Free Republic

A former Environmental Protection Agency regulator warns that while the Obama administration now has coal in its crosshairs, natural gas is next in line. David Schnare cites a proposed rule on methane emissions as one of the ways President Obama and the EPA will clamp down on natural gas. The 33-year EPA veteran, who once sued utilities for coal-fired plants that didn’t meet Clean Air Act standards, is director of the Center of Energy and Environmental Stewardship at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Schnare said the EPA — as part of its “Clean Power Plan” rule that would...

Union leaders called strikes on Sunday at nine U.S. refineries in a bid to pressure oil companies to agree to a new national contract covering workers at 63 plants. The walkouts, the first held in support of a nationwide pact since 1980, target plants that together account for more than 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity. The discord comes as plunging crude prices force oil companies to slash spending. Royal Dutch Shell, the lead industry negotiator, indicated talks had broken down. ... Shell activated a strike contingency plan at its sprawling joint venture refinery in Deer Park, Texas, to keep...

A US-led coalition air strike killed a chemical weapons specialist with the Islamic State group in Iraq who once worked for Saddam Hussein, US military officers said on Friday. The air raid carried out last Saturday near Mosul took out Abu Malik, whose training "provided the terrorist group with expertise to pursue a chemical weapons capability," the military said in a statement. Malik had worked at a chemical weapons production plant under Saddam's regime and later forged an affiliation with al Qaeda in Iraq in 2005, before joining the extremist IS group, according to Central Command. "His death is expected...

Sometimes it looks like the Canadian economy is unraveling like a giant surprise package right in the face of economists and the Bank of Canada. We’ve got big data revisions, shock bank rate cuts, a falling Canadian dollar. Through it all, nobody saw it coming. They didn’t see a thing. Statistics Canada’s labour force data are notoriously wonky and revision prone. Still, Wednesday’s revamp wiped out 50,000 jobs that economists had assumed had been created during 2014. In an economy with almost 20 million employed, the revisions are small, but they cast doubt on the state of the economy and...

Big news today out of the Interior Department: much of the Atlantic coastline from Virginia to South Carolina will soon be opened up for oil and natural gas drilling. In 2010, Interior proposed opening parts of the Virginia coast to drilling, but pulled back after the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico. At the recent States and Nation Policy Summit this past December, ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force adopted a resolution calling upon the Obama Administration to expand access to additional offshore resources in its 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and natural gas leasing program...

Executives at a Bermudan firm funneling money to U.S. environmentalists run investment funds with Russian tycoons. A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president...

The Register-Guard reports Daniel Rowlett is seeking $13 million. He says Walmart sold him a plastic can produced by Blitz USA that exploded as he poured fuel into a burn barrel in October 2013. He suffered burns over nearly half his body.

With an increase in electric and hybrid vehicles along with better fuel-efficient vehicles, changing Bay Area drivers habit are posing a serious problem for state coffers. As motorists use less and less gas, gas tax revenues to pay for state highways, roads and bridges shrink. Meanwhile, as gas prices fall, so does the sales tax generated by fuel sales. In California, among the taxes collected on fuel is a 2.25% sales tax on gasoline and a 9.67 percent tax on diesel.

TYLER - Three people face sentencing as early as next month for their involvement in the stockpiling of chemical weapons in East Texas, which some authorities believe may have been part of a domestic terrorism plot. William Krar, 62, of Noonday, pleaded guilty in November to one count of possessing a dangerous chemical weapon after investigators discovered the components needed to make lethal cyanide gas at a storage facility he rented with his common-law wife, Judith Bruey. Bruey, 54, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess illegal weapons. Edward Feltus, 56, of New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting...

Two environmentalist groups filed suit Tuesday seeking stronger protection for a bird found only in Colorado and Utah ... The Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project said in court papers that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should go back and produce an “adequate finding” on the status of the Gunnison sage grouse ... The threatened designation could result in restrictions on oil and gas drilling, agriculture, recreational and other land uses. ... both camps will be watching litigation closely, in part to see how it might influence policy on the more common greater sage grouse. The...

Expert says western yellow-billed cuckoo may be more prevalent than first thought. Paonia ornithologist Jason Beason likes to say that there are a lot of cuckoos out there. The line is good for laughs at presentations like the talks he gave in the Roaring Fork Valley last week, and it accurately reflects the fact that dozens of species of cuckoos populate the Earth in both the Old and New Worlds. These include birds people might not immediately think of as being cuckoos, such as the greater roadrunner in the southwestern United States. But in the case of the cuckoo of...

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced major new regulations on the emissions of methane into the air from oil and gas production. It calls methane a “potent” pollutant and its new rules would require a 45 percent reduction by 2025 from 2012 levels. Most Americans support these new rules, according to polling from environmental groups. This isn’t surprising. Methane sounds like a dirty and dangerous pollutant and even deadly if leaked into water or the air. However, methane is just another term for the main component of natural gas. Drillers have a powerful motive to stop leakage on...

I am guessing you don’t know one of the major things resident Obama was doing while snubbing France and world leaders who convened in Paris to express solidarity in the civilized world’s war against radical Islamic terrorism. I assure you it was something close to his heart — as opposed to fighting Islamic jihad. It was something that will thrill the anti-business, anti-energy extreme environmentalists but will not warm the hearts of American businesses and energy producers, and it is not good news for America’s currently overhyped economy. Yes, you heard me right; despite all the faux euphoria projected by...

Even as gasoline prices plummeted and the overall energy price index calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics declined, electricity prices bucked the trend in the United States in 2014. Data released today by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December and for the year. 2014 was the most-expensive year ever for electricity in the United States. The annual price index for electricity, published by BLS today, was 208.020. That was up from 200.750 in 2013. ... The average price for a kilowatt hour of electricity in the United States was...

Yes friends, never let it be said that this administration isn’t beholden to special interests to the detriment of the middle class.The oil shale boom has helped create a surplus of oil that has entered the market and driven prices down to under $2 a gallon. It is an economic boon to hard pressed families and businesses who use a lot of fuel. It is also a testament to how well markets work.And that’s why government is about to intrude in that market and jack the prices back up. This time under guise of your out-of-control EPA: In spite...

Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to cut supplies to and through Ukraine amid accusations, according to The Daily Mail, that its neighbor has been siphoning off and stealing Russian gas. Due to these “transit risks for European consumers in the territory of Ukraine,” Gazprom cut gas exports to Europe by 60%, plunging the continent into an energy crisis “within hours.” Perhaps explaining the explosion higher in NatGas prices (and oil) today, gas companies in Ukraine confirmed that Russia had cut off supply; and six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas. The EU raged that...

Taking direct aim at the oil-and-gas industry, President Obama on Wednesday put forth long-awaited regulations on methane emissions, setting an ambitious goal of reducing those emissions by 45 percent over the next decade and again drawing the ire of many in the energy industry. The move comes just days before the State of the Union address and underscores that, in the final two years of presidency, Mr. Obama is looking to cement his legacy on climate-change and environmental issues. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/14/obama-hits-oil-and-gas-industry-demands-massive-re/#ixzz3Op4IqMql Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Russia cut gas exports to Europe by 60 per cent today, plunging the continent into an energy crisis 'within hours' as a dispute with Ukraine escalated. This morning, gas companies in Ukraine said that Russia had completely cut off their supply. Six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas shipped via Ukraine today, in a sharp escalation of a struggle over energy that threatens Europe as winter sets in. Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments from Russia through Ukraine. Croatia said it was temporarily reducing supplies to industrial customers while Bulgaria...

Moscow (AFP) - Russia's Gazprom giant on Wednesday urged the European Union to link up to its planned energy pipeline to Turkey or lose the gas that now transits Ukraine. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller reminded the new European Commissioner for Energy Union, Maros Sefcovic that the South Stream project to deliver gas to Europe through Ukraine has been scrapped. Hence, "the Turkish Stream is the only route along which 63 billion cubic metres of Russian gas can be supplied, which at present transit Ukraine. There are no other options," he said...

Taking direct aim at the oil-and-gas industry, President Obama on Wednesday put forth long-awaited regulations on methane emissions, setting an ambitious goal of reducing those emissions by 45 percent over the next decade. The move comes just days before the State of the Union address and underscores that, in the final two years of presidency, Mr. Obama is looking to cement his legacy on climate-change and environmental issues...