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There was little sleep the first night. Everyone was too wired with nerves and excitement. They expected the police to barrel in at any moment. The encampment went up on Nov. 17, a guerrilla whirlwind of tents, tarps, wooden pallets and two-by-four studs. In just a few hours, the intersection at Jefferson Street SE and Seventh Avenue in downtown Olympia, Wash., was transformed from a drab piece of asphalt into a hulking structure, somewhere between a refugee camp and a carnival tent. As impressive as the camp was, however, most of the 100 people who collected behind its barricades the...

SUPPORTERS OF Olympia Stand, a climate justice coalition in Olympia, Washington, has constructed an encampment blocking the railroad tracks to the Port of Olympia--under a banner reading "No Fracking Sand in Our Port." The purpose of the blockade is to prevent fracking sands, known as ceramic proppants, from being shipped from the port to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and other places. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of extracting oil and natural gas from source rock, primarily shale. This is done by pumping a mixture of fracking sands, and large amounts of water and chemicals into...

Liberal mega-donor Tom “Rhymes With Liar” Steyer has been ranting on Twitter about Donald Trump and the Russians But isn’t this a bit rich coming from someone whose NextGen Super PAC was dedicated to putting notorious uranium-to-the-Russkies saleswoman Hillary Clinton into the White House? A guy who, furthermore, has genuine connections – as opposed to #fakenews connections – with Putin’s inner circle? Someone who, just like Hillary, made huge chunks of his vast fortune prostituting himself so flagrantly to the Russian bear it resembled a horror out-take version of Leo Di Caprio’s ursine rape scene in The Revenant? A green...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- The first company to obtain a permit for fracking in Illinois announced Friday it won't use it, citing market conditions and the state's "burdensome and costly" regulations. "The process we have gone through to receive a permit was burdensome, time consuming and costly due to the current rules and regulations of the state of Illinois, and it appears that this process would continue for future permit applications," Woolsey vice president Mark Sooter said in a statement. The Illinois Legislature in 2013 passed a law regulating fracking. At the time, the law was considered one of the...

GENEVA - Greenhouse gas emissions are on course to be about 30 percent above the 2030 global target, but there are signs of a move away from fossil fuels that not even U.S. President Donald Trump can stop, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Trump has announced he will pull out of the Paris climate agreement under which 195 countries pledged to try to keep global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. An annual U.N. audit of progress toward that goal showed emissions are likely to be 53.0-55.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - OPEC’s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo on Tuesday called on U.S. shale oil producers to help curtail global oil supply, warning extraordinary measures might be needed next year to sustain the rebalanced market in the medium to long term. “We urge our friends, in the shale basins of North America to take this shared responsibility with all seriousness it deserves, as one of the key lessons learnt from the current unique supply-driven cycle,” said Barkindo.

Full Title:10/07/2017 -- New Earthquake activity brewing -- West Coast USA + New deep EQ event coming? Video at link. USA coverage extends from 6:43 to 29:25 with a brief break in between (discussion of non-US activity). He makes the point that the USGS did not report a 5+ earthquake off the coast of Northern California but Alaska resources did report it. His USA predictions are mild and mostly effect west coast, Nevada, Colorado, Kansas etc. Off the coast of northern California he predicts a possible 5.1 and that the energy would transfer to movement in other US locations (smaller...

CANONSBURG, Pa.–West Virginia University researchers believe a Marcellus and Utica shale ethane storage hub could help create $36 billion in investment and more than 100,000 permanent jobs — some of which could occur at industrial sites left behind by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, Weirton Steel and Ormet Corp. During a Tuesday conference, WVU Energy Institute Director Brian Anderson said drillers throughout the region are now producing about 460,000 barrels of ethane per day — almost three times the total amount of ethane expected to be used per day at the Royal Dutch Shell ethane cracker set for Beaver County, Pa. and the...

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.