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North Dakota has joined the big leagues of crude oil production, surpassing 1 million barrels per day — an output second only to Texas in the U.S. State officials said Tuesday that North Dakota yielded 1,001,149 barrels daily in April from a record 10,658 wells. Jubilant oil industry officials hailed the benchmark as another sign that the United States is freeing itself from the grip of foreign oil.

The federal government’s decision to ban energy development across a wide swath of Colorado and eastern Utah to protect the Gunnison sage grouse habitat has raised concerns the action would inflict economic damage. Although the Obama administration was not expected to make its decision as to whether the bird warrants the endangered listing until November, the Bureau of Land Management’s decision this week effectively puts an oil, gas and coal moratorium on 400,000 acres – roughly 90 acres per bird. The final decision was “pushed back until after the election, because when people understand the impact on jobs, people get...

Have you noticed that prices are going up rapidly? If so, you are certainly not alone. But Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, the Obama administration and the mainstream media would have us believe that inflation is completely under control and exactly where it should be. Perhaps if the highly manipulated numbers that they quote us were real, everything would be fine. But of course the way that the inflation rate is calculated has been changed more than 20 times since the 1970s, and at this point it bears so little relation to reality that it is essentially meaningless. Anyone that...

As the debate over how to regulate fracking — and whether to permit the process at all — rages in the U.S. and Europe, there are powerful interests that can benefit from blocking its expansion, namely, existing oil and gas producers, such as the Gulf States and Russia. There have been plenty of rumors that the governments of such places have supported anti-fracking activists, but now NATO has more or less officially accused Russian intelligence agencies of supporting anti-fracking NGOs in Europe. The FT reports: Russian intelligence agencies are covertly funding and working with European environmental groups to campaign against...

BAGHDAD (CBS News/CBSDC/AP) — Islamic militants attacked Iraq’s largest oil refinery late Tuesday, but were repelled by Iraqi security forces after an overnight battle, Iraqi officials said Wednesday. The al Qaeda splinter group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began their attack late Tuesday night, but fighting continued into Wednesday morning. There were unconfirmed reports that the militants had managed to gain control of much of the refinery compound, but in messages posted on their Facebook page, the Iraqi Special Operations force vehemently denied the claims. Iraqi special forces, backed up by air support, destroyed an...

Another New Mexico county has joined a lawsuit to fight the listing of the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species. Lea County in southeastern New Mexico joined three other counties in the state last week in a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Interior and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ... U.S. Rep., Steve Pearce, R-N.M., .. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to cater to environmental groups and disregard science will devastate New Mexico’s way of life,” he said. “New Mexicans will pay the price in lost jobs, industry, ranching and oil and gas production.”

Federal authorities have issued a moratorium blocking oil, gas and coal leasing on 800,000 acres of public land in southwestern Colorado and eastern Utah that is habitat for the imperiled Gunnison sage grouse. ... restrictive measures that will impact jobs and economic development

The explosion occurred on the pipeline "Urengoy-Uzhgorod-Pomary" Lokhvytsky in Poltava region. On it informs "Іnterfaks-Ukraine", referring to the press service of the Interior Ministry in the Poltava region, transmits UE. Read also "Tsenzor.NET": GTS and underground gas storage facilities will remain the property of the state, - "Naftogaz" "The report of the explosion came about 14:20. Fortunately, there were no injuries, fire works are still going on," - said the press service. According to police, the explosion occurred on a section of pipeline located in the field, the distance to the nearest settlement - about 1 km. "According to witnesses,...

Ukraine says Russia has cut off all gas supplies to Kiev, in a major escalation of a dispute between the two nations. "Gas supplies to Ukraine have been reduced to zero," Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuri Prodan said. Russia's state-owned gas giant Gazprom said Ukraine had to pay upfront for its gas supplies, after Kiev failed to settle its huge debt. Gazprom had sought from Kiev $1.95bn (£1.15bn) - out of $4.5bn it says it is owed - by 06:00 GMT. SNIP-- "Today, from 10:00 Moscow time, Gazprom, according to the existing contract, moved Naftogaz to prepayment for gas supplies," Gazprom...

Ukraine faces the threat of Russia cutting off gas supplies when a 06:00 GMT deadline passes on Monday after talks on a long-running gas pricing dispute failed. Russian natural gas producer Gazprom said it was not extending the deadline for Ukraine to start paying off its gas debts after the discussions ended in the early hours of the morning in Kiev, raising the prospect of disruptions to gas flows to the European Union via Ukraine. The breakdown of the talks is likely to increase political tensions that have mounted in the past few days between Kiev and Moscow as Ukrainian...

The Next Billion (Barrels of Oil): T. Boone Pickens Calls for Energy Plan at Stansberry Society Event Thursday June 12, 2014 14:12 Source: JT Long of The Energy Report  (6/12/14) http://www.theenergyreport.com/pub/na/the-next-billion-barrels-of-oil-t-boone-pickens-calls-for-energy-plan-at-stansberry-society-event Known for his saying that "the first billion is the hardest," oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens addressed the Stansberry Society Conference in Dallas at the end of May with a plea for a national energy plan that takes advantage of the billions of barrels of oil being produced each day in the U.S. for domestic use. First addressing the audience, and then in conversation with event host Porter Stansberry, followed by...

A billion-dollar daily shot in the arm for the American economy Posted: August 17, 2012 by Ken Cohen Print this: email   inShare   One billion dollars every single day.That is the rough measure of the benefit the U.S. economy is estimated to receive by the end of this year thanks to the development of new supplies of oil and natural gas, according to a new analysis.USA Today reported recently about a Merrill Lynch study that seeks to quantify just how much the new supplies of natural gas and oil from unconventional sources like shale – not to mention offshore...

Chesapeake chasing ‘all-but-forgotten’ shale assets Posted on May 19, 2014 at 11:50 pm by Collin Eaton in Crude oil, Natural gas, Shale EmailPrint8 inShare81 A Chesapeake Energy storage tank near Dilley, Texas. (Pat Sullivan/AP) HOUSTON – Just a month after BP decided to take a $521 million hit to abandon its plans for the Utica Shale, Chesapeake Energy last week called the region its “newest world-class asset.”It was the second surprising determination that Chesapeake executives made this year on where the company could find its biggest future growth drivers. The first out-of-the-blue call came in February, when the Oklahoma City-based...

New Utica wells rival core Marcellus output Posted on June 12, 2014 at 3:00 pm by Collin Eaton in featured, Natural gas, Shale A drilling rig in the Utica Shale. (Chesapeake) HOUSTON – Natural gas, and not oil, has turned out to be the dominant fossil fuel in Ohio’s Utica Shale, a big disappointment to the industry that prompted BP and Halcón Resources to abandon the play earlier this year.But Aubrey McClendon’s new wildcatting venture American Energy Partners and a handful of players are racing to snap up land in the southeastern corner of the play, where operators have found...

EXCLUSIVE: The Russian natural gas company Gazprom, which supplies much of Europe’s gas imports, is at the center of a secretive cabal of mostly state-owned natural gas companies that has been operating for two decades under the aegis of the United Nations, according to a first-ever audit of the operation obtained by Fox News. Even though it is a U.N. entity, the group, known simply as the Gas Centre, runs on a budget funded by its corporate members. Its supervisory Executive Board has never been approved by the U.N. agency of which it is nominally a part, the United Nations...

US Shale Plays to Watch in 2014 by  Karen Boman | Rigzone Staff | Wednesday, November 27, 2013 The U.S. shale exploration and production boom has dramatically changed the U.S. energy landscape, unlocking enough natural gas resources to turn the country into a future exporter of liquefied natural gas while reversing the decline seen a few years ago in U.S. crude oil production.While unconventional plays such as the Eagle Ford and Bakken are well-known, DrillingInfo CEO Allen Gilmer told Rigzone he sees potential for exploration and production activity in 2014 and beyond for some emerging U.S. shale plays.These plays...

Bridge Magazine, a publication of The Center for Michigan, had a recent series of articles on hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), and while the author provides some value, including good interviews with residents and a look at the externalities of drilling, the pieces make some errors — one in particular is egregious enough that it should be corrected. The author cites the anti-fracking film, "Gasland," and references an infamous scene in the movie where a man is shown lighting methane coming out of his faucet on fire. This has become a defining scene for the anti-gas left. In the piece, author Jacob...

Ukraine's Acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk urged the European Union on Tuesday to block Russian South Stream gas pipeline, currently under construction and expected to transfer Russian oil and gas to central and southern Europe via Black Sea bypassing Ukraine. "We call on the European Union to block the South Stream. Ukraine is a reliable transit country, we have fulfilled and will continue to fulfil our obligations," Yatsenyuk told the parliament. Aiming to diversify Russia's gas supply routes to Europe due to Ukrainian gas debt of $3.5 billion, which Russia fears may lead to possible transit disruptions, Russian gas giant...

Note to new readers: This article explores the consequences of using so much fuel to produce our food. If you come out of it thinking it’s telling you to drive rather than get some exercise, you didn’t read it!

<p>Ukraine's gas company, Naftogaz, announced at a European Union-mediated meeting in Berlin Friday with Gazprom and the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers that it has transferred $786 million to Gazprom, EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said. That covers deliveries in February and March, a period for which the price charged to Ukraine is undisputed, Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuri Prodan said.</p>