Free Republic

Demonstrators gathered outside the Public Service Commission to protest against a requested rate structure change by the local utility company, Madison Gas and Electric (MG&E). During the protest, they decried the use of "dirty coal" and called for more renewable energy. To make their point, they had a blow-up coal power plant that was running on a fan powered by wind and solar charged batteries. Before the protest was over, however, the batteries died and their solar panel could not produce enough energy to keep the power plant standing upright.

The chief executive of French oil major Total, Christophe de Margerie, was killed when a business jet collided with a snow plow during takeoff at Moscow's Vnukovo International Airport, the company and airport officials said. The collision occurred late on Monday, just minutes before midnight Moscow time, the airport said in a statement. The Dassault Falcon business jet carrying de Margerie had been due to travel to Paris. ... De Margerie, 63, was on a list of attendees at a Russian government meeting on foreign investment in Gorki, near Moscow, on Monday. With his distinctive bushy moustache and outspoken manner,...

Despite an administration that has no energy policy, free market forces in the United States are finding a way to provide relief from high prices for an economy that greatly needs the respite. Oil prices are heading the right way for consumers even if the wrong way for the wildcatters, explorers and developers of domestic energy. It’s been planned that way.Now that the worldwide economy is slowing, Saudi Arabia is intent on testing American resolve to become energy independent. The oil-rich kingdom has decided on a price war—a method that would be illegal in the United States—to see if American...

Oil prices (along with prices of many other commodities) have fallen dramatically since last summer. Some observers are waiting to see if Saudi Arabia responds with significant cutbacks in production. I say, don’t hold your breath. When oil demand fell in the 1981-82 recession, the Saudis cut production by 6 million barrels a day in an effort to soften the decline in oil prices. They also cut production in response to lower demand in the 2001 recession and the most recent recession. On the other hand, the kingdom boosted production quickly beginning in August 1990 and January 2003 in anticipation...

Count Harold Hamm, the billionaire CEO of Continental Resources CLR +1.34%, as one oil man not worried about the plunge in crude prices to $82 a barrel. “Notice how it happened all at once,” he says, starting off our phone call. The suddenness of oil’s plunge followed the Saudi assertion a week ago that oil was in oversupply, they could live with $80 oil for a couple years, and didn’t plan to cut their own output. Empty talk, not market fundamentals, moved the price, says Hamm. ”It’s not supply-demand related.” On the contrary, “this is one country, the Saudis, attempting...

An Israeli firm will supply Egypt with natural gas, a company spokesman said Monday, more than two years after sabotage halted the flow of Egyptian gas to Israel. For more than a decade Israel relied on Egypt for roughly 40 percent of its gas needs in line with an export accord signed in 2005 by the two countries which are bound by a peace treaty. But in April 2012 Egypt annulled the contract, saying Israel had not met the financial obligations of the agreement, in a decision that came amid a spate of bomb attacks that targeted the pipeline used...

Stephen J. DUBNER: As you likely know, the American automobile company Tesla makes some of the most desirable–and expensive–electric cars in the world. The company is currently valued at roughly $31 billion. Compare that to the $55 billion market cap of the Ford Motor Company.Tesla, however, last year sold fewer than 25,000 cars while Ford sells more than 6 million vehicles a year, or roughly 240 vehicles for every single Tesla. Tesla currently has just one vehicle in production, the Model S luxury sedan. In the U.S. the starting price is a bit more than $70,000.Americans buy more Model S’s...

It appears the U.S. government has made a major release of oil reserves to deliberately affect the price of fuel prior to the elections.

About one-third of the natural gas North Dakota has produced in recent years has been flared rather than sold to customers or consumed on-site. The rapid growth in North Dakota oil production, which rose from more than 230,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in January 2010 to more than 1,130,000 bbl/d in August 2014, has led to increased volumes of associated gas, or natural gas that comes from oil reservoirs. These increased volumes require additional infrastructure to gather, process, and transport gas volumes instead of flaring them. These additions can take time to build, and well operators are often reluctant to...

The good citizens of Denton will be voting on Nov. 4 whether or not to ban hydraulic fracturing. They have been told by former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips the ban on fracturing is unconstitutional. “Under the Texas Constitution, I do not believe that a municipality may ban all oil and gas drilling within its borders,” former Chief Justice Phillips said during a hearing before the Denton City Council on July 15. He said the ban is incompatible with state law, and it amounts to a government taking of private property of many mineral interest owners and operators....

The US drilling rig count declined 12 units to settle at 1,918 rigs working during the week ended Oct. 17, Baker Hughes Inc. reported. BHI’s average US onshore rig count for the third quarter totaled 1,842 units, up 46 from the second quarter and up 133 from third-quarter 2013. The US onshore well count for the third quarter totaled 9,566, up 110 from the second quarter and up 491 from third-quarter 2013. Average US onshore drilling efficiencies dropped to 5.19, primarily caused by fewer wells/rig being generated in the Permian during the quarter, BHI indicated. The Permian accounted for 54%...

The collapse in oil prices is already a major cause of concern for countries heavily reliant on exports of the commodity. For some, it could be a matter of avoiding a severe recession. Here's why: For governments in oil-exporting countries to meet their spending commitments they need oil to remain above a certain price. With oil prices under $87 a barrel, countries that rely on high oil prices, including Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, may have a reason to be concerned. This chart shows the price per barrel that the six most exposed countries need to meet their national budgets....

Debbie Dooley is not a tree-hugger -- in fact she bills herself as a radical right-wing grandmother, and she is a founding member of the national Tea Party and a leader of the Atlanta Tea Party group. But Dooley is also an outspoken proponent of distributed solar generation and other forms of renewable distributed energy. She will be the featured speaker next week at the Wisconsin Solar Energy Industries Association’s Solar Social Speakers series -- as advocates in the state say solar is under attack by elected officials, regulators and major utilities. While in Wisconsin, Dooley will also visit a...

Targets for renewables are unattainable, futile – and will cost us trillions of pounds. Some time in this century, we reached a state of clever-silly unanimity over green policies, especially carbon emission controls and renewables targets. All parties (except five brave Tories voting against) voted for the second reading of the Climate Change Act in 2008. So, for some years, we humoured the climate-change lobby, and nodded our heads gravely when experts told us we must help save the planet. But most of us behaved like churchgoers listening to boring sermons. We accepted what we were told, on the unspoken...

Steep stock market corrections often create shrouds of pessimism that do bad things to people’s brainpower. And one of the absolutely stupidest things I have heard in recent weeks is that the recent drop in oil prices is bad. You heard me right. Serious people on financial television are saying lower oil prices are a signal of worldwide economic collapse. Here at home that translates to recession, deflation, a profits collapse and rising unemployment. I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve seldom heard such gibberish. The latest stock market scare stems from a bunch of fears — such as...

A new kind of solar cell could store electrical energy without any help from traditional batteries, according to a new study. Researchers at Ohio State University, in Columbus, have developed what they're calling the world's first solar battery — a hybrid device that combines the energy-capturing abilities of a solar cell with the energy-storing capabilities of a battery. The new cell could lower the cost of harvesting renewable energy from the sun by as much as 25 percent, according to the researchers. [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas] The key to the device's success is a mesh solar panel that allows...

There is nothing remotely surprising about the sharp fall in oil prices over the last four months, except perhaps the timing. The fundamental forces driving prices lower (rising supply outside OPEC from shale and sluggish demand growth as result of conservation and substitution) have been clearly visible for at least two years. "If the shale revolution can be sustained in the United States, and successfully exported to other countries, some combination of OPEC production cuts or lower oil prices to encourage demand and forestall more investment, will be inevitable by 2015-16," I wrote last year ("Saudi Arabia must decide response...

...Tesla’s stock promptly dropped 8%... At $2.99, the price to which gasoline had fallen at some California stations last week, electric cars becoming a mass-market taste and not just an item for wealthy hobbyists recedes from probability. If Democrats especially start to find it politically no longer saleable to subsidize a toy for the rich, the company may be in real trouble. Since World War I, the retail price of gasoline has fluctuated in a band between $2 and $4 (using 2006 dollars as a benchmark). Since the 1970s, though, politicians have repeatedly wedded themselves to policies premised on the...

Crude prices have plunged by more than 20% in recent months. The fall means cheaper gas, cheaper flights, and generally good news for American consumers. Oil prices have been falling for months, and the slide could easily continue. With unprecedented instability in the Middle East, how could this be happening? The answer, according to analysts who follow the market, is a little bit of everything, from economic fundamentals in big oil consuming countries to growth in output among some oil producers. But much more clear is the effect of tumbling prices: Low oil prices are the equivalent of a massive...

In case you were too consumed with Ebola news yesterday to notice this, here’s a belated FYI that America’s going to put the Middle East’s oil barons out of business before your grandkids are out of college. Assuming the Ebola doesn’t get us first, I mean. Lockheed has a webpage dedicated to its new breakthrough in compact fusion reactors but this write-up in Aviation Week is the most thorough explanation I’ve seen of how it would actually work. If I understand it correctly, which I probably don’t, the problem with current fusion reactors is that they’re too darned big and...