Free Republic

Energy Policy: Leases and production are down on federal lands, the EPA is waging war on coal, and as for building enough pipelines to encircle the earth, we'd settle for just one from Canada to the Gulf. When President Obama, in responding Tuesday to Mitt Romney's chiding about failing to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, claimed that his administration has added enough new oil and gas pipelines to "encircle the Earth and then some," we felt a perfect response from Romney would have been, "You didn't build that." In fact, energy companies have built some 55,000 miles of pipeline, including...

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s new ambassador to Azerbaijan raised eyebrows this week with a gesture interpreted by some as paying homage to the country’s late dictator – a one-time KGB general installed by military coup who oversaw an autocratic regime before handing power to his son. “The new U.S. envoy to Azerbaijan, Richard Morningstar, has honored memory of national leader of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev,” the Azeri news site News.Az reported. “The newly appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the United States in Azerbaijan visited the monument to great leader in the park in front of the Heydar Aliyev’s Palace....

In Canada we have a strange tradition of "spreading the wealth around." Provinces are divided into "Have" and "Have-Not" categories, and the federal government redistributes wealth from the Haves to the Have-Nots. Aren't you glad you're an American? But hold on. It gets worse. Sometimes, when politicians in a province think they're not getting enough redistributed wealth from the feds, their premier (equivalent to your state governor) will move heaven and earth to get a better deal. Such is the case right now, as the premier of the province of British Columbia (B.C.) is using every phony environmental concern in...

Mexico may someday realize its potential as a natural gas superpower, but in the lengthy meantime the country’s gnawing energy craving may feed off Texas pipelines. Mexico energy planners are pressing ahead with an $8 billion expansion of the country’s 5,500-mile natural gas pipeline system, focusing on central and northern industrial cities. And for the foreseeable future, they intend to fuel that network with U.S. natural gas, including from South Texas and Eagle Ford Shale fields. “Mexico has a unique opportunity, we have access to the world’s cheapest gas,” Mexican Energy Minister Jordy Herrera said of the U.S. supply in...

Pipe manufacturer TMK IPSCO will move its corporate headquarters from Illinois to Houston to increase its exposure to the oil and natural gas market, the company has announced. Currently based in Downers Grove, Ill., TMK IPSCO said it will move most of its headquarters offices to the company’s new research and development center on Houston’s northwest side. The company expects to complete the Houston move by the summer of 2013 and build a new headquarters in the city within the next two years. “Houston is the hub of the global oil and gas industry. It’s important for the company to...

As battles rage over the Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines, governments and energy companies are eyeing other options for transporting oilsands crude to foreign markets, including by rail, a pipeline through the Northwest Territories and shipping more oil to Eastern Canada instead. The political, economic and environmental stakes are enormous. Billions of dollars of investment are on the line but, as the Northern Gateway saga has shown, there are also plenty of potential pitfalls for governments and project proponents. British Columbia’s demands for supporting the Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline proposals — including receiving its...

TransCanada Corp. will be promoting a shorter leg in an upcoming open season on its massive Alaska to Alberta natural gas pipeline project, offering shippers an option to move gas to a liquefaction plant in Alaska. The pipeline and energy firm will run the non-binding solicitation of interest during two weeks in September as part of a biannual commitment to the state proving market interest in the long-delayed project. “The difference between (the last open season in 2010) and now is that we’re also looking at the LNG option in Alaska, which the governor had requested that we look at,”...

“A federal agency‘s recent decision involving the endangered American burying beetle could cause up to a year’s delay in construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, if the project wins federal approval,” the Omaha World-Herald reported Wednesday.

U.S. regulators prohibited Enbridge Inc. from restarting an oil pipeline in Wisconsin, saying the pipeline company must perform additional tests. Enbridge's Line 14 pipeline leaked about 1,200 barrels of oil near Grand Marsh, Wis. on Friday, from the same pipeline system that suffered a catastrophic leak two years earlier in neighboring Michigan. The U.S. Department of Transportation issued a corrective order against Enbridge for the Wisconsin spill, saying the Calgary energy infrastructure company must conduct new tests on the integrity of the pipeline as well as bring in an independent expert to investigate the company's pipeline maintenance plan.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has joined Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in calling for the United States to issue a conditional block CNOOC's proposed acquisition of Canada-based Nexen, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Markey said that Nexen has drilled for oil in the U.S. without paying royalties and that, if the merger proceeded, would result in a "massive transfer of wealth" to China at the expense of the American taxpayer, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to block CNOOC's proposed acquisition of Canada-based energy company Nexen until the...

Did Obama push Canada into China's arms by rejecting the Keystone Pipeline?By The Week's Editorial Staff | The Week – 10 hrs ago China is in the process of acquiring a stake in Canada's valuable Alberta oil sands, months after Obama suspended a plan to invest in the region Has China swooped in to claim a prize the U.S. forfeited? This week, China's state-run energy giant CNOOC announced that it was buying Canadian oil producer Nexen for $15 billion, the largest-ever acquisition by a Chinese company. The deal would give China control over Nexen's oil sands operations in the Canadian...

North Dakota oil producers are increasingly using trains to hunt for the best price for their crude. North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources director Lynn Helms says as much as 40 percent of the state’s oil exports are being shipped by train instead of pipeline. Helms says there isn’t enough pipeline space yet to handle all of North Dakota’s production. It is now almost 640,000 barrels a day.

Shell Pipeline Company’s Houma-to-Houston pipeline reversal project is getting the customers and federal approvals necessary to move forward, the company announced this week. Rising crude production in the region and new shipping contracts are meeting expectations to make the project viable, the company said. Shell plans to reverse the pipeline’s flow to carry up to 300,000 barrels of crude per day eastward from East Houston to Port Arthur to Houma, La. The project seeks to capture growing crude production from the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas and the Permian Basin in West Texas to supply refiners along the Gulf...

Canadian oil exports "are essentially landlocked" because of mounting environmental concerns about the oilsands and bottlenecks in the U.S. midwest market, say newly released briefing notes prepared for Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. The records, marked "secret" but released to Postmedia News using access to information legislation, suggest the U.S. pipeline network is partly to blame for the problem, along with the need for stronger regulations to control the environmental footprint of oilsands activity on the climate, air, land, water and wildlife. "How Canada addresses the environmental issues surrounding the current and projected growth of the industry is of fundamental...

The U.S. government is moving forward with a portion of the Keystone pipeline, following the lead of many Americans who say they want it. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has approved the southern section of the pipeline running from Cushing, Okla., through Texas to Port Arthur on the Gulf Coast.

U.S. veterans looking for jobs have a new employment opportunity -- in Canada, working on that country’s section of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

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...

The nation’s energy transportation network is undergoing a multibillion-dollar overhaul, as oil and natural gas production surges in new regions of the country. Across North America, pipelines and rail terminals are being built in areas where wells were once scarce. Companies are reversing pipe flows and adding stronger pumps to funnel more crude through their lines. The changes are transforming the web that carries energy across the country. “Where it used to be isn’t where it is now. Where it needs to go isn’t where it used to go,” said Terrance McGill, president of fuel carrier Enbridge Energy. “You’re seeing...

The Keystone XL pipeline debacle of last winter was a prime example of Team Obama's precarious position with the environmental lobby. Environmentalists generally have a vociferous hatred for all things oil-related, and dubiously cited possible terrestrial leakages and increased carbon emissions as the too-dire-to-even-consider consequences of allowing TransCanada's pipeline project to move forward. The obvious counter for the pipelines' proponents, of course, was that the pipeline would instantly create productive private-sector jobs, encourage economic growth, and decrease our dependence on less-than-friendly oil sources. What's a president to do?The Obama administration decided they wanted to have their cake and eat it...

The U.S. army Corps of Engineers has granted TransCanada Corp one of three permits it needs to build the $2.3 billion southern section of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project President Barack Obama had pledged to move forward quickly. TransCanada, which seeks to build the overall project in stages after Obama rejected the contentious first incarnation, said the approval covers wetland and water crossings in the Galveston, Texas, district. The company needs two other permits from the agency’s Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fort Worth, Texas districts for the project, which it has rebranded the Gulf Coast project. Tulsa is expected to...