Free Republic

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India aims to auction its remaining 1 million square kilometers (387,000 sq miles) of potential exploration areas in the next two to three years, buoyed by recent oil and gas discoveries, the upstream regulator said on Thursday. It recently launched its biggest-ever exploration round, offering 70 blocks as it expects companies to seize the opportunity to strike good bargains because of the economic slowdown. The discoveries, and their development, will prove useful as India imports over 70 percent of the crude it consumes and demand is expected to rise further as the economy recovers. The country...

Santa Barbara, CA (AP) -- The Santa Barbara City Council has voted to support a continued ban on oil drilling off the California coast. The largely symbolic vote came Tuesday night — two weeks after the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted in favor of lifting the ban. City Council members say their vote was meant to reaffirm Santa Barbara's reputation for environmentalism.

Not oil! In a Washington Post puff piece helping Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sell her new book Know Your Power, Pelosi is quoted: “The men had ruled the roost for such a long time, and they liked that environment. They had this attitude of, ‘We know how to get this done, and there’s a secret sauce to it.’ They never said it that way, but that’s how I heard it: ‘There’s a secret sauce, and you can’t possibly know the recipe because we do.’” Well it sure didn’t take long for Pelosi to develop her own ’secret sauce’ for ruling...

President Bush was on message Wednesday in a Rose Garden news conference when he kept up the pressure on his a drill, drill, drill offensive. He said he knows Americans are worried about gasoline prices, and said he wants them “to understand fully that we have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways.” He specifically mentioned opening up ANWR, the outer continental shelf, and oil-shale exploration. He also took a whack at lawmakers, saying “the Democratically controlled Congress has refused to budge.” That’s spot-on correct. But it has me wondering. Where in...