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After President Obama’s big climate-change environmentalist pander-fest in June, during which he contended that his administration will not be approving the Keystone XL pipeline unless they find that doing so “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” his ambiguity understandably sent radical environmentalists into a slow-burning tailspin of panic and desperation. Seeing as how Canada plans on developing their oil sands whether or not the United States decides to show up at the market, and that the State Department’s previous reports have nixed exacerbated net climate-change effects, the president certainly didn’t effectively rule out the pipeline’s ultimate approval.The green groups...

A n oil-laden train not unlike those rolling down American tracks derailed and exploded Saturday in a Canadian town, proving why pipelines are safer and environmentalist opposition to a pipeline from Canada is misguided. At least 13 people were reported dead and 37 missing in the charred Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, 130 miles east of Montreal, after the accident created an inferno of burning crude. Some may never be found, likely vaporized by the sheer intensity of the blaze that burned for 36 hours. Canada's oil boom, due largely to development of the oil sands in its western province of...

LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec (AP) — Hazardous conditions hindered firefighters' attempts Monday to search for some 40 people still missing after a runaway oil tanker train exploded over the weekend, killing at least five people, officials said. Meanwhile, crews worked to contain oil spilling in the Claudiere River which feeds into the St. Lawrence.

WASHINGTON -- The type of crude oil that would be pumped through the Keystone XL pipeline is no more likely to corrode pipelines or heighten the chance of leaks than other kinds of petroleum, according to a study by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. The finding rebuts one concern raised by opponents of the controversial 1,700-mile Canada-to-Texas pipeline. They have long argued that pipelines are more prone to corrosion and leaks if they carry diluted bitumen, the tar-like substance extracted in Alberta mostly by strip-mining, mixed with...

The Keystone XL pipeline will not be built unless it can be shown that it will not lead to a net increase in carbon emissions, President Barack Obama declared in a major Tuesday speech on climate change at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. While appearing to appease environmentalists, the announcement could mean that the project will move forward. "Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our national interest," he said. "And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net...

President Obama pressed ahead Tuesday with his climate change agenda, calling for new regulations on coal-fired power plants and setting a strict condition for the approval of the controversial Keystone pipeline. "We need to act," Obama said, in an address at Georgetown University. Even before he spoke, the president's proposal drew condemnation from the coal industry and lawmakers whose states rely on that industry for jobs. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, said the proposal "could deliver an unrecoverable blow to coal-rich states" like hers. But Obama claimed climate change is having "profound impacts" on the planet...

The heavy oil sands crude that would flow through Keystone XL is no more likely to cause pipelines to corrode and fail than other crudes, according to a government study Tuesday that could give a boost to the controversial TransCanada Corp. project. But the report by the National Academy of Sciences did not examine the challenges in cleaning up any spills of dense Canadian bitumen that can only be transported through U.S. pipelines after it is diluted with lighter oils. And critics said the study focused too much on the risks of pipeline transmission of diluted bitumen in comparison with...

A protester has emerged from an oil pipeline at a southern Michigan construction site, ending a protest that lasted about 10 hours. The Battle Creek Enquirer reports that Calhoun County Sheriff Matt Saxton says the man emerged about 5 p.m. Monday. Thirty-five-year-old Chris Wahmhoff was first reported inside the pipe about 6:45 a.m.

MARSHALL, MI – A man protesting the Enbridge Inc. pipeline, the source of the 2010 oil spill, has lodged himself into the open pipeline and is refusing to come out, according to reports. WWMT is reporting that the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department and rescue crews are on the the scene and are worried about the man’s oxygen intake. Channel 3 is reporting a woman on the scene, who said she is with MI CATS, the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands, identified the man in the pipe as Chris Wahmhoff, an organizer for Occupy Kalamazoo. The group, which demands Enbridge remove...

... In short, Mr. Obama is about to hammer the American energy industry, and he's doing it for money. The real elephant in the room is the Keystone XL pipeline project intended to bring Canadian oil to American Gulf Coast refineries and the resulting products onto the international market. In fact, the title of the Bloomberg article cited above includes the words "Keystone foes." Mr. Obama has already delayed Keystone, once and a final decision is coming up. While Keystone has received a lot of press attention, there are two interrelated aspects that have not yet come to the surface....

Two natural gas liquids pipelines covering more than 1,500 miles have begun service to the Gulf Coast. The pipelines, owned in partnership by DCP Midstream, Phillips 66 and Spectra Energy, carry natural gas liquids from the Permian Basin, the Eagle Ford Shale and the mid-continent to the coast. The Sand Hills Pipeline is a 720-mile pipeline from the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford Shale. The 800-mile Southern Hills Pipeline stretches from the mid-continent to the hub at Mont Belvieu. Lisa Newkirk, a spokeswoman for DCP Midstream, declined to say where in the mid-continent the pipeline originates but said the...

Friday’s jobs numbers from the Labor Department show that President Obama needs to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Even with 175,000 jobs created in May, there are 2.4 million fewer jobs in America than at the start of the recession in December 2007.Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, to bring oil from Canada to our refineries near the Gulf of Mexico, would create jobs, both for constructing the pipeline and for refining the oil. But President Obama has delayed the pipeline’s approval, citing safety concerns.Pipelines have been used to transport natural gas and oil, including from Canada to the...

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is extending a pipeline deeper into the Eagle Ford shale play to provide an outlet for growing oil production in South Texas. The $107 million expansion will link up with a ConocoPhillips facility Karnes County. That site is currently a gathering center for oil. ConocoPhillips trucks oil and other hydrocarbons to that site from its nearby producing wells, ConocoPhillips spokesman Daren Beaudo said. The expansion was made possible by a new long-term contracted signed between ConocoPhillips and Kinder Morgan, according to a news release. The companies would not disclose the terms of the deal. The 178-mile...

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP said Friday it has cancelled plans for the $2 billion Freedom pipeline, a conduit that would have brought a direct stream of West Texas crude to refiners on the U.S. West Coast. The cancellation underscores the growing difficulty pipeline companies are having in selling new large-scale projects as oil producers and refiners increasingly rely on railroads to ship crude around. Once seen as temporary necessities to deliver oil from emerging oil-producing regions in Alberta, Texas and North Dakota, railcars have become a permanent fixture of the North American energy landscape because they allow refiners more...

WASHINGTON — Building the $5.3 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline across the middle of the United States will require thousands of workers and millions of pounds of steel. It will also require a lot of smelly dead rats. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service this month said that Keystone's proposed route across Nebraska put the endangered American burying beetle at risk. The agency said the black and orange-spotted insect could be spared, and the project move forward, if proper procedure is followed. That means pipeline builder TransCanada Corp. will have to trap and relocate the one-inch beetles, using frozen rats...

RAMALLAH: Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a "priority," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on a visit to the region on Thursday, warning that time was running out for a two-state solution. "The prospects of a two-state solution cannot be kept alive forever as the situation changes," he told reporters from the seat of the Palestinian presidency in the West Bank city Ramallah. "The two-state solution does not have much longer, there is not much more time in which it could be brought about," he emphasised. Hague's visit to Ramallah followed a meeting between Abbas and US Secretary...

House Republicans pushed through a bill Wednesday to bypass the president to speed approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Democrats criticized the legislation as a blatant attempt to allow a foreign company to avoid environmental review. The bill was approved, 241-175, largely along party lines. Republicans said the measure was needed to ensure that the long-delayed pipeline, first proposed in 2008, is built. "This is the most studied pipeline in the history of mankind," said Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., the bill's sponsor. "When is enough enough?" added Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif. "Five years? Six years?...

JERUSALEM (AP) — The United States and Israel raised hopes Thursday for a restart of the Middle East peace process, despite little tangible progress so far from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's two-month-old effort to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. As they met in Jerusalem, Kerry praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the "seriousness" with which he is looking at ways to revitalize peace hopes. Kerry expressed optimism without outlining any concrete strategy for ending a stalemate between the two sides that has seen them hardly negotiate one-on-one at all over the last 4½...

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 17 (UPI) -- Nobel Energy of Houston, which discovered Israel's big natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, is pressing the government to decide on an energy export policy as the prospect of an undersea pipeline to Turkey gains credibility. Israel's deep-water Tamar field, found in 2009 and containing an estimated 9 trillion-10 trillion cubic feet of gas, began production March 31. But Nobel and Israeli partner Delek Energy, the team that discovered Tamar and other fields off Israel, is reluctant to develop the much bigger Leviathan field, found in 2010, until it the government makes...

Word is that both Israel and Turkey are seriously entertaining the notion of constructing an undersea pipeline to deliver Israeli natural gas to Turkey and, perhaps, hence to Europe. The Turks reportedly have expressed willingness to foot part of the estimated $2 billion bill. Such pipelines exist elsewhere in the world, most notably from Russia and from Norway. It is becoming evident that a veiled agenda underpinned the recent Turkish willingness to consider a rapprochement with Israel. Turkey, it appears, hankers after Israeli gas. The perceived Turkish softening was fueled by Israel’s offshore gas discoveries, a fact which nevertheless did...