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<p>Energy companies are lining up for their shot to drill in the Dakotas and Montana after a new government report revealed that a massive geological formation stretching across the states contains twice the oil and three times the amount of natural gas than was originally believed.</p>

For all the Obama-era talk of decline, there is at least one reason why America probably won't, at least not quite yet. "Peak oil" and our "oil addiction" were supposed to have ensured that we ran out of either gas or the money to buy it. Now, suddenly, we have more gas and oil than ever before. But the key question is: Why do we? The oil and gas renaissance was brought on by horizontal drilling and fracking that opened up vast new reserves either previously unknown or considered unrecoverable. Both technological breakthroughs were American discoveries, largely brought on...

To create jobs, jump-start the U.S. economy and drive more money into the nation’s treasury, President Obama should forgo tax increases in his second term and instead embrace much more domestic energy production, an oil and gas industry leader said Tuesday. “Energy access, not taxes, is the key to unlocking new revenues for our government,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, in his annual “State of American Energy” address. His speech focused heavily on recent projections that, with the right policies in place, the U.S. is poised to become the world’s leader in oil and natural gas...

The US government can create an appropriate level of energy independence by causing up to four million barrels per day of additional transportation and heating fuels to be produced from North American energy sources by auctioning long-term financial hedges (Contracts for Difference) to firms offering the best terms for building appropriate conversion facilities. An appropriate level of energy independence is one that a) greatly reduces volatility of worldwide oil markets, b) eliminates the perceived need for political and military intervention in the Middle East and other unstable regions, and c) allows sensible and transparent competition among alternate sources of basic...

As Canadian political and business leaders expressed optimism the proposed Keystone XL pipeline will win approval under a re-elected President Barack Obama, environmental opponents and the U.S. ambassador to Canada cautioned the energy megaproject isn’t a slam dunk. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, had vowed quick approval of the $7.6-billion pipeline if he had won Tuesday’s presidential election. But Obama, who earlier this year rejected TransCanada Corp.’s initial application because it needed more environmental review, has remained noncommital about the fate of the line, which would ship Alberta oilsands product to the U.S. Gulf Coast. In Ottawa, federal Natural Resources...

Key Findings Among the key findings in the IHS study: • Nearly $5.1 trillion in capital expenditures ($2.1 trillion in the oil sector, $3 trillion in the gas sector) will take place between 2012 and 2035 across the entire upstream unconventional oil and gas activity sectors. • Employment in the entire upstream unconventional oil and gas sector on a direct, indirect, and induced basis will support nearly 1.8 million jobs in 2012, 2.5 million jobs in 2015, 3 million jobs in 2020, and nearly 3.5 million jobs in 2035. • The jobs created tend to be high quality and high...

A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. The creators of Promised Land have gone to absurd lengths to vilify oil and gas companies, as Scribe’s Michael Sandoval noted Wednesday. Since recent events have demonstrated the relative environmental soundness of hydraulic fracturing – a technique for extracting oil and gas from shale formations – Promised Land’s script has been altered to make doom-saying environmentalists the...

Although the polls show the presidential campaigns neck and neck, the facts continue to look negative for Barack Obama. Two-thirds of the American people say they believe the United States is going in the wrong direction, and changing the occupant of the White House is the only way to reverse course. Unemployment remains the prime political issue, but the Democrats still allow a tsunami of legal and illegal immigrants to take jobs away from U.S. citizens. Obama's Jobs Czar, Jeffrey Immelt, is busy creating jobs in Communist China instead of the U.S.A. Obama's wild spending is putting an albatross around...

Mitt Romney traveled to Hobbs, New Mexico yesterday to push energy independence for North America in eight years. As president, Romney would embark on energy independence by first empowering the states. Reported Yahoo! News: In what his campaign is billing as a major policy speech, Mitt Romney will unveil an energy plan Thursday that would give states the power to determine whether drilling and mining should occur on federal lands within their borders as part of a larger effort to increase domestic oil, coal and natural gas production and achieve energy independence. The Obama administration has emphasized expensive, unreliable, and...

April 22, 2012 Environmentally Sound Energy Independence Sarah Palin On this holiest of days for EcoLiberals, how about if Americans celebrate Earth Day with responsible energy development that leads to greater independence and conservation? There’s no better way for President Obama and his administration to celebrate Earth Day than to embrace a real, environmentally sound commitment to energy independence instead of relying on foreign countries that lack environmental safeguards. One aspect of the “all-of-the-above” approach I have been discussing for years involves, of course, the necessity to “drill, baby, drill.” It’s no secret that throughout America, including the very wealthy...

WASHINGTON _ The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday's vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably.

Even before he was president, Barack Obama was blamed for high gas prices. In 2008, the announcer in a John McCain ad asked, “Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?” As a photograph of Obama flashed onto the screen, a crowd chanted, “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!” Now Obama is running again, prices are spiking again, and again he’s being criticized — from Valley Center to the GOP campaign trail. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says Obama was partially to blame for the rising prices because he slowed down licensing and permitting processes for offshore and onshore drilling. Former House...

Bet you’ll never guess which country is the world’s largest holder of natural gas, oil and coal resources combined. That’s right. This country. According to a report released today by the Institute for Energy Research, the United States has 1.4 trillion barrels of recoverable reserves of oil — or more than the entire world has used in 150 years. That’s enough to fuel the United States for the next 250 years. Add natural gas and coal resources to that and we’re good to go for all the foreseeable future. But, thanks to backward energy policies, we’re still dependent on foreign...

The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.

Gov. Rick Perry has released a jobs plan. Or is it an energy plan? Or it is an EPA-reform plan? Or is it a trade-deficit plan? The plan is a bit of each, and it is a very good one. Governor Perry, under whom Texas enjoyed the strongest job-creation record of any large U.S. state, proposes to open up oil and gas production in areas in which American producers are either shut out or heavily restricted: the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida coast, and Alaska, among others. Perry’s plan also entails the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and the...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) —The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark —from the melodic golden-winged warbler and slow-moving gopher tortoise, to the slimy American eel and tiny.. rat. ...With a Friday deadline to act on more than 700 pending cases, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act.

A U.S. company says it is getting closer to putting prototype electric cars on the road that will be powered by the heavy-metal thorium (Steam Electric 250MW)... with prototype in two years....never needs refueled.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin spoke to a crowd of over 4,000 at Tyler's Oil Palace in Texas. American energy policy, the BP oil spill, the federal response to the disaster and job creation dominated Mrs. Palin's speech. Here is highlights of the rousing speech

Herman Cain discusses his views on Obama, Libya, Energy Independence, Brazil's Oil, Israel, Muslims in the government and more...

There's been a lot of discussion about energy policy on Right Speak over the past 2 days. Since this will be a defining issue in the upcoming campaign, it's certainly a worthy topic. Earlier today, my good friend Doug produced a brilliantly written piece highlighting Mitt Romney's views on energy, referencing Romney's book, No Apology. While I didn't find much to disagree with in Doug's post, I thought it would be fair to briefly highlight Sarah Palin's experience with energy, and provide a reference for our readers to research her positions. Prior to being elected Governor of a state which...