Free Republic

Russian firm Gazprom is stopping gas supplies to Ukraine after talks on a new price broke down in the small hours of Monday (16 June). It said in a statement published at 10 am Moscow time—its deadline for Ukraine to pay almost $2 billion of old debt—that it is switching to “prepayment for gas supplies … Starting today, the Ukrainian company will only get the Russian gas it has paid for”. It added that Ukraine has not made prepayments for June. The situation does not mean immediate shortages for Ukraine or for EU countries which get Russian gas via Ukraine,...

Energy: As a big Dem donor talks of pipeline terrorism, new federal reports warn that killing Keystone XL will overburden rail transport of oil and result in more frequent and deadlier environmental disasters. Environmentalists who claim that the Keystone pipeline from Canada represents an unprecedented environmental threat ignore that the pipeline would pose no greater danger than the more than 50,000 existing miles of safely operating pipeline already crisscrossing the U.S. They also ignore the very real and growing environmental danger in the only viable alternate for transporting oil — by rail. Keystone would not only carry oil from Canada...

Hedge fund billionaire and rapturous eco-crusader Tom Steyer has fronted a lot of ridiculous attempts to not only thwart the construction of the already-existing Keystone pipeline’s northern extension, which would merely give Canada’s oil sands an efficient connection to our refineries in the Gulf, but to smear everything about the fossil fuel industry, the technology it employs, and the global free market in which it operates. The absurdly worded poll that his NextGen Climate Action group commissioned earlier this year, claiming that the “majority of U.S. voters want to know where the crude oil transported through the Keystone XL...

Full Title: The Keystone Pipeline Is Just One Of Canada's Oil Export Options, And Maybe Not Even The Most Important As the U.S. debates whether to relax a decades-old ban on oil exports and a political battle in the U.S. delays and threatens to reject Canada’s plans to ship oil south through the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada is looking to export significant amounts of oil overseas. The oil shale boom in the U.S. has shrunk American demand for oil imports as Canada’s rich oil sands continue producing oil, leaving the country with too much oil and not enough buyers. About...

Bulgaria's prime minister has ordered a halt to construction work on the Gazprom-led South Stream pipeline project. Plamen Oresharski said after meeting US Senators John McCain, Christopher Murphy and Ron Johnson that he has ordered all work on the disputed project to continue only after consultations with Brussels. Last week, the European Commission opened an infringement procedure against the Balkan country and asked construction work to be stopped, arguing that Bulgaria had not respected EU internal market rules covering the award of public contracts. The stand-off over Ukraine has forced the 28-nation EU into a sudden rethink of its energy...

Last week as part of a high-profile visit to Shanghai, China and before the start of the equally high-profile St. Petersburg Economic Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping oversaw the agreement of a 30-year deal for natural gas supply from Russia to China. The announcement of an agreement to the terms of this deal, which has reportedly been negotiated off and on for nearly a decade, set off shock-waves within the global natural gas market and sparked U.S. politicians' calls for speedier approval of the backlog of liquefied natural gas (LNG)export terminal projects. These faster approvals...

This doesn’t directly have anything to do with the Keystone XL pipeline per se, but it does once again highlight just how dumb that entirely trumped-up and drawn-out debate really is. America already has a network of more than two million miles worth of pipeline sprawling across the United States, but because of the recent oil-and-gas production boom brought on by technological innovations in fracking, we still need millions more as well as a whole slew of existing infrastructure updates. Without more pipelines, we’ll be working underneath entirely self-imposed restrictions on our production capacity — a phenomenon that’s already...

We now know how much Sen. Mark Udall was willing to sell Colorado out for- $15 million (give or take). The eco-extremist Tom Steyer is hoping to have a $100 million dollars to spend in just seven races this election cycle. That means if Steyer distributes his hoped for funds evenly, it only took less than $15 million dollars for Udall to choose a San Francisco eco-extremist’s wishes over what is best for Colorado ... Opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is nothing but an extremist issue pushed by those on the margins of the Democratic Party. The chance to...

AP Content - Excerpt only BISMARCK, N.D. — The godfather of North Dakota’s present oil bonanza predicted the state’s crude production will double to 2 million barrels daily by decade’s end, but warned industry officials Thursday that future safety missteps would threaten that.

Labor unions are beseeching senators to pass legislation that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline by circumventing a government review process that threatens to stretch into 2015. In a letter to senators today, five unions, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute say the bill is essential to free the pipeline from “political limbo.” “After nearly six years of countless polls and five exhaustive federal reviews stating the pipeline is safe to build and will create thousands of jobs, we have unfortunately seen political rhetoric and gamesmanship take precedence over policy and leadership,” the groups say. The...

He owes it all to the Keystone Kops of the leisure class. For the past decade the Democrats have managed to defy gravity by bolting together an unlikely coalition of the richest and poorest Americans. It’s no secret. Ever since President Bush’s re-election in 2004, the pattern has been clear. People making above $100,000 and below $40,000 vote Democratic. The people in the middle vote Republican. But now that top-bottom coalition is about to come apart, or lose its majority status at least. And the issue will be one that may loom larger than the debacle of Obamacare — the...

Rep. Jared Polis’s decision to sponsor a barrelful of anti-fracking initiatives is threatening to make a tough election year even rougher for Colorado Democrats, starting with Sen. Mark Udall. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is attempting to broker a deal that would persuade Polis to pull his proposed anti-fracking initiatives, but if the governor can’t get it done, every Democratic candidate will face pressure to take a stand this year on an issue that has badly divided the state party. That starts with the Democrat Udall, who’s already under fire for refusing to stake out a position on whether to construct...

BERLIN--A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin praised German diplomacy on Thursday while railing against the U.S. in the latest effort by Moscow to highlight western divisions over the Ukraine crisis. Vladimir Yakunin, president of the Russian Railways and one of the Russian officials on the U.S. sanctions list, lavished praise on Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister, who visited Ukraine this week to endorse the government's planned dialogue with its critics at home. "I know Mr. Steinmeier a little bit myself. I know he is very balanced and a very objective politician," Mr. Yakunin told reporters. "To my mind,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has informed multiple European states that Moscow will not supply gas to Europe through Ukraine as of June 1 if Kiev does not pay its bills, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Thursday. Fico, speaking to reporters after meeting NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the most pressing threat facing Slovakia was the question of deliveries from Russia that pass through Ukraine. "Today, multiple member states including Slovakia were informed by President Putin that as of June 1, if Ukraine does not pay for supplied gas, it will not be supplied to the European...

Hillary Rodham Clinton brings a quarter-century of public service to her potential presidential campaign, but it’s her most recent job as secretary of state for President Obama — overseeing relations with Russia, handling the terrorist attack in Benghazi and negotiating over the war on terrorism — that could come back to haunt her. Many of Mr. Obama’s current political problems also could affect Mrs. Clinton, including the handling of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the decision not to slap the terrorist label on Boko Haram, a group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls last month. Even the Keystone XL...

The Keystone XL Pipeline got another nail in its coffin Monday, in the form of a Senate energy vote that excluded the pipeline issue. But Keystone was already near death thanks to the Obama's administration's recent decision to ignore the evidence of a definitive government study—and instead keep listening to environmentalists' dubious claims. The upshot will be more political fires in Washington caused by train derailments in the absence of a pipeline to transport oil more safely. After the derailment in downtown Lynchburg, Va., on April 30, approximately 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil burned or spilled into the James...

A bipartisan Senate effort to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline collapsed Monday making it unlikely a politically potent vote on the project will take place before November’s midterm election. A vote on Keystone was tied to the fate of an unrelated energy efficiency bill that has support in both parties. But that measure failed to get the 60 votes it needed to move forward after getting bogged down in partisan fighting over whether GOP amendments would be allowed.

The B.C. City of Burnaby is threatening to withhold emergency services in the event of an oil spill, in the latest sign of municipal furor over Kinder Morgan Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. The Vancouver suburb is home to Kinder Morgan’s Westridge dock, making it the staging ground for a potential three-fold increase in oil sales to markets in Asia and along the U.S. West Coast. The Houston-based company’s Canadian unit has applied to nearly triple capacity on the Pacific-bound pipeline to 890,000 barrels a day, potentially opening vast new markets and raising prices for Alberta’s landlocked oil. Municipalities have...

The Keystone XL pipeline may be stalled, but it's pumping a steady flow of cash into Washington — where inertia is a multibillion-dollar industry. The pipeline debate has become a money-making machine for lobbyists, advertisers, NGOs and political fundraisers in the U.S. capital, where tens of millions of dollars are being spent on the issue. The spending deluge will continue indefinitely, thanks to the two latest non-developments: the Obama administration has delayed a decision on the pipeline, and a congressional effort to speed up the process appears to have collapsed this week. The Washington insider news outlet, Politico, described the...

Canadian oil prices are now just $18 below the price of U.S. crude thanks to a series of new U.S. pipelines, The Wall Street Journal reported this morning. This means the Keystone XL Pipeline is already obsolete. "Higher oil prices in Canada ... are a sign that oil-sands crude is finding its way to the U.S. even without the approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline," Journal reporters Nicole Friedman and Chester Dawson said. "The resurgence in Canadian oil prices and energy stocks is further confirmation that the transportation problems that have prevented both Canada and the U.S. from enjoying...