Free Republic

SINGAPORE - More than 300 large dry cargo ships are having to wait outside Chinese and Australian ports in a maritime traffic jam that spotlights bottlenecks in China’s huge and global commodity supply chain as demand peaks this winter. With some vessels waiting to load coal and iron ore outside Australian ports for over a month, key charter rates have jumped to their highest in more than three years. Placed end-to-end, the total delayed fleet would stretch more than 40 miles, enough to span the English Channel from Dover to Calais and back. Charter rates for a 180,000 DWT capesize...

For the first time in years, there is an emerging consensus that the biggest racket in national politics deserves to end. Earlier this month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and 10 other Republican senators held a luncheon summit at the White House with President Trump with the goal of drastically reforming the Renewable Fuel Standard, the federal mandate that annually funnels $13.5 billion from the wallets of American fuel and food consumers into the coffers of agribusiness giants. Before the national nightmare of Obamacare, there was the RFS, the most sweeping and intrusive federal intervention in the American economy undertaken in...

Despite setback, TransCanada says it is still committedNebraska regulators on Tuesday shot down a request from TransCanada to reconsider the proposed path of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, the latest in a series of setbacks for the $8 billion project and one that leaves its future very much in doubt. Nebraska’s Public Service Commission (PSC) last month green-lighted a route through its state, but the approved path wasn’t the one TransCanada prefers. The Canadian company, which has been trying to complete the Canada-to-Texas project for the past decade, said it would ask Nebraska officials to rethink their decision and amend...

The Georgia Public Service Commission on Thursday is set to decide the fate of Plant Vogtle, the only nuclear reactor under construction in the U.S., which is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. At Thursday’s hearing, a commission made of five elected officials, all Republicans, will vote on whether to permit Georgia Power’s new plan for the project, which includes an updated cost projection and construction timeline, or to cancel it. Georgia Power is estimating $12.2 billion in costs for its 45.7 percent share of the project, and for the reactors to be producing electricity by 2021...

The Trump administration is preparing to unveil as soon as this week expansive offshore oil plan that would open the door to selling new drilling rights in Atlantic waters, according to people familiar with the plan… President Donald Trump his Interior Department to write the new blueprint with the aim of auctioning oil and gas drilling rights off the U.S. East Coast -- territory that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had had had had ruled out..” Don’t get me wrong! Cheaper energy and greater energy independence for our nation are nothing to sneeze at! But many of us familiar...

A laser-driven technique for creating fusion that dispenses with the need for radioactive fuel elements and leaves no toxic radioactive waste is now within reach, say researchers. Dramatic advances in powerful, high-intensity lasers are making it viable for scientists to pursue what was once thought impossible: creating fusion energy based on hydrogen-boron reactions. And an Australian physicist is in the lead, armed with a patented design and working with international collaborators on the remaining scientific challenges. In a paper in the scientific journal Laser and Particle Beams today, lead author Heinrich Hora from the University of New South Wales in...

President Donald Trump will meet with a group of Republican lawmakers Thursday to discuss ways of addressing problems oil refiners have with the EPA’s biofuels mandate. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is among nearly a dozen Republican lawmakers prepared to confront Trump over his administration’s refusal to ratchet down the biofuel standard. They want to find a way to lessen the impact the standards have on oil refiners. “President Trump will meet with senators today to discuss his commitment to the Renewable Fuel Standard and how to effectively address the program’s impact on independent refiners,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said...

General Electric Co. announced Thursday that it will cut 12,000 jobs from power division amid a global softening of electricity demand and the switch from coal and other fossil fuels. "The plans announced today are driven by challenges in the power market worldwide," the manufacturing giant said. "Traditional power markets including gas and coal have softened. Volumes are down significantly in products and services driven by overcapacity, lower utilization, fewer outages, an increase in steam plant retirements, and overall growth in renewables." The company said Thursday that the cuts will "right-size" GE Power amid the transition taking place in the...

The Bureau of Land Management is auctioning off 10 million acres worth of leases Wednesday for oil and gas exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), 150 miles west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).Republicans in Congress are fighting to open ANWR to oil and gas exploration through the GOP tax bill. The Trump administration is moving ahead with oil drilling in Alaska through the NPR-A, 23 million acres free from the federal restrictions that cover ANWR.The 10-million-acre lease offering will be the largest single lease sale in the history of the area. The previous record was set...

The Trump administration is offering oil companies all 10.3 million acres of available land on the reserve, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a press release on Tuesday. The reserve is the single-largest parcel of public land in the United States. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The Trump administration has opened up a huge amount of land in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve for oil-sale leases, the CBD said. “Oil companies submitted lease bids on Monday for the largest oil-lease sale ever offered in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve,” the release said. “Bids will be open on Wednesday.” Trump just opened off...

Despite that slight, Trump made the promotion of policies that support a healthy oil and gas industry a centerpiece of his campaign strategy from beginning to end. During his speeches, the primary and general election debates, and the hundreds of rallies he conducted before crowds of thousands of supporters, candidate Trump talked about issues all too familiar to those in and around the nation’s oil patches: the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, EPA’s Waters of the United States regulatory scheme, the Clean Power Plan and the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) hydraulic fracturing rule. At a September 2016 rally...

SUPPORTERS OF Olympia Stand, a climate justice coalition in Olympia, Washington, has constructed an encampment blocking the railroad tracks to the Port of Olympia--under a banner reading "No Fracking Sand in Our Port." The purpose of the blockade is to prevent fracking sands, known as ceramic proppants, from being shipped from the port to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and other places. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of extracting oil and natural gas from source rock, primarily shale. This is done by pumping a mixture of fracking sands, and large amounts of water and chemicals into...

The first oil refinery to open in the U.S. in 40 years breaks ground in west Texas. The MMEX Resources Corporation’s $50 million project is set to be built in Pecos County. The area holds a significant crude oil supply, and is also railroad accessible. It will be developed in two phases, and is expected to create hundreds of jobs. Once it is completed, the 126 acre refinery will be able to process 10,000 barrels of crude oil each day. Meanwhile, officials plan to file permits for a second unit that would be able to produce 100,000 barrels. The first...

ST. CROIX — It was all talk and little to show for it back in June 2016, when The Consortium asked Governor Kenneth Mapp about a timeline for jobs he said would be coming to St. Croix through the ArcLight Partners, LLC agreement, as the firm had partnered with China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., also called Sinopec, for the expansion of the Limetree Bay Terminals’ oil storage facility, other oil-related work, and, importantly, some oil refining. These jobs were to be aside from the roughly 500 people currently working at the oil storage facility. “I have no specific date to...

Today, the Department of Energy issued a Record of Decision and approved the Presidential permit for the proposed Northern Pass Transmission Line project. The 192-mile above and below ground, alternating and direct current transmission system will deliver up to 1090 megawatts of low-emission, reliable hydropower from Quebec, Canada to Deerfield, New Hampshire while creating jobs, lowering energy costs, and reducing the carbon footprint across New England. Since it was first proposed in 2010, the $1.6 billion Northern Pass project has been subject to multiple layers of federal and state government permitting regulations, a nearly 4,000 page Environmental Impact Statement, and...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Evidence that when Democrats rule taxes are never high enough can be found at any gas station in this once politically competitive state. Last month, the California gas tax was raised 12 cents a gallon. Regular gas at some stations is again approaching, and in some cities exceeding, $4 a gallon, a level not seen since natural disasters temporarily curtailed refinery production, and Gulf States manipulated prices. Republicans plan to put the gas tax issue on the 2018 ballot; hoping voters will roll back the increases. Some are not waiting for the next election, but are voting...

Following spirited discussion on both sides of the issue, a vote was called at the Energy and Natural Resources committee hearing, regarding new legislation proposed by Sen. Murkowski. By a vote of 13 in favor and 10 opposed, the legislation passed out of the committee just after 8 a.m.

<p>The U.S. will be a dominant force in global oil and gas markets for many years to come as the shale boom becomes the biggest supply surge in history, the International Energy Agency predicted. [snip] The boom will turn the U.S., still among the biggest oil importers, into a net exporter of fossil fuels.</p>

An effort by Vermont utility regulators to settle the long-standing, contentious issue of how much noise neighbors of industrial wind projects should be subject to ended up upsetting both proponents of wind power and those who say the noise poses a health risk to people who live near turbines. Proponents of using industrial wind projects as part of Vermont's long-term goal of getting 90 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2050 say the new wind rules will make achieving that goal more difficult, if not impossible. "These rules will certainly have a chilling effect on wind energy in...

As Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine nears its fifth calendar year—and as Ukraine’s infamously cold winter draws near—American companies are incrementally cutting into Russia’s de facto monopoly as a supplier of nuclear fuel and coal to Ukraine, thereby undermining a longtime coercive lever of Russian influence over Kyiv.