Free Republic

Fresh off his 72% reelection victory in New York’s 27th District, Congressman Chris Collins has set to work attempting to deliver on his promises to the voters. One of the biggest challenges he faces is the effort to help turn things around in the Empire State on the energy front. New York, just like Pennsylvania and West Virginia, sits on two major shale oil reserves. But unlike their neighbors to the south, where jobs have multiplied and personal wealth has moved upward, New Yorkers have not been able to benefit from these opportunities. Democrats in charge of the state...

...“In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” said Fedun. “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.” No surprise, Friday was a bloodbath for shares of America’s oil and gas independents. Goodrich Petroleum fell 34% on the day, and is off 79% in three months. Swift Energy fell 30%, Penn Virginia and Sanchez Energy down 29%, SandRidge 26%. Some of these, like Swift, are highly leveraged, and there’s even some concern that bidding...

Well after Thanksgiving we now have much more for which to be thankful. West Texas Intermediate crude oil slashed below $65 today as the market continued to chew on oversupply in face of a global economic slowdown. On Thanksgiving Day the cartel formerly known as OPEC met and decided to leave output unchanged and let free markets correct price and supply issues. Oil prices then plunged over ten percent on Friday, and some are asking if oil will go as low as $40 a barrel. I donÂ’t know about that, but since June when West Texas oil hit $108 prices...

OPEC Cannot Kill U.S. Shale Oil Boom with Low Crude Prices Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates—the only OPEC members financially solvent enough to afford temporarily reducing crude oil production—are believed to have refused to cut output on November 27, 2014 to push oil prices down to $68 a barrel in hopes of killing the U.S. oil boom. But unlike traditional oil wells that lose future production capability if temporarily shut down, U.S. shale oil wells have the flexibility to close and then reopen without a long-term loss of production capability.     From an annual low of $1.21 a barrel in...

Here are the breakeven oil prices for every drilling project in the world Myles Udland, Business Insider | December 1, 2014 8:40 AM ETMore from Business Insider BloombergCitigroup said companies are canceling projects that require oil prices above $80 a barrel to break-even as the futures market has made hedging above that price a challenge.   TwitterGoogle+LinkedInEmailCommentsMore Oil is getting slammed.On Thursday, OPEC announced that it would not curb production to combat the decline in oil prices, which have been blamed in part on a global supply glut.And now that oil prices have fallen more than 30% in just the last...

PUNGESTI, Romania — Vlasa Mircia, the mayor of this destitute village in eastern Romania, thought he had struck it rich when the American energy giant Chevron showed up here last year and leased a plot of land he owned for exploratory shale gas drilling. But the encounter between big business and rural Romania quickly turned into a nightmare. The village became a magnet for activists from across the country opposed to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Violent clashes broke out between the police and protesters. The mayor, one of the few locals who sided openly with Chevron, was run out of...

Myles Udland November 30, 2014More than 50% lower. That is how far Canadian billionaire Murray Edwards, chairman of Canadian Natural Resource, thinks oil prices can fall from here. Speaking with Canadian business publication Financial Post, Edwards said, "Prices could spike down to $30, $40. It got down to $35 in 2008, for a very short period of time." Edwards told Financial Post's Claudia Cattaneo that, "On a given day you can have market fluctuations where prices fluctuate far more than the underlying economic value of the unit," adding that if oil falls to $30 or $40 a barrel he doesn't...

The biggest news for the United States stock market and American consumers happened on Thanksgiving in a far off desert kingdom. Saudi Arabia has taken the big gambit of not cutting production which means downward pressure on oil will continue, and that means less revenue for them. Why would a nation that gets 90% of their revenue from oil allow the price to plunge? I’ve said it several times, but I’m more convinced this is their (last) chance to crush, or at least derail/stall, America’s fracking miracle.It’s a war without bullets, but make no mistake, it's also about no prisoners....

On election night, voters in Denton, Texas, a city of about 113,000 people northwest of Dallas, voted to ban fracking within the city limits. Appeals were immediately filed; Denton is in oil and gas country – in the Barnett Shale – where fossil fuel resources are not only creating significant growth for the industry, but also lining the coffers of local municipalities and governmental entities within the state. To find out more about what the ban means, and what lies ahead, Rigzone interviewed Mark A. Plummer, CEO and owner of Chestnut Exploration Companies, headquartered in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas,...

When it takes up to four million pounds of sand to frack a single well, it’s no wonder that demand is outpacing supply and frack sand producers are becoming the biggest behind-the-scenes beneficiaries of the American oil and gas boom. Demand is exploding for “frac sand”--a durable, high-purity quartz sand used to help produce petroleum fluids and prop up man-made fractures in shale rock formations through which oil and gas flows—turning this segment into the top driver of value in the shale revolution. “One of the major players in Eagle Ford is saying they’re short 6 million tons of 100...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay. I mentioned the plummeting oil price, and there are a lot of people trying to figure out, why is this happening? There are a lot of people that do not understand what it is that's driving down the crude oil price. What explains it? When it happens and it's a mystery, people look to traditional explanations, "Well, are people driving less? Is the demand for gasoline down? The economy bad? What's going on?" And in this case that's not the answer The simple explanation for much, not at all, but for much of the drop in...

A week after a historic vote to ban hydraulic fracturing (or fracking — the controversial drilling method that forces oil and gas from shale formations with pressurized water, sand and a host of chemicals), Denton, Texas, has been told the state will continue to issue drilling permits within the city limits. “It’s my job to give permits, not Denton’s,” said Christi Craddick, chairwoman of the Railroad Commission of Texas. “We’re going to continue permitting up there because that’s my job.” Also known as the Texas Railroad Commission or TRC, the three-member state body actually has no jurisdiction over the rails,...

Rick Perry ascended from Lieutenant Governor to Governor of Texas in December 2000 when then-governor George Bush resigned after being elected the 43rd President of the United States. Perry will retire in January with the tenth longest gubernatorial tenure in U.S. history. Perry made job creation one of his principle mantras, and he has overseen remarkable employment gains under his watch with 2.1 million jobs added during his tenure. The total represents 30% of the jobs added in the U.S. since 2000 and more than twice as many as any other state. The so-called “Texas miracle” does not show any...

Those low gas prices on station signs aren’t going away soon, the government says. In a dramatic shift from previous forecasts, the Energy Department predicted Wednesday that the average price of gasoline in the U.S. will be below $2.94 a gallon in 2015. That a 44-cent drop from an outlook issued just a month ago. If the sharply lower estimate holds true, U.S. consumers will save $61 billion on gas compared with this year. Rising oil production, particularly in the U.S., and weak spots in the global economy have led to a sharp reduction in oil prices over the past...

Federal wildlife officials have granted protection to the Gunnison sage grouse, a move that could to bring restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land uses to preserve the bird's habitat in Colorado and Utah. ... They're related to the greater sage grouse, which is at the center of a separate and larger debate over federal protection across 11 Western states.

In what many pundits have described as a “wave election,” many candidates who embraced and campaigned on the principles of free-markets and limited government saw great success this past Tuesday. In contrast, however, the citizens of Denton, TX voted via referendum to ban the oil and gas drilling technique commonly known as hydraulic fracturing. Proponents of the ban cited contamination of groundwater and seismic activity associated with the disposal of wastewater as reasons to support the ban. Interestingly, there has never before been a proven documented case of hydraulic fracturing contaminating aquifers and the precise relationship between injection wells and...

The San Miguel County Commission on Wednesday will vote on whether to adopt an oil and gas drilling ordinance that imposes some of the strictest requirements on hydrocarbon exploration in the country. The Commission meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. at the County Commission chambers, on the second floor of the old courthouse building. ... Commissioners held a four-hour hearing on the proposed ordinance and Comprehensive Plan changes last Monday, taking public comment from more than three dozen people. Among those present at last Monday’s hearing was Robert Freilich, the Los Angeles planning and zoning attorney hired by the county to...

Only by overlooking important forces in markets and politics can anyone assert that Saudi Arabia is letting crude prices fall mainly to extinguish competition from North American shale oil. With oil, the Saudi regime always takes the long view. With security, however, its motivations are more immediate. The kingdom faces unusually intense threats: Islamic State (IS) militancy in Iraq and Syria, the chance that Iran won’t agree by a Nov. 24 deadline to suspend its nuclear ambitions, terrorist insurrections from restive Yemen, durability of the menacing government of Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus. Falling oil prices hurt the IS and Iran,...

Allows direct business between Canadian dollar and Chinese yuan, cutting exchange costs. Canada and China have signed a reciprocal currency deal that's expected to dramatically boost exports. The hub will foster far easier trade between the Canadian dollar and the Chinese yuan, also known as the renminbi. It makes Canada the first country in the Americas to have a deal to trade in the renminbi.

Waterless Fracking may increase access to more energy, without the need to deal with the waste water.From the article: Researchers at the Colorado School of Mines claim they have developed a method to unlock hydrocarbons trapped in shale with using any water at all. They are seeking to perfect Cryogenic fracturing, which replaces water with searing cold liquid nitrogen (or carbon dioxide). Used at temperatures below minus 321 Fahrenheit, it is pumped underground at high pressure. Once it comes into contact with the heated, pressurized shale, a reaction occurs which caused the shale to crack open and creates fissures...