Free Republic

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business. Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.

The depth of Greece's financial woes have been laid bare as official figures showed the country has fallen further into the red following the election of its Leftist government. Greece's primary budget surplus, which excludes its debt interest payments, shrunk to just over €1bn during January and February, compared to €3.17bn over the same period in 2014, according to figures from the Ministry of Finance.

Since October 2014, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has regularly referred to the concept of a "Mastermind" (ust akil, "supra-intellect," in Turkish) that, he says, is plotting against Turkey. This concept has been applauded by the Islamist pro-AKP media. Erdogan's December 12, 2014 speech, which focused on this "mastermind" concept, inspired the production of a two-hour "documentary" by one of the leading Turkish television channels, the pro-AKP A Haber. The film, titled "The Mastermind," first aired on March 15, 2015 and has been broadcast repeatedly since then; in addition, the Turkish Islamist pro-AKP media are circulating the film on their...

HOUSTON – Oil field services firm Schlumberger announced Thursday it plans to ax another 11,000 workers, kicking off what could be a second major wave of layoffs across the oil industry. The move will bring Schlumberger’s layoffs up to 20,000 employees, roughly 15 percent of its workforce, since it began paring back its payroll earlier this year to cope with low oil prices. The nine-month oil slump has cost the energy industry more than 120,000 jobs so far, according to oil field staffing firm Swift Worldwide Resources. Oil equipment companies have been forced to fine-tune their workforce as they promise...

A Syrian businessman described as the "middleman" for oil deals between ISIS and Bashar al-Assad's regime will be targeted for European Union sanctions on Saturday. The listing of George Haswani, the owner of HESCO engineering company, sheds more light on financial links between Syria's regime and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or Isil or Islamic State or Daiesh).

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Moscow on Monday where the issue of Middle East peace talks will be raised, Russian authorities announced Thursday. “The two leaders will hold talks concerning key aspects of Russian-Palestinian relations and their future, with particular attention on the trade, economy and humanitarian sectors,” the Kremlin said in a statement according to AFP. There will also be “an exchange of ideas on the process of Israeli-Palestinian talks and other problematic regional situations,” the statement continued, adding that North Africa would also be on the agenda. …

OPEC's strategy of holding output steady is not working and the group's members should discuss production levels before its next meeting in June, Iran's oil minister said, a sign of the pain lower prices are causing OPEC's less wealthy producers. However, Bijan Zanganeh also told Reuters it was up to other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to make way for any extra Iranian crude that reaches world markets if Western sanctions on Tehran are lifted. Oil prices have halved from the $115-a-barrel level hit last June, in a drop that deepened after OPEC refused to...

OPEC has been the most talked about international organization among investors, analysts and international political lobbies in the last few months.  When OPEC speaks, the world listens in rapt attention as it accounts for nearly 40 % of the world's total crude output. With its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, one of the mandates of 12- member OPEC is to "ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers, and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry." (Source: opec.org).  However, OPEC...

Russia is considering soon giving Greece funds based on future profits Athens would earn from shipping Russian gas to Europe as part of an extension of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, a Greek government official said. Plans for the pipeline taking Russian gas from Turkey to Europe via Greece would be linked to lower Russian gas prices, the official added. Greece would pay back the Russian prepayment after the pipeline started operating, the official said.

Spearheaded by the Senators from Washington_State, legislation just introduced in the United States Senate will finally address the rash of crude oil train wrecks and explosions that have skyrocketed over the last two years in parallel with the steep rise in the amount of crude oil transported by rail. Oil production is at an all-time high in America, great for our economy and energy independence, but bad for the people and places that lie along the shipping routes. Just since February, there have been four fiery derailments of crude oil trains in North America and many more simple spills. More...

Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ali al-Naimi said on Tuesday that the kingdom stood ready to "improve" prices but only if other producers outside of OPEC joined the effort. Naimi said Saudi Arabia had pumped around 10.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, marking an increase from previous months. He did not say why output had risen. Naimi also said he expected oil prices that have languished near six-year lows to improve in the near future. Oil prices extended gains late on Tuesday as traders took Naimi's comments as sign he may be open to renewed talks with producers like...

Greece has demanded nearly €279bn in reparations from Germany, more than the value of its current bail-out, as the cash-strapped country continues to pursue compensation for crimes carried out by the Third Reich. A parliamentary committee established by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras put an official number on the claim, which includes the cost of a forced Nazi loan made by the Bank of Greece and the return of archaeological treasures. Greece suffered a brutal occupation at the hands of the Third Reich in 1941, with over 40,000 people starving to death in Athens alone. SNIP--- Berlin moved to quickly to...

ROSWELL – Gasoline prices in New Mexico could drop to as low as $1.60 a gallon this year as the United States and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries engage in an outgoing crude oil price war, an expert told the New Mexico Landmen’s Association on March 27. Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said at the landmen’s association’s monthly meeting recently that crude oil storage in the United States is at a near maximum, meaning it will be some time before crude oil prices...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is the only major Republican likely 2016 presidential candidate who hasn't weighed in on the controversy over Indiana's "religious freedom" law that erupted this week — and his explanation for avoiding the issue is questionable.

Energy: New federal regulations on fracking on public land ignore a study documenting that methane found in well water is unrelated to the location of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells. When the Obama administration recently released its new regulations on fracking — regulations that it said were needed to keep up with the advance and success of the decades-old technology to meet public safety needs — the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance immediately filed suit, saying that the new regs were based on "unsubstantiated concerns" that lacked any scientific basis. "Hydraulic fracturing has been conducted...

It’s not even 8 a.m. and rush hour is on in northwestern New Mexico. Dozens of big white trucks and water tankers, neon flags flying, head north to the gas patch. I’m driving south, through Aztec, and as I pass the retro-orange A&W on the edge of town, I pull up alongside a drilling rig. The thing’s huge, too huge, it seems, to be rolling along the same road as my little Nissan. Yet the strange, rolling infrastructure has been a familiar site around here for decades — back in 1948, when a UFO purportedly crashed out on a nearby...

WTI crude fell below the earlier lows near $48.50 and down to $48.23 as reports reveal that once the deal is completed (presumably on June 30) all oil and banking sanctions against Iran will be lifted.

This afternoon, Fact Check.org produced a fact-check that ostensibly criticizes U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) for his contention that there has never been an instance of ground water contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing. Of course, this piece isn’t really about Inhofe at all; but before we get into that, we can’t help but wonder why they are fact-checking Inhofe and not former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson … or Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz … or Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell — all of whom have said exactly the same thing. Rather than a “fact-check,” it reads more like an advocacy...

Myles Udland March 30, 2015The crash in oil prices is hammering the Texas economy. The latest manufacturing outlook index from the Dallas Fed plunged again in March, to -17.4 from -11.2 in February, indicating deteriorating business conditions in the state. Expectations were for the index to show a reading of -9. But the most important part of this report is the commentary from Texas business leaders, who have given an on-the-ground picture of how the decline in oil prices is affecting one of the country's economies most driven by oil. In March the tune didn't change, as it sounds as...

Plunging oil prices have been an economic windfall for U.S. consumers, primarily through greater savings at the pump. In energy-reliant countries around the world like Angola, however, the effect has been far less beneficial. Social and economic turmoil in countries like Venezuela and Russia—largely because of the swoon in global oil prices—has drawn attention away from Angola, an OPEC member that is Africa's second-largest oil producer. The country churns out 1.75 million barrels of oil per day, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). The sub-Saharan country is hugely dependent on oil production to generate revenue for its economy, which...