Free Republic

Gov. Andrew Cuomo doubled down last week on his blame-the-messenger approach to New York’s growing shortage of natural-gas supplies by ordering the Department of Public Service to “broaden its investigation” of National Grid and threatening to “find another franchisee.” Anything, rather than admit that his own policies are at fault. The utility has stopped taking new gas customers in parts of Long Island, Brooklyn and Queens where it can’t handle the new demand — because Team Cuomo vetoed the proposed Williams pipeline to bring in supplies from New Jersey. (Jersey is also blocking the pipeline, since Gov. Phil Murphy is...

Steve Allan's 'Public Inquiry into anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns' dives down a rabbit hole At the July 4, 2019 launch of Alberta’s Public Inquiry into anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns, Premier Jason Kenney defined the menace as: “...foreign special interests secretively spending tens of millions of dollars to thwart Alberta’s economic development by land locking our energy.”

President Donald Trump will announce an executive order during a trip to Texas on Wednesday that could make it harder for states to scuttle pipelines and other energy projects based on concerns about their impact on water quality. Trump has made it a priority to expand energy development in the United States, in part by rolling back government regulations. Pointing to Washington state and New York, Republican lawmakers have complained about states using the permitting process to stop energy projects. A senior administration official told reporters there are problems with the way some states are interpreting Section 401 of the...

Bent on destroying Israel, and gripped by vicious anti-Semitism, Baghdad ‘pauperized’ its Jews and forced them to leave for the nascent Jewish state in 1951-2. It believed Israel would collapse under the strain. But the immigrants ultimately helped Israel thrive, and it was Iraq that suffered After Adolf Hitler’s defeat in May 1945, many Nazis melted away from the Reich, smuggled out by such organizations as the infamous Odessa group and the lesser-known Catholic lay network Intermarium, as well as the CIA and KGB. They ensured the continuation of the Nazi legacy in the postwar Arab world. Egypt was a...

America’s anti-fracking enviros had a strange benefactor. While allegations of the Donald Trump campaign colluding with Russians to alter the presidential election outcome remain unproven at best, a clear money trail and U.S. intelligence reports demonstrate Russia’s active campaign of funding U.S. environmental groups. On March 1, U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), released a report on “Russia’s Social Media Meddling in U.S. Energy Markets.” The report details Russia’s motives in interfering with U.S. energy markets, influencing domestic energy policy, and manipulation of Americans via social media propaganda. “This report reveals that Russian agents...

Canadian drillers are moving rigs south to the U.S. to seize more profitable opportunities. But it’s not just the bright prospects of the Permian that is attracting Canadian companies—moving south of the border has more to do with favorable tax rates and more takeaway capacity and market access opportunities than there is in Canada.

What Happens When You Don't Build Natural Gas Pipelines? Jude Clemente , CONTRIBUTOR The answer to the question posed is a really, really bad chain reaction: magnified during winter and peak demand...with a pipeline shortage...a natural gas shortage is created, prices for both natural gas and electricity skyrocket, CO2 emissions go up because more carbon intensive fuels are forced to compensate. Headquartered in New York, New Jersey, and New England (hereafter the "Northeast"), the devastating consequences of the anti-pipeline business just reared its ugly head again as we faced the coldest temperatures since The Polar Vortex of 2013-2014. Two of...

London (Platts)--12 Dec 2017 554 am EST/1054 GMT An explosion Tuesday at the major European gas hub at Baumgarten in Austria has forced operator OMV to close the facility, with Austrian and Italian gas prices surging in early trading as a result of the blast. Italian gas price almost doubles to Eur45/MWh on blast Baumgarten station 'out of service': Gas Connect Austria Russian gas supplies to Italy nominated at 108 mil cu m Tuesday Russia's Gazprom said it was having to re-route gas supplies to parts of Europe following the explosion. "[Gazprom] is working on the redistribution of gas flows...

Richards Murphy writes that Boko Haram is the brainchild of some powerful interests targeting the untapped natural resources in Northern NigeriaThe curse of natural resources is apparently real or more accurately, cursed interests in resource exploration are real. This evil often goes about masked as something less sinister. Take for instance the insanity that is todayÂ’s Afghanistan, which began in a fashion not too different from what Boko Haram is acting out in Nigeria today. Somewhere in the convoluted mix of transitions and mishmash of Mujahedeen, Taliban and al-Qaeda was UNOCAL, an oil multinational and its effort to construct pipelines...

Mindless. They failed to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, which they said posed particular environmental hazards. They failed to stop the Dakota Access pipeline, which they say represents an adulteration of sacred Indian grounds. OK. Whether you agree with their objections to either pipeline (and I don’t), at least they offered some specific rationale for why they were opposed. It’s not as if they’re just going to mindlessly oppose every pipeline anyone ever proposes, because that would be nothing more than knee-jerk opposition to energy-related infrastructure driven by reflexive opposition to fossil fuels. You do that, no one is going...

The Talk Shows Feb 12th, 2017 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): White House adviser Stephen Miller; Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Miller; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Miller; Sens. Chuck U. Schumer, D-N.Y., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.THIS WEEK (ABC): Miller; Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson; Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.; Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J.

Drill baby drill . . . and transport it too. If you had issues with Donald Trump, but you figured he might be worth rolling the dice if there was the hope of four or five things good things happening, what might have been on your list? The Supreme Court, certainly. The ObamaCare repeal, absolutely. For me, one of the issues close to the top as well was energy independence. And that doesn’t only include drilling for domestic resources. Most people don’t realize what a big problem transport infrastructure is, and the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines were supposed...

President Trump plans to sign executive orders reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, which had been stalled under the Obama administration, sources tell Fox News. The moves had been widely expected, as Trump blasted his predecessor for effectively blocking the projects amid environmental and other concerns. While the Canada-to-Texas Keystone project was at the center of a heated debate for years until the Obama administration rejected a key permit in November 2015, the Dakota pipeline more recently became the subject of fierce protests until the Army Corps of Engineers in December blocked construction of a controversial segment. The...

Environmentalists are misrepresenting a transparently anti-fossil fuel editorial about the Dakota pipeline as rigorous analysis, a pipeline safety regulator told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Brigham McCown, a former Bush administration official and regulator with the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, said that anti-fracking activists are stooping to new lows to stymie the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). McCown was referring to a report by Richard Kuprewicz, an analyst with a consulting firm that advises government agencies about pipeline safety; it was Kuprewicz who analyzed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assessment on the pipeline. Kuprewicz’s 10-page...

Big bold Drudge lines [*h*] ... CIA PLANS CYBER STRIKE ON RUSSIA 'DEFCON WARNING UPGRADE' MOSCOW READY FOR WAR Obama wants to not only wag-the-dog, but who knows? A cyber-war could disrupt internet communications -- time to blind Trump supporters. And it all boils down to their bribe money to take out the Syrian government. Obama and Hillary want you to think that Bashar Assad is the very devil. In many ways he is. Worst of all is his defense of Christians and Jews so far as the Establishment thinks. ISIS is cool -- they enslave Christians and Jews for...

When President Obama announced he was killing the Keystone XL pipeline, he said he was agreeing with the State Department’s assessment that the pipeline from Canada “would not serve the national interests of the United States.” The fact is that it would not have benefitted the personal financial interests of friend and economic mentor, Warren Buffett, who can rest assured that oil from Canada and the nearby Bakken formation in North Dakota will continue to be transported by a railroad he owns. As Investor’s Business Daily noted in a 2011 editorial: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of...

While the last decade of oil and gas development has been largely contained to the shale regions of Pennsylvania, the next phase will tunnel through the midstate. Company men have been showing up at doorsteps throughout the region, asking for pieces of private property where pipelines can be built. After 10 years of drilling, shale operators have more natural resources than the infrastructure to deliver it. There's now more supply than demand, and pipeline builders are seizing the opportunity and submitting plans for an underground network to move through Pennsylvania. "These projects are absolutely crucial, especially given the fact that...

Construction or preliminary work has begun on three new pipelines designed to flow new supplies of natural gas from Azerbaijan to consumers in Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy. For more than a decade, companies have been announcing proposals to build new natural gas pipelines to connect natural gas resources in Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East with consumers in southern Europe. In contrast to the three new pipelines considered in this article, most of these projects have failed to advance. These three new or expanded pipelines would reach from Azerbaijan's eastern edge on the Caspian Sea to Italy's southeastern...

The Fox News report that the Teamsters have decided not to endorse Hillary Clinton’s candidacy at this time, shortly after her pronouncement of her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, does not surprise and shows the peril of trying to be all things to all constituencies. On the one hand, there is a need to placate environmentalists and climate change true believers who oppose the pipeline from Canada. Among them is billionaire Tom Steyer, an eco-zealot who has pledged his fortune in support of Democratic candidates who want to repeal the Industrial Revolution who want us to rely on solar...

Our Political Bureau NEW DELHI MANY functionaries of the United States State Department, who handled South Asia under the Clinton Administration, may have to face embarrassment when the Bush regime gets down to locating the factors that made it easier for terrorists to carry out the September 11 carnage. These functionaries, it is reliably learnt, ignored the warnings about the activities and intentions of the terrorist groups operating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. One of such reports had come from Michael Sheehan, the head of counter-terrorism wing of the State Department. Sheehan’s report also listed the measures that the ...