Free Republic

<p>Remember when we told you earlier this month that a gas station in Oklahoma City had lowered its price for regular unleaded to $1.99 a gallon?</p> <p>Well, now that trend is nationwide: GasBuddy.com, which monitors prices across the country, says the $1.99 sign is up over pumps in 24 states. The national average is at $2.43 a gallon, but at one filling station in Springfield, Mo., it was only $1.93.</p>

<p>President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he's removing more than 52,000 square miles of waters off Alaska's coast from consideration for oil and gas exploration or drilling.</p> <p>The president said in a video announcement that Bristol Bay and nearby waters, covering an area roughly the size of Florida, would be withdrawn from consideration for petroleum leases. He called Bristol Bay one of the country's great natural resources and a massive economic engine.</p>

The U.S. chemical industry is expanding at a healthy clip thanks to a domestic drilling renaissance that has flooded the world with cheap oil and gas. The industry grew by 2 percent this year and is expected to swell further next year as advances in drilling and completion technologies unlock vast new supplies of hydrocarbons that chemical companies rely on to make products and fuel their plants, according to the American Chemistry Council’s annual year-end review of the industry. “The wind is back in our sails,” Kevin Swift, chief economist for the trade group, said in a statement. “During the...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that the sharp fall in global oil prices is the result of “treachery,” in an apparent reference to regional rival Saudi Arabia, which opposed production cuts. Oil prices have plunged by more than 40 percent since June to around $65 a barrel, placing severe strain on Iran’s economy, which is already hobbled by international sanctions imposed over its nuclear program. An OPEC meeting last month failed to reach agreement on production curbs, mainly because of Saudi opposition. Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the fall in prices is at least partly “politically motivated,”...

"It means that anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about – or isn’t telling you the truth. The United States consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil. But we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves. That means we can’t just rely on fossil fuels from the last century. "

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blasted the United States Wednesday for its large-scale use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, saying it is flooding the market with oil produced with environmentally destructive methods. The United States, one of the world's biggest practitioners of fracking, a controversial technique that involves pumping a pressurized fluid - usually composed of water, sand and chemicals - into a shale formation to create a fracture in the rock layer and release trapped petroleum or natural gas - has used that technology to double oil output to 8.5 million barrels per day in six years.

The world’s energy markets will change dramatically in around 2020, when North America shifts from a major energy importer to an important fuel source for the world’s middle class, according to Exxon Mobil Corp.’s annual energy forecast. The Irving, Texas-based company’s report predicted that global energy demand would by grow 35 percent through 2040, driven by 2 billion new people and the rise of an energy-hungry middle class in developing countries. The report also outlined how supply growth in North America and global efficiency gains, would be critical to meeting the future’s energy needs. Exxon’s vision of the future was...

Just how wrongheaded can someone be about America's energy situation? Take a look at President Obama's long history of false claims about oil. If the president has a mantra, it has to be "We can't drill our way out of this problem." Any time he talks about energy, he trots out that phrase. Whatever the problem, increasing domestic oil supply is never the solution.

Oil and gas production has begun at the Jack/St. Malo project in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, companies involved in the project announced. Chevron Corp. and Statoil said the fields are located about 25 miles apart in 7,000 feet of water 280 south of New Orleans. Chevron said the fields, discovered a decade ago, eventually will reach daily production of 94,000 barrels of oil and 21 million cubic feet of natural gas. Chevron has a 50 percent working interest in the Jack field, with Statoil and Maersk splitting the remaning half. Chevron holds a 51 percent working interest in the...

Tomas Hirst December 2, 2014Russia's Economy Ministry has downgraded its GDP forecast for the country in 2015 from 1.2% growth to a 0.8% contraction. In other words, the country is falling into a recession. The net amount of foreign capital expected to flow out of the country in 2014 has been revised sharply upward to $125 billion (up from $100 billion), while the projection of net outflows for next year has also been increased, to $90 billion from $50 billion. The independent Russian news agency Interfax reports Deputy Economic Development Minister Alexei Vedev as saying that the downgrade reflects the...

$75 dollars a barrel – that’s the price crude oil would have to hit for frackers in North Dakota’s Bakken fields to feel pressure to slow new production, according to Greg Zuckerman, author of “The Frackers” and a special reporter at the Wall Street Journal. “All these guys have hedged. They’ve got production [and] they’ve already got the acreage. They’re not gonna stop but maybe they’ll kind of slow new stuff.” Fracking in other parts of the country, though, is likely to be much more resilient. In Texas’s Eagle Ford and Permian basin, Zuckerman says oil prices would have to...

Russia’s aggressiveness in Ukraine is proving a boon to North American energy producers looking for greater export opportunities. Whether for natural gas projects in the United States or for oil pipelines in Canada, the West’s confrontation with energy powerhouse Russia has refocused North American political debates – including the controversy over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline – on the need for global energy security. Russia’s aggressiveness in Ukraine is proving a boon to North American energy producers looking for greater export opportunities. Whether for natural gas projects in the United States or for oil pipelines in Canada, the West’s confrontation...

President Obama threatened a new round of sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, this time aimed at the country’s energy sector. Obama, speaking at a news conference at the Council of the European Union, said the crisis in Ukraine underscored Europe’s need to become less dependent on Russia’s rich energy sources. He also acknowledged that additional sanctions could affect Russia’s neighboring countries but said the United States was committed to helping those nations find energy alternatives. Obama said coordination between the U.S. and Europe on economic sanctions against Russia has been excellent and warned that if Russia continues on its current...

The fight against hydraulic fracturing has recently ratcheted up. On November 5, one town in Ohio and three in Colorado, passed ballot measures designed to ban or temporarily halt hydraulic fracturing—the brief (3-5 day) phase, often referred to as “fracking”—that is essential to the advanced oil-and-gas extraction processes that have given America the lead in global energy production. A fourth Colorado town awaits a recount. Initial election results showed the moratorium in Broomfield, Co—failed by 13 votes. However, on November 13, after all the overseas, military, provisional and other outstanding ballots were counted, it had passed by 17 votes. A...

Sarah Palin is back! Not only did she get another Fox News contract, she was the star of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Conference this past weekend for her slashing attacks not only on President Obama and Democrats but on Republican sellouts (and 2016 hopefuls) like Jeb Bush. Watching Palin gleefully take on Bush, who made a dumb comment about needing immigration reform because immigrants are “more fertile” than native-born Americans, I realized that Palin’s star really is rising again, at a time of heightened racial insecurity on the white far-right. They need a hero, and here she is again....

A $21 price difference between crude oil in Midland and Cushing, Okla., is an all-time high, as oil production in the Permian Basin far outpaces the pipeline infrastructure to move it. The spot price for West Texas Intermediate crude was about $87 per barrel this week in Cushing – the delivery point at which the U.S. benchmark oil is priced – versus $65 per barrel in Midland. The two only differed by $3 in October, according to a Wells Fargo report. “If I produce a barrel of oil in the Permian, my ability to move it to market is restricted,”...

Federal officials on Friday approved a plan that sets aside 445 square miles of public land for thedevelopment of large-scale solar power plants, cementing a new government approach to renewable energy development in the West after years of delays and false starts. At a news conference in Las Vegas, Interior Secretary Ken Salazarcalled the new plan a "roadmap ... that will lead to faster, smarter utility-scale solar development on public lands." The plan replaces the department's previous first-come, first-served system of approving solar projects, which let developers choose where they wanted to build utility-scale solar sites and allowed for land...

Mitt Romney revealed a new energy policy today that will hinge on states, and not the federal government, being able to control energy development on federal land, a shift that the campaign says will result in North American energy independence by the year 2020. It includes more offshore drilling options, evoking memories of the slogan introduced four years ago at the Republican National Convention in 2008: “Drill, baby, drill.” “If I’m the president of the United States in a few months here, I will set a national goal of America and North America, North American energy independence by 2020,” Romney...

PRESS RELEASE OIL AND GAS SEEPAGE FROM OCEAN FLOOR  REDUCED BY OIL PRODUCTION November 18, 1999 (Santa Barbara, Calif.) Next time you step on a glob of tar on a beach in Santa Barbara County, you can thank the oil companies that it isn't a bigger glob. The same is true around the world, on other beaches where off-shore oil drilling occurs, say scientists, although Santa Barbara's oil seeps are thought to be among the leakiest. Natural seepage of hydrocarbons from the ocean floor in the northern Santa Barbara Channel has been significantly reduced by oil production, according to...

A U.S. district judge ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Friday to re-assess its plan to allow drilling on some 50,000 acres on the Roan Plateau, which the energy industry says contains one of the largest natural gas fields in the continental United States. Judge Marcia Krieger said BLM had failed to thoroughly assess all the environmental impact to the ecologically sensitive plateau in western Colorado before approving energy development on the mountain. "Like many areas of Colorado, the area has been blessed with an abundance of two major resources, the uses of which are often in...