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There has been a lot of optimism returning to the energy markets of late as oil prices have climbed to the $50 a barrel region. Ironically, while a few years ago $50 a barrel would have been seen as an unthinkably low oil price, today it is regarded as much needed relief from prices that ran in the $25 a barrel region earlier this year. Yet with the climb in prices, analysts are now starting to forecast prices per barrel of as much as $80 in the next year. That view is not the mainstream though. Instead most analysts are...

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) were a major driver of the rally in oil markets over the past several months, as the outage of roughly 600,000 barrels per day helped push up crude oil prices. In June, a 30-day ceasefire between the NDA and the Nigerian government led to a few weeks of relative calm, and Nigeria’s oil minister said that the country was able to bring back a large chunk of the disrupted supply, bringing output up from 1.4 million barrels per day to 1.9 mb/d at the end of June, but still down from the 2.2 mb/d Nigeria...

ExxonMobil and British Petroleum have been facing off over the terms of the renewal of the “contract of the century” in Azerbaijan, according to sources that spoke to Reuters. BP currently operates the Azeri-Chigar-Guneshi fields in the middle of the Caspian Sea—a region that contributes a tenth of the firm’s global output. The British company has reportedly agreed with the Azeri government on the terms of a 30-year contract, but in an effort to expand its presence in the ACG region, Exxon has been pushing for a piece of the $100 billion pie.

A militant group has however since February 2016 been making headlines through their capacity to destroy oil infrastructure. Their attacks have driven Nigeria’s oil output to near a 22-year low. Contrary to popular opinion, the group, Niger Delta Avengers, NDA for short, according to them is not just made up of Niger Deltans but has support from other parts of Nigeria, namely Northern, Western and Eastern part of the Country with the sole purpose of crippling the Nigerian Economy until their demands are met. According to reports, Diplomats and security experts say the group has shown a level of sophistication...

The collapse of oil prices has killed off any appetite that the oil industry had for megaprojects that cost tens of billions of dollars. With scarce resources, oil companies have shifted their focus, pouring resources into short-cycle projects, which often means shale drilling. Liam Denning over at Bloomberg Gadfly put some numbers to the phenomenon, using data from Oslo-based Rystad Energy. The data is revealing, painting a portrait of an industry that has scaled down the size of new oil projects. Intriguingly, the focus on smaller oil fields began before the plunge in oil prices, although the price crash is...

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh recently joined 16 other state Attorneys General to launch, in their own words, “an unprecedented, multi-state effort to investigate and prosecute the ‘high-funded and morally vacant forces’ that have stymied attempts to combat global warming—starting with holding ExxonMobil and other industry giants accountable for fraud and suppression of key climate science.” In explaining his support of “AGs United for Clean Power,” Frosh said: “There is no doubt that climate change is an existential threat to our society and to our entire planet….I am deeply troubled that oil companies have contributed to the problem by intentionally...

Fracking is once again becoming a hot topic in the oil and gas world., with Germany moving Tuesday to impose an indefinite ban on the unconventional drilling technique. But in the U.S. this week the story was the opposite. Oil and gas drillers won a critical legal victory over the future of fracking in America’s shale plays. That came in Wyoming, where a District Judge struck down a set of tougher rules on fracking that had been implemented by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) early last year. Last March, the BLM came down hard on the U.S. shale...

The meltdown of California’s cap-and-trade system of reducing carbon emissions has not only thrown its climate change crusade into disarray but caused collateral damage. One victim is Gov. Jerry Brown’s $3.1 billion plan to spend auction proceeds, now on indefinite hold. It not only affects a $500 million allocation for Brown’s bullet train project, but another $500 million for “low carbon transportation and fuels.” The latter is a centerpiece of Brown’s very ambitious drive to reduce petroleum use in auto travel – the largest single source of California’s carbon emissions – by 50 percent by 2030 even though the Legislature...

Rebellious Democrats shut down the House’s legislative work on Wednesday, staging a sit-in on the House floor and refusing to leave until they secured a vote on gun control measures before lawmakers’ weeklong break. Exasperated Republicans were forced to recess while cutting off cameras that showed the protest. But in an unprecedented step, C-SPAN used live video feeds from one lawmaker’s Periscope account and another’s Facebook page to transmit words and images from the House. Nearly 100 Democrats led by Georgia Rep. John Lewis demanded a vote on measures to expand background checks and block gun purchases by some suspected...

On June 11th at 4 AM five assailants were captured on security camera assaulting restaurant patrons outside Geno’s Steaks. The jihadis beat the restaurant patrons screaming, “Don’t mess with us, we belong to ISIS!” The Philadelphia police released this report: "On June 11, 2016 at approximately 4:15 am, five (05) unknown males were captured on surveillance video outside 1219 South 9th Street assaulting the victims. After the assault the suspects fled in two (02) vehicles, a dark colored pickup truck and a SUV and fled in an unknown direction. Both vehicles had New Jersey license plates. Victim #1 was struck...

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today unanimously reversed a trial court’s ruling dismissing a fraud case brought against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The result of the appellate court’s ruling is that CAIR National, operating out of the District of Columbia, must stand trial and allow a jury to hear all of the evidence of the massive fraud and attempted cover up carried out by CAIR and perpetrated against hundreds of CAIR fraud victims. In January of last year, Judge Paul Friedman, the federal judge presiding over a five-year old lawsuit alleging...

Sen. Susan Collins' attempt to keep firearms out of the hands of potential terrorists just picked up its most powerful backer yet: Harry Reid.

The Obama administration on Wednesday decried a ruling by a federal judge that blocks rules for hydraulic fracturing, saying the decision prevents regulators from using “21st-century standards” to ensure that oil and gas operations are conducted safely on public lands. Jessica Kershaw, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said “modernized fracking requirements” imposed by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell reflect best industry practices and are aimed at ensuring adequate well control, preventing groundwater contamination and increasing transparency about the materials used in fracking. Kershaw’s comments came after a judge in Wyoming ruled late Tuesday that federal regulators lack authority to set...

Electric cars are showing up all over the place, but hydrogen fuel-cell cars have lagged behind, with only three Asian makers committed to offering them in the U.S. That's partly because setting up a network of hydrogen stations to fuel them is slow and expensive. Now Nissan has a better idea. Rather than pumping hydrogen into the cars at very high pressure, the company proposes to offer a different kind of fuel-cell car — one that is filled with ethanol instead. That fuel, or an ethanol-and-water blend, is "reformed" to produce a supply of hydrogen on board the car itself....

Like a crazed serial killer, the liberal green groups are celebrating their “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. Now to get their next homicidal high, the leftists have turned their ambitions on the oil and natural gas industries. Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the grand, green vision: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired...

President Obama furthered his gun control message today when addressing the massacre in Orlando that killed 50 people, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. 'Although it's still early in the investigation we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate,' Obama said, making no reference to ISIS or Islamic terror in his brief remarks. Obama called the shooting spree, at the gay nightclub Pulse during Pride month in the United States, a reminder of how easy it is for someone to get a hold of a weapon that could...

Bond guru Bill Gross believes the growing global move toward negative yields will have dire consequences. In a tweet from his firm, Janus Capital, Gross goes back half a millennium to assert that the current situation with the world's debt market is unprecedented and dangerous: The warning comes as yields on Japanese government bonds and German bunds hit record lows.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev has whipped up a storm on Russian social media for an off-the-cuff comment he made to a Russian pensioner last month. Medvedev was caught on camera telling an elderly woman in Crimea, a region annexed by Russia from Ukraine in spring 2014, that there was "no money left" in Russia's budget when he was asked why the state pension of 8,000 Russian rubles a month (around $125 a month) was not higher given the rising cost of living. "There just isn't any money now. When we find money, we'll make the adjustment," Medvedev replied to...

It was the third such ‘honour killing’ in as many monthsA teenager was burnt alive by her mother on Wednesday after marrying a man of her own choice, Pakistani police said. Zeenat Bibi, 16, was set on fire by her mother Perveen Bibi in the eastern city of Lahore a little more than a week after the wedding, police said. "Perveen Bibi killed her daughter Zeenat Bibi by burning her alive around 9:00 am on Wednesday," Haidar Ashraf, a senior police official told AFP, adding the teen had married a man named Hasan on May 29.

Doctors Now Have to Steal Food From Hospitals to Feed Their Own Families The increasing shortage of food and other basic products in Venezuela, on top of inflation, is now takingits toll on the health of the nation — most notably, on its malnourished children. Children frequently arrive to the San Felipe Central Hospital after having fainted from malnourishment, officials told the PanAm Post, and are given medicine to take three times a day, Mothers tell physicians they don’t have enough food in their homes, even after rationing. “Children under five months of age come in here with diarrhea and...