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ith the oil price crash now nearly two years in, there have been some obvious casualties. Dozens of oil related firms have declared bankruptcy, oil service firms have found rig counts collapsed, and thousands of jobs have been lost across the industry with many skilled employees reporting difficulty finding anything more than short-term contract work. Against this backdrop one might have expected a severe economic downturn in Texas, but instead the Lone Star State is holding up surprisingly well. Texas’ economy has long been thought of as being oil driven, but the reality is that the state’s situation is more...

Saudi Arabia has warned the United States that a proposed U.S. law that could hold the kingdom responsible for any role in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks would erode global investor confidence in America, its foreign minister said on Monday. The minister, Adel al-Jubeir, speaking to reporters in Geneva after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, which mainly focused on Syria, denied that Saudi Arabia had "threatened" to withdraw investment from its close ally. The New York Times reported last month that the Riyadh government had threatened to sell up to $750 billion worth of American assets should...

Aquarius’s new take on internal combustion engines will be the big leap forward that vehicles need, says company founder. The notoriously conservative car business – autos, after all, are still largely powered by the internal combustion engine, developed nearly 150 years ago – is in for big changes, according to Gal Fridman, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Aquarius Engines. “Our enhanced engine design uses energy much more efficiently, and eliminates the valves and rods that cause energy loss,” he said. “If a car equipped with a modern standard internal combustion engine can go about 600 kilometers on a tank...

A cargo of 650,000 barrels of crude left the Libyan port of Hariga yesterday, in the eastern part of the conflict-torn country, sparking what promises to be another phase in the conflict as the Islamic-leaning government in Tripoli vows to block the maneuver. This premature attempt at crude oil exports could have huge implications for international efforts to unite the country under the new Government of National Accord (GNA), which was formed with UN support, because eastern Libya is controlled by a government based in Tobruk, which has not yet recognized the GNA of Fayez Serraj.

The green doomsayers have repeatedly claimed the fuel is disappearing It would be hard to find anyone in all of America who has been more wrong on the American energy story than Barack Obama. Oil prices have fallen from $105 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to hovering at $35 a barrel today. That’s a two-thirds reduction in the price and the biggest factor is shale oil brought to you by fracking. In many areas of the country gas is now less than $2 a gallon and it could fall further in the weeks ahead. The falling price means,...

Europe’s plans to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by switching from conventional oil to biofuels actually ended up increasing emissions, according to a study published Monday by the environmental group Transport & Environment (T&E). The study found, on average, biofuel from vegetable oil creates 80 percent more CO2 emissions than the conventional oil it replaces. The report estimates the biofuels create new emissions equivalent to putting an extra 12 million cars on the road.

“WE DON’T care about oil prices,” Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince, recently told Bloomberg, a news agency: “$30 or $70, they are all the same to us.” Such comments by the man calling the shots in the world’s biggest oil power should be taken with a pinch of salt. Low oil prices cost the country billions, threaten its credit rating and are turning it from creditor to debtor: this week it set out to raise $10 billion from global banks. Yet the claim is not entirely hollow, either. Saudi Arabia is determined not to give any succour...

The amount of electricity generated from natural gas surpassed the share of coal-fired production in July in the U.S. for the second time. The first time was for the month of April, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration. The EIA reported Wednesday that the share of electricity coming from natural gas-fired power plants hit 35 percent in July. It was 34.9 percent from coal plants. The shift comes as the ongoing domestic shale boom produces lots of natural gas at relatively cheap prices. At the same time, few new coal plants are being built nationally because of increasing federal regulations...

King Coal may be losing its throne sooner than expected, as the U.S. goes through a change in how it gets the bulk of its electricity. The change is not coming from solar and wind as environmental groups would like to believe, although renewables are growing. The big switch is coming from natural gas produced from fracking shale rock deep underground. Natural gas is replacing coal as the dominant way Americans receive electricity to power everything from their lights to their iPhones to the big screen televisions. It is cheaper than coal, which is why natural gas power plants are...

There's no denying that natural gas is revolutionizing our energy economy, but few believed it could deal such a swift death blow to coal, the commodity that brought us into the Industrial Revolution and has been our backbone ever since. But the signs are irrefutable. Here's what you need to know. A historic battle Coal and natural gas have been going at it for a while. Traditionally, these were actually complementary energy sources. As a cheaper fuel that was more difficult to manage, coal-fired generation plants were the "slow burners" that kept our energy capacity steady throughout the day. Relatively...

EIA's most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts that the amount of electricity generation fueled by natural gas in April and May will total just 3.5% less than the projected amount of coal-fired generation. This convergence has occurred only once before, in April 2012, when natural gas fueled just 1.5% less generation than coal. Power generation from the two fuels is expected to rise at similar rates over the next couple months, and then diverge again later in the summer as demand rises and coal unit capacity utilization continues to rise. Natural gas-fired generation has been rising over the past few...

Ohio's energy mix is about to change, the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out, with six gas-fired plants on the drawing board and older coal-fired generation set to retire. The accelerated retirement of many coal plants is a nationwide trend, driven by low natural gas prices and EPA pollution regulations. About 60,000 MW of coal fired generators are expected to be offline by 2020, according to the EIA, due largely to the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), and, once it is finalized, the carbon regulations under the Clean Power Plan. The state is also wrestling with energy efficiency standards,...

A new power plant in West Texas that could transform coal into cleaner-burning natural gas is poised to break ground later this year, an executive in charge of the project said at a conference in Houston Wednesday. The project, located on a 600-acre site in Odessa, uses coal as a feedstock for a 400 megawatt power plant. But instead of burning it, the plant uses a chemical process to first strip it of carbon, sulfur and mercury. The result, project leaders say, is a hydrocarbon that can fuel the power plan but burns even cleaner than natural gas — even...

A former Environmental Protection Agency regulator warns that while the Obama administration now has coal in its crosshairs, natural gas is next in line. David Schnare cites a proposed rule on methane emissions as one of the ways President Obama and the EPA will clamp down on natural gas. The 33-year EPA veteran, who once sued utilities for coal-fired plants that didn’t meet Clean Air Act standards, is director of the Center of Energy and Environmental Stewardship at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Schnare said the EPA — as part of its “Clean Power Plan” rule that would...

If you thought gas prices will never stop rising, just wait until you see what happens to electricity after the Barack Obama’s EPA gets its way.  The agency will deliver on Obama’s election promise to bankrupt any new coal-fired electrical production in its first-ever regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions, the Washington Post reports.  The new regulatory regime will all but guarantee that new coal-fired plants won’t be built to replace others shutting down: The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the proposal. The move...

Saudi Arabia single-handedly scuttled the Doha meeting, knowing all along that Iran would not participate, with a valid reason. The Russians and others agreed to proceed without Iran, planning to include them at a later date. So if everything was known beforehand, why did the Saudi’s pour cold water on the aspirations of the remaining members, risking its alienation from Russia and the OPEC community? Was it simply Saudi enmity toward Iran? Not exactly. Upon closer scrutiny, we can find the Saudi masterstroke behind Doha. It is well known that Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on oil revenues, and that...

Jacki is joined by Dr. David Grantham, senior research fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis to discuss how oil and antiquities from terrorist networks has made its way to America and what we can do to stop it. Jacki also speaks with Brendan Williams to talk about the importance of energy issues in the upcoming Presidential election. Lastly Jacki is joined by Doug Domenech, director of the Fueling Freedom Project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, to talk about the history of Earth Day.

Jacki Talks With Dr. Grantham About How ISIS Oil Has Made Its Way To the USA

Massachusetts Senate President Stanley Rosenberg on Wednesday called upon Berkshire Gas to lift its moratorium on new and expanded natural gas service in the region — but a spokesman for Berkshire's parent company, the publicly-traded Avangrid, told The Republican that the moratorium on new hookups would stay in place without a "permanent solution" for additional natural gas capacity in western Massachusetts. ... Berkshire Gas had hoped to purchase capacity on the line. Berkshire's parent company, Avangrid, had also signed on as an investor in the $5-8 billion Kinder Morgan pipeline. Berkshire more than a year ago imposed a moratorium on...

The great white environmentalist sharks smell blood in the water. It’s gushing from mortally wounded US coal companies that the Obama EPA has gutted as sacrifices on the altar of “dangerous manmade climate change” prevention and other spurious health, ecological and planetary scares.Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and other once vibrant coal producers have filed for Chapter 11 protection, shedding some $30 billion in shareholder value and tens of thousands of jobs in their companies and dependent industries. The bloodletting has left communities and states reeling, union pension funds and 401k plans empty, and the health, welfare, hopes and dreams of...