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The Obama administration said it would not authorize construction on a critical stretch of the Dakota Access pipeline, handing a significant victory to the Indian tribe fighting the project the same day the group lost a court battle. The administration said construction would halt until it can do more environmental assessments. The Department of Justice, the Army and the Interior Department jointly announced that construction would pause on the pipeline near North Dakota's Lake Oahe, a major water source on the Missouri River for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The agencies will now decide whether they need to reconsider permitting...

Bill Clinton Mocks “The Coal People” Who Oppose Hillary

Speaking in Homewood, PA on Friday, Bill Clinton criticized the “coal people” in West Virginia for supporting Donald Trump .“We all know how [Hillary’s] opponent has done well down in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky,” the former president told the crowd at the Greater Pittsburgh Coliseum. “The coal people don’t like any of us [Democrats] anymore.” Clinton added that “they all voted for me. I won twice, and they did well.” “They blame the president when the sun doesn’t come up in the morning now.”

An overlooked corner of West Texas is believed to contain billions of barrels of newly-discovered shale oil. Apache (APA) revealed the huge find this week after more than two years of stealthily buying up land, extensive geological research and rigorous testing. ... Apache believes the new shale play spans at least five formations, contains over three billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of rich natural gas.

In mid-January, everyone's favorite market indicator Dennis Gartman, made an infamous prediction when oil was trading in the mid-$30s, when he said that oil won't hit $44 again "in my lifetime" Sure enough, three months later, oil "killed" Gartman, or at least his credibility, when it jumped above $44. We thought that Gartman had learned his lesson, and would avoid such bombastic forecasts in the future. Turns out we were wrong, and earlier today Gartman again appeared on CNBC, where he said that "investors shouldn't expect the commodity to break through $55 for a few years."

Is the electric car the inevitable wave of the future? Is the internal combustion engine finished, through, a relic of the 20th century—as many are now saying? I have argued before that electric cars are overhyped. I calculated that the Tesla, for example, is still a really bad deal when you compare its substantial extra costs against the cost of operating a similar gasoline-powered car over five or ten years. But what if I'm wrong? For example, how much of that calculation is due to the inflated cost of a Tesla, which uses all of the positive publicity lavished on...

Mines are closing and the coal industry is facing a run of bankruptcies and other bad news, but a company backed by a $90 million investment is defying conventional wisdom by preparing to open two new mines in Appalachia, the hardest-hit coal region. The mines in West Virginia and Virginia will create some 400 jobs in counties where unemployment ranges close to three times the national average, Ramaco Development CEO Randall Atkins told The Associated Press. "It's a fairly big deal, frankly, for southern West Virginia," Atkins said....

New Mexico and Texas oil companies and communities say they will warn Saudi Arabia and Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to stop overproduction of oil and lowering prices as a strategy to slow or shut them down, or face import quotas. Independent oil companies with the Panhandle Initiative to Reduce Imports (PIRI) will hold an industry and public rally from 11:30 a.m. – 2 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27, at the Pecos River Village Convention Center, 711 Muscatel Ave., Carlsbad. Lunch and admission are free. Southwest and Rocky Mountain oil producers say they feel they are under OPEC and...

This Labor Day, America has 83,000 fewer coal jobs and 400 coal mines than it did when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, showing that the president has followed through on his pledge to “bankrupt” the coal industry. A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama’s first term. During Obama’s second term, the industry employment in coal mining has fallen by another 33,300 jobs, 10,900 of which occurred in the last year alone, according to federal data. Currently, coal mining employs 69,460 Americans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Much of...

Three years ago, Wood Mackenzie reported on how water scarcity could impact global energy industries, from North American shale gas to Middle Eastern desalination. An updated report from Wood Mackenzie and Verisk Maplecroft finds the risks are greater in 2016, yet the market opportunity to address them remains largely untapped. In the U.S., for example, water costs for gas wells that use hydraulic fracturing doubled from 2012 to 2016, according to the latest report....

BISMARCK, N.D. — A protest of a four-state, $3.8 billion oil pipeline turned violent after tribal officials say construction crews destroyed American Indian burial and cultural sites on private land in southern North Dakota. Morton County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Donnell Preskey said four private security guards and two guard dogs were injured after several hundred protesters confronted construction crews Saturday afternoon at the site just outside the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. One of the security officers was taken to a Bismarck hospital for undisclosed injuries. The two guard dogs were taken to a Bismarck veterinary clinic, Preskey said.

What’s at issue is the pace of extraction, the means of shipment (rail or pipe), the degree and nature of carbon offsets, access to markets, and consequently the price. Currently, Texas-bound Canadian heavy crude trades at a discount to the global price. De facto, the United States has in Canada a captive supplier. Former prime minister Stephen Harper threatened, after President Barack Obama shelved the Keystone XL pipeline project in 2012, to sell our oil to China instead.... Here’s why this matters, particularly in light of Trudeau’s signature promise to boost property for Canada’s middle class: The resource economy, mineral...

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has some advice for Hillary Clinton: Tax fossil fuels. Stiglitz, who is an adviser to Clinton, says taxing carbon would be the best way to address climate change -- and boost the U.S. economy. The move would immediately lead to higher prices for oil, gas and coal. It would also hike the cost of anything that uses those fuels such as electricity and transportation. The goal is to force Americans to find alternatives that are cheaper and better for the planet. Taxes typically hinder the economy, but Stiglitz believes this one would help. "I...

The Saudis counted them out. So did the Russians, even many domestic analysts said North American shale and tight oil and gas production would decline in the face of low prices and that investment would dry up and output would fall. Well, guess what? They have all been proven wrong. Sure, rig counts have dropped and there have been painful layoffs of workers, but the industry is surviving and against all the “experts” advice, production of natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shales of the U.S. Northeast is averaging 22.63 billion cubic feet per day in August,

If a pair of extreme green ballot measures fall in the Rocky Mountains and no one in the liberal media is paying attention, does the collapse make a sound? This week, two anti-fracking initiatives backed by deep-pocketed environmental lobbying heavyweights, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, failed to gather enough signatures. The more draconian of the efforts, Initiative 78, would have imposed a mandatory 2,500-foot setback around all oil and gas operations -- essentially halting drilling in upward of 95 percent of Colorado's energy-rich land area. These drastic attempts to sabotage the oil and gas industry didn't just miss...

Service awarded $334 million contract for solar power without proper controls The U.S. Navy handed out a $334 million contract for solar power without having a good way to determine whether the project would be cost effective. The Pentagon’s inspector general recently audited three of the Navy’s large-scale renewable energy projects at installations supervised by the U.S. Pacific Command, finding that federal employees tasked with carrying out cost-effectiveness assessments of these projects did not have the documentation to back up their calculations or conclusions. The Navy has not provided “comprehensive guidance” for evaluating the cost effectiveness of the six large-scale...

These days, the trend is not Pemex’s friend. Mexico’s loss-leading, debt-swamped, state-owned oil giant company announced that in July it had imported 554,000 barrels of oil a day — its highest monthly volume of imports since public records began in 1990. In total, two-thirds of all the oil Mexico consumed in July was imported — a staggering statistic for a country that until not so long ago was home to one of the largest oil fields in the world, the Cantarell. Pemex also acknowledged that its crude production fell a further 5% in July while its natural gas production shrunk...

Colorado officials identified “several potentially forged signature lines” on a failed ballot anti-fracking ballot measure pushed by environmental activists to restrict drilling inside state lines. Officials said “No. 78,” a measure calling for a 2,500-foot setback on hydraulic fracturing, may have had forged signatures, and Colorado State Department officials “referred the questionable section to the Attorney General’s office for investigation.” Secretary of State Wayne Williams announced Monday that “two proposed ballot measures aimed at adding more limitations on oil and natural gas drilling in Colorado failed to make the November ballot because supporters didn’t collect enough valid voter signatures.” Both...

Venezuela has not been able to import all the crude and fuel it needs this year to cover shortfalls at oilfields and refineries as state-run PDVSA struggles to pay suppliers on time, according to trade sources and internal company data seen exclusively by Reuters. The decline is the largest in five years as the worst economic crisis in decades undermines PDVSA's ability to buy oil imports, which fell 21 percent in the first seven months of this year to 154,465 barrels per day (bpd), the data showed. Venezuela is also on track to suffer its steepest annual oil output drop...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Jerry Brown took a strong stand against coal on Friday, approving an East Bay lawmaker's bill to ban state funding for coal-related projects. In signing state Sen. Loni Hancock's bill, the governor also praised the Oakland City Council for voting to ban transportation of the ore through its city and encouraged other cities to do the same. "Other localities should follow suit -- and the state should, too -- to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate the shipment of coal through all California ports, Brown wrote in a signing message.