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Crude prices surged Sunday evening following an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure and announcement from President Trump that he has authorized the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. U.S. oil futures advanced about 12% to $61.60 a barrel shortly after trading opened at 6 p.m. ET. Brent crude, the global gauge of oil prices, soared 13% to nearly $69 a barrel. If those moves held, they would mark some of the biggest intraday for crude in years. ...

Saudi and American officials are investigating the possibility that attacks on Saudi oil facilities Saturday involved cruise missiles launched from Iraq or Iran, questioning Yemeni rebel claims of responsibility, people familiar with the matter said. Leaders of the Houthis, the Yemeni rebels whom Saudi Arabia is trying to dislodge from the country’s capital, claimed they sent a squad of drones hundreds of miles into the heart of Saudi Arabia to carry out coordinated attacks on two of the country’s vital energy sites. If true, the attacks marked the most effective and far-reaching drone strikes carried out by outgunned Houthi forces...

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters marched in front of Frankfurt's IAA car show on Saturday to demand a swift end to combustion engines and a shift to environmentally friendly vehicles as Chancellor Angela Merkel's government prepares to unveil climate protection measures. Police in Frankfurt said some 15,000, including many cyclists, took part in the march. Organizers put the number at 25,000 and said that around 18,000 cyclists had descended on the city. Protesters took aim at SUVs, seen by environmentalists as a highly polluting status symbol that has no place in cities. "STOP SUV," "SUV not cool," and "We...

With the U.S, Russia, and China all jostling for position in Iraq’s oil and gas industry both north and south, Iraq’s oil ministry last week reiterated its desire to have one or more foreign partners in the Mansuriya gas field. Situated in Diyala province, close to the Iran border, Mansuriya is estimated to hold around 4.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, with plateau production projected at about 325 million standard cubic feet per day. For the U.S., encouraging Iraq to optimise its gas flows so that it reduces its dependency for power from Iran is the key consideration. For...

(Moderator, if I can't excerpt the BBC, please note) Drone attacks have set alight two major oil facilities run by the state-owned company Aramco in Saudi Arabia, state media say. Footage showed a huge blaze at Abqaiq, site of Aramco's largest oil processing plant, while a second drone attack started fires in the Khurais oilfield. The fires are now under control at both facilities, state media said. A spokesman for the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said it had deployed 10 drones in the attacks. The military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, told al-Masirah TV, which is owned by the Houthi movement...

The Trump administration is planning to provide the identity of a Saudi official who allegedly helped the 9/11 hijackers to family members of victims of the terror attacks that occurred 18 years ago. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The victims' family members have been pressuring the Trump administration to release the information. In a recent letter to President Trump, they called on him to "instruct Attorney General Barr not to invoke privileges and to give us the FBI documents so that we can finally learn the full truth and obtain justice from Saudi...

House approves two bills to block Trump drilling BY REBECCA BEITSCH - 09/11/19 05:33 PM EDT The House on Wednesday approved two bills that offer sweeping protections to the nation’s coastlines, permanently blocking offshore drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and part of the Gulf of Mexico. Another vote on legislation to block drilling in the Atlantic is set for Thursday as House Democrats seek to advance their environmental agenda. “We’re striking back this week against the Trump administration and their agenda to drill everywhere, every time, with no exception," House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Friday promised to sign an executive order on her first day in office, putting a moratorium on new fossil fuel leases and pledged to ban fracking “everywhere.” Warren promised in a tweet Friday to “sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands” and vowed to “ban fracking — everywhere”:

The Department of Energy announced this week that it’s withdrawing the Obama administration’s energy-rationing mandate for certain lightbulbs. Opponents criticized the rule change, arguing that the move would be bad for consumers and the climate. The reality, however, is that families and businesses will be better off, and the change will have a negligible impact on the environment. The Energy Department’s decision to withdraw energy-efficiency standards for candle-shaped, globe-shaped, three-way and reflector lightbulbs is a victory for consumer choice. Whether it’s buying a lightbulb or a new car, families have different preferences and needs. They consider the various trade-offs in...

U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), negligible just three years ago, now amount to 10% of the global market and at 22 million tonnes so far this year are equal to the total volumes pumped out in 2018, Refinitiv data showed. The data, comprised of tracked individual journeys made by LNG tankers from supply source to destination, also showed LNG production hit an all-time high last month of 31 million tonnes. As global volumes grow, Qatar, for years the world’s largest LNG supplier, lost market share to Australia, which exported more LNG than any other country in the past...

Die-hard Trump haters continue to maintain that the President of the United States is in thrall to, or maybe being blackmailed by Russia’s President Putin. As a corollary, they still push the notion that Russia will corrupt the 2020 presidential election, so that if and when Trump wins, they will deny him legitimacy. The crashing and burning of the Mueller effort to prove this thesis means nothing to the deluded dead-enders. But the stupidity of this charge is refuted by the power play President Trump’s Secretary of Energy Rick Perry carried out over the holiday weekend. Via Reuters: “We’re...

In his book "2061 - Odyssey Three" (the third of his Space Odyssey series), Arthur C. Clarke put forward the intriguing proposal that the core of the planet Jupiter was, in fact, a diamond the size of Earth. Now Clarke, even though a science fiction author of some repute, had a science background and always tried to bring rigorous scientific accuracy to his stories. So, could his proposition be possible? The somewhat predictable answer is - we don't know. But we can analyse the possibility within known scientific parametres, to see if it is, at least, possible. For diamond to...

<p>Support for the president rebounded in the past year, with 67% of farmers saying they’d back him for reelection in 2020, according to a survey of 1,150 growers carried out by Farm Futures between July 21 and Aug. 3. That’s up from last year, when backing fell to just under 60% following the introduction of Chinese retaliatory tariffs on American soybeans...</p>

The United State has imposed sanctions on a leading Chinese state-owned company for importing Iranian oil. The sanctions placed by the U.S. State Department bar Zhuhai Zhenrong Corporation, one of China’s largest state-run oil companies, from “engaging in foreign exchange, banking or property transactions under US jurisdiction,” London-based Financial Times reported. “As part of that maximum pressure campaign, I am announcing that the United States is imposing sanctions on the Chinese entity Zhuhai Zhenrong and its chief executive Youmin Li,” Secretary of State Pompeo told reporters on Tuesday. While the U.S. sanctions have deterred almost all foreign buyers in Europe...

It sounded like a historical moment was in the offing. For the first time, Europe’s finance ministers were seriously planning on publicly denouncing tax havens by presenting a black list of countries that lure companies through tax-saving schemes. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the countries on the list were “not doing enough to fight tax evasion.” Fellow Frenchman Pierre Moscovici, the European Union’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, called for vigorous sanctions. […] That was one and a half years ago, and that momentum has largely disappeared. This is partly because the black list had several fundamental...

The United States' surging oil and gas production will soon allow the country to surpass Saudi Arabia in liquid petroleum exports. While Saudi Arabia will remain the top crude oil exporter, the U.S. is destined to usurp the kingdom as soon as late 2019 when it comes to overall liquid petroleum exports, including fuels and some natural gas liquids, according to a new report from the Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy. "Increasingly profitable shale production and a robust global appetite for light oil and gasoline is poised to bring the U.S. to a position of oil dominance in the next...

Has there been a president in living memory who relishes a fight more than Trump? I don't think so. That is a major reason why he remains popular with conservatives and has seen his favorability ratings rise. Sure, I like President Trump's actions on job-killing regulations, tax relief, border security, energy independence, military funding, judicial appointments, and so on. But what really invigorates me and millions of other EverTrumpers is that he is fearless -- impervious to attacks by his adversaries and merciless in responding to them. Trump is an oddity: a Republican president who stands up to the Left's...

Promoting his newly unveiled $16.3 trillion "Green New Deal," 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders called for drastic action against oil companies. "Fossil fuel executives should be criminally prosecuted for the destruction they have knowingly caused," he wrote Thursday on Twitter. Sanders boasts his plan will reverse a climate "crisis" he likens to the crisis President Franklin Roosevelt faced when he launched the New Deal. The Vermont senator promises it will create 20 million jobs and achieve "100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by at least 2050." He says...

Bernie Sanders has unveiled his own version of the Green New Deal which expands upon the one promoted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and includes some actual dollar figures. The grand total associated with this plan, according to Sanders, is $16.3 trillion dollars. But Sanders claims all of that would be paid for in fifteen years from a combination of new taxes and cuts in other government spending. Sanders’ plan is quite expansive but here are some of the noteworthy goals: No more fossil fuels: “Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Rosneft, one of the world's top oil producers and exporters, has notified customers that future tender contracts for oil products will be denominated in euros not dollars, five trading sources told Reuters. The move, which could come as soon as this year, is likely to be seen as an attempt to offset any potential negative impact of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Rosneft, which accounts for over 40% of oil output in Russia, produced 45.8 million tonnes of oil products at home in the first six months of this year - from diesel and gasoline to fuel...