Free Republic

Power: Despite efforts in the media and Congress to shut it down through fear and falsehoods, a new estimate of America's most promising energy source portends even more gas, oil — and jobs. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced Tuesday that the Marcellus Shale formation that straddles the northeastern United States may hold a staggering 84 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable natural gas, up significantly from the last official government estimate of 2 tcf made in 2002. The USGS said the estimate came from new information about the gas-rich formation underlying New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and...

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

Energy: An oil company wants to invest its profits in clean-burning American natural gas. A Hungarian billionaire and a "green" politician want to stop it. This is the real Climate-gate scandal. While the greenies of the world united in Copenhagen to talk about the weather, emitting a Third World-country-size chunk of greenhouse gases to gather there, the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil, was doing something about it. On Dec. 14, Exxon agreed to buy XTO Energy, a natural gas firm, in a deal valued at $41 billion. XTO is one of the leaders in something called "fracking" technology, in...

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy Policy: New York's governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York's and America's energy economy? Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada. The Marcellus Shale...

Energy Policy: New York's governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York's and America's energy economy?Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada. The Marcellus Shale stretches...

Stimulus: Brazil, a leader in the use of biofuels such as ethanol and in the face of falling oil prices, still plans to spend huge sums to expand its offshore oil resources. Drilling rigs are infrastructure too.With oil prices scraping the bottom of the barrel, pun intended, there wouldn't appear to be much incentive to pursue the development of new oil resources. And in tough economic times worldwide, the necessary investment required would appear to be prohibitive. As the U.S. seeks to get its economy going by building roads, bridges and bicycle paths, Brazil has decided to create jobs and...

Energy Policy: The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil. We've been told that for the last 150 years. The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.Ever since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pa., in 1859, experts have been predicting we would soon run out of oil. The latest is Dr. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency in Paris, whose job it is to assess future energy supplies by OECD countries. In an interview with the Independent, Dr. Birol says that based...

A top expert tells Congress that oil will be around for a long time and high inventories and low prices are no excuse not to find more. Oil shock? How about a no-oil shock? Be careful what you wish for, goes the old proverb. Well, as we all had hoped, energy prices have fallen — but only as part of the global decline in economic activity. This has been used as an excuse to further discourage exploration for and development of domestic oil resources. But if the economy does recover, that policy could provoke another recession.

Energy: With a media wind at his back, Barack Obama regularly gets away with false and distorted statements. He repeated one Tuesday that seems superficially plausible but should not go unchallenged.ust as he said during the Sept. 26 University of Mississippi debate with John McCain, the Illinois Democrat claimed during the Nashville town hall setting that "we have 3% of the world's oil reserves and we use 25% of the world's oil. So what that means is that we can't simply drill our way out of the problem." It's disappointing that McCain failed to call out Obama on his figures,...