Free Republic

The latest, spectacular “Exit South Stream, Enter Turk Stream” Pipelinistan gambit will be sending big geopolitical shockwaves all across Eurasia for quite some time. This is what the New Great Game in Eurasia is all about. In a nutshell, a few years ago Russia devised North Stream – fully operational – and South Stream – still a project – to bypass unreliable Ukraine as a gas transit nation. Now Russia devises a new sweet deal with Turkey to bypass the “non-constructive” (Putin’s words) approach of the European Commission (EC) concerning the European “Third Energy Package”, which prohibits one company from...

North Dakota is poised to impose the strictest oil standards in its history on Tuesday, requiring every barrel of crude to be filtered for dangerous types of natural gas in an effort to make crude-by-rail transport safer. The new requirements come as federal, state and local officials grapple with how best to ensure the safe transport of North Dakota's crude oil, which has been linked to a string of fiery crude-by-rail explosions, including one last year in Quebec that killed 47 people. Governor Jack Dalrymple and the two other members of the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC) are taking the...

Research firm Genscape says that after a year-and-a-half of delay, Kinder Morgan's Texas-to-California Freedom Pipeline project has been revived, with changes that the company hopes will attract shippers. The 250,000 bpd pipeline proposal was shelved in mid-2013 following its failure to receive enough interest from shippers, who said they wanted to transport oil by rail into California, rather than inking long-term pipeline contracts. However, many of these West Coast companies have confronted crude-by-rail permitting delays amid heightening environment impact scrutiny. But now the modified pipeline plan is much more attractive, Tom Dobson, project director of Kinder Morgan Pipelines, said during...

Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) said Dec. 5 its capital budget for 2015 is $4.6 billion, up 18 percent from what it spent in 2014. Including spending for joint ventures DCP Midstream, Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. and WRB Refining, Phillips 66 expects its total capital program to be $6.8 billion next year. Last year, Phillips 66 announced its 2014 capital budget of $2.7 billion, not including joint ventures, in December and increased that to $3.9 billion in July. Here's a basic breakdown of the company's 2015 budget: Midstream:$3.16 billion, plus $550 million for its share of DCP's expenditures Chemicals:$1.45 billion for...

The Environmental Protection Ministry called the oil spill from the Tran-Israel pipeline in southern Israel one of the worst pollution events in the history of Israel on Thursday and said the clean up will cause landscape damage and could take many months. ...

The most important thing to understand about an environmental concern is that it is infinitely malleable. It has Play-Doh’s or putty’s wonderful power of accommodation, to take whatever shape, for the moment, might be called for. Because the environment is, by definition or tautology, everything that is around us — there will always be something “in” the environment on which to hang an objection, mount a protest or, as Samuel Johnson, ever elegant, put it, “to point a moral, or adorn a tale.”

The Keystone XL Pipeline project is almost certainly dead. No, not because a bill that would have finally given the go-ahead to begin construction fell one vote short in the lame duck Senate last month. Sure, that halted the legislative approval process in its tracks, but only until January, when a new Congress arrives and is sworn in. Republicans, who will have a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, have pledged to bring it back for another vote in the next session. The next vote may well bring a different result, but will the pipeline ever...

HUIMANGUILLO, Mexico — The big-time gasoline thieves had already come and gone during the wee hours, filling their tanker trucks with stolen fuel and then fleeing. Then dawn broke, and word spread that a crime gang had again tapped into a gasoline pipeline, and it was spewing fuel into a ditch. At first, only a few farmers showed up, carrying plastic jerry cans. Then dozens. Then even more. All were eager to collect what spilled fuel they could. (...) Mexico is plagued by rampant energy theft. In the first eight months of this year, 7.5 million barrels went missing, a...

President Vladimir V. Putin said Monday that he would scrap Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline, a grandiose project that was once intended to establish the country’s dominance in southeastern Europe but instead fell victim to Russia’s increasingly toxic relationship with the West. It was a rare diplomatic defeat for Mr. Putin, who said Russia would redirect the pipeline to Turkey. He painted the failure to build the pipeline as a loss for Europe and blamed Brussels for its intransigence. The decision also seemed to be a rare victory for the European Union and the Obama administration, which have appeared largely...

One Democratic congressman is so opposed to the Keystone XL Pipeline that he wouldn’t vote for it even if his party got a minimum-wage bump from Republicans in exchange. “I wouldn’t make that trade,” Rep. Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democrat, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” of a hypothetical raise to $9.50 per hour. Senate Democrats late Tuesday filibustered a measure to green-light the contentious oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast, potentially dooming the chances of party colleague Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and underscoring the power of the pro-environment caucus. Republicans vowed to put President Obama’s veto pen to the...

The new leader of North Dakota’s oil-rich Three Affiliated Tribes is pledging to speed negotiations on a proposed pipeline through tribal land that would curb the wasteful burning of natural gas in the state by more than 10 percent. North Dakota’s booming oil production has led to an unmanageable increase in the state’s output of natural gas, which is a byproduct of oil production. Oneok Inc., the biggest operator of natural gas pipelines and processing plants in North Dakota, wants to build a 20-mile-long pipeline to capture natural gas from oil wells in Dunn County and move it to an...

“Understand what this project is,” Barack Obama said earlier this week when pressed on why his administration continues to stall on the Keystone XL pipeline after almost six years of waiting for a decision. “It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else.”CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Understand what that was, Glenn Kessler responds today in a Washington Post fact check. It’s a three-Pinocchio lie based on an ignorant-at-best interpretation of a presentation slide from environmental activists. The refineries in...

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are stoking fear about the project by connecting it to two of the biggest bogeymen in politics: Charles and David Koch. The claim goes that the Koch brothers stand to make $100 billion if the pipeline gets built. The figure, which would effectively double the Kochs’ net worth, has bounced around liberal news organizations and was repeated this month by progressive radio talk show and TV host Thom Hartmann on his RT show. Take it with a block of salt, a PunditFact analysis finds.

So the Senate Democrats just defeated the $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline by 1 vote. Sitting duck Mary Landrieu — the soon-to-be former senator from Louisiana — begged her Democratic colleagues to vote for the energy-and-job-creating project but, no, the Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren “Green” wing of the party chose leftist sanctimoniousness over practicality. Here’s the thing about energy: we need as much of it as we can get as cheaply as possible. Are you worried about “the environment,” “peak oil,” etc.? Then you should be an aivd supporter of fracking, the Keystone pipeline, and any other means of extracting fossil...

President Barack Obama might be open to using the Keystone pipeline as leverage with Republicans if they cooperate on other aspects of his long-stalled domestic agenda, such as investing in infrastructure, closing tax loopholes or reducing carbon emissions. After years of fighting over TransCanada's crude oil pipeline from Canada, a Keystone deal is not entirely out of the question, sources inside the administration and others close to the White House told Reuters on Tuesday. With the Senate's narrow defeat of a Keystone bill on Tuesday, Obama avoided the awkward position of possibly vetoing a bill supported by members of his...

Desperate Sen. Mary Landrieu loses the vote, and likely her Senate seat as well. The ongoing theatrics surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline continued in earnest Tuesday. Desperate Democrat incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) spent the afternoon trying to secure the critical 60th vote necessary for the filibuster-proof majority that would get the legislation through the Senate and onto Obama’s desk, while her fellow Democrats weighed the pros and cons of alienating their radical environmentalist constituency. Democrats chose to stand with the radicals, defeating the bill by a 59-41 vote. By the middle of the afternoon, Landrieu’s chances of winning over...

The 59-41 Senate vote was just shy of the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, following a dramatic six days of whipping by the embattled Louisiana Democrat on an issue that almost all of Washington had expected to sit idle until next year. The defeat deals a blow to Landrieu’s campaign ahead of her Dec. 6 runoff against GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, whom polls show running comfortably ahead.

Six years into a wait for the approvals to operate the newest section of the Keystone Pipeline system, TransCanada has already spent $2.4 billion on the project. TransCanada had hoped that it would have the permits for its Keystone XL pipeline within two years, since the first phase of the Keystone Pipeline system was reviewed and approved in 23 months. But it’s been more than six years since TransCanada filed its application to build the Keystone XL expansion, and it has still not been approved. Facing environmental pressures from his liberal base if he approves the pipeline and strife from...

The Senate narrowly rejected legislation to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline on Tuesday, handing a defeat to the oil industry and dealing a major blow to Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, who staked her political career on the outcome. The Senate voted 59-41 for the legislation, falling one vote shy of the 60 needed for passage under the deal bringing it to the floor. But Keystone supporters insisted the defeat would be short-lived. Republican leaders are vowing to try again after they take over the chamber in January — when they will have more than enough votes to get a measure...

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats, by a single vote, stopped legislation that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, one of the most fractious and expensive battles of the Obama presidency. The vote represented a victory for the environmental movement, but the fight had taken on larger dimensions as a proxy war between Republicans, who argued that the project was vital for job creation, and President Obama, who had delayed a decision on building it. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, who is facing a runoff election Dec. 6, had pleaded with her colleagues throughout the day to...