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GasBuddy.com says fuel prices could spike within a week anywhere from 10 to 30 cents a gallon, and they could stay higher for several weeks. Its analysts are blaming aging refineries for unplanned repairs. When those happen, often the oil companies will tackle maintenance issues, too.

Unbeknownst to most of us, homes are now fitted with smart water meters, smart gas meters, and smart appliances that communicate with each other and with the “mother ship.” Under the guise of climate change advocacy which pretends to save the planet from a non-existent anthropogenic global warming, people across the globe have been forced by utilities and their governments to accept smart meters as readers of their electricity consumption. I called these smart meters in my book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy,” drones attached to our homes. Smart meters are being deployed without debate and without the informed consent...

Real estate developers were too late to the party in North Dakota. Just a few years after fracking sparked a shale oil frenzy that lured thousands of unemployed workers to North Dakota in the hopes of landing high-paying jobs, plummeting oil prices have sapped some oomph from the boom. As workers streamed into North Dakota, temporary camps popped up to meet the demand, and real estate developers followed suit with plans to create thousands of permanent apartments. Related: The North Dakota Boom That’s Going Bust After Oil’s Plunge But crude oil prices have fallen more than 50 percent in the...

A British cousin of Barack Obama is suing Scotland Yard over claims colleagues made her life a misery by deliberately breaking wind near her desk. Marie Auma, who related to the US President through her aunt, Kezia Obama, who is his Bracknell, Berkshire-based step-mother, is demanding £400,000 from the Met over claims that she was belittled and humiliated during a two year campaign of harassment.

Raising $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 is challenging, but possible through mechanisms including carbon markets, domestic carbon taxes and a variety of international transportation taxes, a United Nations advisory group said in a report Friday. Earlier this year, the UN's Ban established the panel, which includes U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and Deutsche Bank vice-chairman Caio Koch-Weser. The financing will be used to support mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries--in particular, for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.

The Interior Department said Tuesday that the greater sage grouse, a ground-dwelling bird whose vast range spans 11 Western states, does not need federal protections ... The fight over whether to list the bird as endangered or threatened recalled the battle over the spotted owl 25 years ago, where federal protection greatly impeded the logging economy. ... could help defuse a potential political liability for Democrats heading into the 2016 election; ... House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop said Tuesday's announcement was a "cynical ploy" intended to mask the fact that the Obama administration has imposed limits on development...

There’s fallout from the July 27 Houston Chronicle exposé of a trip to Azerbaijan by 10 member of the House that violated House rules. The trip was ostensibly sponsored by nonprofit groups but was actually funded by oil companies BP, Conoco Phillips and SOCAR, the national oil company of Azerbaijan. According to the New York Post today: Rep. Gregory Meeks pushed to let an Iran-backed natural-gas project dodge US sanctions — after attending an illicit junket paid for by energy companies. Also from the Post: “Congressman Meeks went on a 2013 Congressional trip to Baku, Azerbaijan, subsidized in part...

The union era's death knell sounded in Kentucky on New Year's Eve, when Patriot Coal announced the closing of its Highland Mine. The underground mine in western Kentucky employed about 400 hourly workers represented by the United Mine Workers of America. ... Union membership remains substantial in West Virginia, with more than 30,000 members, largely because that state wasn't affected by the environmental regulations on high-sulfur coal that essentially halted mining in western Kentucky in the 1990s. Smith said those western Kentucky mine shutdowns led to the loss of about 20,000 union members in two years.

U.S. oil prices soared 10% on Thursday, as a rally in Chinese and U.S. stocks and better-than-expected U.S. economic data prompted a rush by traders to bail out of bearish bets that the market would fall. Traders and analysts at hedge funds, banks and brokerages said supply-and-demand conditions in the oil market remained weak and there appeared to be little fundamental justification for such a strong rally, or expectations of more price gains in the near future. Rather, they said, it appeared to be set off as investors with so-called short positions that profit from falling prices closed those bets...

Initial tests on mortar fragments from an Aug. 11 Islamic State attack against Kurdish forces in Iraq have tested positive for the chemical weapon mustard gas, the Pentagon said Friday. A few days after the attack near Makhmour, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces brought fragments from the mortar rounds to U.S. forces. Makhmour is just south of Irbil, where the U.S. has one of its training center sites. “We were able to take the fragments and do a field test on those fragments, and they showed the presence of HD, or what is known as sulfur mustard. That is a class...

Pentagon sources tell CBS News that reports are "credible" that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) likely used mustard gas against Kurdish fighters in Iraq. It is unclear if the gas was leftover from Saddam Hussein stockpiles or if they were brought over from Syria, which would be the two likeliest sources of the gas, said a senior Department of Defense official. The official said the reports are credible because of prior information, but did not elaborate. Mustard gas is considered an "antiquated" weapon that must be used in very large concentrations to be lethal, the official told...

Anti-fracking activists are at work in Michigan, organizing a ballot campaign to ban the practice in this state. Since May they have been working to collect the 252,523 valid signatures required to place the measure on the November 2016 ballot. Fracking, or more precisely hydraulic fracturing, is a process for extracting oil and natural gas by injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into shale rock below the earth’s surface. Michigan Capitol Confidential recently communicated about the industry and the proposed ban with Erin McDonough, president and CEO of the Michigan Oil and Gas Association. Before accepting her current...

There goes crude oil again. On Tuesday morning, West Texas Intermediate crude futures in New York fell 4% to as low as $43.03 per barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was also lower, near $50 per barrel, after on Monday having its biggest one-day jump in a month. We got OPEC's latest monthly production numbers Tuesday morning, and they showed that production surged to a three-year high in July. The 12-member oil cartel has overshot its production target for at least a year in a bid to maintain its market share. After what seemed like a recovery in prices around...

Presidential candidate and former Gov. Jeb Bush got into some hot water recently over his past work with a foundation run by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for its funding of Planned Parenthood. What went unnoticed, however, was that Bush worked with Bloomberg as he gave millions to environmental groups to take down the coal industry. Bush, who’s looking to win the Republican presidential nomination, served as a founding director of the Bloomberg Family Foundation — now called Bloomberg Philanthropies — from 2010 through 2014. During Bush’s second year with the organization, Bloomberg donated $50 million to the...

The sage grouse population has exploded in the last two years, growing by nearly two-thirds from more than 49,000 males in 2013 to more than 80,000 this year. ... This is encouraging news for the bird, and for the people whose lives would be turned upside down by the federal government if it still insists on listing the critter as an endangered species on the brink of extinction. The report considered the population across the bird’s 11-state habitat, with specific news on the growth in Colorado numbers ... The report falls on the heels of a gloom and doom forecast...

Take notice if you drive to and from work each day in California. SB 350, known as the California Gas Restriction Act of 2015, (de León) requires a 50% reduction in petroleum, 50% increase in renewables for electricity generation, and a 50% increase in the energy efficiency of buildings by 2030. SB 350 will also grant the Air Resources Board significant authority to adopt regulations that will result in a 50% reduction in petroleum use in cars and trucks by 2030. In short, unelected regulators will be able to limit how far you can drive, ration gas, increase costs, and...

The Socialist Utopia has come to Venezuela and so has triple-digit inflation. Inflation is soaring at about 65%, murder rates are the second highest in the world, they don’t have food, chocolate,cooking oil, sugar, beer, shampoo, chicken, beef or even toilet paper. Businesses put the blame on the socialist government’s economic policies and the government blames it on everyone else. A number of U.S. movie stars have gone to Venezuela many times to applaud their regime and compare their economy to ours. Sean Penn was one. ... American leftists cheered the Socialist government and the social justice he forced on...

Hope you like increasing prices, everyone! #ForTheMiddleClass https://twitter.com/WSJPolitics/status/627796768328183808 … It’s not like Americans weren’t warned. All in the name of fighting “climate change,” of course. Has that ever really been a barrier for this administration?

Oil and gas producers in one of the most active drilling areas in the country have had to make concessions to not disturb species such as the lesser prairie chicken and the dunes sagebrush lizard. Now industry officials in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico may have four other species to contend with: make way for the Cascade Caverns salamander, the Arizona toad, the alligator snapping turtle and the Rio Grande cooter. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday it is giving what it calls “status reviews” to the four amphibians and reptiles found in the Southwest as...

The Michigan state budget is $54.5 billion — so why can’t legislators find an extra $1.2 billion or so for road funding? That’s the question MLive tries to answer in a video. But they buy into a bad argument in their explanation. Many proponents of raising taxes to increase road funding often say that the total budget number of $54.5 billion is misleading and that lawmakers have “only” about $10 billion to work with. MLive accepts this argument and assumes new spending for roads can only come from this portion of the state budget. But that is incorrect. While it...