a conventional gas-fired vehicle without any fuel costs or pollution. ...

In principle, motive power can become untethered to an infrastructure of gasoline, natural gas or hydrogen filling stations required for any ICE based vehicle including conventional hybrid vehicles and conventional hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles. Nor does the vehicle need to bve electrically recharged using utility power as in the case of battery powered electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf, or Tesla Roadster. Beside low cost relative to hydride, electric, and fuel cell vehicles, additional advantages are that there is no pollution including no carbon dioxide, no filling stations are needed; so, costly infrastructure build out is eliminated, the inconvenience of frequent fuel filling or recharging is gone, and performance is not sacrificed.

The company says that the CIHT is the most efficent and best use of the hydrino energy stacks, but that it could also provide electricity to EV batteries, generate hydrogen for a hydrogen vehicle, or even produce hundreds of kilowatts parked in the driveway, providing power for a group of homes.

This great news from BlackLight Power will no doubt stir profound questions about the economic effects of such a vehicle - and other vehicles, such as airplanes - on existing companies and employment.

The answer to several of those questions is that the length of time required to introduce such vehicles will give new and existing automakers time to transition away from the ICE engine, put vast amounts of money from fuel savings back in the pockets of consumers, and employ millions of people in the conversion to a new vehicle paradigm. God help them if they don't seize the opportunity and begin fueling a Golden Age of prosperity; the chance won't come again.

In some ways, I must say, the hydrino engine and reactor are the culmination of all the dreams we have had for HHO, which will play a critical part in its use - perhaps for centuries to come. It is the reason the HHO Games & Exposition were created. Now we must move on to a new generation of effort and achievement that will help us lead this world into a far better future for all of us.

BlackLight Power Gets $10-Million Investment And A Huge Order For 750-Megawatt Hydrino Reactor

In this small, 50-kilowatt hydrino reactor - enough to provide power to 10 homes - hydrogen atoms are heated and then resonate with a NaH catalyst that absorbs photon from their orbit, creating the fractional state of he atom that is called a hydrino. Heat created in the process of stripping the photons turns a steam turbine to create electricity, while some hydrinos return to regenerate the catalyst so that more fuel is never needed. Photo: BlackLight Power Co.

BlackLight Power, the Cranbury, N.J., company we told you about several weeks ago, announced Friday that it won a huge contract for a 750-megawatt hydrino reactor and an addition $10 million in investments.

The hydrino is a fractional state of hydrogen that is created when a heated hydrogen atom is stripped of a photon in its orbit during resonance with BlackLight's proprietary NaH solid fuel catalyst. The stripping process yields incredible amounts of heat to power a steam turbine to produce electricity. Some hydrinos are reabsorbed into the catalyst, making it self-regenerating. It never needs more fuel than one liter of water, which will produce 2.7 billion Joules of heat energy, the company says.

The hydrino reactor, which will power all the Italian factories of a billion-euro diversified plastics and energy company called RadiciGroup and its subsidiaries Geogreen SaP and Geoenergie SaP, is also a future power source for the automotive industry, according to engineering drawings released by the company on March 19.

The Radici reactor is the seventh now on order and the first for Europe.

Meanwhile, my 3,500-word article on BlackLight Power and hydrinos has been viewed on CNN's iReport and in The American Reporter since January and was updated several times since then.

I'm also urging my childhood friend, Congressman Rush D. Holt of New Jersey, to advocate for hydrino energy, which was discovered in his district - once the home of Albert Einstein. Thomas Edison worked just 17 miles from BlackLight Power's headquarters.

The BlackLight Process is likely to revolutionize the world to the same extent as the work of those men, and Dr. Randall Mills, who discovered the hydrino, has often been spoken of as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in physics. His ideas have opened up a vast divide between quantum and classical theory, and he has proposed a unified theory of both.

ERHC's Dan Kenney Responds To Ledbetter Charges

ERHC Energy's p.r. contractor, Dan Keeney, has responded to publication of Jim Ledbetter's charges without addressing any of the particulars. The company was unavailable for comment at the time the story was posted before dawn on Wed., Jan 13, and after midnight on Jan. 14.


Here is his comment:



Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:52:45 -0600
From: "Daniel Keeney, APR"

Joe:


Your post the other day stated that "the company was unavailable for comment," which is strange because my contact information is pretty ubiquitous and nobody tried to contact me prior to posting your wild accusations about ERHC. It is absolutely astonishing to me that you did not contact the company before publishing allegations of illegal activities - not once but twice now. You clearly have an agenda to harm the company without regard to the veracity of your supposed sources of information.


Sincerely,



Daniel Keeney, APR

DPK Public Relations

With respect to any "agenda" I might have:

Since I fought the federal allegations from the beginning and frequently argued for the copmpany's innocence with respect to charges the FBI proffered to the Federal Grand Jury in Dallas, it seems clear to me that ERHC On The Move has no malicious agenda. In fact, we sent a very clear positive signal to investors when the share price was $0.12 in January 2009, helping to spark a very strong period of share price growth from which the company and shareholders alike benefitted enormously. We didn't get any thank-you note on that occasion, either.

The company never bothered to thank us for the many efforts we made to clear their name - from contacting numerous other journalists who had attacked it to speaking with the US Attorney who bnrought the case - so we find it quite easy to believe they turned a cold shoulder to Jim Ledbetter as well. I note that the fact Jim is homeless, alone and possibly suicidal has not elicited any sympathy. At this point, they have not even offered the man crocodile tears.

As for his charges with respect to Godsonic, they were widely debated on other investor Websites. we don't recall the company responding to those concerns, either. However, in our estimate the charges may have merit and deserve an airing.

With Fed Probe Behind It, ERHC Faces New Charges From Ledbetter

The FBI has returned all the documents it seized from the company's Houston headquarters as part of the probe of Rep. William Jefferson that sent the former Louisiana congressman to federal prison, it said Tuesday. ERHC On The Move had long reported that the investigation was a long and fruitless exercise based on no more than a newspaper clipping concerning the ex-congressman in its files.

Other pundits repeatedly claimed the company was deeply implicated by the Jefferson probe because a former director who became a government informant was taped by the FBI as she met with Jefferson on behalf of another company.

The probe cost investors tens of millions of dollars in share price declines, but the Justice Dept. was long unwilling to say it had no evidence to proceed. Indeed, the charges crippled the company's stock price growth at the most critical time in its existence, just after it was awarded potentially lucrative concessions in several blocks of the Nigeria-San Tome & Principe Joint Development Zone (JDZ) and was searching for partners to help develop the concessions.

It is believed by many that major oil companies, including ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, who had competing bids and claims in the Gulf Of Guinea, used their considerable influence with the Bush Administration to get ERHC indicted on charges that were apparently groundless.

Even as the documents were returned, however, an admittedly broke and inebriated former technical director for ERHC Energy told ERHC On The Move that company CEO Peter Ntephe bribed Godsonic, a Nigerian company with strong political connections, with a payment of $245,000 that was purportedly intended to coerce Godsonic to sign a document it was already required to sign, with the implication that the payment went to Nigerian officials. The payment, reported in company SEC filings, excited considerable controversy on investor boards at the time.

Ledbetter also charged that his lawyer was bought off by the company with a $50,000 payment that he said was made by a Nigerian company a month after he gave up his lawsuit. He said the unnamed company had opened for one day to make the payment and closed the next day. He said ERHC spent $1.5 million on four attorneys who fought the Ledbetter lawsuit.

He also said the company's exploration of five wells in Block 4 had failed to produce evdence of oil and gas in commercial quantities. The company announced the end of drilling last week. It is pursuing other opportunities in the Nigerian energy business, it said in an earlier statement.

Ledbetter says he is living in his car and close to committing suicide. "My date of death may be today or tomorrow," he responded when asked during an early-morning telephone call for his date of birth to verify his identity. Calls to Houston police and a national suicide hotline failed to locate Ledbetter.

The FBI probe may not have taken the Godsonic payment into consideration, given its apparent occurrence long after the May 2006 seizure of the company's documents.

Here is the company's press release:

Federal Investigators Return Documents of ERHC Energy Inc.

HOUSTON, January 12, 2010 – ERHC Energy Inc. (OTCBB:ERHE), a publicly traded American company with oil and gas assets in the highly prospective Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa, today announced the return of all the documents taken by federal investigators from its corporate headquarters in May 2006. A total of 106 boxes containing original archival records from the Company’s inception until 2006 have been returned.

“This is a positive start to a new year in which the Company will be targeting several benchmarks in its strategies toward corporate growth and the enhancement of shareholder value,” said Peter Ntephe, chief operating officer with ERHC.

Broke, Alone And Desperate, ERHC's Ledbetter Is At Brink Of Suicide

Somewhere in Houston this morning, former ERHC Energy technical engineer James Ledbetter is alone, cold, living in his car, angry and a little drunk.

"I am just so angry," he told us in a 20-minute phone call at 4:37 AM local time.

"Peter Ntephe, the CEO of ERHC Energy, violated the Federal Corrupt Practices Act by making a $240,000 payment to Godsonic to sign off on a document that they were already required by law to so sign off on." He said he protested to Ntephe, to the company's Controller, Sylvan Odobulu, to Howard Jeter, the former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria who sits on ERHC Energy's board, and the board itself, all to no avail. Instead, he said, on Dec. 17, 2008, then Acting CEO Ntephe "walked into my office and said, 'We need to talk.'"

"I thought something good was going to happen," he said.

Instead, Ntephe introduced a lawyer and fired him, saying "We're not going to continue your employment." He wouldn't answer any questions about why, Ledbetter said, and had an armed guard escort him from the office to his home, where any ERHC documents he had were seized.

"I was not given any unemployment insurance, severance payment or anything," Ledbetter said. On the telephone line I heard a rough, broken sob. Ledbetter said he spent $5,000 on a lawyer to get unemployment, and a month later gave up. ERHC had fought back with four lawyers, he said.

"They paid $1.5 million in two months to challenge me," he said. "One month after I gave up, my lawyer received a $50,000 payment from Nigeria." Friends told him that to accomplish that, "A Nigerian company opened up for one day, for the payment, and closed the next day." None of the payment went to Ledbetter.

Now he's lost his wife and his home in a divorce that ended four months ago. He said he feared that this conversation would cost him everything else he had. Then he went off on a tangent.

"During exploration, they found a lot of oil," he said. "They found gas. But it wasn't enough to develop."

To ascertain that it was Ledbetter, who had called us shortly after his firing, we asked his date of birth. He gave it to us, and then said, "My date of death may be today or tomorrow."

His last words were, "Nigerians don't give a sh-t about other people."
There was a click and the line went dead.

The Houston Police Dept. told us that without an address for Ledbetter, they were unable to help. A national suicide hotline promised to try to get Ledbetter on the phone after a Houston police dispatch supervisor named Wagner said there was nothing they could do with a name, age and phone number. They suggested I call the FBI in Washington.

I told Ledbetter during our conversation that he was not a lot worse off than many ERHC investors. I urged him to get food stamps like I do. When I called back after he hung up, I urged him to get in touch with the police and get help. I gave him the number and I offered to take him in for a while if he would promise not to drink and could get himself to Florida.

He didn't call back. He didn't pick up when I called again.

The company was unavailable for comment.

No Oil, But Plenty Of Money For New Investments

After spending a small fortune trying to find oil without success in the Gulf Of Guinea, a Saturday January 9 report says ERHC Energy is going to explore the possibility of joint ventures with other firms in the oil and energy business in Nigeria. This comes as the company also announced the end of drilling in Block 4, where five wells drilled over the past four months have not yielded any petroleum.

Here is the story from LeadershipNigeria:

ERHC Energy Inc. Pursues Investments In Nigeria Oil And Gas Industry

Written by By Indo Ali, Abuja with Agency Report
Saturday, 09 January 2010 00:23

A publicly traded American company with oil and gas assets in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa, ERHC Energy Inc, has announced that negotiations are underway on potential investments that would expand the company's presence in Nigeria's oil and gas industry.

ERHC has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU), with Circle Ltd. and Excel Exploration and Production Limited to negotiate investment in, and acquisition of working interests in the Eremor Marginal Field (OML 46). The Eremor Field, which is located in shallow water off-shore Nigeria, was discovered in 1978.

The discovery well, Eremor-1, encountered three oil and gas zones, the most prominent of which is the D-03 reservoir with 43 feet of net oil sand. It was re-entered for testing in 2005 with the D-03 reservoir testing 2,200 barrels per day of oil with API gravity of 220, a low gas to oil ratio and no water. Excel was awarded a 100 per cent interest and operatorship of Eremor in 2003.

ERHC, through its locally incorporated subsidiary, ERHC Energy Nigeria Limited, has also entered into a non-binding MOU with WellTest Integrated Services Limited to negotiate the acquisition of a controlling equity interest in WellTest. The company provides well testing, production engineering and procurement services to Nigeria's oil and gas industry.

To coordinate the company's business development in the Nigerian and West African oil and gas industry, ERHC has opened its Nigeria liaison office at Oguda Close, Maitama, Abuja. The company's wholly owned subsidiary ERHC Energy Nigeria Limited operates the liaison office.

"With considerable progress being made in the ongoing exploration campaign of our oil and gas interests in the Nigeria Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone (JDZ), this is the right time to accelerate business development activities elsewhere," said Peter Ntephe, Chief Operating Officer of ERHC. "These opportunities will begin the process of diversifying our portfolio of assets and accelerate the timeline for producing revenues. We are also investigating other exploration and production opportunities and will report progress to stockholders at the earliest appropriate time."

The MOUs are non-binding and the completion of the transaction is subject to, among other things, negotiation of a definitive agreement, satisfactory due diligence and adequate financing.

The parties expect to enter into a definitive agreement and complete the transactions, subject to satisfaction of closing conditions and the receipt of all necessary regulatory and other approvals, including board approvals.