Free Republic

Exactly two months after the latest Warren Buffett-owned BNSF train derailed near the spot where the Galena river meets the Mississippi, resulting in a huge fire and the evacuation of all homes in a one mile radius, moments ago another of Buffett's BNSF oil trains derailed, this time near the town of Heimdal, North Dakota, resulting in the same outcome. According to the Bismark Tribune, the town in Wells County was evacuated Tuesday morning after a train full of oil tanker cars derailed and burned about a mile and half east of here. ... For those concerned that these countless...

A veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistan expert is under federal investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe and has had her security clearances withdrawn, according to U.S. officials. The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week. Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying...

Want to know why the president and his team are stampeding to talk about global warming despite increasing public disinterest in the topic, a bitterly cold and snowy winter and deepening skepticism about the costs of clamping down on industry as the economy again falters? It turns out that money talks. From the NYT: “A billionaire retired investor is forging plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election, seeking to pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers. The donor, Tom Steyer, a...

Energy Transport: New data show fast-rising rail shipments from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation and the need for a safer alternative to rail — like the Keystone XL pipeline. In his post-election press conference, the president noted in justifying his continual kicking of the Keystone XL oil drum down the road that "while this debate about Canadian oil has been raging ... we've seen some of the biggest increases in American oil production and natural gas production in our history." That increase is due in large part to oil recovered from the Bakken shale formation centered on North Dakota. So...

A Tulsa, Okla.,-based plumbers and pipe welders union is clearly flush with cash, as a dozen of their top officials made more than $200,000 last year, federal records show. Plumbers AFL-CIO Local Union 798 paid business manager Daniel Hendrix $280,000 and financial secretary/treasurer Wade Pilgreen $272,000 in fiscal 2013, according to disclosures the union filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. ... Hendrix said his pipe fitters make about $50 an hour and work at least a 60-hour a week plus expenses, and the union staff is compensated at a similar rate for their roughly 80-hour work weeks. A person...

State regulators have cleared Vermont Gas Systems to install pipeline near power lines owned by the Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO). The company was temporarily forbidden to do work near the power lines over concerns that the chemical treatment used on utility poles would be disturbed by the work. ... Vermont Gas submitted the plan the day the Public Service Board ordered it, and after receiving comments on the plan, the board approved it on August 26. Work on the controversial pipeline is ongoing. Vermont Gas has filed for permission to go ahead with the next phase of the project,...

Who could have ever imagined that North America would surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas liquids? A decade ago, that would have seemed laughable. Yet that’s exactly what has happened; and it’s not just Saudi Arabia that has been left in North America’s dust -- Russia has, too.

Apparently they seek to lower the cost of dominating our markets while keeping a tight leash on a rudderless debtor and efficiently extracting benefits/wealth from Chinese properties (and powerful traitors) in the USA.  Maybe you 2x Obama voters didn't expect hopenchange to include being sold into economic slavery, yet here we are... thanks, idiots! A Bering Strait tunnel and/or bridge has been actually been proposed at various times, going back to 1892, and most often by the Russians. Moscow says they are still currently planning a bridge project for $65B, yet experts doubt that their conventional rail approach -if ever actualized- would be able...

... The Yale and Stanford graduate, and his brother Jim, a law professor, have been dubbed “The Koch Brothers of the left.” Mr. Steyer rejects the comparison because he claims that the fossil fuel-rich Kochs speak only for their own interests, while he speaks for the people and the planet. In fact, the Kochs speak out against subsidies. He speaks for them.... The public appears less and less convinced of, or concerned about, climate catastrophe, and appears positively gung ho for Keystone XL. A poll for the American Petroleum Institute, released last week, indicated strong support for the pipeline from...

Russia signaled concern on Wednesday at Estonia's treatment of its large ethnic Russian minority, comparing language policy in the Baltic state with what it said was a call in Ukraine to prevent the use of Russian. Russia has defended its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula by arguing it has the right to protect Russian-speakers outside its borders, so the reference to linguistic tensions in another former Soviet republic comes at a highly sensitive moment.

Otherwise, rump Ukraine will simply shut the taps...         h/t FReeper Meatloaf

Energy Policy: An oil-laden train collides with another and bursts into flames in a small American town, proving why pipelines are safer and why environmentalist opposition to a pipeline from Canada is misguided. Casselton, N.D., had a near brush with tragedy after a train of tank cars carrying crude oil derailed, resulting in fiery explosions and a call from the town's mayor for a re-examination of how such fuel is transported across the United States. The railroad runs right through the middle of Casselton, a town of 2,400 people about 25 miles west of Fargo, and Mayor Ed McConnell said...

HOUSTON — North America’s massive demand for pipelines linking oil fields and refineries has pushed the once obscure midstream sector to gain on the biggest industry players, according to a report by Deloitte. Since the beginning of the shale production boom, Kinder Morgan and other companies that operate pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure have boosted their capital spending from about $7 billion in 2006 to $26 billion last year. And their market value, always dragging behind integrated oil companies and independent producers, has tripled its position within the U.S. oil and gas industry. By 2035, fitting the nation’s...

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...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)New pipelines are beginning to carry a glut of domestic crude from the middle of the country to Texas' Gulf Coast, boosting the fortunes of the area's big refineries and further fueling a decline in oil imports. Magellan Midstream Partners' Longhorn pipeline began shipping oil from West Texas to Houston in April—the first of at least seven pipeline projects that could send as much as two million barrels a day from oil-saturated choke points in Oklahoma and the interior of Texas to the largest concentration of refineries in the country. But domestic oil production is at such a high level...

Note: Photo included with article. SNIPPET: "U.S. authorities have transferred Younis al-Mauritani, held in Afghanistan, to Mauritania, officials in the West African nation said on Saturday. Pakistan said in September 2011 it arrested al-Mauritani, better known in his homeland Mauritania as Youssouf Al Mauritani, during a joint operation with U.S. intelligence services." SNIPPET: "Pakistani military authorities said Al Mauritani was planning to attack U.S. economic interests including pipelines, hydro-electric dams and oil tankers when he was captured."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite President Barack Obama's pledge that Syria's use of chemical weapons is a "game changer" for the United States, he is unlikely to turn to military options quickly and would want allies joining him in any intervention. Possible military choices range from limited one-off missile strikes from ships - one of the less complicated scenarios - to bolder operations like carving out no-fly safe zones. One of the most politically unpalatable possibilities envisions sending tens of thousands of U.S. forces to help secure Syrian chemical weapons. Obama has so far opposed limited steps, like arming anti-government rebels,...

Iraq's prime minister has warned that a plague of sectarianism is threatening Arab nations, after the most widespread violence there since US troops left. Nouri Maliki said sectarian conflict had returned to Iraq "because it began in another place in this region" - an apparent reference to Syria. The violence has left some 170 people dead across the country since Tuesday. On Saturday, at least five anti-al-Qaeda Sunni militiamen and three security forces personnel were killed. Police said the first attack saw gunmen open fire on a checkpoint near the city of Tikrit manned by members of the local Awakening...

The Sierra Club has announced its approval for a "one-time" use of civil disobedience. The civil disobedience is intended to step up their efforts to oppose the Keystone pipeline. Many of the other groups opposing Keystone have been engaging in civil disobedience as a tactic, including arson-based ecoterrorism. This will be the first time in the Sierra Club's history that they have approved violating the law.

Energy companies behind the oil boom on the Northern Plains are increasingly turning to an industrial-age workhorse - the locomotive - to move their crude to refineries across the U.S., as plans for new pipelines stall and existing lines can't keep up with demand. ... The environmental fears carry an ironic twist: Oil trains are gaining popularity in part because of a shortage of pipeline capacity - a problem that has been worsened by environmental opposition to such projects as TransCanada's stalled Keystone XL pipeline. That project would carry Bakken and Canadian crude to the Gulf of Mexico. Wayde Schafer,...