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Turkey and Turkish Cyprus signed a deal on Wednesday in New York to establish a ground for offshore gas exploration in a move set to escalate the already high regional tensions over Mediterranean energy reserves and border issues. On Tuesday, the Greek Cypriot administration confirmed that drilling had begun in a southeastern offshore block, adjoining a gas field in Israeli waters reputed to be the world's largest gas reserves find of the past decade. With the latest agreement the ethnic Turkish northern half of Cyprus, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, marked its marine borders with Turkey and will issue licenses...

Russia has sent two nuclear-powered submarines to patrol Eastern Mediterranean waters around Cyprus and enforce the island's right to explore for undersea oil and gas in its territorial seas, according to information from Defencenet.gr, citing a Russian FM spokesman.

As regional powers attempt to rise, other regional powers will react. This is particularly true in this era of globalization. Turkey is now riding a learning curve. Here is how the latest is unfolding. Turkey warned Thursday it will declare a border on the continental shelf if the island of Cyprus proceeds with offshore oil and gas drilling activities. The Foreign Ministry's announcement came a day after Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias announced that U.S. firm Noble Energy will soon begin exploratory drilling to confirm deposits beneath the sea bed off Cyprus' southern coast despite Turkey's attempts to prevent such a...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad overshadowed his legitimacy. In a televised interview with the Al-Jazeera, Prime Minister Erdogan said, "when we came to the political power nine years ago, there was a 30-year resentment between Turkey and Syria. We made great efforts to improve relations with Syria with which we share 910 kilometres of border. We always proposed al-Assad to release political prisoners, make constitutional amendments and start multiparty system. Unfortunately, none of these reforms were made. I paid a visit to Aleppo earlier this year. I told al-Assad that we were...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said economic isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) should be ended. Putin has signaled for concrete steps to be taken in this regard. Russian President hosting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an "honorary guest" in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi noted, the "meaningless" embargo imposed on TRNC must be lifted and his country will have direct contacts with both the Turkish and Greek Cypriot societies on the island. The two leaders emphasized their opinions overlapped on many issues. "The first thing we must do is to solve the problem...

German lawmakers approved a law that essentially bans fracking, ending years of dispute over the controversial technology to release oil and gas locked deep underground. The text approved on Friday does not outlaw conventional drilling for oil and gas, but leaves it up to state governments to decide on individual cases. But fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, which is carried out by blasting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals underground to release shale oil and gas, will be banned. …

TransCanada Corp is formally requesting arbitration over U.S. President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, seeking $15 billion in damages, the company said in legal papers dated Friday. TransCanada submitted a notice for an arbitration claim in January and had then tried to negotiate with the U.S. government to “reach an amicable settlement,” the company said in files posted on the pipeline’s website. “Unfortunately, the parties were unable to settle the dispute.” TransCanada said it then filed its formal arbitration request under North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provisions, seeking to recover what it says are costs and...

Many oil companies succumb to the pressure from environmental activists and the media and join the fight against ‘climate change,’ or at least make motions to appear to do so. Not Exxon Mobil. In a previous column, I applauded CEO Rex Tillerson for refusing to climb on the climate change band wagon and for focusing on producing energy from fossil fuels—on which all of us depend—instead. Tillerson and Exxon have not lost their integrity: they are steadfastly holding on to the principles they know their existence and successful value creation depend on, such as the right to liberty, and more...

The meltdown of California’s cap-and-trade system of reducing carbon emissions has not only thrown its climate change crusade into disarray but caused collateral damage. One victim is Gov. Jerry Brown’s $3.1 billion plan to spend auction proceeds, now on indefinite hold. It not only affects a $500 million allocation for Brown’s bullet train project, but another $500 million for “low carbon transportation and fuels.” The latter is a centerpiece of Brown’s very ambitious drive to reduce petroleum use in auto travel – the largest single source of California’s carbon emissions – by 50 percent by 2030 even though the Legislature...

In the latest rebuke of the Obama administration’s expansive view of executive power, a federal judge has struck down the Interior Department’s effort to regulate fracking for oil and natural gas. Judge Scott Skavdahl of the District Court of Wyoming already had put a hold on the regulations last year, and in a decision released late Tuesday, he ruled that Congress did not give Interior the power to regulate hydraulic fracturing, indeed it had expressly withheld that power with some narrow exceptions.

The entire Los Angeles metropolitan area and most of Southern California can expect blackouts this summer. The power grid is under direct threat as a result of the unprecedented, but little reported, massive natural gas leaks at Alisco Canyon that was ongoing for four months as an intense summer heat wave sets in. According to Reuters: California will have its first test of plans to keep the lights on this summer… With record-setting heat and air conditioning demand expected in Southern California, the state’s power grid operator issued a so-called "flex alert," urging consumers to conserve energy to help prevent...

March for Environmental Hope A real thing, Jimmy. If truth is stranger than fiction, it should come as no surprise that Friday marks the start of the first-ever pro-nuclear power march — probably in world history — and it all starts in San Francisco. The March for Environmental Hope, a four-day trek from the City by the Bay to Sacramento, is being pitched as a family-friendly event — and in this case that means more than funnel cakes and bounce houses. Organizers are hoping to tug on the collective heart strings of America by making this about the children, as...

Now that many environmentalists and climate scientists have realized that nuclear energy is essential for addressing global warming, a coalition of environmental groups is sponsoring a multi-day March for Environmental Hope in California in support of nuclear power

The ITER fusion reactor will fire up for the first time in December 2025, the €18-billion project’s governing council confirmed today. The date for “first plasma” is 5 years later than under the old schedule, and to get there the council is asking the project partners—China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States—to cough up an extra €4 billion ($4.5 billion). “It is expected, if there are no objections, that we can approve [the schedule] by November and then we can move forward,” says ITER director general Bernard Bigot. ITER aims to show that it...

One of the lingering fights between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is over whether to ban fracking or simply regulate it more heavily. The Hill reports that fight is now continuing as the Democratic platform committee debates the party’s approach to energy: “I think it could be a tension point, but I think it’s a good tension point,” said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica, who will testify before the committee this week.

NorthWestern Energy is asking Montana to pull the plug on solar projects, at least until the utility can get better terms from the state on ones it legally can’t refuse. The utility, which provides electricity to half of Montana, told Montana’s Public Service Commission on June 9 that the mandated price it must pay to small commercial solar projects of 3 megawatts or less is too high and hurting consumers. The projects, known as qualifying facilities, or QFs have been popping up like dandelions because Montana’s guaranteed rate is too generous, according to the utility.

Whoever wins the race to the White House is going to have to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin from day one. Hopefully, the next U.S. president will learn from the mistakes of the past. One of the biggest foreign policy follies of the Obama administration was the so-called Russian “reset”. In March 2009 Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov symbolically, if not awkwardly, pressed a “reset” button—to demonstrate a fresh start to U.S.-Russian relations.

Police in a U.S. town bordering Mexico have apprehended an undocumented, Middle Eastern woman in possession of the region’s gas pipeline plans, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. Authorities describe the woman as an “Islamic refugee” pulled over during a traffic stop by a deputy sheriff in Luna County, New Mexico which shares a 54-mile border with Mexico. County authorities alerted the U.S. Border Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) has been deployed to the area to investigate, sources with firsthand knowledge of the probe confirm. The gas pipeline plans in the woman’s...

Launch unlikely to boost uranium prices in near term************************************************ The U.S. saw a nuclear reactor come online this month for the first time in 20 years, and more are set to follow—proving that nuclear power is alive and well in a post-Fukushima disaster world.

With prices set to double by 2018, we’ve seen the bottom of the uranium market, and the negative sentiment that has followed this resource around despite strong fundamentals, is starting to change. Billionaire investors sense it, and they’re always the first to anticipate change and take advantage of the rally before it becomes a reality. The turning point is where all the money is made, and there are plenty of indications that the uranium recovery is already underway. It’s been a very tough few years for uranium. But it now looks like we’ve reached the bottom, and the future demand...