Free Republic

Inflation is crippling rural America and driving some people to consider moving closer to cities in an effort to ease the financial stress, according to the latest analysis from one expert. Iowa State University professor Dave Peters has been studying the effect of inflation on people in rural communities as part of the school's Small Town Project. He found that this year alone, expenses for rural Americans had increased by 9.2%, but their earnings only increased by 2.6%. And Peters has pinpointed where it's hurting most. "Mainly, fuel prices, particularly among the farmer and agricultural community," he said. "They really...

A little more than a year ago, oil prices were above $100 a barrel. The national average for gasoline was in the $3.50 range. In late spring, oil was $60-ish and the national average for gas was around $2.70. The price of a barrel of oil has plunged to $40 and below—yet, prices at the pump are just slightly less than they were when oil was almost double what it is today. Oil and gasoline prices usually travel up or down in sync. But a few weeks ago the trend lines crossed and oil continued the sharp decline while gasoline...

The green energy movement in America is dead. May it rest in peace. No, a majority of American energy over the next 20 years is not going to come from windmills and solar panels. One important lesson to be learned from the green energy fad’s rapid and expensive demise is that central planning doesn’t work. What crushed green energy was the boom in shale oil and gas along with the steep decline in the price of fossil fuel that few saw coming just a few years ago. A new International Energy Agency report concedes that green energy is in fast...

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...

Heating oil and propane expenditures projected to be lower than last winter Autumn arrived in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic states last week as temperatures turned noticeably colder and snow fell across Wisconsin and Minnesota. Notwithstanding triple-digit temperatures in parts of California, the winter heating season has begun for much of the country, including the Midwest and the Northeast, where heating oil and propane are important heating fuels. Each October, EIA publishes an outlook for winter energy supply, demand, and prices as part of its October Short-Term Energy and Winter Outlook (STEO). EIA projects the retail price of heating oil...

The average household winter heating fuel expenditures discussed in this STEO provide a broad guide to changes compared with last winter. However, fuel expenditures for individual households are highly dependent on local weather conditions, market size, the size and energy efficiency of individual homes and their heating equipment, and thermostat settings (see Winter Fuels Outlook table). Forecast temperatures based on the latest forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are much warmer than last winter east of the Rocky Mountains, with the Midwest 16% warmer, the South 12% warmer, the Northeast 11% warmer. However, last winter provides a...

Introduction: US residual fuel oil demand recently hit a record-low 154,000 b/d less than a decade after demand was closer to 1 million b/d, according to US government statistics. The precipitous decline is a direct result of refineries looking to maximize production of high-value products such as middle distillates and gasoline and minimize production of low-value products like fuel oil, which typically sells for less than the crude oil used to make it. Rising natural gas production also has lead to a greater reliance on that product for power generation at the expense of fuel oil. However, there appears to...

If you’re heating with propane, it might be time to turn the thermostat down. Way down. The perfect storm of a wet fall followed by an immediate “turn on the furnace, honey” start of winter has combined with an intermittently working pipeline to squeeze the supply of propane to the upper Midwest. Adding to that misery was the rupture of a natural gas pipeline on Saturday in Canada that interrupted the main supply to some areas of the Upper Midwest. Shortly following the pipeline explosion, Xcel Energy − a Minneapolis-based company − asked customers in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin...

With months of cold weather ahead, many Rhode Islanders have already drained their oil tanks and found that they simply lack the necessary resources to keep their families warm over the course of a frigid New England winter. Demand for heating aid is surging in the midst of this latest cold snap, say administrators at various entities that offer winter heating assistance, from community action agencies to the Diocese of Providence. […] Much of the surge has come in recent days. In the Diocese of Providence, between 250 and 275 people requested assistance Tuesday through “Keep the Heat On,” the...

New low-sulfur fuel standards for marine ocean carriers go into effect Aug. 1, and the near-term result is likely to be a 20 percent to 25 percent hike in fuel costs for a special blended diesel carriers will have to use. The switch in fuels is required to meet a 1 percent sulfur limit set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, several shipping companies have said. EPA drops the other shoe in 2015, when the sulfur standard is lowered to 0.1 percent. One vessel operator, Totem Ocean Trailer Express Inc., or TOTE, estimates that a 25 percent increase in fuel...

The Bombing of Sterling HallText and photos copyright © 2000 Leemark Communications The doors to the old part of Sterling Hall, as seen from Charter Street. Early on August 24th, 1970, a van loaded with six barrels of explosives blew up just outside the East Wing of Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. The bombing was carried out by four men in protest of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombing was directed against the Mathematics Research Center, a U.S.-Army-funded facility, which was located in the East Wing of Sterling Hall along with the...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.ice.gov/news/releases/1204/120420detroit.htm APRIL 20, 2012 DETROIT, MI Second Michigan man arrested in explosives investigation Suspected of possessing more than two tons of bomb-making materials SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. – A second man suspected to be involved in an explosives investigation was arrested Thursday by special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and deputies with the Chippewa County Sherriff's Department. Kenneth Kassab, 53, of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., was taken into custody without incident Thursday on charges related to the...

As a Russian fuel tanker plows through the frozen Bering Sea on its way to Nome, it has been getting help from an unlikely source: a drone that flies overhead and sends images of ice back to researchers onshore. The camera-equipped drone looks like a smoke detector with wings and legs. It glides on 20-minute missions ranging from 10 feet to 320 feet above the ice, and its images can be instantly viewed on a tablet-type computer screen. The tanker is bound for Nome, a town of 3,500 residents that missed its final pre-winter delivery of fuel by barge when...

A Russian tanker is inching through thick ice in the Bering Sea en route to delivering fuel to Nome. The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy is cutting a path for the 370-foot Renda, which is carrying more than 1.3 million gallons of fuel. Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class David Mosley said the vessels were 170 miles south of Nome as of late Sunday morning. Mosley said the ships are able to travel only five miles an hour through ice up to two feet thick. The Coast Guard initially estimated arrival time early Monday, but Mosley says it's difficult to...

The Shanghai Petroleum Exchange has suspended physical fuel oil trading due to thin trading volumes, a source with the exchange said Monday. The total traded volume on SPEX since November 8, 2006 (the day of launch) to April 17, 2009 (the last trading day) was recorded at 1.29 million lots, or roughly 2,050 lots/day on average. One lot refers to 10 mt on SPEX. Fuel oil physical trading on SPEX was launched on a forward basis, with contracts' delivery dates set in forward months. "Considering the thin trading volume for fuel oil and some petrochemical products, we decided to suspend...

President Barack Obama's first budget includes $15 billion a year for renewable energy programs and an ambitious plan to raise $646 billion from a carbon reduction proposal. "Because our future depends on our ability to break free from oil that's controlled by foreign dictators, we need to make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Mr. Obama said Thursday morning. "That's why we'll be working with Congress on legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy." The plan uses money from a cap-and-trade program — which would allow companies to...

Barack Hussein Obama will propose a massive business tax on greenhouse gases in his FY 2010 federal budget to be presented this week.The massive tax increase and power grab was buried at the end on article on Obama's forthcoming budget proposal in The New York Times:On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since companies would pass their...

(CBS) About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year's time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market.So what happened? It's a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike...

Citgo has suspended its fuel-assistance program for low-income homeowners, putting added financial pressure on Joe Kennedy’s Citizens Energy Corp. Citgo, owned by the Venezuelan government, is pulling out of the program that provided home-heating oil to thousands of Northeast customers, via contributions to Kennedy’s nonprofit Citizens Energy. Kennedy has been criticized for accepting money from Citgo at the behest of controversial Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, whose notorious anti-American rants have upset many Americans. Kennedy has defended Citgo’s donations, saying the goal of fuel-assistance program is to help the needy. Kennedy is holding a press conference this afternoon.

The Rev. John L. Burton wasn't going to rely on divine intervention to keep his small church in Windham Center warm this winter. Doing his best to protect St. Paul's Episcopal Church from skyrocketing heating oil prices, he signed a contract in late summer with a local dealer to buy fuel oil at $4.67 a gallon for the coming heating season. By doing so, the congregation of 60 families committed to paying $5,000 more than last winter to heat its 175-year-old stone church. But with heating oil prices threatening to reach $5 a gallon by winter, Burton hoped to put...