Free Republic

Governor Palin weighs in on Obama’s failed ISIS strategy: OBAMA’S IMPOTENCE; WHY HE CAN’T "DRILL, BABY, DRILL" Obama destroys our own oil development and pipeline proposals (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/02/24/obama-keystone-veto/23879735/), and vows to bankrupt our American-made energy industry (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/11/02/hidden-audio-obama-tells-sf-chronicle-he-will-bankrupt-coal-industry), but is impotent against a crazy Muslim cult’s crude wealth-generating oil infrastructure. Memo to Obama: you could destroy ISIS in a heartbeat if you wanted to. These desert rats aren’t running a covert oil operation – their rigs, pump stations, gathering centers, separation facilities, pipelines, value-added refineries, trucks and transportation corridors are right there under your nose. Bomb them. Let the United States Military do...

Activists trying to stop Shell’s offshore oil drilling in the U.S.’s Arctic Ocean region invoke the interests of native Alaskans. “These communities depend on this environment for food and resources and have stewarded it for centuries,” Greenpeace says, as part of its “The People vs. Shell” campaign—what the group describes as possibly “the most important fight in environmental history.” A lot of native Alaskans, including many who live along the state’s North Slope, would prefer that Greenpeace mind its own business.

Hundreds of people in kayaks and small boats have staged a protest in the north-western US port city of Seattle against oil drilling in the Arctic by the Shell energy giant. Paddle in Seattle was held by activists who said the firm's drilling would damage the environment. It comes after the first of Shell's two massive oil rigs arrived at the port. The firm wants to move them in the coming months to explore for oil off Alaska's northern coast. Earlier this week, Shell won conditional approval from the US Department of Interior for oil exploration in the Arctic. The...

The arrival in Seattle Thursday of an oil rig Royal Dutch Shell is outfitting for oil exploration in the remote Arctic Ocean marks a pivotal moment for an environmental movement increasingly mobilized around climate change. Activists paddling out in kayaks to meet the rig off Seattle's picturesque waterfront said it's their moment to stand against opening a new frontier of fossil fuel exploration. "Unless people get out there and put themselves on the front lines and say enough is enough, than nothing will ever change," said Jordan Van Voast, 55, an acupuncturist who was going out on the water to...

CERAWEEK-U.S. fracking costs falling fast, may keep fields in play HOUSTON, April 22     (Reuters) - U.S. oil and natural gas companies have pushed down costs of fracking a shale well faster than expected, and if the trend holds up it could allow producers to keep working in oilfields that just months ago looked uncompetitive after the oil price crash.A more than 50 percent fall in the price of crude oil since June has left oil and gas producers insisting on steep price cuts from oilfield service companies that provide everything from drilling rigs to hydraulic fracturing.Oil is trading...

Exploration firm U.K. Oil & Gas Investments said Thursday there may be up to 100 billion barrels of oil at an onshore site in south England, near Gatwick airport, a company spokesperson told CNN. That's more than double the amount of oil pumped from Britain's energy offshore North Sea fields in the past 40 years. The company's share of the total reserves are estimated at close to 9 billion barrels. UKOG chief executive Stephen Sanderson described the discovery as a "world class potential resource."

Get ready for the White House to ignore their own science experts again. The Department of Energy commissioned a study by the National Petroleum Council which was meant to help determine our long range energy strategy. Their conclusion? We need to head on up to the Arctic basin and drill baby drill.

Now into the seventh year of the Obama administration, what a change has been wrought in our energy security.Only half a decade ago liberals were predicting that oil production had peaked.Only last year analysts were saying that weÂ’d never see oil below $100 again. Ever. While the Keystone Pipeline lingers, private oil exploration and production in the United States has assured this country, for the first time in my lifetime, is the dominant player not just in oil consumption, but in oil supply, as well.And oil price. Analyst at UBS say the magic number is $65-$70 a barrel. Their point...

Earlier this week, the American Gas Association released its 2015 Playbook. The report shows that natural gas continues to deliver safe, affordable, and reliable energy, while also providing environmental and energy efficiency benefits. Customers are deriving financial savings from using natural gas. For instance, households that use natural gas for space heating, water heating, cooking and clothes drying save an average of $693 per year compared to customers who use electricity to power these activities. Over the past five years, low natural gas prices have provided a total savings of almost $65 billion to natural gas customers, allowing this money...

Before a near-capacity crowd at the Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center Thursday, former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said people in Texas and across the nation are in a position to lead, not those in Washington, D.C. Palin, who was in Midland as part of the John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute Distinguished Speaker Series, spoke on the topic “Groundbreakers, Mavericks and Trailblazers: How Women Are Showing 21st Century Leadership.” JBS Public Leadership Institute Executive Director Bob Brescia and Odessa American Publisher Pat Canty co-moderated the lecture. Palin said the country is suffering from a dire lack...

In a lecture event titled “Groundbreakers, Mavericks, and TrailBlazers: How Women are showing 21st Century Leadership,” John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute guest Sarah Palin spent her opening speech time on hitting all the key points a conservative Midland-Odessa wants to hear: American exceptionalism, attacks on President Barack Obama and foreign countries, praise of President Ronald Reagan, cleaning up the “good ol’ boys” system in Washington, D.C., and saying “screw political correctness.” Palin was the center of attention at the Wagner-Noël Performing Arts Center on Thursday evening. She spent the first half of the roughly 90-minute event speaking freely on...

It’s always a pleasure returning to the beautiful Lone Star State. This week I’m in Houston speaking with the industrious men and women of America’s oil patch at the North American Prospect Expo. These are the unsung heroes of our nation’s energy renaissance. In the brutal economic environment of the last six years, one sector had good news to report, and it came straight out of America’s oil patch. From 2007 to 2012, employment in the energy industry rose a dramatic 31.6 percent while employment nationwide fell 2.7 percent. U.S. oil production increased from 6.5 million barrels per day in...

Governor Palin wrote a great article for the Houston Tribune today loaded with a lot of good facts on energy.  She also notes an interesting flip flop from our president on the matter. It’s always a pleasure returning to the beautiful Lone Star State. This week I’m in Houston speaking with the industrious men and women of America’s oil patch at the North American Prospect Expo. These are the unsung heroes of our nation’s energy renaissance.In the brutal economic environment of the last six years, one sector had good news to report, and it came straight out of America’s oil patch. From...

Energy: While taking credit for increased oil and gas production on private and state lands, the president moves to put 12 million acres of the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off limits. OPEC and the Saudis are smiling. Whoever's in charge of presidential optics these days fits the classic definition of the blind leading the blind. It's bad enough that President Obama doesn't have time to get to Paris for a global protest against terrorism after the Charlie Hebdo attack but can meet and greet the San Antonio Spurs. But then he privately slams an invitation by Congress to Israeli...

Defining a politician’s personality, whether positively to build them up, or negatively to tear them down, is a basic rule of politics. Themes can define an image e.g. "Roosevelt's categorization of Al Smith as "The Happy Warrior" or Democrat folklore depicting William Jennings Bryan as "the Great Commoner" are two classic positive examples. On the negative side, Mitt Romney never recovered from being defined as "Mr. 1 percent", nor did John Kerry from being "Mr. Flip Flop." Once a politician is defined (fairly or unfairly doesn't enter into the picture) as say, Rick Perry was as a forgetful ditherer, it...

<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,”...