Free Republic

A long-time goal for many energy minded conservatives may finally be on the horizon this week as congress considers lifting the more than forty year old ban on crude oil exports as part of the next spending bill. This would be great news for jobs and the economy, not to mention giving us some leverage to help out our allies who currently rely on Russian and middle eastern suppliers. Unfortunately, such a boon still requires help from at least some of the Democrats and their attitude is less than positive. The Hill was interviewing a few of them on Thursday...

If the amount of oil in storage continues to climb it could send the price of crude — and probably gasoline, too — plummeting. The U.S. has so much crude that it is running out of places to put it, and that could drive oil and gasoline prices even lower in the coming months. For the past seven weeks, the United States has been producing and importing an average of 1 million more barrels of oil every day than it is consuming. That extra crude is flowing into storage tanks, especially at the country’s main trading hub in Cushing, Oklahoma,...

American consumers are still enjoying relatively cheap gasoline as the summer driving season gets closer. AAA reports the national average at $2.44 this week, still below the 50-year inflation-adjusted average of $2.50 per gallon. If youÂ’d like cheaper gas, donÂ’t blame the oil and gas industry. ItÂ’s been the United Steelworkers and their strike against Royal Dutch Shell and 11 refineries that ticked gas back up more than anything, although it appears that a settlement has been accepted. Refiners are in their bi-annual season of throttling back production to perform maintenance and retool for the summer blends. So it begs...

With a glut of crude oil filling up pipelines and storage tanks and pushing down U.S. oil prices, Texas lawmakers are calling on Washington to lift its 40-year-old ban on crude exports. “Congress should update our national trade policy to benefit Texas producers and consumers,” state Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, said Monday at a joint hearing of the House Energy Resources Committee, which he chairs, and the chamber’s International Trade and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. More than 100 Texas House members have signed on to a proposed resolution that calls the ban a “relic from an era of scarcity and...

Energy: Three million gallons of Bakken crude burning in rural West Virginia after an oil train derails in a snowstorm ought to underscore the environmental safety of replacing rail cars with the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the reasons President Obama says he'll veto the Keystone pipeline bill that, as a result of last November's GOP electoral gusher, has found its way to his desk is that it will only carry Canadian crude to foreign markets and is not worth jeopardizing the environment. Two things are wrong with that argument. The first is that Keystone XL will also bring Bakken...

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates—the only OPEC members financially solvent enough to afford temporarily reducing crude oil production—are believed to have refused to cut output on November 27, 2014 to push oil prices down to $68 a barrel in hopes of killing the U.S. oil boom. But unlike traditional oil wells that lose future production capability if temporarily shut down, U.S. shale oil wells have the flexibility to close and then reopen without a long-term loss of production capability. From an annual low of $1.21 a barrel in 1970 to an annual high of $108.90 in 2012, OPEC,...

The biggest news for the United States stock market and American consumers happened on Thanksgiving in a far off desert kingdom. Saudi Arabia has taken the big gambit of not cutting production which means downward pressure on oil will continue, and that means less revenue for them. Why would a nation that gets 90% of their revenue from oil allow the price to plunge? I’ve said it several times, but I’m more convinced this is their (last) chance to crush, or at least derail/stall, America’s fracking miracle.It’s a war without bullets, but make no mistake, it's also about no prisoners....

Energy Transport: New data show fast-rising rail shipments from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation and the need for a safer alternative to rail — like the Keystone XL pipeline. In his post-election press conference, the president noted in justifying his continual kicking of the Keystone XL oil drum down the road that "while this debate about Canadian oil has been raging ... we've seen some of the biggest increases in American oil production and natural gas production in our history." That increase is due in large part to oil recovered from the Bakken shale formation centered on North Dakota. So...

Crude oil just broke $80. In morning trade on Monday, the price of crude oil fell below $80 a barrel for the first time since mid-2012 as energy prices continue to plummet around the world. The most recent drop in oil, which has been a bear market since topping out at about $107 during the summer, follows a cut in oil-price expectations from Goldman Sachs' Jeff Currie over the weekend. Currie took his oil-price forecasts for WTI Crude to $75 a barrel in the first quarter of 2015 and to $70 a barrel in the second quarter of next year....

Who could have ever imagined that North America would surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas liquids? A decade ago, that would have seemed laughable. Yet that’s exactly what has happened; and it’s not just Saudi Arabia that has been left in North America’s dust -- Russia has, too.

Much larger than Eagle Ford and once thought to have reached peak production, new technology has brought us full circle back to the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, where the recent shift to horizontal well drilling has rendered this play the unconventional ground zero. Determining where the next real oil boom will be depends largely on following the technology, and while the Permian Basin has been slower than others to switch from vertical well drilling to horizontal drilling, horizontal has now outpaced vertical, and investors are lining up to get in on the game. Until about 12 years...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil prices edged higher on Wednesday, with the U.S. benchmark pushing back toward $107 a barrel after militants in Iraq attacked the country's biggest oil refinery, underlining worries about potential threats to export facilities in the south.

Videos at source A CSX train carrying crude oil derailed Wednesday afternoon by the James River in downtown Lynchburg, sparking a massive fire that sent a thick column of black smoke high into the sky. Officials said 12 to 14 tanker cars were involved, but what caused the derailment is unclear. Three or four of the cars were breached, spilling oil into the river. Hazardous-materials crews are on scene. The incident happened shortly before 2 p.m. near Ninth and Jefferson streets. City firefighters are allowing the fire to burn out, and it has abated somewhat since the derailment. Multiple off-duty...

According to experts cited by The New York Times, President Barack Obama's eventual decision on the Keystone XL pipeline -- last week, the administration once again postponed a decision -- "will have a marginal impact on global warming emissions." The global economy releases lots of greenhouse gas -- 32.6 billion metric tons of carbon in 2011. The Keystone XL pipeline would add 18.7 million metric tons. In the global greenhouse gas picture, it won't make a dent. To the working men and women of America, however, the project represents "a lifeline to good jobs and energy security," according to Terry...

The story starts with a former journalist and Harvard Law School graduate who wanted to improve conditions for Ecuadorean people living in the Amazon rain forest, polluted by a big oil company. In 2011, attorney Steven Donziger won a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron Corp. But don't expect a happy ending for his clients. On Tuesday, Lewis Kaplan, a federal judge in New York, ruled that the Chevron judgment was "procured by fraud" and later covered up by "half-truths." Donziger's legal team "submitted fraudulent evidence," paid off a court-appointed "global expert" and even wrote the $9.5 billion judgment handed down...

The shovel-ready pipeline from Canada gets yet another clean bill of health as yet another State Department review says it will have negligible environmental impact, unlike the crude-carrying trains that are replacing it. President Obama promised in the State of the Union that 2014, his sixth year in office, would be a "year of action" on jobs, unlike the first five that saw the labor force participation rate sink to its lowest level in decades. In his weekly radio address on Jan. 18, he said he wanted "to work with Congress this year on proven ways to create jobs, like...

Energy Policy: An oil-laden train collides with another and bursts into flames in a small American town, proving why pipelines are safer and why environmentalist opposition to a pipeline from Canada is misguided. Casselton, N.D., had a near brush with tragedy after a train of tank cars carrying crude oil derailed, resulting in fiery explosions and a call from the town's mayor for a re-examination of how such fuel is transported across the United States. The railroad runs right through the middle of Casselton, a town of 2,400 people about 25 miles west of Fargo, and Mayor Ed McConnell said...

Jittery afternoon in the oil markets, where crude futures plunged $3 in less than a minute shortly before 2 p.m., for no immediately obvious reason. In such cases, the chatter inevitably turns to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But we have no credible reports of a release at this point. Heck, we don’t even have a shady report to point to. CNBC’s befuddled anchors are just now floating the idea that options expiry may be playing a role. And CNBC has a White House spokesman saying there’s no change to the strategic petroleum reserve. “Fat finger” error? Probably not: Brent moved...

WASHINGTON _ The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday's vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably.

Crude oil futures pared gains in choppy trade on Thursday, after the International Energy Agency warned that elevated oil prices could derail the global economic recovery. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in July traded at USD100.28 a barrel during European morning trade, easing up 0.11%. It earlier rose by as much as 1% to a daily high of USD101.24 a barrel. The governing board of the International Energy Agency expressed “serious concern” that there were growing signs that the rise in oil prices was affecting the global economic recovery by widening global imbalances...