Free Republic

June 2005 They come from different backgrounds with the same story. But the countries they are in — Canada and Australia — refuse to believe them or publicly acknowledge what they are saying. Why? Because both administrations have huge and influential money ties with China which has never been closer. The latest diplomatic crises involving Chinese spies overseas is playing out in Australia after a Chinese First Secretary Chen Yonglin applied for asylum in Sydney. Chen has alleged there are 1,000 Chinese spies in Australia and that abductions sponsored by the Chinese Government take place Down Under. He said he...

A $9 billion oil pipeline that became a symbol of the rising political clout of climate change advocates and a flash point in U.S.-Canada relations was officially canceled on Wednesday. Keystone XL, which was proposed in 2008 to bring oil from Canada's Western tar sands to U.S. refiners, was halted by owner TC Energy Corp (TRP.TO) after U.S. President Joe Biden this year revoked a key permit needed for a U.S. stretch of the 1,200-mile project. Opponents of the line fought its construction for years, saying it was unnecessary and would hamper the U.S. transition to cleaner fuels. Its demise...

On his first day in office, President Biden canceled permits for the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmentalists and anti-fossil fuel activists should not have applauded his move. After all, Canada will not stop extracting oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta. Instead, it will simply export oil over existing pipelines or to the Pacific Ocean, where the damage from a potential spill would be harder to address. Biden’s cancellation cost jobs and pushes Canada toward greater economic cooperation with China. It also shakes confidence in U.S. business. Who would invest in the country if any future administration can simply renege...

If President Trump had been colluding with Russia, the first thing he would have done would have been to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and otherwise prevent our achieving energy independence. Russia was once described as being a gas station masquerading as a country. Its only commodities of value are weapons and oil. Building Keystone XL and unleashing fracking was Trump’s way of screwing with Putin’s ambitions, not rewarding them. We would have to wait for Joe Biden to collude with Russia on energy by banning Keystone XL and declaring war on fracking. As Helen Raleigh, writing in The Federalist,...

fter decades of exhaustive attempts to overcome the dirty reputation of oil sands, we finally have an environmentally-friendly and low cost method to tap into these vast resources in the state of Utah—good news both for Mother Nature and all oil and gas investors. MCW Energy Group’s CEO, former Exxon President of the Arabian Gulf region, Dr. R. Gerald Bailey, tells Oilprice.com in an exclusive interview that his hunt for an innovative technology that simultaneously makes money and cleans up the environment is over. The race to capitalize on Utah’s vast oil sands resources is on, and only the ‘clean’—both...

Shell Canada Ltd. has withdrawn its regulatory application for the proposed Pierre River heavy oil mine north of Fort McMurray. The Pierre River Mine (PRM) application outlined a proposal for 200,000 b/d. The project “remains a very long-term opportunity for us, but it’s not currently a priority,” said Lorraine Mitchelmore, Shell Canada president and executive vice-president, heavy oil. “We will continue to hold the leases and can reapply in the future when the time is right,” she said. PRM had been joined with an application for a 100,000-b/d expansion of the Jackpine Mine, but Shell separated the applications in 2009....

To no one’s surprise, President Barack Obama issued a veto this week. Until now, Obama has had very little need of this authority; this is only the third of his entire presidency. For the first six years of his time in the White House, Democrats controlled the Senate, and Harry Reid made sure that Republican initiatives never reached his desk by blocking them from floor votes, .. That changed last November, when Democrats suffered their second consecutive midterm blowout and lost control of the Senate. Reid lost the ability to control the floor, and with that most of his ability...

For all those who have forgotten that the I in the GDP equation stands for Investment, here is a reminder courtesy of the latest crude collapse victim, Suncor, which moments ago announced it is not only cutting its 2015 CapEx by $1 billion (as in I, directly and adversely impacting US GDP by the same amount) but that it would also cut "operating expenses" by up to $800 million, and, drumroll, implementing "a series of workforce initiatives that will reduce total workforce numbers in 2015 by approximately 1000 people, primarily through its contract workforce, in addition to reducing employee positions....

Environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, have raised concerns that the pipeline could foul underground and surface water supplies, increase air pollution around refineries and harm wildlife. They also have speculated about what they consider inadequate pipeline safety and emergency spill responses….. Supporters say the project could be a boon for U.S. jobs and energy production while strengthening a friendly source of oil.

DON SMITH/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER An air permit issued on Nov. 6 by the state Department of Environmental Protection allows Buckeye Partners to accept large amounts of Canadian tar sands oil at its newly renovated oil terminal in Perth Amboy. As debate rages in Washington over the environmental risks of allowing Canadian tar sands oil to be pumped across the U.S. in the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the Christie administration has quietly approved a permit that essentially opens New Jersey’s rail lines to carry that kind of oil through densely populated towns, past thousands of homes and businesses.  An air permit,...

The European Commission on Tuesday proposed scrapping a mandatory requirement to label tar sands oil as highly polluting after years of industry opposition. The new proposal abandons one obstacle to Canada shipping crude from tar sands to Europe and is likely to draw strong criticism from environmental campaigners and Green politicians. It is suggested in a revised draft law on how refiners report the carbon intensity of the fuel they supply. The debate about labelling tar sands, also known as oil sands, dates back to 2009 when EU member states approved legislation with the aim of cutting greenhouse gases from...

CALGARY • An anti-Keystone XL pipeline commercial funded by President Barack Obama supporter and hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer confirms what many Canadians have long suspected — American anti-oil activists have gone mad. The commercial was intended to be aired Tuesday evening on WRC-TV, an affiliate of NBC in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the president’s appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The commercial is so offensive the station refused to air it. While intended as a parody, it insults TransCanada Corp. CEO Russ Girling, whose company is proposing Keystone XL; it’s a low blow to Canada; and it...

Repairman Shawn Flett stood 30 feet above the ground on the deck of a truck the size of a house. He had just waved it gingerly into the repair shop as if guiding an airplane into a hangar. This is a beast of a machine, with 14-foot tires and weighing in at more than a million pounds. The truck burns 50 gallons of diesel an hour as it rumbles with 400-ton loads across the giant open-pit mines that have transformed a swath of Alberta’s vast northern forest into unsightly but lucrative sources of oil. “It handles like a Cadillac,” Flett...

Dear VICTORY! Thanks to you, we defeated Exxon’s plan to turn a pristine stretch of the Rocky Mountains into an industrial tar sands corridor. This is a win for the environment worth celebrating. Last week, we succeeded in bringing down a Goliath ... none other than Exxon Mobil. Thanks to your activism, we forced the oil giant to back down in its quest to turn a remote and wild stretch of the Rocky Mountains into an industrial transportation corridor. Exxon has formally withdrawn its application with the state of Montana to ship thousands of mega-sized tractor trailers, filled with tar...

President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline application, as recommended by the U.S. State Department, was met with disappointment by our friends north of the border. In a statement, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office said that President Obama called him this morning. “The president explained that the decision was not a decision on the merits of the project and that it was without prejudice, meaning that TransCanada is free to reapply,” said the statement. “Prime Minister Harper expressed his profound disappointment with the news.

Environmentalists' complaints about the Keystone XL oil pipeline ring hollow when the alternatives are considered. Saying no to the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline across the Great Plains states would not change the demand for oil by one barrel nor would it lessen the impact of getting that oil out of the tar sands of Canada's Alberta province. Despite the promise of alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient vehicles, and our need to develop them, demand for oil will remain high for several decades yet even in the most optimistic projections, here and in places such as China and India. And,...

Energy Independence: As our enemy Iran threatens to close a vital waterway for the shipping of oil, plans for a secure, job-creating supply from our ally Canada gather dust on the president's desk. The blustering threat from the quite mad Iranian mullahs and their supremely mad leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may be just a bluff, but then again it might not. It may just be an attempt to intimidate and poke the eye of an American president perceived as weak and whose failure to support and exploit the "Iranian Spring" of 2009 may come back to bite us. These are not...

Energy Policy: Canada's prime minister restates that if there's no Keystone XL pipeline in the works, not to worry. Our northern ally will still be our friend as it sends its tar sands oil to Asian markets. 'I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a Monday interview with Canada's CTV National News. It was the latest warning from our impatient northern neighbor that has used its energy resources to advance job creation and growth and...

Jobs: The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree. You can see why the economy is in trouble. Vice President Joe Biden, the stimulus sheriff, says he turned first to MF Global's Jon Corzine for economic advice and President Obama thinks 20,000 people getting extended unemployment benefits does more for the economy than 20,000 people getting paychecks to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. In the president's view, extending the payroll tax cuts...

Energy Policy: The president who often lets policy decisions be driven by others now says the pipeline to bring Canada's tar sands oil to America is his decision to make. So make it already, Mr. President. The administration's industrial policy of picking winners and losers, particularly in the energy sector, has given us such white, or should we say green, elephants as the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. It has an opportunity to pick a real winner — the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada's rich tar sands to the American market. So far the administration has given...