Free Republic

“The traffic has increased so greatly,” said Steve McCroskey, Eddy County planner, 48, a 1989 graduate of Carlsbad High. “If we had this much traffic when we were cruising (in high school), I don’t think any kid would have gotten home without a wreck.” John Waters, executive director of the Carlsbad Department of Development, said about 43,000 vehicles pass through this intersection each day and that the population in a 20-mile radius of Carlsbad has gone from 42,000 in 2010 to an estimated 75,000 today. Those numbers are attributable to a boom in oil and gas business that started in...

After a harsh winter, it's time to get out and hit the open road. So what's with $4-a-gallon gasoline? North American oil production is on the rise, so you might have expected a break at the pump by now. Yet gas prices remain stubbornly high. What happened to the homegrown energy boom? Wasn't North Dakota supposed to be America's Saudi Arabia? How come gas isn't back to $2 a gallon? The boom is real, and North Dakota, along with states and Canadian provinces, is producing a gusher of oil. The North American energy bonanza now underway is helping the U.S....

WASHINGTON - In a campaign ad opposing him, Democratic congressional candidate Larry Kissell looks like he's standing on a dark and lonely stage as he declares his opposition to oil drilling off the coast of North Carolina. That would be an especially fitting backdrop these days for drilling opponents on the campaign trail and in the halls of Congress. What was an acceptable stance on energy policy as recently as a few months ago has become a less tenable political position going into election season. "It's extraordinary how quickly the politics of the issue have changed," said Bill Holman, director...

• "Even if drilling works, it'll take a decade or more for the oil to flow." This is quite an argument coming from the Democratic Party, which has made keeping oil off the market a linchpin of its energy policy for decades. If President Clinton hadn't vetoed the idea of drilling in ANWR back in 1995, we'd have that oil on the market today. Ditto if Congress had approved ANWR drilling in 2002, when President Bush requested it. Even so, the larger point is false anyway. New oil will be flowing in some cases within three to four years, according...

BP's board and London-based executives were informed of widespread corrosion at the UK oil giant's Alaska field two years before the company was forced to shut it this week, citing "unexpectedly severe corrosion". On May 22 2004, Chuck Hamel, an advocate for BP workers in Alaska, took the charges directly to Walter E. Massey, chairman of the environment committee of BP's non-executive board of directors. In the letter, Mr Hamel told Dr Massey that in the previous four years BP employees and contract workers had brought to him concerns about safety, health and threats to the environment at Prudhoe Bay,...

On pipeline, India gets a gentle US reminder: Iran is big worry area US Ambassador Mulford tells Aiyar that Tehran’s N-programme causing deep concern in the Bush admn, no idea how events there are going to unfold NEW DELHI, MARCH 9: Ahead of Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar’s visit to Islamabad for trilateral talks on the proposed Iran-India gas pipeline, Washington has officially conveyed to New Delhi that the Bush administration continues to have serious concerns on Tehran and can’t foresee how events there will shape up. The veiled message—from US Ambassador David Mulford to Aiyar—is the first communication from...