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Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has asked one of America's most ardent drilling advocates and climate change skeptics to help him draft his energy policy. U.S. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota - a major oil drilling state - is writing a white paper on energy policy for the New York billionaire, Cramer and sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Cramer was also among a group of Trump advisers who recently met with lawmakers from western energy states, who hope Trump will open more federal land for drilling, a lawmaker who took part in the meeting said. Cramer...

Oil and gas industry groups on Thursday sued federal agencies over revisions to land management plans in Colorado and other western states to protect the greater sage-grouse. The Western Energy Alliance and the North Dakota Petroleum Council filed the suit in North Dakota, saying the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service failed to follow proper procedures for public involvement in adopting the land use plan amendments. They also say the plans ignore sound science and will hurt western economies. Plan revisions being challenged include ones in northwest Colorado, where greater sage-grouse habitat substantially overlaps with oil and gas...

Top Republican donors may be taking their time flocking to Donald Trump, but a prominent billionaire is on board: energy and hedge fund magnate T. Boone Pickens. Pickens, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a hedge fund conference in Las Vegas, said he talked to Trump Monday and confirmed to the New York billionaire and presumptive nominee he'd support his candidacy.

Crude oil futures rose 3.5 percent in mid-afternoon trading on Wednesday, following official data earlier in the day showing a 3.4-million drop in crude inventories and a fall in crude output to 8.8 million barrels per day, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2014. June deliveries of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) were up US$1.57, or 3.5 percent, settling at US$46.23 per barrel on the New York exchange. This jump is higher than any closing price the commodity has seen since November of last year.

It might not be a great time to start offshore drilling, with oil prices as depressed as they are, but it might just be a great time to buy an offshore drilling rig for a cut-rate price—in fact, you might be able to get one for only one tenth of what they cost in 2011. This is the cost coup recently pulled off by Ocean Rig, a company controlled by shipping billionaire George Economou, who has landed a drillship—the Cerrado—for only US$65 million at auction, which represents less than 10 percent of the estimated price when it was built over...

Shell has evacuated nearly 100 essential oil personnel from a major production facility in the Niger Delta, following a series of attacks from a newly formed militant group that has vowed to renew the fight abandoned after a 2009 amnesty deal. Some 98 Shell personnel were airlifted from the Shell-operated Eja Oml 79 oil production facility in the Niger Delta over the weekend, bringing into question the facility’s 90,000 barrel-per-day production capacity. The facility is run by Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Corporation). The evacuations come after militants of the Niger Delta Avengers attacked an offline oil platform...

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In a surprise move, Saudi Arabia sacked its long-time oil minister over the weekend, an event that illustrates the near-total control that the new young Saudi prince has obtained over the country’s energy industry. For many years, Ali al-Naimi, the outgoing Saudi oil minister, was the voice of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry and policy. Even seemingly insignificant remarks from al-Naimi could move oil prices up or down. But the 80-year old oil minister has seen his power eclipsed by the 30-year old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In April, when al-Naimi was forced to backtrack on the Doha oil...

Libyan officials attached to the government in Tripoli are warning that the country will have to halt the majority of its output from southeastern fields within a month’s time as the Hariga port remains under blockade over an export dispute between rival governments. Fields in the south-east which provide the majority of the Libyan oil output will be shut down in a month unless blockade on the Mediterranean Sea terminal Marsa el-Hariga if lifted, officials in Tripoli have warned on Tuesday. Factions loyal to the eastern government in Tobruk, and the parallel National Oil Company in Benghazi, have been in...

But we believe the period of excessively high oil prices has come to an end. The international spread of two revolutions will assure much ampler oil supplies, and will deliver prices far below the highs that reigned between the end of 2010 and mid-2014.

When the price of oil drops, so does the cost of gasoline. But while people are enjoying paying lower prices at gasoline pumps, plunges in oil prices can cause economic damage in Texas. And it can put American oil producers out of business when the price of foreign oil imports gets cheaper than the costs of extracting oil from the ground in the U.S.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Oil drilling companies and royalty owners from the Texas Panhandle to New Mexico's stretch of the Permian Basin are embarking on a grass-roots campaign to limit foreign oil imports, salvaging what they say is a major sector of the U.S. economy. "American oil is competing against a cartel of government operators which has a stated initiative of driving an American industry out of business," said Tom Cambridge, one of the Panhandle producers leading the campaign. The grass-roots movement is pushing for the next president of the United States to issue a proclamation setting quotas for imports...

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia, crimped by low crude prices, approved Monday a long-term blueprint for the kingdom’s economic transformation aimed at reducing its dependence on oil. The multiyear plan, dubbed “Saudi Vision 2030,” was approved by the cabinet, according to Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman. The Saudi cabinet, in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the government’s economic council would be in charge of overseeing the vision’s implementation. Saudi officials later Monday were to present a broad overview of the country’s most extensive economic shake-up in decades. The steep drop in oil prices has given new urgency to...

To the casual observer, Saudi Arabia might seem like an emboldened nation that is asserting itself. They’ve been challenging Iran, fighting rebels in Yemen, threatening to invade Syria, and if some rumors are to be believed, they are currently trying to attain nuclear missiles from Pakistan. However, these aren’t the actions of a stable nation that is asserting its dominance in the region. These are the flailing death throes of a nation that is struggling to hang on. Ever since global oil prices started to plummet, Saudi Arabia just hasn’t been the same. That’s no surprise. Since prices fell, other...

The end of Ali al-Naimi's more than two-decade tenure as Saudi Arabia's oil minister signals a new era for crude markets, analysts said on Saturday, and appeared to be a reaffirmation of Saudi policy to let oil set its own pricing. On Saturday, Saudi Arabia issued a royal decree that replaced al-Naimi with Khalid al-Falih, chairman of Saudi Aramco, as part of a broad reshuffling of the cabinet. The move came as the world's largest oil producer continues to grapple with the fallout from the global bear market in crude oil. Al Naimi was the most watched figure in the...

Life isn’t much fun these days in the world’s socialist paradise. If you had to choose a country you didn’t want to live in, Venezuela would be near the top of the list. Corrupt, dysfunctional, bankrupt, crime-ridden, drug-infested, short of practically every basic commodity, it can’t keep the lights on, keep the government running or brew its own beer. Last weekend six army officers were arrested for stealing goats from a farm because they were hungry. Venezuela has become the basket case of the western hemisphere, a case study on how not to run a country and a living example...

Saudi Arabia's King Salman on Saturday replaced his veteran oil minister and restructured some big ministries in a major reshuffle apparently intended to support a wide-ranging economic reform programme unveiled last week. The most eye-catching move was the creation of a new Energy, Industry and Natural Resources Ministry under Khaled al-Falih, chairman of the state oil company Aramco. He replaces the 80-year-old oil minister Ali al-Naimi, in charge of energy policy at the world's biggest oil exporter since 1995. But major changes were also made to the economic leadership, with Majed al-Qusaibi named head of the new Commerce and Investment...

America’s uranium industry has been absolutely devastated by Department of Energy decisions and political maneuvering by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and individuals closely tied to her. ... in 1976, the uranium extraction industry employed 35,000 people. Today .. fewer than 500 people in this country are involved in it .. 20 percent of our electrical power is dependent on those 500 people, that’s every fifth light-bulb. We’re now producing enough uranium to power 4 or 5 of our nuclear reactors, that’s 94 dependent on foreign uranium. ... Since 2011, DOE has sold off roughly $1 billion of publicly-owned uranium...

She-Who-Must-Not-Be-President ran into a dust-up in coal country last week. Sitting across a table for a media photo-op, an unemployed coal worker put the former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator from New York and First Lady on the hot seat. Strange as it might seem, the folks in West Virginia don’t much cotton to politicians intent on tossing them out of work. No matter how many government handouts those politicians promise. At a CNN town hall in March, Hillary Clinton boasted: “I’m the only candidate which [sic] has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity — using clean...

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on Saturday took to Twitter to praise workers in the Teamster union and attack Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. The union has not made an endorsement in the election so far, but typically backs Democratic candidates. Trump appeared to be referring to a series of "Teamsters for Trump" groups on Facebook, several of which has members numbering in the thousands. NPR reported this week on Teamsters member who normally back Democrats but prefer Trump this election.