Free Republic

A recent email sums up the public’s concept of the electricity choice debate quite well. I have never understood anything about the “choice” question on electricity. What choice? I have lived in Michigan since 1996 and paid my electricity bill every month for the past 20 years. I’ve never had “choice.” I get a bill and it’s always Consumers Energy. I get that other people get Detroit Edison. But you don’t get a “choice.” That is real life for the vast majority of people and businesses in Michigan. A monthly electric bill arrives from one of the two big utilities...

Big bold Drudge lines [*h*] ... CIA PLANS CYBER STRIKE ON RUSSIA 'DEFCON WARNING UPGRADE' MOSCOW READY FOR WAR Obama wants to not only wag-the-dog, but who knows? A cyber-war could disrupt internet communications -- time to blind Trump supporters. And it all boils down to their bribe money to take out the Syrian government. Obama and Hillary want you to think that Bashar Assad is the very devil. In many ways he is. Worst of all is his defense of Christians and Jews so far as the Establishment thinks. ISIS is cool -- they enslave Christians and Jews for...

While OPEC and Russia are talking about freezing or even cutting crude oil production to restore the market balance – and pushing up prices in the process – rig drillers and manufacturers are struggling to make ends meet. It’s certainly been a tough couple of years for E&Ps in the U.S. and elsewhere, but it has been even tougher for drilling tech makers and contractors. For one, just like shale boomers, the drillers that made the boom possible have borrowed heavily, and are now facing the bill. For another, in order to survive when the price slide began, drillers seriously...

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s membership on the executive board of an energy company, Joule Unlimited, which received millions from a Putin-connected Russian government fund, also included “75,000 common shares,” according to an email exchang uncovered by the Wikileaks hacks. In the newly-uncovered email exchanged under the subject “Podesta Outstanding Docs for Joule,” Eryn Sepp, who was an assistant to Podesta at the Center for American Progress, forwarded a message to Podesta from Mark C. Solakian, who was Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Joule Unlimited Technologies, Inc. “It is my understanding that John transferred the resulting 75,000...

America’s first offshore wind power plant will cost about $17,600 dollars to build per home it will power. Three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, the wind farm is supposed to generate enough energy to power 17,000 homes, but will cost $300 million to build five turbines. This cost is just to build the turbines, not to operate them. The extremely high cost of offshore wind doesn’t worry environmentalists and progressives, however, because, as Salon.com says about the project, “it’s the precedent that counts.” Despite the extremely high cost, federal officials want to power a whooping 23...

Climate change activists shut off cross-border oil pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington on Tuesday. The activists broke in to unguarded valve stations and shut off the flow of oil before being arrested. Reuters reports: All they had to do was twist shut giant valves on five cross-border pipelines that together can send 2.8 million barrels a day of crude to the United States from Canada – equal to about 15 percent of daily U.S. consumption. The pipelines have valve stations every 20 miles, many of them in remote locations and protected by nothing more than a locked...

The U.S. has quite the penchant for creating celebrities. The manufactured stars that we already have at our disposal are never enough. Like Rice Krispie treats, you tell yourself “just one more,” but there is always the next YouTube sensation—or in this case, a private citizen who manages to pique our interest, at least for a news cycle or two. It’s just usually not in the energy industry. Meet the new man of the hour, Energy’s Latest Unsung Hero: Ken Bone, who was in attendance at Sunday night’s much anticipated presidential debate. The event was a town hall style debate,...

Moscow — Leaders of Turkey and Russia signed a long-delayed deal Monday to build the TurkStream gas pipeline under the Black Sea to deliver Russian gas to Europe's doorstep within three years. The rapid warming trend in Russo-Turkish relations holds deep implications for Syria's immediate crisis, which dominated the talks and the subsequent headlines, but the fallout from that pipeline deal is a potentially crushing blow to struggling pro-Western Ukraine and may be rearranging strategic realities around the region for many years to come. Analysts say that if TurkStream goes ahead it will enable Moscow to cut its former main...

Tesla’s Elon Musk struck back at Robert Murray, chief executive of Murray Energy Corp., after the latter called Tesla “a fraud” in an interview. In a tweet, Musk said the real fraud was denying “climate science” and went on to add that the subsidies Murray spoke against in his interview with CNBC were pennies on the dollar, unlike what Big Coal gets from the government. The reason Murray lashed out at Tesla, which was in an interview with CNBC, was because the company, according to him, had failed to generate a profit despite the subsidies it receives, but he went...

On September 11th, Libyan National Army (LNA) forces under General Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive on the oil facilities in Ras Lanuf, al-Sidr, Az-Zuwaytinah, and Berga in the Gulf of Sirte. Until that moment, the sites had been under the jurisdiction of the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), guided by Ibrahim Jadran. In Ras Lanuf and al-Sidr PFG officers surrendered without fighting and all the terminals have ended up under Haftar’s control. The vast majority of the operation was reportedly conducted by Sudanese and Chadian mercenaries. The Tobruk government, led by Abdullah al-Thani, expressed its full support of Haftar’s operation and...

Back in 2010, deep green environmentalist Rick Smith, then head of Environmental Defence Canada, hailed Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act regime as a cost-free operation that would catapult the province into the big leagues of renewable energy. Through fat subsidies and high prices offered to wind, solar and other renewable industry players, jobs and growth would boom and Ontario would be free of its dirty coal plants. It was the End of Coal, the government said. The birth of a renewable miracle. Asked whether the plan might lead to higher prices for consumers, “No,” said Dr. Smith —...

U.S. crude oil storage is filling up with unaccounted-for oil. There is a lot more oil in storage than the amount that can be accounted for by domestic production and imports. That’s a big problem since oil prices move up or down based on the U.S. crude oil storage report. Oil stocks in inventory represent surplus supply. Increasing or decreasing inventory levels generally push prices lower or higher because they indicate trends toward longer term over-supply or under-supply.

(Editors’ note: This column is co-authored by NCPA Research Associate Luke Twombly) The second presidential debate might mention that a Russian state newspaper predicted direct confrontation with the United States over Syria. Neither candidate will probably note that the escalation comes as solutions to protect America’s frighteningly vulnerable electric grid system languish on Capitol Hill. Each should be reminded that an increasingly popular target for U.S. adversaries sits largely unguarded. Thankfully, Texas can take the lead. As the only state with a self-contained grid, Texas finds itself in a remarkable position to protect the nation by protecting itself. The primary...

Ever since the 1973 oil embargo, U.S. energy policy has sought to replace petroleum-based transportation fuels with alternatives. One prominent option is using biofuels, such as ethanol, in place of gasoline and biodiesel instead of ordinary diesel. Transportation generates one-fourth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, so addressing this sector's impact is crucial for climate protection. Many scientists view biofuels as inherently carbon-neutral: They assume the carbon dioxide (CO2) plants absorb from the air as they grow completely offsets, or "neutralizes," the CO2 emitted when fuels made from plants burn. Many years of computer modeling based on this assumption, including work...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A Texas petroleum drilling company announced Tuesday it has made a large-scale oil . . .

Hillary Clinton has vowed to slash U.S. oil consumption in the next decade as part of an overall plan to shift the country to clean, renewable energy, but experts say her goal is probably impossible. The target — to cut U.S. oil consumption by a third by 2027 — is an example of Clinton's hard line on fossil fuels during the Democratic primary and the general election. But some of her tough talk leaves her considerable wiggle room and contrasts with her record while serving as America's top diplomat. That record includes a program to promote natural gas development overseas...

Hydropower has always been touted as a clean source of generating electricity, despite of the facts that it displaces thousands of people from their natural abodes, destroys their lives and livelihoods and submerges huge amounts of lands and forests. Now, a new study claims that it is also accelerating global warming. […] The study is done by Washington State University the has found that during times of drawdown — a period in which the water level behind a dam is rapidly lowered — temperate reservoirs can produce up 20 times more methane than normal. …

With oil prices continuing to languish below $50 per barrel, the major oil producers in the Middle East are seeing their financial positions deteriorate. To plug the gap in the government budgets, the Gulf States are having to turn to the international bond markets. Saudi Arabia plans on taking out $10 billion to $15 billion in debt from international financial markets, but a controversial piece of legislation passed by the U.S. Congress could complicate Saudi Arabia’s plans. Congress passed a bill that would allow the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its potential involvement....

The real reason energy companies are going bankrupt is more technical. Reserve base lending for unconventional reservoir projects became a ponzi scheme. This is how it works. Step 1) An oil company borrows money or issues equity to drill a well. Step 2) The well “discovers” oil. The reason I put discover in quotations is that the resource (not reserve, there is a difference) potential of shale source rocks has been known for decades. Step 3) Estimate the resource and reserve potential. NB: Resource is properly defined as uneconomic at the current price. Reserve is properly defined as economic at...

A Michigan state senator from the Upper Peninsula says the federal Environmental Protection Agency has done everything in its power to indirectly shut down a mine near Marquette. The issue is back in the news because a limited-government legal foundation announced last month it will represent the Marquette County Road Commission in a federal lawsuit against the EPA. The agency has blocked a plan to build a shortcut road to the Eagle Mine in the western Upper Peninsula. In a phone interview with Michigan Capitol Confidential this week, Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, suggested that the EPA’s real target in the...