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By all accounts, Shai Agassi, the founder and CEO of Better Place, Israel's bankrupt electric car company, is an extremely charismatic man. His charm had politicians, venture capitalists, celebrities and non-automotive industry reporters slobbering over him. Everyone wanted to get their picture taken with the man who would transform Israel's auto industry into the first electric powered industry in the world and transform the start-up nation into the transportation hothouse for the world. Agassi's vision was simple and easy to understand. By 2020, half of Israel's cars would be battery powered electric cars supplied by his company, Better Place. We...

U.S. crude-oil production grew by more than one million barrels a day last year, the largest increase in the world and the largest in U.S. history.

For frack fans out there. Russia rules the roost on shale, but those reserves are useless until it learns how to pull that stuff out of the rock.

I somehow managed to completely miss this from a couple of weeks back, but it’s an especially interesting and kind of epic piece of news from a state that’s home to some of the largest, most cultishly do-or-die green interests in the country and a legislature currently dominated by a liberal supermajority. When I first caught wind of the fact that Californians were getting ready to introduce a proposal to ban fracking, I suspected that they would definitely have a fighting chance of getting the thing passed — but it turns out that enough of California’s legislators are at least...

Few issues divide Democrats more than energy policy, as we've learned as unions and environmentalists fight over the Keystone XL pipeline. More evidence now comes from California, where greens have lost an attempt to ban oil and gas hydraulic fracturing. Democratic leaders brought their fracking moratorium bill to the Assembly floor last week, and their rank and file revolted. The bill lost 37-24, with 12 Democrats joining 25 Republicans to defeat it. Another 18 Democrats abstained, and it's a good bet they were "no" votes who didn't want to publicly cross their leadership. This was a rare rout of the...

Petrotyrants: If there was any doubt the U.S. shale revolution is breaking the dominance of unsavory energy producers on global oil supplies, look no further than last week's OPEC meeting, where the alarm bells were going off. At Friday's Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting in Vienna, the mask of non-chalance about America's new fracking energy boom came off. After years of dismissing U.S. energy production as insignificant and expensive, OPEC suddenly said it would "study" the growth in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, a deceptively bland response to the biggest challenge the cartel has ever faced on its monopoly....

It was late 2010 when a chipper agent for Kenoil, Inc., a drilling company in Eastern Ohio, drove to the nearby hamlet of Millersburg to visit Lloyd Miller. His car slithered down the hill overlooking the Millers's home and white farm buildings, past a set of pine green drums, pipes, and gauges—a shallow oil well that Kenoil had drilled on the Millers’s property many years ago—and stopped in front of the aluminum barn where the family, who are Amish dairy farmers, lodges its horses and buggy. The agent had an unexpected business proposition for Lloyd and his wife, Edna: Kenoil...

Uh, oh....Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone confirms that he has launched an investigation to determine whether White has broken any laws…

Upstate New York is in economic crisis. And New York's moratorium on hydrofracturing, or "fracking," is impeding recovery. In New York City, private sector wages grew by 4 percent in real terms between 2000 and 2011. But in New York State's Southern Tier, in counties such as Broome, Chemung, and Tioga, wages declined by 1%. Over the past decade, employment in New York City has grown by 9 percent. But in Binghamton and its surrounding suburbs, in Broome County, employment has declined by 11 percent over the same period. Elmira, Chemung County, has seen a decline of 8%. These counties...

"A bill that would have phased out single-use plastic bags was rejected by the state Senate Thursday, joining several other failed bids in previous years." "Defeated three bills to place limits on hydraulic oil and gas drilling, known as “fracking.” One bill would put a temporary moratorium on new drilling until more impact studies are completed. Another would impose safeguards to protect groundwater supplies."

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

LONDON—North American oil production will dominate world-wide supply growth over the next five years, the International Energy Agency predicted Tuesday, the result of growing production from "fracking" and other technologies that access once-inaccessible reserves. It is a shift that few predicted five years ago, and will come at the expense of producers like members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that have for years dominated the industry. In its most recent analysis, which takes a five-year view of the oil market, the IEA said U.S. production is rising much faster than previously forecast as a result of sustained...

Following up on last week’s piece detailing the reasons why the Shale oil and natural gas boom has taken place in Texas, but not in other states like California and New York, we’ve seen quite a bit of interesting, related news pieces over the last several days. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published a very informative op/ed in its Review & Outlook section, titled “A Tale of Two Oil States”, which made more detailed comparisons between the economic performance between Texas and California, and the ways in which each state’s policy decisions related to shale development have affected that...

Saudi Arabia signaled that it intends to remain a world energy powerhouse for the foreseeable future, partly by exploiting new technology which has unlocked vast quantities of oil and natural gas in North America. ... “We have rough estimates of 600 trillion cubic feet of unconventional shale gas. The potential is very huge and we plan to exploit it,” he said during a Credit Suisse conference. Mr. al-Naimi didn’t say how quickly Saudi Arabia might begin commercial production of shale gas or shale oil, or describe how it will supply the large amounts of water used in hydraulic fracturing or...

Over the past five years, technology has improved the productivity of the typical oil or gas rig on America’s shale fields between 200 and 300 percent.

Some students at Evergreen Middle School got a very one-sided presentation (according to multiple reports from parents) on energy on Friday, May 3, watching a live “What the Frack” rap that told students natural gas and coal “poisoned the water, poisoned the air, poisoned the people, do you think that’s fair?” The rap was delivered by a pair of children who call themselves “Earth Guardians.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Full version at the end of the post. CompleteColorado.com has been investigating this matter since Tuesday. We are aware that numerous parents made complaints to the principal, Kristopher Schuh. Schuh sent the following response...

Have environmentalists already won the war over fracking in California? It’s starting to look that way. A trio of bills swiftly moving through the state’s legislature would ban hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, until the practice is deemed safe. The bills are among nine pieces of legislation currently under consideration that would effectively restrict drilling in the Monterey Shale, a geological formation that holds an estimated 15.4 billion barrels of oil, the largest such reserve in the US. Unreachable by conventional drilling, the Monterey Shale has come into play with advances in fracking, which injects chemical-laced water into wells under...

<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>

I've done work for T. Boone Pickens and the Pickens Plan since 2008. I wanted to mention this at the top because we're going to be discussing natural gas. Don't…don't go on your next email yet, this is actually pretty interesting. New data from the Environmental Protection Agency indicates that drilling for natural gas releases significantly less methane (the main component of natural gas) into the atmosphere than previously thought. Twenty percent less. This is not seen as good news for the ultra-environmentalists who fervently believe that any fuel made from fossilized plant or animal matter (coal or natural gas)...

SWEETWATER — About a year ago, talk began circulating in this West Texas town about a huge oil-producing formation called the Cline Shale, east of the traditional drilling areas around Midland. Then the oilmen and their rigs arrived. Now homes and hotels are sprouting, “help wanted” signs have multiplied, and a major drilling company has cleared land to build an office and equipment yard. “It is coming, and it is big,” said Greg Wortham, the mayor of Sweetwater, who also serves as executive director of the Cline Shale Alliance, a new economic development group. The Cline Shale, thousands of feet...

The interminable war on drilling, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline has taken some bizarre turns. Now it’s getting worse, as opponents grow more desperate, and the moon again grows full. Deep water drilling, 3-D and 4-D seismic (the ability to visualize 3-D over many years), deep horizon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and other technological marvels have obliterated environmentalist claims that the United States and world are running out of oil and gas – and therefore we need to switch to subsidized, land-hungry, job-killing wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels. Thanks to free enterprise innovation on state and public...

Turns Back To Coal, Abandons Emissions TargetsFrom Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPFThe Japanese government is moving to speed up the environmental assessment process for new coal-fired power plants. According to Japanese media reports, the government intends to make 12 months the maximum period for assessing and approving new coal-fired power plants as its utilities seek to develop more power stations to stem surging energy supply bills. With the government considering the closure of much of the installed nuclear capacity over the medium term, the spotlight is back on coal as the cheapest energy source, notwithstanding plans to cut carbon...

New technology and a little-known energy source suggest that fossil fuels may not be finite. This would be a miracle—and a nightmare. As the great research ship Chikyu left Shimizu in January to mine the explosive ice beneath the Philippine Sea, chances are good that not one of the scientists aboard realized they might be closing the door on Winston Churchill’s world. Their lack of knowledge is unsurprising; beyond the ranks of petroleum-industry historians, Churchill’s outsize role in the history of energy is insufficiently appreciated. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. With characteristic...

Environmentalists have failed with every specious charge brought forth against fracking, with fear-mongering fallacies consistently flying in the face of the evidence to the contrary. Now they are claiming that fracking is a criminal activity due to the potential of natural gas drilling to cause earthquakes. Earthquakes? Really, linking seismic events to fracking is outright laughable. Disingenuous information is the real criminal activity in this saga. Fracking's latest misinformation tour is being castigated by a celebrity clown car chugging through the hills of Scranton, Pennsylvania, carrying 30,000 pounds of frack-a-phobic bananas (apologies to the late Harry Chapin). This Landship of...

Facts are essential in today’s debate over energy policy. It is a fact, for example, that the United States is producing more of its own oil and natural gas due to advances in technology. It’s also a fact that anti-oil critics are using fear tactics to fight the American drilling renaissance because the facts are not on their side. Such political games are not unusual in America, but when a federal agency like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), entrusted with overseeing human health and the environment, appears to be swayed by the fear mongering, facts become more important than ever....

:21AM ET on Sunday by FRANKFURT, March 31 (Reuters) - Bosch, one of the world's largest auto parts suppliers, blames the U.S. fracking boom in shale gas for hurting demand for energy-efficient green technologies, its chairman told a German newspaper. The Stuttgart-based company recently decided to discontinue its photovoltaic solar energy activities at the cost of roughly 3,000 jobs - due largely, but not entirely, to a glut in capacity built up in China. "Photovoltaic is going through a unique transition. But you cannot entirely dismiss that the use of energy-efficient technologies came under pressure through fracking in the United...

Environmental activists and politicians would like you to think that we must love their regulations -- or hate trees and animals. I love trees and animals. But you can love nature and still hate the tyranny that environmental regulations bring. The Environmental Protection Agency just announced it will boost gas prices ("only" a penny, although industry says 6 to 9 cents) to make another minuscule improvement to air quality. In New York City, my mayor wants to ban Styrofoam cups, saying, "I think it's something we can do without." Congress already dictates the design of our cars, toilets and light...

LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany — The sprawling chemical plant in this city along the Rhine River has been a jewel of Germany’s manufacturing-led economy for more than a century. But the plunging price of natural gas in the United States has European companies setting sail across the Atlantic to stay competitive. German chemicals giant BASF, which operates the plant here, has announced plans for wide-ranging expansion in the United States, where natural gas prices have fallen to a quarter of those in Europe, largely because of American innovations in unlocking shale gas. Among those most affected are energy-intensive industries such as steel...

Although he is famously averse to leaving New York State, Gov. Cuomo would be well advised to make a day trip 60 miles across the border to a booming city in Pennsylvania. Williamsport, a town of 30,000 people, is renowned as the site of the Little League World Series. More instructive to Cuomo as he dithers over approving fracking for natural gas in New York is how stunningly the industry has improved the area’s fortunes. Once plagued by a shrinking population and economy — like much of upstate New York — Williamsport now boasts the third-fastest-growing metropolitan economy in the...

While other states have been moving right along with deploying the decades-old hydrofracking technique that’s unlocking access to their hitherto hard-to-reach oil and gas reserves (and enjoying the subsequent wealth- and job-creation that comes with it), the state of New York has been hanging back while Governor Andrew Cuomo decides whether he cares more about serving the best interests of his state or placating the vociferous green lobby. The governor has been dithering between continuing New York’s current ban on hydraulic fracturing or allowing fuel companies to go for it in at least the state’s southern portion, and has several...

New York State's review of high-volume hydraulic fracturing has taken more than four years—and it's not over yet. Right now, all eyes are on the state's health commissioner, Nirav Shah, who has said that he will tell Governor Andrew Cuomo within weeks whether the Department of Environmental Conservation's plan for "fracking" would be sufficient to protect human health. Then it's up to the governor to make a final decision on whether to permit the technique, which involves pumping large volumes of water mixed with chemicals into rock far underground in order to release natural gas. (See related quiz: "What You...

ALBANY, N.Y. - A formal complaint filed with New York's lobbying board asks it to investigate whether Artists Against Fracking, a group that includes Yoko Ono and other A-List celebrities, is violating the state's lobbying law, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. The Independent Oil & Gas Association, an industry group that supports gas drilling, filed the complaint Tuesday with the state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics. The complaint is based on an AP story that found that Artists Against Fracking and its members, including Ono, her son Sean Lennon, actors Mark Ruffalo and Robert De Niro...

ALBANY, N.Y. – A formal complaint filed with New York's lobbying board asks it to investigate whether Artists Against Fracking, a group that includes Yoko Ono and other A-List celebrities, is violating the state's lobbying law, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. The Independent Oil & Gas Association, an industry group that supports gas drilling, filed the complaint Tuesday with the state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

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...

Some of the nation's biggest oil and gas companies have made peace with environmentalists, agreeing to a voluntary set of tough new standards for fracking in the Northeast that could lead to a major expansion of drilling. The program announced Wednesday will work a lot like Underwriters Laboratories, which puts its familiar UL seal of approval on electrical appliances that meet its standards. In this case, drilling and pipeline companies will be encouraged to submit to an independent review of their operations. If they are found to be abiding by a list of stringent measures to protect the air and...

Last week, political, media and celebrity worlds converged to produce headlines worthy of “News of the Weird.” Sean Penn eulogized anti-American strongman Hugo Chavez as “a friend (America) never knew it had,” while Dennis Rodman declared North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “an awesome guy.” Upon returning from the starving gulag-state, Rodman scored a Sunday interview with George Stephanopoulos, and CNN declared him a “diplomatic triumph.” But perhaps the most captivating cause celebre — likely to transform advocates into media and campus darlings — is the crusade to halt the drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). However, if you expect...

The real story on fracking, say scientists, is that the risks are small and the rewards immense.Celebrities are now upset about fracking, the injection of chemicals into the ground to crack rocks to release oil and gas. With everyone saying they want alternatives to foreign oil, I'd think celebrities would love fracking.I'd be wrong. Lady Gaga, Yoko Ono and their group, Artists Against Fracking, don't feel the love. Yoko sang, "Don't frack me!" on TV.Stopping fracking is the latest cause of the silly people. They succeeded in getting scientifically ignorant politicians to ban fracking in New York, Maryland and Vermont.Hollywood...

The oil industry is increasing spending on research that it hopes will make it cheaper and easier to coax more crude and natural gas from shale formations and deep-sea oil fields, extending and accelerating the U.S. energy boom. The largest oil-field-service firms--Schlumberger Ltd., Halliburton Co. and Baker Hughes Inc.--raised their research and development budgets by 24% from 2010 to a combined $2.1 billion in 2012. In recent years, these companies, which provide a range of services for energy exploration, have become the primary R&D engines of the oil industry, surpassing spending by oil-and-gas companies such as Chevron Corp. and Royal...

For more than four years, New York has had a moratorium on fracking, the controversial technique for extracting natural gas. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has long insisted that science, not politics, will dictate his decision about whether to lift the ban, and his administration has missed several self-imposed deadlines as they gather more scientific input. In fact, the State Assembly just approved a two-year extension of the moratorium until there is “conclusive scientific evidence” on environmental and health risks. Reportedly, this most recent delay stemmed from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who convinced Cuomo to wait for results from an...

Celebrities are now upset about fracking, the injection of chemicals into the ground to crack rocks to release oil and gas. With everyone saying they want alternatives to foreign oil, I'd think celebrities would love fracking.I'd be wrong. Lady Gaga, Yoko Ono and their group, Artists Against Fracking, don't feel the love. Yoko sang, "Don't frack me!" on TV. Stopping fracking is the latest cause of the silly people. They succeeded in getting scientifically ignorant politicians to ban fracking in New York, Maryland and Vermont.Hollywood gave an Oscar to Gasland, a documentary that suggests fracking will shove gas into...

As the Cline is roughly 9,800 square miles in size, this works out to estimated reserves in excess of 30 billion barrels. These reserves could easily eclipse the Bakken (4.3 billion barrels according to conservative government estimates) and the Eagle Ford (3 billion barrels).

On the same day the Independent Democrat Caucus in New York announced another piece of proposed legislation to delay development of the Marcellus Shale in New York, two representatives from a premiere energy conference in New Mexico heralded success on the radio and praise for energy operators.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that the United States’ coal industry’s days are numbered. “Even though the coal industry doesn’t totally know it yet or is ready to admit it, its day is done. … Here in the U.S., I’m happy to say, the king is dead. Coal is a dead man walking,” Bloomberg said at the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit near Washington, D.C. Bloomberg has been a vocal advocate for killing coal-fired power. He said health problems from pollution and climate change-exacerbated events like Hurricane Sandy have fomented growing recognition...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Earthquakes are part of living in California. But Randy Paige, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9, says Mother Nature might not be solely to blame for the Earth’s shaking. Many scientists are concerned with fracking — the use of hydraulics to get gas and oil out of the ground — and suggest the practice might be responsible for increased seismic activity. “We call this induced seismicity,” says US Geological Survey Seismologist Lucy Jones. She says earthquakes can be triggered when waste water, used in the hydraulic process is disposed of by injecting the water deep into the...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) -- When word spread about the potential natural gas riches of the Marcellus Shale, Kimberly More saw it as the hope for saving her horse farm. She figured that leasing her 170 acres to a drilling company could bring an upfront bonus of nearly half a million dollars, plus a monthly royalty when gas starts to flow, enough to pay for a new house, a new barn and her own riding business. "I have three young girls. My husband left," More said. "I don't want to be on social services. I want to take care of my...

Get out of here. That was one Wyoming state representative’s message to a resident who contacted him recently stating her opposition to a bill that would have allowed people with concealed carry permits to carry guns in public schools, colleges and sporting events.

North America has become the fastest growing oil and gas region in the world. Production of shale oil and gas and oil sands resources are increasing year after year as new infrastructures are developed, new extraction technologies are used and more resources are found. The surging supply growth could change North America into the new Middle East by 2020 according to a GPS report produced by Citigroup (NYSE: C). If accurate, the energy industry would generate benefits from exploitation of oil and ensure endless economic wealth for the country. As a matter of fact, crude oil is off its all-time...

America will only achieve the ambitious climate change goals outlined by President Barack Obama last week by encouraging wide-scale fracking for natural gas over the next few years. That is the advice of one of the nation's senior scientists, Professor William Press, a member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Fracking – known officially as hydraulic fracturing – involves pumping high-pressure water through underground rocks to release natural gas trapped deep underground. It is believed that there are vast reserves of these subterranean gas fields across the US. Thousands of wells have already been drilled in...

America will only achieve the ambitious climate change goals outlined by President Barack Obama last week by encouraging wide-scale fracking for natural gas over the next few years. That is the advice of one of the nation's senior scientists, Professor William Press, a member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Fracking – known officially as hydraulic fracturing – involves pumping high-pressure water through underground rocks to release natural gas trapped deep underground. It is believed that there are vast reserves of these subterranean gas fields across the US. Thousands of wells have already been drilled in...

<p>“THE NATURAL-GAS boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence,” President Obama declared in his State of the Union addressTuesday night. “That’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.”</p>