Free Republic

As part of his ongoing war against the ethanol industry, Senator Ted Cruz traveled to Philadelphia this week to meet with oil refinery workers who claim to be facing layoffs and financial ruin due to the federal mandated Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The now-bankrupt refinery, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, has argued that the cause of its financial problems are renewable identification numbers, or RINs, federal credits that refineries must purchase if they are unable to blend ethanol with gasoline as federal law requires. Credit prices fluctuate and in the past year, have risen from a few cents to nearly $1.40 apiece....

Sen. Ted Cruz is pressuring Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds to reach a deal between oil refiners and the ethanol industry over the Environmental Protection Agency's renewable fuel mandate. Cruz, speaking on behalf of a group of eight GOP senators, wrote in a Tuesday letter to Reynolds that they do not wish to up-end the market for corn ethanol produced in her state, which is the nation's top producer of the fuel. Instead, Cruz argued that the senators' real problem with the Renewable Fuel Standard is refiners being required to buy expensive renewable identification number credits, or RINs, to meet the...

The end of the Peronist hold on Argentine politics and rise of pro-business president Mauricio Macri has heralded in a new age for what was long regarded as one of the most economically unstable nations in Latin America. The former Buenos Aires mayor and businessman won the presidency in 2015, ousting his mercurial populist Peronist predecessor Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Since coming to power, Macri has worked to restructure a shattered economy ruined by decades of market warping tariffs and subsidies, protectionism, heavy handed regulation, rampant inflation and unsustainable fiscal policies. The center-right president has been able to achieve what...

The U.S. Department of the Interior will offer offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida for oil and gas exploration and development //snipp// This will be the largest such lease sale in the country's history, it will include almost 77 million acres of federal waters in the Gulf. The lease sale will be live streamed online from New Orleans.

OCALA, Fla. In mid-2016, a regional task force that spent almost two years exploring ways to improve safety on a crowded Interstate 75 decided to take a conservative approach: make changes to the highway rather than build or expand other roads. Then Hurricane Imra blew into Florida and thousands of people trying to flee its path got stuck, many of them in Ocala and points north and south. Now, a new road with a potential route through Marion and Alachua counties may be back on the table, if not exactly speeding ahead. "I think they are going to do it...

The recent gas tax hike in California enacted to fund transportation projects could face tough sledding in the face of a repeal effort. Likely voters were nearly evenly split on the issue with 47% saying they favor repeal, while 48% said they oppose it, in a poll released Feb. 7 by the Public Policy Institute of California. The creator of the initiative to repeal a gas tax hike and vehicle fee increase approved by the state legislature last year to support transportation projects said signature gathering efforts are right on track. (You need to pay if you want to know...

WAYNESBORO — President Trump's national infrastructure plan announced Monday that calls for a $1.5 trillion investment in roads, bridges and the rest of America's crumbling infrastructure, provides for about $200 billion in federal funds. The remainder of dollars would have to come from state, local and private sources. For the Shenandoah Valley, the good infrastructure plan news includes funding to help with the maintenance backlog in the national parks, including Shenandoah National Park, where there is a $56 million maintenance backlog. However, a couple of local government officials and one of Virginia's U.S. senators interviewed expressed doubt about the trickle...

"We are running out of oil," US political leaders told us. "We can't compete with OPEC. We can't drill our way out of this." In 2012, no less an authority than Barack Obama said that increased production by increased drilling – "drill, baby, drill," he called it – was not a plan, but rather "a bumper sticker." Obama assured, "We can't just drill our way to lower gas prices." But widely unreported during the Obama years is that advances in two technologies most responsible for increased drilling efficiency – industrial fracturing (aka fracking) and horizontal drilling – were creating a...

Leading presidential hopeful López Obrador seeks to broaden his appeal and soften his reputation as a hot-headed populist _________________________________________________________ MEXICO CITY—Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a nationalist who built his career blocking oil wells and railing against the political elite, is trying a third time to achieve what he failed to do twice before: win the Mexican presidency. The 64-year-old leftist candidate is leading in the polls ahead of the July 1 election after trying to reinvent himself with a new party, unlikely allies and as a champion of national unity who doesn’t threaten Mexico’s traditional economic powers. Although once a...

Fully 39 percent of registered voters say they would support the GOP candidate for Congress in their district, while 38 percent would back the Democratic candidate. Nearly a quarter of voters, 23 percent, are undecided. Voters are split almost evenly along party lines. Democratic voters break for their party, 85 percent to 5 percent, while Republicans similarly favor the GOP, 84 percent to 8 percent. Among independent voters, 26 percent would vote for the Democrat, 25 percent for the Republican and nearly half, 49 percent, are undecided. The GOP’s 1-point advantage comes after three months of tracking in which Democrats...

On Oct. 11, 2016, Michael Foster and two companions rose before dawn, left their budget hotel in Grand Forks, N.D., and drove a white rental sedan toward the Canadian border, diligently minding the speed limit. As the driver, Sam Jessup, and a documentary filmmaker, Deia Schlosberg, recorded events from the back seat. For months, he’d imagined his next actions: He would snip the padlock that secured the gate and approach the blunt length of vertical pipe in the center of the enclosure — the stem of a shut-off valve for the 2,700-mile-long Keystone Pipeline. What neither the sheriff’s department nor...

RUSH: Here’s Chuck You Schumer. And Chuck You was in Louisville at the University of Louisville, and he spoke a Q&A period after his remarks. It was this morning. And a member of the audience said, “There’s been talk of a blue wave of Democrats winning seats in the midterms. If this is to happen, what are the biggest obstacles that Democrats must overcome in order to win big in November?” SCHUMER: People will make their own decisions about Donald Trump. Our mistake, I think, you cannot just run against Donald Trump. And it is the job of we Democrats...

[Reuters] Bit by bit, the U.S. petroleum industry is turning world oil markets inside out. First, sharp drops in U.S. imports of crude oil eroded the biggest market that producers like OPEC had relied on for many years. Now, surging U.S. exports – largely banned by Washington until just two years ago – challenge the last region OPEC dominates: Asia.

As if the recent nosedive that oil prices have taken in the last few days wasn’t bad enough—Baker Hughes reported a staggering increase to the number of rigs. The number of active oil and gas rigs increased by 29 to Baker Hughes data. This brings the total number of oil and gas rigs to 975, which is an addition of 234 rigs year over year.

PHOENIX — Hopis and Navajos who work at a coal mine near the Arizona-Utah border said Tuesday their family lives and earning power will suffer greatly if the power plant fed by the mine is shuttered as planned. The Navajo Generating Station in Page is set to close at the end of 2019 unless a new owner can be found. That’s considered a long-shot, but the company that owns the supply mine says it has identified investors interested in one of the largest coal plants in the West. More than 200 workers, their family members and supporters in blue T-shirts,...

California will block the transportation through its state of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs, officials told Reuters on Wednesday, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.

Islam is “not a religion of hate,” Jordan’s King Abdullah said in a recent interview, arguing that there was perhaps a “lack of understanding” of the religion in Washington. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked Abdullah — in an interview filmed in Davos last month but aired on Sunday — about President Trump’s stated view during the 2016 election campaign that “I think Islam hates us.” “By ‘us,’ I think he meant America,” Zakaria said. “In your conversations with President Trump, have you tried to persuade him that that was not the case?” “Absolutely, to all Americans,” Abdullah replied. “And whether I’m...

The White House plans to withdraw Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House official confirmed to CNN Saturday. Hartnett White, who would have overseen environmental and energy policies across the government, had described the belief in "global warming" as a "kind of paganism" for "secular elites" during a September 2016 interview on "The Right Perspective," an online conservative radio show. She has also said the goal of climate activists and the United Nations was an all-powerful, one-world government and "planetary management," KFile reported. President Donald Trump announced Hartnett White's nomination in October and...

TWO BIG THINGS threaten the improving U.S. economy: a weak dollar and trade protectionism. Both routinely seduce policymakers, and both always result in bitter aftermaths with terrible political consequences. Yet some in the Trump administration are playing with both--and with fire. 1) The dollar. Great nations do not have weak currencies. Nonetheless, with a surety born of ignorance, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has bluntly stated his desire for a weak dollar. Thankfully, President Trump immediately contradicted him. But the fact that Mnuchin and his department want to undermine the value of our currency is troubling. Mnuchin has bought into the...

A Republican congressman says the U.S. government should significantly raise the gas tax in order to fund President Donald Trump's ambitious infrastructure plan. Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania told Bloomberg TV that the tax should be increased by 15 cents per gallon of gasoline. The current rate is 18.4 cents, and hasn't seen a hike since 1993. Shuster said Thursday at a Republican congressional retreat in West Virginia that for the average American, a 15-cent increase would equal the cost of 'a cup of coffee a week that they might have to forgo.' 'Or if you're a Starbucks person, half...