Free Republic

Protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline in western Canada have been escalating for several weeks. Now the company which operates passengers and freight traffic on CanadaÂ’s rail system says travel is being disrupted for tens of thousands of people: Via Rail, the crown corporation that operates much of CanadaÂ’s commuter rail service, announced on Wednesday that trains on the Toronto-Montreal and Toronto-Ottawa routes would be halted until at least Friday. More than 150 passenger trains have been cancelled since the blockade began, forcing an estimated 24,000 people to find alternate travel routes.Canadian National Railway, which owns the tracks, warned...

Not too long ago, on Nov. 8, 2011, Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev, German Chancellor Angel Merkel, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte participated in an inauguration ceremony for the first of two natural gas pipelines laid in the sea bottom from western Russia along the Baltic States to Germany. You may have heard of this, known as Nord Stream I. This pipeline could deliver 27.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, equal to about 3.5% of the annual consumption of natural gas in the United States in 2016. A second pipeline of the Nord...

A recent hoax in Minnesota highlighted the lengths some activists will go to in order to persuade public opinion and shape their own narrative in the media.  An activist group called the “Yes Men” developed an elaborate plan about the fictitious development of a pipeline in Duluth. The goal of this stunt was to try and create fear about pipelines and prevent the construction of a major pipeline that is being upgraded and replaced for efficiency and improved safety. The Yes Men created the “Indigenous Pipeline Council”, a fake group behind their hoax that resulted in a local television station reporting...

As the impeachment inquiry hogs the spotlight in Washington, another drama in which Ukraine has a role is playing out more quietly -- and causing concern in Kyiv, which is watching warily as Russia brings its Nord Stream 2 pipeline closer to completion. Members of the U.S. Congress appear unified on the need to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin's $11 billion project to deliver natural gas to Europe via a new pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea. Bills that would impose sanctions on companies involved in Nord Stream 2 sailed through committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate last...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Mountain Valley Pipeline, one of the major construction projects crossing West Virginia, has extended the timetable and price for its expected completion. The pipeline’s developers announced last week that construction now isn’t expected to concluded until late next year at a cost of $5.3 to $5.5 billion because key aspects of the giant project have been challenged by federal regulators and in the court system. The original cost estimate when work began in February 2018 was $3.7 billion. The original estimated completion date was the fourth quarter of 2019 — now. The pipeline’s developers say it is...

A gas shortage threatens the Long Island region,” bleat six Long Island state senators, all Democrats, in a letter pleading for approval of a pipeline proposed to fix the problem — belatedly admitting that the policies they’ve long favored don’t work for their own constituents. This year, Sens. Todd Kaminsky, John Brooks, James Gaughran, Anna Kaplan, Monica Martinez and Kevin Thomas all voted for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Green New Deal law, whose very purpose is to further crimp energy supplies, and for a $100 million hike in taxes on energy. And, as Senate GOP leader John Flanagan (their fellow Long...

DES MOINES, Iowa – On September 19, 2019, a federal grand jury returned an Indictment charging defendants, Jessica Rae Reznicek and Ruby Katherine Montoya, with one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, four counts of use of fire in the commission of a felony, and four counts of malicious use of fire, announced United States Attorney Marc Krickbaum. Montoya was recently arrested in the District of Arizona and detained pending court proceedings to determine her appearance in the Southern District of Iowa. Reznicek appeared in Des Moines on October 1, 2019 and was conditionally released pending trial. Trial...

last year Buffett donated $169 million to the NoVo Foundation, a charity run by his youngest son, Peter, and Peter’s wife, Jennifer. ... Some of the foundation’s resources are directed towards radical activism that clearly benefits Buffett’s bottom line. In fact, money Buffett donated to the NoVo Foundation has been used to attack companies that compete with Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries and holdings. ... In 2017, NoVo donated $3.5 million to the “Clean Clothes Campaign” managed by the liberal Tides Foundation.. ... Why would the NoVo Foundation fund a series of crusades focused on ferociously targeting Walmart and Sam’s Club? It...

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador said his administration has reached a deal ending a $3 billion controversy over contracts for seven natural gas pipelines that were built by four companies south of the border... Either idle or incomplete, the pipelines are not delivering gas, but the clauses allowed the companies to collect payments due to delays and circumstances beyond their control... Mexico is consuming more than 8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, but only produces 2.6 billion cubic feet per day — meaning that the rest needs to be imported. Under the agreement between the Mexican government...

A Russian-led project to bring a new gas pipeline to Europe has taken the European Union to court to challenge new rules it says are meant to stall the project. Nord Stream 2 — a new undersea gas pipeline being built by Russia’s energy firm Gazprom and backed by five European energy companies — said on Friday it had asked the Court of Justice of the European Union to annul an EU gas directive, which dictates the pipes cannot be directly owned by a gas supplier.The owner of the pipeline is Russia's energy firm Gazprom, who will also be its...

The sins of former President Obama are just now beginning to surface. We know that Obama targeted George Papadopoulos first to stop the construction of Israel’s natural gas pipeline to Europe in favor of Iran’s pipeline. Then Obama targeted Papadopoulos a second time to prevent candidate Trump from being President! The pieces are all starting to fall together and Obama and his gang can’t make it stop. The most corrupt President in US history, Barack H. Obama, will soon be known as the biggest crook to enter the Oval Office. One individual who was targeted by Obama will be the...

A Ninth Circuit Court judge nullified a key barrier to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that it no longer applies after the Trump administration replaced the permit earlier this year. Judge Edward Leavy out of Montana ruled Thursday night in favor of the Trump administration and TransCanada Corporation’s motion to dismiss. The ruling sided with arguments that the old permit for the pipeline, which was replaced by the Trump administration in March, is no longer valid and therefore the injunction associated with it also no longer applies. The action hands a victory to the Trump administration, which...

f you protest an oil or gas pipeline in Texas, you could face up to 10 years in prison. The bill on the verge of becoming law in Texas would classify civil disobedience against the construction of a pipeline in Texas a third-degree felony, putting it on “the same level of felony as attempted murderers,” according to the Texas Observer, or equivalent to sentences handed down to “drive-by shooters who fail to hit their mark,” as Bloomberg put it.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order next week in response to environmental activists’ ongoing legal efforts to stymie his administration’s efforts to reduce regulations and ramp up pipeline construction to allow Americans access to the abundant domestic supply of natural gas. “The effort is spurred by the blockage of the construction of the 125-mile Constitution Pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York,” CNBC reported. “Officials say the administration’s broader goal is to lower energy prices by accelerating the transport of natural gas and to reaffirm U.S. energy ‘dominance,’ a word that appeared multiple times in an early...

President Donald Trump on Friday issued a new presidential permit for the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline, reaffirming his support for the controversial project while also apparently seeking to sidestep a current federal lawsuit that blocks construction. The president’s order on Friday supersedes and rescinds a previous permit Trump signed shortly after taking office in 2017. But it also seeks to kick-start the crude oil pipeline by opening a way around a current lawsuit.

The leak was caused by fuel thieves illegally tapping the pipeline in a small town in the state of Hidalgo, about 62 miles north of Mexico City, according to state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. Video footage showed dozens of residents near the town of Tlahuelilpan gathered to collect spilled fuel in buckets, garbage cans and other vessels. Fuel was seen spouting dozens of feet into the air from the tap. Footage then showed flames shooting high into the air against a night sky and the pipeline ablaze. Hidalgo Gov. Omar Fayad said 20 people were killed immediately and...

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is running into some trouble amid withering opposition from the Trump administration. As it stands, Russia still needs to ship large volumes of gas to Europe via Ukraine. Nord Stream 2 would allow Russian gas to bypass Ukraine, giving Russia more leverage to meddle in Ukraine while still reliably delivering gas to Europe. Merkel has been supportive of the project, not least because several major western European companies have stakes in the pipeline, including Royal Dutch Shell, as well as major German companies Wintershall and BASF. Last year, Merkel, under intense pressure from the Trump...

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called on Turkey to respect International Law at the Press Conference following the 5th trilateral meeting in Israel with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday... “We have emphasised the need for respect of international law in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean. Respecting, in particular, the right of Cyprus to exercise its sovereign rights in its EEZ “. Mr Tsipras went on to underline the need for a just and viable solution of the Cypriot problem with the scrapping of the guarantees on the occupied part of the island and...

Poland took another step towards weening itself off Russian energy supplies on Wednesday by signing a 20-year agreement with San Diego-based Sempra Energy to import U.S. liquefied natural gas. In the coming years, Warsaw plans to replace Russian gas with pipeline supplies from Norway and shipments of LNG, or gas super-chilled to liquid from for transport by sea. This is a big deal," said Assistant Secretary Francis Fannon, who heads the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Energy Resources. Fannon told CNBC's "Power Lunch" that Poland is "stepping up and answering the call on energy security" for Europe.

Regulators on Friday accused one of California’s largest utilities of falsifying safety documents for natural gas pipelines for years following its criminal conviction and multimillion-dollar fine for a pipeline explosion that killed eight people near San Francisco. The California Public Utilities Commission said an investigation by its safety and enforcement division found Pacific Gas & Electric Co. lacked enough employees to fulfill requests to find and mark natural gas pipelines. Because of the staff shortage, PG&E pressured supervisors and locators to complete the work, leading staff to falsify data from 2012 to 2017, regulators said. The company “had common knowledge...