Free Republic

Today, House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) led a letter to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler and Director Haoxiang Zhu, seeking information on a proposed rule change to permit the listing of Natural Asset Companies (NACs) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

CHICAGO () - When temperatures drop to bone-chilling levels like we’re experiencing now, railroads use open flames to keep the trains moving.. According to Metra spokesman Michael Gillis, they’re using natural gas to heat switches. “It looks like the tracks are on fire, but what it is, there are gas burners next to the switches, and we light them to keep the switches warm, so the switches can move,” said Gillis. “If they freeze up, then our trains can’t change tracks and that leads to congestion…It’s really essential to keep the switches operational so that we can keep our trains...

With energy bills putting a crunch on the U.S. this winter, comparing the costs of electric heat vs gas heat can be an important decision for homeowners looking to save money. When Kiplinger looked at this same question last year, we concluded that gas heat was the cheaper option. However, a new study found flaws in the way electric heating costs are accounted for, changing the cost outlook. Moreover, electricity costs vary substantially from one U.S. state to another. In this year’s winter fuels outlook, published by the Energy Information Agency (EIA), it’s forecasted that from November through March, heating-oil...

The Biden Regime is now proposing a new natural gas tax. Biden’s first order of business was to kill tens of thousands of jobs and cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. Gas prices shot up immediately after Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline. Since then, Biden has continued to wage a war on the ‘fossil fuel’ industry. He has also depleted the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now Biden is proposing new regulations and taxes on the fossil fuel industry. “Under President Biden’s leadership, EPA is delivering on a comprehensive strategy to reduce wasteful methane emissions that endanger communities and fuel the climate crisis,”...

The U.S. has become the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas. President Biden is finding that this superpower status comes with its own set of headaches. In the past two years, hundreds of cargoes loaded with supercooled gas departed the U.S. Gulf Coast as foreign buyers turned to America for energy supplies. Developers of export terminals have seized the momentum to advance plans to build new plants and crank out even more LNG. Now, climate activists and Democratic lawmakers are exhorting the Biden administration to halt this expansion. They argue that the federal government, which has to approve LNG...

Let’s round out the year with a bit of good news, or at least the potential for something positive following a season where reasons for optimism have been few and far between. Among the many terrible governmental policy shifts seen under the Biden administration, one of the more odious has been the war on gas stoves, a subset of the overall war on fossil fuels and “Things That Work.” The Biden administration and its liberal allies have been hell-bent on shutting down natural gas in parallel with oil and gasoline. The fact that our vaunted Vice President and border czar...

A truck driver transporting compressed natural gas reportedly suffered severe burns when his vehicle crashed into a Glenville, N.Y., bridge and exploded on Thursday evening. Town Supervisor Chris Koetzle announced that power in the area was knocked out due to the explosion. The driver survived with third-degree burns, he added. Over 1,200 customers initially lost power in the affected area, according to National Grid, but that number has been steadily improving, CBS 6 Albany reported.

Bombshell new records released by the House Ways & Means Committee have revealed that Joe Biden used email aliases to speak with his son’s business associates hundreds of times while in office as Obama’s vice president. The Republican-led committee obtained metadata from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. The metadata reveals Joe Biden used alias email accounts 327 times during a nine-year period from 2010 to 2019 to discuss shady foreign business deals. He used the email aliases to correspond with his son, Hunter, and one of Hunter’s key business associates, Eric Schwerin, among others. The vast majority of...

Weather pundits on TV and even The Old Farmers Almanac are telling us key factors like Solar Cycle 25, El Nino, and a polar vortex moving south from the North Pole will combine to give most of the U.S. a colder and a much more snowy winter. Are we ready? Is the Biden administration ensuring our gas and coal-fired power plants are winterized and have enough fuel? Of course not. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a not-for-profit regulatory authority whose stated mission is "to assure the effective and efficient reduction of risks to the reliability and security of...

The TurkStream pipeline, which brings natural gas from Russia to Türkiye across the Black Sea and then into southeastern Europe, was controversial in certain quarters of the West ever since it was conceived. Now the flow of natural gas to Europe from Russia via Türkiye is reaching all-time highs. TurkStream has a capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, roughly half of which stays in Türkiye, and the rest continues on to the Balkans and Central Europe. Serbia and Hungary are the primary European consumers. According to S&P Global, supplies via TurkStream into Southeast Europe rose...

Natural gas remains the main source of heating in American homes despite the current administration’s electrification push. . Heating homes this winter using natural gas is estimated to cut down energy costs by more than 40 percent compared to electricity, according to a recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Households using electricity to heat homes are projected to pay $1,063 on average between November and March, according to a Nov. 7 winter fuels outlook report by the EIA. In comparison, households using natural gas are only expected to shell out $601. Region-wise, the biggest difference is in...

What is the US aircraft carrier doing in Israel? It will start to carry out serious massacres there by striking, destroying Gaza"...The comments of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan... A plane carrying ammunition from the United States arrived in Israel tonight... Tonight rocket fire aimed at Israel from Syria... Meanwhile the Russian military in Syria says that there were only three US coalition air space violations in Syria's Al-Tanf today... The United States determining that the new military government in Niger since July is the result of a military coup. This means a permanent cutoff of 200 million dollars... Tensions...

Forecourt fuel prices will increase from midnight tonight — adding €1.28 and €1.48 to the cost of a 60-liter fill of petrol and auto diesel respectively. There will be a €7.50 increase on the current rate of carbon tax that is applied per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions by carbon fuels. This will bring the carbon tax rate up to €56.00 per tonne. The increase in carbon tax will subsequently be applied to all other carbon fuels, including solid fuels and home heating oil, but not until 1 May 2024. It will add 90 cents to the cost of a...

Germany's cabinet on Wednesday approved putting on-reserve lignite-fired power plants back online from October until the end of March 2024, the economy ministry said, as a step to replace scarce natural gas this winter and avoid shortages. In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a sudden drop in Russian gas imports to Germany, Berlin reactivated coal-fired power plants and extended their lifespans, with a total output of 1.9 gigawatt hours generated last winter. Despite gas bottlenecks easing since last winter with new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal deliveries, coal-fired power plans will be reactivated

Solar should be competing for sales in the marketplace, not for subsidies in Washington,' ... The Biden administration quietly issued a 59-page report outlining the current scope of federal energy-related subsidies revealed that the renewable energy sector enjoys significantly larger taxpayer backing than the fossil fuel industry. The report — authored by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) and published in August — represents the first of its kind since 2018. The EIA analyzed data from 2016 through 2022, and determined that, during that time period, the federal government doled out $183.3 billion in direct and mainly indirect...

Faint interest in film glorifying activists bent on violence, destructionJames Cameron caught little heat for a shocking admission. He hearts eco-terrorism. It’s one thing for the “Avatar” director to be so green he makes his cast and crew eat vegan. That seems quaint compared to a quote that got ignored by most press outlets. Now, we have an entire film dedicated to eco-activists willing to employ violence to suit their needs. And it’s clear where the story’s empathy lies. “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” deserves some sort of Truth in Advertising award. The story follows a gang of eco-thugs...

First son Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer told lawmakers this week that Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings brought the political scion onto its board so that “people would be intimidated to mess with them … legally.” ... Archer also revealed that then-Vice President Joe Biden met twice with his son’s shady post-Soviet business partners at DC’s Café Milano, not once as previously reported. These and other revelations blow new holes in Biden’s claim that he never discussed business with his now-53-year-old son — as House Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry. The transcript also confirms...

WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday began a new effort to crack down on methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change. The first-ever White House Methane Summit came at a time of severe heat across much of the U.S., including in Pittsburgh, where temperatures are expected to approach or exceed 90 degrees until the weekend. President Joe Biden established a new methane task force to work with state and local officials to detect leaks and reduce emissions. The White House said billions of dollars of natural gas are lost to leaks every year. In Pennsylvania, methane accounts for...

The Biden administration is cracking down on water heaters by imposing greater efficiency standards. Consumers will have to shovel out thousands of dollars more to install a heat pump water heater rather than a conventional storage water heater in order to fall in line with new standards released on Friday by the Department of Energy. If the proposal is adopted, by 2029, all new electric water heaters must deploy heat pump technology and all gas-fired ones will use condensing technology.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in Virginia this week delivered a message to Congress, the White House and developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline: not so fast. Pennsylvania-based Equitrans Midstream’s roughly 300-mile pipeline, envisioned to bring shale gas from the Marcellus and Utica in Appalachia to markets in the Southeast, was fast-tracked as part of the Biden administration’s deal with Congress to suspend the debt limit in June. It’s also supported by Pennsylvania congressmen, including U.S. Reps. John Joyce, R-Blair, and Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, who joined U.S. Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., to introduce the legislation in May that helped...