Free Republic

If decision-makers take as long to act on this issue as they did on gay rights, we will all be wearing scuba masks to rallies A few weeks ago, Time magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the US Gulf coast the "Selma and Stonewall" of the climate movement. Which, if you think about it, may be both good news and bad news. Yes, those of us fighting the pipeline have mobilised record numbers of activists: the largest civil disobedience action in 30...

Oil prices could rise to anywhere between $150 and $270 a barrel by 2020 as demand growth in emerging markets like India and China out paces expected supply, the OECD said Wednesday. The report shows the central role that Asian oil demand will play in determining prices, even as the U.S. reduces its need for energy imports amid a surge in its unconventional hydrocarbons production. Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Energy reported China overtook the U.S. as the world's largest net oil importer.

With massive protests already planned, environmentalists see new signs Obama is going their way. Environmentalists are promising mass arrests and acts of civil disobedience if the Obama administration moves forward with a controversial pipeline project through the Midwest — even as Obama's political arm seeks to use the project in its latest fundraiser. Opponents to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, said they have more than 50,000 recruits ready to be jailed as part of one of the largest broad-scale direct-action protests in their movement's history. "With our Keystone XL pledge of...

March 16, 2013 Did Obama Just Block Keystone? Stanley Kurtz Deciding whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline is surely one of the toughest challenges of Barack Obama’s presidency. He hasn’t made up his mind yet, of course. Or has he?Bloomberg reports that the Obama administration “is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects.� Up to now, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), federally approved projects had to consider potential impacts like dangerous spills or air pollution, but not global warming. Directing all...

While many have long seen America as the global bad boy, everybody likes Canada. If Uncle Sam tucks his pack of Marlboros under his T-shirt sleeve and plays by his own rules, the Canadian moose -- or whatever their Uncle Sam equivalent is -- always wears his blue blazer and school tie and does his chores without being asked. Canada is a global citizen, a good neighbor, a northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility that earns its gold stars from the United Nations every day. This fact should have relevance below the 49th parallel. Right now, we're all...

War On Energy: In yet another clean bill of health, the State Department's draft review says the pipeline from Canada will not affect global warming or harm aquifers it crosses. But it will create jobs and economic growth. The U.S. State Department's second Keystone XL supplemental environmental impact statement, which represents the project's fourth environmental review, finds the pipeline would not accelerate global greenhouse gas emissions or significantly harm the natural habitats along its route. This sent the administration's environmentalist base into spasms of hysteria. Greenies had warned that the extraction of crude from Alberta's oil sands would release dangerous...

From Tom Nelson: Keystone pipeline passes environmental review: It’s the [CO2-induced] end of the world as the Sierra Club knows it, and I feel fineKeystone XL pipeline would have little impact on climate change, State Department analysis says – The Washington Post The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday afternoon, suggesting the project would have little impact on climate change. Live Blogging the Keystone XL Environmental Assessment Release | DeSmogBlog Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune just released the following reaction in a press release just sent out:“The Sierra Club...

The Obama administration today moved one step closer to approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, concluding in a draft environmental impact statement that the project would not accelerate global greenhouse gas emissions or significantly harm the natural habitats along its route. The report, done by the State Department,  suggests that the proposed 875-mile pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska, has cleared a significant hurdle on its way to President Obama’s desk for final consideration.“The approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project,...

TransCanada has only been waiting for the go-ahead for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline for, oh, four or so years now, and the State Department has now several times concluded that the pipeline poses no real reason for environmental alarm — despite the vociferous protestations of its eco-critics. After having released an environmental impact review in 2011 that basically concluded that the project poses no real threats, State released another revised environmental impact review on Friday afternoon that… also basically concludes that the project poses no real threats. It very carefully avoids making any recommendations for specific action on the...

Tune in Tuesday night to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. As the president speaks, he will be alert to the chorus of Hollywood stars, environmental activists, editorial writers and industry leaders who are pushing for him to make the biggest climate-change decision he can possibly make: Impose a carbon tax.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., defied the odds in November when she won the closest senate race in the country, and now that she's arrived in Washington, she's defiant as ever. But now, instead of defying the pollsters, she's defying the Democratic caucus by taking divergent opinions on issues central to the President Obama's second term agenda, ranging from gun control to the environment. Heitkamp, who says growing the economy is her top priority, is concerned that the president is changing his focus to issues like climate change and gun control. "I think, you know the one thing that has gotten...

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has approved his state’s portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, explaining that its revised route avoids areas that critics had earlier claimed were environmentally sensitive. The Alberta-to-Texas pipeline would create more than 5,500 Nebraska jobs during its construction period and support 1,000 permanent jobs through 2030. During the project’s lifetime, KXL would generate $950 million in labor income, $130 million in property, sales and other state and local taxes, and $679 million for the state’s gross domestic product, by bringing Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries.President Obama’s second term agenda, continued viability of Medicare and...

The Sierra Club has announced its approval for a "one-time" use of civil disobedience. The civil disobedience is intended to step up their efforts to oppose the Keystone pipeline. Many of the other groups opposing Keystone have been engaging in civil disobedience as a tactic, including arson-based ecoterrorism. This will be the first time in the Sierra Club's history that they have approved violating the law.

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed off on TransCanada’s revised route through his state earlier this week, effectively clearing what the Obama administration has cited as a major hurdle to green-lighting the entire Keystone XL pipeline. Having already been through years of multiple State Department reviews, and with the southern portion of the project already under construction, it appears that bipartisan members Congress in fact can agree on at least one thing: The administration’s level of well-orchestrated stalling on this thing is starting to get downright ridiculous. A letter signed by 53 senators said Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman’s approval of a...

Washington-The Obama administration has delayed a decision on TransCanada Corp´s rerouted Keystone XL oil pipeline until after March, even though Nebraska´s governor on Tuesday approved a plan for part of the line running through his state. "We don´t anticipate being able to conclude our own review before the end of the first quarter of this year," said Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman at the State Department, which had previously said it would make a decision by that deadline. She said the department would take into consideration approval of the line by Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman.

Energy: The further review the administration said was needed is done, with a Nebraska environmental agency saying it's safe to build the pipeline that will bring oil, jobs and revenue from our friendly northern neighbor. After kicking the Canadian oil barrel down the road, the Obama administration may soon be forced to approve the Keystone XL pipeline or come up with another excuse to block it after a report from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality declared it would have "minimal environmental impacts" on the state and its sensitive aquifers. Friday's report triggered a 30-day deadline for Nebraska Gov. Dave...

The eventual completion of the full-length Keystone XL pipeline seems more and more like an inevitability for the Obama administration, as it continues to clear bureaucratic hurdles and TransCanada proposes new routes to work with and not against the greenie-grain — not to mention the clamorous pressure to finally allow all of the undeniable economic benefits doing so would bring about already.As environmentally innocuous as the pipeline actually is, the eco-radicals decided a long time ago that they’d remain dead set against the whole idea on principle, and they’ve managed to turn it into one of the most contentious energy-related...

Energy companies behind the oil boom on the Northern Plains are increasingly turning to an industrial-age workhorse - the locomotive - to move their crude to refineries across the U.S., as plans for new pipelines stall and existing lines can't keep up with demand. ... The environmental fears carry an ironic twist: Oil trains are gaining popularity in part because of a shortage of pipeline capacity - a problem that has been worsened by environmental opposition to such projects as TransCanada's stalled Keystone XL pipeline. That project would carry Bakken and Canadian crude to the Gulf of Mexico. Wayde Schafer,...

As Canadian political and business leaders expressed optimism the proposed Keystone XL pipeline will win approval under a re-elected President Barack Obama, environmental opponents and the U.S. ambassador to Canada cautioned the energy megaproject isn’t a slam dunk. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, had vowed quick approval of the $7.6-billion pipeline if he had won Tuesday’s presidential election. But Obama, who earlier this year rejected TransCanada Corp.’s initial application because it needed more environmental review, has remained noncommital about the fate of the line, which would ship Alberta oilsands product to the U.S. Gulf Coast. In Ottawa, federal Natural Resources...

Daryl Hannah, of "Splash" and "Blade Runner" fame, was arrested Thursday afternoon for protesting the construction of a major oil pipeline in Texas. The Keystone XL pipeline is designed to bring crude oil from Canada to Texas' Gulf Coast. Hannah, along with 78-year-old Texas landowner Eleanor Fairchild, were arrested for criminal trespassing and other charges after they were accused of standing in front of pipeline construction equipment on Fairchild's farm in Winnsboro, a town about 100 miles east of Dallas, ABC affiliate KLTV reported. …

Pew and their posse have underwritten a crusade by Canadian environmentalist nonprofits to obstruct the development of the Great White North’s oil sands resources. That obstruction in turn obstructs the possibility of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would connect Canada’s booming oil production with American refineries, and thereby boost both nations’ GDP, create thousands of new jobs, and reduce America’s dependence on oil from nations that are rather less friendly than Canada.

In a move that likely to shake America’s energy future to its core, protestors have adopted the idea of ‘chaining’ themselves to equipment being used for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline in Texas. In the video below one anti-gas protester tells reporters, “It’s necessary to stop this pipeline. It’s a threat to our constitutional rights.” Huh? It’s just too bad the equipment the loons chained themselves to didn’t belong to TransCanada… And, it wasn’t being used on the project that day. [VIDEO]

About Us Resources Carney on Keystone: ‘We Haven’t Rejected Anything’ By Matt Cover August 24, 2012 (CNSNews.com) – White House Spokesman Jay Carney said that the Obama administration had not “rejected” the Keystone pipeline, despite the fact that the president did, in fact, cancel the project after congressional Republicans forced him to make a decision. “First of all, the Keystone Pipeline is a process. We haven’t rejected anything,” Carney told reporters Thursday. Carney had been asked by ABC News’ Jake Tapper why the White House used the term ‘all-of-the-above’ to describe its energy policy when it had rejected Republican ideas...

HOBBS, N.M. (AP) — Seeking to reset his economic message, Republican Mitt Romney pledged Thursday to create 3 million jobs and more than $1 trillion in revenue by ramping up offshore oil drilling and giving states more control over energy production on federal land. Romney, reviving a long-elusive goal pushed by presidents and presidential candidates for decades, said his plans would make the U.S., along with Canada and Mexico, energy independent by 2020. "This is not some pie in the sky kind of thing," Romney told voters in Hobbs, the heart of New Mexico's oil and gas industry. "This is...

The prices that Americans pay for gas at the pump may reach an all-time high this summer. The average price is $3.70 per gallon, which is an increase of 30 cents since July and the climb in price from July to August was 9 percent. The increase is particularly concerning because a reduction in global demand, caused by a persistent world-wide recession, has kept demand for gas relatively low. Some have predicted that the price of gas will reach $3.90 per gallon before Labor Day. Gas prices have risen each month for seven straight months this year.

“A federal agency‘s recent decision involving the endangered American burying beetle could cause up to a year’s delay in construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, if the project wins federal approval,” the Omaha World-Herald reported Wednesday.

When President Barack Obama blocked the Keystone Pipeline, Republicans said the move would encourage Canada to pursue oil deals with China instead of the United States and cede a massive chunk of North American oil assets to the communist nation. Now, with China's state-run oil company CNOOC poised to cut a $15.1 billion deal--the largest ever foreign acquisition for a Chinese company--with Canadian oil company Nexen, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are in full backpedal mode.

Protesters lay down in the middle of Stetson Avenue and Lake Street and smeared “oil” on their bodies Thursday to protest the building of pipelines in Canada and the United States. Dressed in bathing suits, shorts and jeans, four women and four men reached into a 100-foot-long plastic prop of an oil pipeline and rubbed the dark substance — actually vegetable oil, corn starch, flour and chocolate syrup — into their bare skin and clothes. Then, they lay “dead” to illustrate the damage they said pipelines cause. “Shut it down,” the environmentalists screamed. “Get up, get down. We need clean...

George Soros’ Tides Foundation in Canada is under investigation by the Canada Revenue Agency after members of the Conservative Party labeled the organization a foreign-funded radical group. As the Globe and Mail reports, the group “serves as a clearinghouse for foreign donors that want to donate here but do not have Canadian charitable status.” The organization has funneled money to liberal advocacy groups, particularly regarding oil development issues.President of Tides Canada Ross McMillan admitted that the “information requested of us by CRA does not appear to be random –many of the questions concern international funding, projects of interest to international...

The president finds himself between an environmentalist rock and a labor union hard place The Keystone XL pipeline is roiling U.S. electoral politics again. TransCanada refiled its application for a permit to build the pipeline with the State Department last week. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has vowed, “I will build that pipeline if I have to do it myself.” In April, the House of Representatives passed a transportation bill that mandates the construction of the Keystone pipeline. The vote was 293 to 127, the majority vote was minus 14 Republicans, but included 69 Democrats. President Barack Obama threatened...

Politics: The president tells building-and-trades union workers that Republicans have blocked multiple bills putting them to work, even as he blocks an oil pipeline their former union chief supported. President Obama may have thought he was preaching to the choir when he addressed the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference on Monday, blaming Republicans for blocking his attempts at job creation. But he forgot one of the cardinal rules of public speaking — know your audience. "I've said now is the time to do this, interest rates are low, construction workers are out of work ... and time...

Glenn spent a good portion of his show Tuesday night on GBTV to address Warren Buffett’s connections to TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline. Does the Oracle from Omaha have an interest in seeing the project killed? Glenn’s research team compiled quite a bit of evidence that could certainly lead one to reach that conclusion. ...the State Department advised the President to reject the proposal to extend the Keystone XL pipeline because it was not in the “national interest” of the country at this time. But why would Obama choose to not support this project when he has backed so many...

American mainstream media astroturfing notwithstanding, Monday’s one-day summit meeting in Washington with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon is the classic: “A picture is worth a Thousand Words” lesson. The American media presented the meeting as a run-of-the-mill get together of the three North American amigos.... Look at the expression on Barack Obama’s face from pictures taken during the event. The malevolent expression on Obama’s face as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was speaking tells a different story. The picture is right up there with Michelle’s countenance while looking at France’s Carla Bruni. President Barry Soetoro...

Obama's neglect of our nearest neighbors and biggest trade partners has created deteriorating relations, a sign of a president who's out of touch with reality. Problems are emerging that aren't being reported. Fortunately, the Canadian and Mexican press told the real story. Canada's National Post quoted former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson as saying the North American Free Trade Agreement and the three-nation alliance it has fostered since 1994 have been so neglected they're "on life support." Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier. The Winnipeg...

President Obama supports job creation, economic growth and revenue generation – except when he doesn’t. Official announcements from his Labor Department reported that the nation’s February unemployment rate is still 8.3 percent. That’s a decent decline from previous months. But the reality is far worse. Most of that job growth was in business and professional services, and half was temporary. Millions of Americans are working part-time or multiple low-wage jobs to make ends meet. Overall, 23.5 million are out of work or underemployed. Factor all that in, and the real unemployment rate is 14.9%, according to University of Maryland...

Soaring gas prices pose a major electoral vulnerability to a President so damaged he refused to celebrate the two year anniversary of his marquee domestic accomplishment. That is why, for the past several weeks, President Obama and his administration have been in damage control mode. At stops around the country, he sought to deflect blame for the pain Americans are experiencing at the pump. President Obama’s basic defense goes something like this: presidents cannot control the price of gasoline, but I have increased domestic oil production and decreased our reliance on foreign oil, so really, when you think about...

President Obama came to the heart of Oklahoma oil country on Thursday to insist he's a fan of the industry and give his approval to the southern leg of the project.

As gasoline prices continue to rise, President Obama on Thursday pushed back on attacks from Republicans that he is blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline and is against drilling, arguing his administration has added enough new oil-and-gas pipelines to "encircle the Earth and then some." Obama highlighted his support for the southern leg of the controversial Keystone pipeline, which would carry oil from Cushing, Okla., to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Appearing before a backdrop of oil pipelines in Cushing, Obama said he was making construction a priority through an executive order issued Thursday that instructs federal agencies to expedite...

President Barack Obama is in my home state of Oklahoma today, touting his tired talking points about energy in little Cushing, “the town that fossil fuel built.” For the record, most Oklahomans aren’t happy he’s here. The state administration will give him no official welcome and protesters have already gathered near the location of the president’s speech, which — predictably — was closed to the public. First, listen to this portion of the president’s energy address (h/t Greg Hengler).

TORONTO — Canadian proponents of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline applauded Barack Obama's directive on Thursday to expedite the approval process for the southern leg of the pipeline. They also urged the U.S. president to approve the northern leg. Approval of the southern part of the pipeline is not really the Obama administration's call because it does not cross borders. The northern portion of the pipeline needs administration approval because it would cross the Canadian border. The longer 1,700-mile (2,735-kilometer) pipeline became a political flashpoint late last year when congressional Republicans wrote a provision forcing Obama to make a decision, and...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I've never seen anything like it, folks. I've never seen this kind of a mid-course correction. I don't even think I saw one like this from Bill Clinton. Suddenly the biggest believer in the Keystone pipeline (or half of it), the biggest believer in drilling for oil, the biggest believer in expanding domestic oil supplies happens to be Barack Obama! Who just two days ago (and every day prior to that) hated the very idea and was trying to dissuade anybody from believing that drilling for oil or pipelining oil would make any difference whatsoever in the...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

“If you hear anybody on TV saying that somehow we are against drilling for oil, then you will know that they either don’t know what they are talking about or they are not telling you the truth,” Obama said, against the backdrop of oil production facilities outside Maljamar, N.M. “We are drilling all over the place,” Obama added, reading from a speech on his podium on a windy afternoon. “That’s the reason we have been able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil every year since I took office.” While Obama has repeated in recent days that there’s no “silver...

RIPLEY, Okla. — President Obama stood in a red-dirt field before acres of stacked pipeline pieces on Thursday to illustrate his support for expedited construction of the southern half of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. But his public declaration of support for the project has pleased neither the industry and its Republican supporters nor environmentalists. Environmentalists nationwide have rallied to oppose the entire Canada-to-Gulf Coast pipeline because its owner, TransCanada, wants to transport what environmental groups consider dirty oil from the tar sands of Alberta. The groups say such oil would hasten climate change, threaten spills and pollute air,...

As gasoline prices continue to rise, President Obama on Thursday pushed back on attacks from Republicans that he is blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline and is against drilling, arguing his administration has added enough new oil-and-gas pipelines to "encircle the Earth and then some." Obama highlighted his support for the southern leg of the controversial Keystone pipeline, which would carry oil from Cushing, Okla., to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Appearing before a backdrop of oil pipelines in Cushing, Obama said he was making construction a priority through an executive order issued Thursday that instructs federal agencies to expedite...

A solid majority of Americans think the U.S. government should approve of building the Keystone XL pipeline, while 29% think it should not. Republicans are almost twice as likely as Democrats to want the government to approve the oil pipeline. About half of independents also approve. These data were collected as part of Gallup's annual Environment survey, conducted March 8-11, 2012. The Keystone XL oil pipeline is a politically divisive project, which President Obama and the Republicans in Congress have been battling over. The proposal from TransCanada Corporation for building a pipeline to carry crude oil from Canada down to...

Rush on Obama's new found love for building the Keystone XL pipeline. He rips into the mainstream media for repeating Obama's lies and blasts the president following his speech at the pipe plant in Cushing, OK today. (audio)

There are good reasons for Mr. Obama’s discomfort. First is the almost immediate hit to the president’s popularity when gasoline prices go up. Rightly or wrongly, Americans hold him accountable. In fact, the president is vulnerable on this topic. He has consistently portrayed fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas as energy products of the past while expressing an almost unimaginably naïve optimism about the potential of alternatives. His attachment to high-cost “green” energy has played well with environmentalists but for most of the country – the roughly 50% not concerned about global warming -- it is increasingly...

Guest post by Alec Rawls“President no longer worried about CO2!” That’s what the headlines should have read last week after Obama presented an elaborate argument that alternative energy is the only viable response to high energy prices without ever once mentioning CO2, global warming or climate change. Instead, he presented the need to lessen our reliance on oil purely as an economic imperative.Back when he thought that global warming was a winning concern Obama used to acknowledge that his anti-CO2 policies were going to cause high energy prices (forcing them to “necessarily skyrocket“). Now he is trying to use the...

When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump. "Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said. "America still has only 3% of the world's oil reserves." Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn't affect global oil prices....But the figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the...