Free Republic

I do hope that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo runs for president in 2020, and further that he is the Democratic nominee. He appears determined to make upstate New York into the East Germany of America by his intransigent refusal to allow fracking to produce natural gas, this keeping shale gas-rich upstate New York from enjoying the same kind of prosperity as western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Cuomo’s anti-gas bias extends to using state power to block natural gas pipelines intended to serve New England that have received federal approval. So lots of New Englanders will have continue using more...

Amid the fracking boom that brought natural gas prices to historic lows and led to the transition of a lot of power generation capacity from coal to gas, New York and New England may face power shortages tantamount to an “energy crisis” due to state policies in recent years that have effectively banned fracking and blocked pipelines that would bring in gas, writes the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Ever since the previous governor, David Paterson, introduced a moratorium on fracking in New York back in 2010, the state has become a poster city for the drive towards...

Russian scientists and local oil field services companies claim to have created a technology for thermochemical gas fracturing that could be an alternative to hydraulic fracturing and could increase oil production by between 1.7 and 6 times, Russia’s news agency RIA Novosti reports, citing the University of Tyumen’s press service.The chemicals react and emit heat and gas, which makes extraction easier and lifts well productivity, according to the scientists and researchers. The other upside in the technology, the Russians claim, is that the main component in the chemical reactions is ammonium nitrate, which is often used as fertilizer.According to Professor...

Russian scientists and local oil field services companies claim to have created a technology for thermochemical gas fracturing that could be an alternative to hydraulic fracturing and could increase oil production by between 1.7 and 6 times, Russia’s news agency RIA Novosti reports, citing the University of Tyumen’s press service. In hydraulic fracturing, rocks are fractured with high-pressure injection of fluids, while the new breakthrough technology, as claimed by Russian scientists and media, is creating chemical reactions in the strata that contain oil. The chemicals react and emit heat and gas, which makes extraction easier and lifts well productivity, according...

In April, a Dimock, PA resident named Ray Kemble filed a lawsuit against drilling company Cabot Oil and Gas. Two months later, Kemble and his lawyers withdrew that lawsuit. Now Cabot is suing Kemble claiming his lawsuit was frivolous and an attempt to extort the company. From the Associated Press: Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. said Dimock resident Ray Kemble and his lawyers sought to harass and extort the Houston-based driller, attract media attention and “poison” the community by recycling “stale, settled claims” against the company. “Cabot will protect its rights and pursue justice against those who irresponsibly and maliciously...

Are you worried about the Russian influence on the presidential election? If so, there's a chance you are at least eight years too late. Consider the curious case of Rainer Baake, born in 1955 in the West German town of Witten. From his German Wikipedia entry (translated): After the Abitur (final high school examinations), Rainer Baake worked as a Community Organizer in Chicago from 1974 to 1978. So a 19 year old German went from a small town in Germany to be a community organiser in Chicago for four years. This is as strange as a 19-year-old African-American would be...

Booming energy production from U.S. hydraulic fracturing operations has hurt Canadian oil and gas projects, according to a report by Bloomberg. Canadian energy projects have become less competitive than their U.S. equivalents for a variety of reasons, including tightening regulations, long approval processes and environmentalist opposition. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s attempts to expand energy exports while reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions has further complicated the issue. Petroliam Nasional cancelled a $27 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project Wednesday due to an “extremely challenging environment” for business. This followed a slew of sell-offs by major oil companies, including...

Forget about allegations of Russian interference in U.S. presidential elections for a moment, or even “collusion” between Russian officials and Trump campaign operatives. The real action is in the European and U.S. energy markets, according to a letter from two Texas congressmen to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that details what they call “a covert anti-fracking campaign” with “little or no paper trail.” Smith and Weber quote sources saying the Russian government has been colluding with environmental groups to circulate “disinformation” and “propaganda” aimed at undermining hydraulic fracturing. Commonly called fracking, the process makes it possible to access natural gas deposits....

House lawmakers want the Trump administration to investigate reports that a wealthy foundation used an offshore shell company to give millions of dollars to environmental activists opposed to U.S. energy development. “If you connect the dots, it is clear that Russia is funding U.S. environmental groups in an effort to suppress our domestic oil and gas industry, specifically hydraulic fracking,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith said Friday. Smith and Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber asked Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to investigate whether or not environmentalists were funneling money to U.S. environmental groups through a Bermuda-based shell company. Republicans are pitching...

Net foreign assets at Saudi Arabia's central bank, a measure of its ability to support its currency, look set to fall sharply this year as oil prices slump and Riyadh expands its sovereign wealth fund to invest abroad. They shrank from a record high of $737 billion (578.36 billion pounds) in August 2014 to $529 billion at the end of 2016 as the government liquidated some assets to cover the huge budget deficit caused by the fall in oil prices. This year, an austerity drive and a partial rebound in oil prices have helped Riyadh make progress in cutting the...

Beijing (AFP) - China opened its gates to US beef imports this week, giving American cattle farmers much sought-after access to the country's massive market following a 14-year ban. Shipments of eligible US beef have been allowed to enter China since Tuesday, the General Adminstration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement. Announced last month, the lifting of the beef embargo was one of the first concrete results of trade discussions that began when Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Donald Trump at the US leader's resort in Florida in April.

Democrat super-lobbyist Tony Podesta was paid $170,000 over a six-month period last year to represent Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, seeking to end one of the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against that country, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned. Podesta, founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, is listed as a key lobbyist on behalf of Sberbank, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. His firm received more than $24 million in fees in 2016, much of it coming from foreign governments, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

While that’s quite remarkable, wind and solar together still supply less than 1.5% of America’s energy. Fast growth from a small number is like winning $100 in Vegas on a $10 bet. Nice, but not life-changing. To find a “radical and pervasive” change in energy markets we have to look elsewhere. Over the same decade noted above, the amount of energy added to America from shale hydrocarbons was 2,000% greater than the additional supply from solar and wind combined. That actual revolution also happened because of the maturation of new technologies. But, notably, in this case it took place without...

A federal judge has thrown out a $4.24 million jury verdict against one of the largest natural gas producers in Pennsylvania and ordered a new trial in a lawsuit alleging Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. contaminated the well water of two families. U.S. Magistrate Judge Martin Carlson on Friday set aside the verdict reached a year ago by a jury in Scranton, saying the evidence presented by the Dimock homeowners “was spare, sometimes contradictory, frequently rebutted by other scientific expert testimony, and relied in some measure upon tenuous inferences.” Carlson also said the plaintiffs presented no evidence that would...

The Trump administration has rightly decided to repeal an Obama administration rule on hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” as it is commonly known, a process which injects fluids under pressure to release oil and natural gas trapped in America’s vast shale formations. According to The Hill: The Trump administration is planning to repeal former President Barack Obama’s landmark 2015 rule setting standards for hydraulic fracturing on federal land. Justice Department lawyers revealed the decision late Wednesday in a filing with the Denver-based Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, where the federal government under had been fighting against the oil and...

President Donald Trump as a candidate promised to unshackle the American energy industry by undoing most of the job killing regulations created by the Obama administration. In a court filing, Justice Department lawyers revealed that the new administration is planning to repeal the Obama hydraulic fracturing rule, that placed severe restrictions on the process of getting oil and natural gas from shale. Earlier yesterday, the administration said they would roll back some of the automobile emissions standards and curtail other Obama administration environmental rules on water and coal leasing.

The Trump administration is rolling back an Obama administration rule requiring companies that drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands to disclose chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. The administration said in court papers Wednesday that it is withdrawing from a lawsuit challenging the Obama-era rule and will begin a new rule-making process later this year. The Interior Department issued the rule in March 2015, the first major federal regulation of fracking, the controversial drilling technique that has sparked an ongoing boom in natural gas production but raised widespread concerns about possible groundwater contamination and...

The House of Delegates has approved a bill to permanently ban natural gas fracking in Western Maryland. The bill passed by a vote of 97-40. The 97 votes is 12 more than the minimum of 85 needed to override a veto from Governor Larry Hogan. That majority was important to the chairman of the committee hearing the bill in the Senate. The chairman of the Senate Education Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, Joan Carter Conway of Baltimore City, says she won’t bring the bill to the Senate floor unless lawmakers have enough votes to override a possible veto from Governor...

SANTA FE — Opposition to the shale oil extraction process known as fracking is growing, particularly among minorities, threatening the political viability of the oil industry in New Mexico, an oil and gas industry expert told state lawmakers Thursday. Claire Chase, the government affairs director for Mack Energy of Artesia, said while state government is heavily reliant on oil revenues, New Mexico is the most vulnerable state in the nation to increasing opposition to fracking and fossil fuels in general. She said a new culture of protests and activism has the oil and gas industry in its sights. Chase said...

Climate Change: U.S. output of so-called greenhouse gases continues to decline, a new report shows. Even so, global warming activists are likely to be disappointed. The drop has nothing to do with their pet cause, alternative energy. That's right. The Environmental Protection Agency's yearly greenhouse gas emissions report noted that after rising slightly in 2013 and 2014, greenhouse gas output fell in 2015 — the most recent full year for which data are available. OK, but maybe it was a one-year fluke? Hardly. First off, the drop was significant in size — 2.2% on an annual basis, far too big...