Free Republic

On his recent visit to Alaska, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke began laying the groundwork to open the 3% of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contained in Area 1002 to oil development. He ordered a new assessment of the area's potential oil reserves. The most recent comprehensive study by the United States Geological Survey was completed in 1998, and its mean estimate of recoverable reserves in Area 1002 was 7.7 BBO (billion barrels of oil). At $45 a barrel, that's $346 billion. Most of this oil lies in the western portion, near the terminus of the Trans Alaska Pipeline at Prudhoe...

European leaders criticizing President Donald Trump’s Thursday decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord have also been lobbying the administration to fast-track the approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals. ProPublica’s Andrew Revkin reported Friday that, while European leaders were “generally basking in the glow of the Paris Agreement,” they’ve been quietly lobbying Trump since February to fast-track approvals of multi-billion-dollar investments in U.S. LNG export terminals. Maros Sefcovic, who heads the European Union’s commission on energy policy, told ProPublica in April that “LNG exports were a central focus of meetings earlier in the year in Washington with...

The company that owns the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, announced that it plans to shutter the facility in 2019 unless the state of Pennsylvania steps in to keep it open. The plant near Harrisburg, Pa., hasn’t been profitable for the past five years, according to owner Exelon Corp. The company announced last week that it failed to auction off future energy production from Three Mile Island for the third year in a row. “Today is a difficult day, not just for the 675 talented men and women who have dedicated...

In another move to free up domestic energy supplies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at lifting the Obama administration’s offshore drilling restrictions.For decades, bad policies have blocked access to America’s abundance of domestic resources, yet America has still managed to be a global energy leader. Trump’s executive order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” could unleash further success in the energy sector.The economic potential sitting just off America’s coasts is enormous. The Outer Continental Shelf is awash with natural resources, containing an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.Realizing...

Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told Breitbart News that she welcomes President Trump’s executive order aimed at lifting the ban on offshore drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic and Atlantic areas. Governor Palin said, “Quashing Obama’s anti-American energy plan makes America great again. We’ve been working for years to remind people that our exceptional nation came to be by developing our God-given natural resources and by expecting reward for an unsurpassed work ethic. We capture that again when we drill, baby, drill!” Trump’s executive order directs the U.S. Department of the Interior to...

The U.S. Department of Energy has signed an order authorizing Golden Pass Products to export domestically produced LNG to countries that do not have a free trade agreement with the U.S. Golden Pass is jointly owned by Qatar Petroleum (70 percent) and ExxonMobil (30 percent). The authorization allows for the export of up to the equivalent of 2.21 billion cubic feet of LNG per day (Bcf/d) from the Golden Pass Terminal near Sabine Pass, in Jefferson County, Texas. Golden Pass estimates the construction of its facility will provide 45,000 direct and indirect jobs over five years, and the project will...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — As New Mexico’s elected leaders wrangle over raising taxes to plug a budget shortfall, major multinational energy companies have quietly spent more than $13 billion in recent months on assets in the state’s oil and gas hot spots. The new wave of investment bodes well for the industry being able to generate much-needed revenues for the struggling state over the long haul, analysts said. The interest from companies such as Texas-based EOG Resources, ExxonMobil and Marathon Oil started last fall and is carrying into this year despite prices remaining around $50 a barrel. New Mexico also led...

Police in Citrus County, Florida said Sunday that a man reportedly seen shooting at a natural gas pipeline had been fatally shot by officers after a vehicle chase. Citrus County Sheriff Mike Prendergast was quoted in a statement on his office’s Facebook page as saying no police were injured. He said officers from Citrus County, Marion County and the Florida Highway Patrol were involved. The chase began in Marion County and ended with a “crash” near Floral City in Citrus County, according to the statement. “This is where the suspect engaged the deputies and was subsequently shot and killed,” it...

The Obama administration is denying permits for energy companies to conduct seismic surveys in the Atlantic Ocean to map potential drilling sites for oil and natural gas. The Interior Department said it denied six pending applications in part because Obama has blocked Atlantic drilling under a five-year offshore drilling plan finalized late last year. Environmental groups and some East Coast lawmakers oppose the surveys, saying that loud sounds from seismic air guns could hurt marine life. …

In his enviro-extremism, President Obama is attempting to tie President-elect Trump’s hands by blocking vast swaths of the Arctic Ocean and stretches of the Atlantic from oil and natural-gas drilling. The gambit, announced by the administration on Tuesday, is part of an eleventh-hour wave by which Obama is flooding the regulatory zone: Promulgating so many rules – of the unpopular, hard-left variety that Democrats dare not unveil before Election Days – that he hopes the Trump administration will find it too cumbersome to undo all of them. The incoming president should not let his predecessor get away with it. Obama’s...

Smart energy policy could give the next President his best prospect for spurring growth in manufacturing jobs—and thus delivering on the promises his voters think matter most. Pundits are terrible at predicting presidencies; remember the hymns to the greatness of the Second Lincoln, the New Roosevelt, and the Democratic Reagan that wafted to the heavens during the Obama transition. And the pundits were even worse at predicting Trump’s fate during the election; how many times did they predict his demise? But now, as convinced as ever of his incompetence and their infallibility, the punditocracy is telling us why the Trump...

Dear President-Elect Trump, There’s work to be done. And I know you’re up for a challenge. In fact, I’m now sure of it. So let me lay out a policy position that I am truly hoping you will adopt as your own. I’m talking about natural gas as a transportation fuel: cheap, clean, abundant natural gas. And I’m talking about U.S. energy independence, balanced budgets, jobs, trade and the environment. We use natural gas for power generation and as a heating fuel but that’s an old story for a new reality. Fracking has unlocked a phenomenal amount of gas in...

For families using natural gas in their homes, this could be an expensive winter... or a cold one without heat. New England consumes the most liquid natural gas (LNGs) out of anywhere in North America primarily due to high population density and colder climate. Historically, the price of LNG rises in correlation to snow storms. Because of bottlenecks in the pipelines for LNG, supply is limited in the North East and a demand surge can cause a spike in price. In 2015, there were only 6 million homes that use traditional heating oil in New England, whereas nearly half of...

The dozen or so cranes visible from Interstate 10 in Baytown will only remain for a few more months as Chevron Phillips Chemical's $6 billion petrochemical expansion moves toward completion. Chevron Phillips' complex is more than 80 percent complete, although it won't be fully operational for almost another year. The project involves a massive ethane cracker - on a plot the size of 44 football fields - that will separate a component of natural gas called ethane, which will provide the feedstock for some 1.5 million metric tons a year of ethylene, a common building block of plastics. Chevron Phillips,...

Big bold Drudge lines [*h*] ... CIA PLANS CYBER STRIKE ON RUSSIA 'DEFCON WARNING UPGRADE' MOSCOW READY FOR WAR Obama wants to not only wag-the-dog, but who knows? A cyber-war could disrupt internet communications -- time to blind Trump supporters. And it all boils down to their bribe money to take out the Syrian government. Obama and Hillary want you to think that Bashar Assad is the very devil. In many ways he is. Worst of all is his defense of Christians and Jews so far as the Establishment thinks. ISIS is cool -- they enslave Christians and Jews for...

On the morning of Sept. 9, an inspector with the Alabama Surface Mining Commission was performing a routine monthly check of an old coal mine in Shelby County when he noticed "a strong odor of gasoline" as well as a sheen on the surface of one of the retention ponds. The gasoline he was smelling came from Colonial Pipeline's Line 1, an underground pipeline three feet in diameter that normally pushes 1.3 million barrels of gasoline per day from refineries in Houston to distribution centers across the Southeast and along the eastern seaboard. That 36-inch line, built in 1963, has...

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from Belgium and the U.S. has identified the active site of an iron-containing catalyst that has raised hopes for designing a practically useful catalyst that might make converting methane to methanol a possibility. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers describe their efforts, what they discovered and why they believe their findings may lead to a practical way to convert methane to a more efficient energy resource. Jay Labinger, with the California Institute of Technology offers a News & Views piece outlining the work done by the team in the same journal issue....

The fate of the European Union’s global warming commitments negotiated as part of the Paris Protocol may be in jeopardy as result of Brexit. The U.S. on the other hand, should take a page out of the U.K.’s playbook and not only withdraw from the Paris agreement, but also withdraw participation from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change altogether. ... countries made individual commitments to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, largely centered on shifting away from affordable natural resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas, and toward more expensive, intermittent, subsidy-dependent renewables. ... The...

Saudi Arabia knew that North American shale production could potentially torpedo their hold on the energy market via oil. So, they decided to trounce the natural gas market by opening the floodgates with petroleum. It didn’t work. The Telegraph now reports that shale production has cut prices so low that they can produce at prices that are lower that what’s required to keep Saudi Arabia’s socioeconomic fabric healthy: Opec's worst fears are coming true. Twenty months after Saudi Arabia took the fateful decision to flood world markets with oil, it has still failed to break the back of the US shale...

The clock is counting down toward an important decision for Maryland’s economic future, namely whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to drill for natural gas in the state. Over a year ago, legislation that blocked fracking for another two years became law without Gov. Larry Hogan’s signature. That law barred the state from issuing drilling permits until October 2017 and required the Department of the Environment to adopt new regulations by October 2016. The passage of this law effectively delayed any decision on fracking until next year. To recap: the Marcellus Shale is a geological formation found...