Free Republic

U.S. crude oil production could top 12 million barrels per day by the end of 2019, according to the latest Energy Department (DOE) forecast released on Tuesday. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the DOE’s statistics arm, (EIA) projects U.S. crude output would grow by more than 1.5 million barrels per day over the next two years, primarily as the result of abundant shale oil and gas reserves. EIA projects the U.S. will “average 11.9 million [barrels per day (b/d)] in 2019, 0.4 million b/d higher than forecast” the agency released in April. Now, EIA “forecasts U.S. crude oil production will...

Major European cities such as Madrid and Paris are discriminating against diesel engines due to officials’ concerns about the types of pollution oil-burners produce...The four-cylinder EcoBlue is the most advanced diesel engine Ford has ever produced. Starting with a clean sheet, engineers focused on developing an engine that has very low internal friction.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took aim at investors who are selling Turkish lira, saying the currency was under attack as it hit fresh record lows against the dollar. Erdoğan said there was no technical or rational reason why the lira should be losing so much value. Turkey has prepared a “project” that will reverse this trend, he said in a speech on Tuesday. The lira hit a new record as Erdoğan spoke, falling to as low as 4.3 to the U.S. currency. It declined 0.6 percent to 4.2946 at 1:28 p.m. in Istanbul. The currency had traded at 1.15...

Oil prices dropped early on Tuesday as market participants await the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump on the Iran nuclear deal at 2:00 p.m. today. President Trump tweeted on Monday that he would announce his decision on whether to waive sanctions on Iran at 2:00 p.m. At 11:35 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, WTI Crude was down 3.65 percent at $68.10 and Brent Crude was down 3.02 percent at $73.87.

As global oil markets shift their attention from U.S. shale oil production back to a resurgent Saudi Arabia and Russia and geopolitical concerns bearing down on oil prices, Citigroup said last Wednesday that the U.S. is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia next year as the world’s largest exporter of crude and oil products. The U.S. exported a record 8.3 million barrels per day (bpd) last week of crude oil and petroleum products, the government also said Wednesday. Top crude oil exporter Saudi Arabia’s, for its part, exported 9.3 million bpd in January, while Russia exported 7.4 million bpd, the bank...

To put this story into context, let's go back to 1899 and the publication of Johann von Bloch's book Die Zukunft des Krieges (The Future of War). Bloch was a 19th-century railway magnate who had built the Warsaw to Moscow railway. In those days, the best and the brightest worked on optimizing the productivity of railroads through operational analysis. Bloch applied insights from managing railroads to theorizing about the conduct of war. His big insight, original at the time, was that wars would be won by the country with the biggest industrial output. This is the same as the Soviet...

In 1998, a historic $206 billion settlement was reached between four major tobacco companies and nearly every state in the nation to recover Medicaid and other costs associated with the tobacco industry's deadly product. Now we face a similar historic fight, except this time the stakes are even higher. The corporate malfeasance in question has ramifications not just for us but also for countless other species—all while a corporate plutocracy ascendant in American politics is determined to cover it up. In "The Case for Climate Reparations," Jason Mark traces the legal and ethical questions raised by the fossil fuel industry's...

Are Berlin’s close energy ties with Moscow paying off? Data from Russia’s Federal Customs Service shows they might be after Germany paid less for natural gas from the world’s largest exporter than most other buyers. Only the U.K., which produces most of its own gas, had lower import costs among the biggest offtakers, according to the figures obtained by Bloomberg and detailed in the chart below. Chancellor Angela Merkel has worked to strengthen the energy relationship with Russia, bucking U.S. pressure to punish Vladimir Putin’s interference in Syria and elections across the west. Germany has backed projects such as Gazprom...

19 stunning photos show what the radioactive area inside the Chernobyl nuclear plant looks like 32 years after the explosionThe Chernobyl nuclear power plant was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. As many as 150,000 people in the area were permanently relocated, and an estimated 4,000 clean-up workers got radiation poisoning. Experts say that more than 70,000 people experienced severe poisoning from the accident on April 26, 1986.On April 26, 1986, a radioactive release many times as large as the that of the Hiroshima bomb occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet...

The 86-year-old social scientist says accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it. We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.” Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist...

Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines. People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become. And yet that’s not what’s happening. In fact, it’s the opposite. Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent. And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in...

As OPEC’s efforts to balance the oil market bear fruit, U.S. producers are reaping the benefits - and flooding Europe with a record amount of crude.

THE United States is flooding the European markets with record amounts crude oil as US producers seize on Russia and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pact to cut output resulting in soaring oil prices. US crude oil is seen as the cheaper option as the OPEC and Russia pact begins to bite after agreeing jointly to oil output jointly by 1.8million barrels per day (bpd) help rebalance the market and to help elevate the benchmark Brent prices. Now, the relatively high prices brought about by that pact, coupled with surging US output, are making it harder to...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Today is Earth Day, and it is the perfect time to celebrate the natural resources like oil, natural gas and coal, which are gifts to humanity from Mother Earth herself. These indispensable drivers of modern society will no doubt be demonized today amid all the frightful doom and gloom predictions that will be launched by environmental activists and repeated by various media outlets. All the vitriol directed at these fossil fuels by the environmental community notwithstanding, it is a simple fact that our prosperous, modern, energy-hungry society was made possible by the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump criticized OPEC on Friday for output curbs that have helped raise global oil prices and said “artificially” high prices would not be accepted, drawing rebukes from oil-producing countries as prices dipped following his remarks. “Looks like OPEC is at it again. With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea. Oil prices are artificially Very High! No good and will not be accepted!” Trump wrote on Twitter. Several members of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said in response that oil prices were not...

Up to 95 per cent of plastic polluting the world’s oceans pours in from just ten rivers, according to new research. The top 10 rivers – eight of which are in Asia – accounted for so much plastic because of the mismanagement of waste. About five trillion pounds is floating in the sea, and targeting the major sources – such as the Yangtze and the Ganges – could almost halve it, scientists claim. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt flew in coach-class seats on at least two trips home to Oklahoma when taxpayers weren’t footing the bill, despite claims he...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico ranked as the nation’s fastest-growing state for wind-energy construction last year, according to a new report from the American Wind Energy Association. The state added enough new turbines to produce 571 megawatts of electricity, growing installed capacity by 51 percent to 1.68 gigawatts, according to the association’s 2017 annual market report, released this morning in Santa Fe. That’s enough electricity to power about 422,000 average U.S. homes every year. And New Mexico could maintain front-running status for another couple of years, with 1.7 GW of new wind construction projects now in the pipelines for installation...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The boom in New Mexico’s oil patch is pumping up state revenue and economic development in Lea and Eddy counties, but it’s also raising many red flags for environmental organizations. Activists say the unprecedented level of investment and activity flooding into southeastern New Mexico, which elevated the state last year to third-largest oil producer in the nation, foreshadows long-term environmental problems unless balanced development plans and firm regulations are in place to protect natural resources. That includes better control of methane emissions, plus efforts to protect water, vegetation and wildlife against overzealous development and industrial accidents such...

Hundreds of small, independent producers might soon be swallowed up by today’s unprecedented oil and gas boom in southeastern New Mexico. As industry titans like ExxonMobil and Concho Resources pump billions of dollars into previously untapped sections of New Mexico’s century-old oil patch, the state’s small- and medium-sized producers are struggling on the margins to keep running aging wells based on outdated technology. Those companies, which have flourished for decades in New Mexico’s side of the Permian Basin, don’t have the resources to invest in the modern drilling technology needed to dig into the oil-rich, hard shale-rock formations where the...

Revenues from oil and gas sold to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are now the largest source of funds for the Islamic State (ISIS), as the militant group faces mounting military pressure in both Iraq and Syria. The Wall Street Journal reports that officials from the U.S. and Europe said the Assad regime, despite pronouncements that it is fighting the extremist group, is directly supporting ISIS through the purchase of energy, needed to power the Syrian capital Damascus and other parts of the country. Amos Hochstein of the U.S. State Department told the Journal that the group’s “revenue...