Free Republic

In another move to free up domestic energy supplies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at lifting the Obama administration’s offshore drilling restrictions.For decades, bad policies have blocked access to America’s abundance of domestic resources, yet America has still managed to be a global energy leader. Trump’s executive order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” could unleash further success in the energy sector.The economic potential sitting just off America’s coasts is enormous. The Outer Continental Shelf is awash with natural resources, containing an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.Realizing...

A top adviser to President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to throw the administration’s support behind a proposed controversial liquefied national gas terminal in Oregon that had been rejected by regulators during the Obama administration. “The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to permit an LNG export facility in the Northwest,” said Gary Cohn, chair of the White House National Economic Council. “Just think of the transport time from the Northwest to Japan versus anywhere else. Then we’ve got to put facilities on the East Coast to get from the East Coast to Germany.” “The one place...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled against an American oil drilling company that claimed Venezuela unlawfully seized 11 drilling rigs in 2010. Siding with Venezuela, the justices ruled 8-0, with Justice Neil Gorsuch not participating, to throw out a 2015 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Boulder - Remember that unsuccessful attempt in the legislature to toughen penalties for vandalizing oil and gas equipment? Child’s play. It turns out the author of a letter to the editor in Boulder’s Daily Camera that got a national media mention last week — for appearing to endorse outright violence against fracking operations — is the author of a pending statewide ballot issue to hike Colorado’s severance tax on oil and gas production. Reached by phone today, Andrew O’Connor, of Lafayette, unapologetically reiterated his hardline stance ... “I wouldn’t have a problem with a sniper shooting one of the workers”...

Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told Breitbart News that she welcomes President Trump’s executive order aimed at lifting the ban on offshore drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic and Atlantic areas. Governor Palin said, “Quashing Obama’s anti-American energy plan makes America great again. We’ve been working for years to remind people that our exceptional nation came to be by developing our God-given natural resources and by expecting reward for an unsurpassed work ethic. We capture that again when we drill, baby, drill!” Trump’s executive order directs the U.S. Department of the Interior to...

Scientists have just discovered massive amounts of a rare metal called tellurium, a key element in cutting-edge solar technology. As a solar expert who specialises in exactly this, I should be delighted. But here’s the catch: the deposit is found at the bottom of the sea, in an undisturbed part of the ocean. People often have an idealised view of solar as the perfect clean energy source. Direct conversion of sunlight to electricity, no emissions, no oil spills or contamination, perfectly clean. This however overlooks the messy reality of how solar panels are produced. While the energy produced is indeed...

Drill, baby, drill! It seems like months ago now - wait, it was months ago - that the one-foot-out-the-door Barack Obama was pushing through as many executive orders as he could in an attempt to lock in liberal policies after he left office. One of the worst, which we reported at the time, put severe limits on offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans - and there was some question as to whether President Trump would have the authority to reverse the orders once he took office. I suppose nothing is ever truly over until left-wing federal judges weigh...

Working to dismantle his predecessor’s environmental legacy, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday aimed at expanding drilling in the Arctic and opening other federal areas to oil and gas exploration. With one day left to rack up accomplishments before he reaches his 100th day in office, Trump signed an order reversing some of former President Barack Obama’s restrictions and instructing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review a plan that dictates which federal locations are open to offshore drilling. It’s part of Trump’s promise to unleash the nation’s energy reserves in an effort to reduce reliance on foreign...

President Trump on Friday is expected to sign an executive order that could open large parts of the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans to new oil and gas drilling, a prospect that elicited a fierce backlash in California and elsewhere even before details of the order were clear. The move, which is certain to face legal and political challenges, could undo a plan finalized late in President Obama’s second term that sought to limit fossil fuel development and fight climate change by not including new drilling leases off the coast of California or Alaska during the current five-year federal offshore...

•President Donald Trump will instruct the Interior Department to revise the Obama administration's five-year plan for developing federal waters. •His executive order will tell the Commerce Department to refrain from naming or expanding marine sanctuaries and review existing ones. •Trump will seek to overturn President Barack Obama's effort to indefinitely put much of U.S. Arctic waters and part of the Atlantic off limits to drillers. President Donald Trump on Friday will instruct his cabinet officials to take actions that will potentially open new areas of federally administered waters to energy development. The actions, to be spelled out in a new...

Conservative groups wrote a letter to Congress Tuesday asking lawmakers on the appropriations committee to eliminate a solar subsidy program worth $270 million. Conservatives want Congress to pull funding from the Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative, citing recent investigations that found the program provided subsidies for rooftop solar power. The letter calls SunShot the “ground zero of the solar subsidy machine,” arguing that it gives out millions of dollars in subsidies through net metering programs. Such programs force utilities to buy the electricity from rooftop solar panels at up to six times the market price, effectively forcing non-solar residents to pay...

The U.S. Department of Energy has signed an order authorizing Golden Pass Products to export domestically produced LNG to countries that do not have a free trade agreement with the U.S. Golden Pass is jointly owned by Qatar Petroleum (70 percent) and ExxonMobil (30 percent). The authorization allows for the export of up to the equivalent of 2.21 billion cubic feet of LNG per day (Bcf/d) from the Golden Pass Terminal near Sabine Pass, in Jefferson County, Texas. Golden Pass estimates the construction of its facility will provide 45,000 direct and indirect jobs over five years, and the project will...

Where is the richest county in the nation in terms of average gross income? For a long time now if you’d have guessed one of the collar counties around the nation’s capitol you’d have been correct. You’d also likely be forgiven for suggesting one of the bedroom communities around the Big Apple in Connecticut and New York. They’re traditional magnets for money. But according to Time Magazine, the latest figures show that wealth has begun to aggregate somewhere new and it’s far, far to the west. One county in Texas is now at the top of the heap and...

April 22 is Earth Day, the March for Science and Lenin’s birthday (which many say is appropriate, since environmentalism is now green on the outside and red, anti-free enterprise on the inside). April 29 will feature the People’s Climate March.The Climate March website says these forces of “The Resistance” intend to show President Trump they will fight his hated energy agenda every step of the way. Science March organizers say they won’t tolerate anyone who tries to “skew, ignore, misuse or interfere with science.”After eight years of government policies that killed jobs and economic growth – and skewed, ignored, misused,...

Britain went a full day without using coal to generate electricity for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the National Grid says. The energy provider said Friday's lack of coal usage was a "watershed" moment. Britain's longest continuous energy period without coal until now was 19 hours - first achieved last May, and again on Thursday. The government plans to phase out Britain's last plants by 2025 in order to cut carbon emissions. Friday is thought to be the first time the nation has not used coal to generate electricity since the world's first centralised public coal-fired generator opened...

Guest post by David Middleton THE 240MWE FACILITY IS THE LARGEST POST-COMBUSTION CARBON CAPTURE PROJECT IN THE WORLD WASHINGTON, D.C. — Secretary of Energy Rick Perry took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony today to mark the opening of Petra Nova, the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture project, which was completed on-schedule and on-budget. The large-scale demonstration project, located at the W.A. Parish power plant in Thompsons, Texas, is a joint venture between NRG Energy (NRG) and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation (JX).“I commend all those who contributed to this major achievement,” said Secretary Perry. “While the Petra Nova...

Oil slumped to a two-week low on Wednesday, after U.S. data showed a smaller-than-expected drop in overall crude stocks and a surprising build in gasoline inventories, which raised worries about excessively high global supply. U.S. crude futures settled down $1.97 to $50.44 a barrel, a 3.8 percent drop, the worst-one day decline since March 8, as investors bailed out of long positions in response to the bearish inventory figures.

After years of creating headaches for the oil-and-gas industry, the greater sage grouse is now standing in the way of renewable energy. The U.S. District Court in Portland on Wednesday killed a major wind-energy project slated for southeast Oregon over concerns about its impact on a local sage grouse population in a victory for environmental groups, which had fought the proposal for years. The 104-megawatt project, which would have spread up to 70 wind turbines and a transmission line across 10,500 acres in rural Harney County, was decried by environmentalists as an “industrial scale wind development” that would have disrupted...

Using a proprietary app called ­iSteer, Brian Tapp, a geologist for EOG Resources, dashed off instructions to a drilling rig 160km away. This tool is among the reasons the little-known Midland, Texas, company says it pumps more oil from the continental US than Exxon Mobil, or any other producer.A rig worker received Mr Tapp’s iPhone alert and tweaked the trajectory of a drill bit thousands of feet underground, to land more squarely in a sweet spot of rock filled with West Texas crude.US shale drillers transformed the energy industry over the past decade with hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, in...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suggested Exxon Mobil is "crazy" in response to a report that the oil giant is seeking a waiver to resume projects in Russia. "Are they crazy?" McCain tweeted Wednesday with a link to the Wall Street Journal's report.