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This is a video of a panel discussion at the Herzliya Conference in Israel which informed that the US can be oil energy independent in 10 years. Really fascinating.

In testimony delivered in Houston today, officials with the American Petroleum Institute said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new ozone pollution standards would exact significant costs on consumers, jobs and the economy without delivering commensurate benefits. Furthermore, they said there was no solid scientific justification for imposing the more stringent standards.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Virginia's two U.S. senators on Wednesday urged the Obama administration to carry out a previous plan to lease almost 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) in federal waters off the state's coastline to oil and natural gas companies. The lawmakers said in a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that recent comments by a department official that the Virginia lease sale originally planned for late 2011 would be delayed until 2012 at the earliest are frustrating given that drilling creates jobs and needed energy supplies. The offshore Virginia area that would be leased may hold 130...

Americans are adopting a failed type of clean energy subsidy—the feed-in tariff—just as Europeans are abandoning it. “How can California encourage investors to generate renewable electricity? How about a guarantee that if they generate the power, they'll be paid at a good price?” suggests Ray Pingle of the Sierra Club. Fair enough. But the price proposed by the Sierra Club and some members of Congress is three to five times more than the current average price of electricity. Green power advocates in the United States have started pushing for a European-style subsidy scheme in which homeowners or businesses that install...

Energy: The government says wind power could supply the eastern half of the U.S. with a fifth of its electricity by 2024. Just don't try building wind farms where someone might see them. A claim is contained in a new study released by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and technically it might be true. But we've heard these overblown predictions before, and experience around the world with heavily subsidized alternative energy has not worked out well. The area in question, called the Eastern Interconnection, is a grid extending roughly from the western borders of the Plains states through...

Despite the Facts, Democrats, Republicans, and the Neoconservatives Continue To Hype Energy Autarky When talking about energy, facts should matter. Alas, when it comes to promoting the myth of “energy independence” politicians and political operatives on both the Left and the Right are not interested in facts or reality. Their only interest is in playing to the crowd and in trying to stir emotional responses. That’s a somewhat painful conclusion. For the past two years, and particularly since the publication of my book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” which came out in April 2008, I have...

January 13, 2010, 4:00 a.m. American Energy Independence A war-fighting necessity or “‘foreign oil’ alarmism”? By Barbara Lerner Is energy a key element in the war we are fighting against the onslaught of Islamist terror and subversion? Does America need energy independence to really win this war? The American people seem to think so. The last time a Rasmussen poll asked them if the development of new homegrown energy sources was “an urgent national priority,” 81 percent said yes. Only 9 percent disagreed. In NRO last month, I argued that the great American majority is right, on this fundamental...

nterior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Wednesday that big oil and natural gas companies will no longer be "the kings of the world" like they were under the Bush administration, announcing new drilling policies to protect the environment on western federal lands. While the reforms would likely slow the permitting process to search for oil and gas on government lands and decrease the number of acres available for energy exploration, Salazar rejected industry claims that the Obama administration's policy change would reduce domestic energy supplies. "The difference is in the prior administration the oil and gas industry essentially were the...

WASHINGTON – Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday announced policy changes he said will bring more scrutiny and greater public voice in how oil and gas leases are awarded on public lands. Salazar said the changes should ensure stricter environmental standards in oil and gas leasing while bringing more clarity to the process to energy companies hoping to drill on public lands, mostly in Western states.

Richmond, VA) -- Governor-elect Bob McDonnell wants Virginia to become the first state on the Atlantic seaboard to explore and drill for oil. The Republican has sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, asking that Virginia be allowed to move ahead on offshore energy exploration. McDonnell cites an Old Dominion University study that concluded natural gas production would create hundreds of jobs and generate millions of dollars for the state. It's believed at least 500-million barrels of oil could lie off the coast of Virginia.

There is that old complaint that says if Moses had only made a right turn after he led the Israelites across the Reed Sea, the Jews would have the Oil, the Arabs would have the desert and the world would be much better off. Well that might be changing a bit. Last January a major supply of natural gas was found off the coast of Haifa, Israel's major port city. Yesterday A significant quantity of oil was discovered near Rosh HaAyin, a city located east of Tel Aviv on the western edge of Samaria

Energy: An oil company wants to invest its profits in clean-burning American natural gas. A Hungarian billionaire and a "green" politician want to stop it. This is the real Climate-gate scandal. While the greenies of the world united in Copenhagen to talk about the weather, emitting a Third World-country-size chunk of greenhouse gases to gather there, the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil, was doing something about it. On Dec. 14, Exxon agreed to buy XTO Energy, a natural gas firm, in a deal valued at $41 billion. XTO is one of the leaders in something called "fracking" technology, in...

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

The United States could be energy independent if it possessed the collective political will to make it happen. After all, the country has the largest energy reserves on earth, according to a recently-released Congressional Research Service report.

The Culver City Council on Monday unanimously approved a moratorium to halt drilling in the Inglewood Oil Field until next August, by when city officials hope to have drafted a new ordinance that ensures the public’s safety and welfare. The new moratorium will extend one that expires Oct. 8 by 10 months, until Aug. 23, 2010. Plains, Exploration & Production Company, the primary operator of the oil field, has already sent four notices of intent to drill new wells to the State Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources, even though the oil company agreed with the Los Angeles County...

The government is, increasingly, the enemy. Imagine the jobs, the wealth, the independence, and cutting the jihad snake off at the head. There is no downside. We could easily extract that oil with minimum impact to the trees. ..... For decades, Democrats have blocked efforts to responsibly develop this nation's energy resources, transforming vast areas of opportunity into "The No Zone." (hat tip Jim)

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel. Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields. The global...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy Policy: Ignoring peak-oil Cassandras, BP has made another giant oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. We're not running out of oil. Our government just doesn't want us to look for it.The world is running out of oil and good riddance. That's the environmentalists' mantra. But since the first well was drilled near Titusville, Pa., 150 years ago, the prophecy has gone unfulfilled. Trouble is, those darn greedy oil companies keep finding the stuff. Oil has been produced in the Gulf of Mexico since the first well was drilled by Kerr-McGee Corp. in 1947. Some of the wells are...