Free Republic

BISMARCK, N.D. — A federal judge in North Dakota on Thursday blocked a new Obama administration rule that would give the federal government jurisdiction over some state waterways. U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson of North Dakota issued a temporary injunction against a the rule, which gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers authority to protect some streams, tributaries and wetlands under the Clean Water Act. The rule was scheduled to take effect Friday. “The risk of irreparable harm to the states is both imminent and likely,” Judge Erickson said in blocking the rule from taking effect....

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Wednesday called for a coalition to combat terrorism in the Middle East. Opening a meeting with Putin in Moscow, el-Sissi said "the Egyptian people" are hoping for broader ties with Russia in all areas, particularly in fighting terrorism in the Middle East. El-Sissi's Russian visit, his second in the past three months, highlights Moscow's attempts to expand its influence in Egypt at a time when Egyptian-U.S. relations have soured in the aftermath of the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

A little more than a year ago, oil prices were above $100 a barrel. The national average for gasoline was in the $3.50 range. In late spring, oil was $60-ish and the national average for gas was around $2.70. The price of a barrel of oil has plunged to $40 and below—yet, prices at the pump are just slightly less than they were when oil was almost double what it is today. Oil and gasoline prices usually travel up or down in sync. But a few weeks ago the trend lines crossed and oil continued the sharp decline while gasoline...

As the Obama administration creates policy based on the premise that the planet is warming, more and more scientists are concluding the real danger is global cooling. One recently painted this scenario: Food shortages from crop failures brought on by cold weather during the summers will produce civil unrest, as in “huge civil unrest.” “There’s no question of will it occur … but exactly when,” said David Dilley, a former NOAA meteorologist and the current senior research scientist at Global Weather Oscillations. He gave a presentation recently on “Mind Your Own Business TV” with Debi Davis.

It’s been a bad week for billionaires and climate change activists Tom Steyer and George Soros. Soros is being labeled a hypocrite for making a $2 million investment in coal while Steyer is catching flak after an investigation by Associated Press revealed that a California proposition Steyer backed in 2012 has not translated into the green energy generation and jobs that were promised.

A group of influential Muslims is calling on others of their faith to wage a jihad on global warming, and is calling on Islamic governments to reduce their use of fossil fuels ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Paris this year. “Excessive pollution from fossil fuels threatens to destroy the gifts bestowed on us by God, whom we know as Allah – gifts such as a functioning climate, healthy air to breathe, regular seasons, and living oceans,” wrote Islamic leaders from 20 countries after attending a summit in Istanbul, Turkey. “We are driven to conclude from these warnings...

Americans do well with moderation. It is in our national DNA. It is also a by-product of the freedom of expression and allowing different perspectives in the public forum. In foreign policy, non-interventionism is the moderate stance, and it has served Americans well in her four hundred or so years. As British subjects, American colonists were compelled to fight for the British crown, until they felt compelled to defend themselves against the king’s army. After centuries of European conflicts dragging Americans into war, national independence yielded a non-interventionist foreign policy for the infant nation. George Washington advised in his farewell...

A new energy boom is taking shape in the oil fields of west Texas, but it’s not what you think. It’s solar. Solar power has gotten so cheap to produce—and so competitively priced in the electricity market—that it is taking hold even in a state that, unlike California, doesn’t offer incentives to utilities to buy or build sun-powered generation. Pecos County, about halfway between San Antonio and El Paso and on the southern edge of the prolific Permian Basin oil field, could soon host to several large solar-energy farms responsible for about $1 billion in investments, according to state tax...

U.S. oil fell closer to $39 per barrel on Friday, as traders continued a rout that is likely to hand the next-month contract its longest string of consecutive weekly losses since the bust of 1986. Fears that China’s economy may be sputtering and signals that global production is on the rise have driven oil lower for the past seven weeks, and barring a large recovery Friday, soon to be eight weeks. Those concerns combined once more on Friday as an early economic indicator in China came in at a six-year low. “(China’s) stock market problems, their currency problems, all these...

Moscow (AFP) - Russia's battered ruble fell Thursday on the back of weaker oil prices to more than 75 to the euro for the first time in over six months, deepening its recent decline. The ruble also tumbled against the dollar to near 67.44, its weakest against the greenback since February. Russia's currency has fallen more than 20 percent against the dollar in the past two months, sparking fears of more instability after a period of relative recovery. Russia's economy has slumped into recession amid lower oil prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

We have a “moral imperative” to burn carbon dioxide-emitting fossil fuels because the energy they provide is a “liberator” of humanity, says Dr. John Christy, a climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. “We are not morally bad people for taking carbon and turning it into the energy that offers life to humanity in a world that would otherwise be brutal,” Christy wrote in a recent op-ed. “On the contrary, we are good people for doing so.” He also challenged what he says are contradictions in Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si, in...

Pioneer is the first oil and gas company to sign a long-term wastewater supply contract with Odessa, a city of about 110,000 people. The Dallas-based company recently began construction on a pipeline network that will transport the treated water from the city's sewage plant to one of its oilfields about 20 miles away. "The money has been approved," said Stephen McNair, president of Pioneer's water management group. Pioneer's goal is to eliminate the use of fresh water in fracking in 5 to 10 years, said McNair. The municipal reclaimed water the company intends to use comes from sewage plants that...

WILLISTON N.D. (Reuters) - Harold Hamm, the chief executive of North Dakota oil producer Continental Resources Inc , has stunned a bearish crude market by scrapping all of the company's hedges - a bold bet that prices will recover soon after sliding some 25 percent. Related Stories [$$] Saudi Oil Price Cut Scrambles Market The Wall Street Journal Saudi price cuts send New York oil prices to 3-year low AFP [$$] Saudi Price Cut Upends Oil Market The Wall Street Journal Gulf oil producers seen riding out price plunge AFP [$$] Occidental Petroleum’s Profit Falls 24% The Wall Street Journal...

Lightning struck an electrical transformer at the Valero refinery in Texas City Thursday morning, causing a fire. Officials with Texas City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) told Houston's ABC affiliate Channel 13 that the lightning strike occurred just before 6:20 am CST this morning. Firefighters on the scene told local media that there is currently oil burning inside of a container at the facility. Derek Duckett, Texas City Emergency Management Coordinator, told the Houston Chronicle that firefighters can't douse the fire with water due to the potential danger from electrical shock. They are now containing the fire to the transformer...

The chief environmental regulator in the United States had some blunt words of reality regarding the administration’s climate change regulations. The Clean Power Plan that will require drastic cuts in 47 states’ carbon dioxide emissions – consequently shifting America’s energy economy away from affordable, reliable coal – will adversely impact poor, minority families the most. When speaking about the higher energy prices caused by the administration’s climate regulations on power plants, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said, “We know that low-income minority communities would be hardest hit.”

The real winner of President Barack Obama’s so-called “war on coal” isn’t the EPA, nor is it the natural gas industry. It’s liberal billionaire George Soros.Last week, Obama’s EPA announced sweeping regulations for U.S. power plants, forcing them to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions 32 percent by 2030. The news sent shockwaves through the coal industry, sending stocks tumbling and forcing the industry’s two biggest players to consider bankruptcy filings.That’s where liberal billionaire Soros steps in. In the days after the Clean Power Plan was announced, Soros bought more than 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of...

The United States should consider allowing “strategic” crude exports to allies abroad while renegotiating the nuclear deal with Iran, Sen. Robert Menendez said. The New Jersey Democrat’s comments, part of a speech Tuesday at Seton Hall University to explain his opposition to the agreement, marked a shift in his approach to oil exports. Menendez historically has opposed moves to loosen the longstanding ban on exporting U.S. crude. But on Tuesday, Menendez highlighted oil exports as a geopolitical tool — a way for U.S. oil to compete in markets that might be customers for Iranian crude if the nuclear accord is...

There’s a “conceivable reality” U.S. oil prices may plummet to a new 11-year low of $33 a barrel or lower this year, according to a Citigroup report released Wednesday as oil prices dipped to a six-year low near $40.50 per barrel. The new “How low can oil go?” report contends that capital markets are “getting nervy” and one of the only ways to stop this downward trend is for North American shale companies to lose more access to capital during the next phase of borrowing negotiations in October, called redetermination. In February 2009, closing U.S. oil prices last bottomed out...

With West Texas Intermediate crude now below $42 a barrel, the edifice of America’s oil and gas boom is finally crumbling. The number of companies in bankruptcy or restructuring has increased, and the clouds will only grow darker in the months ahead. Declining revenues, evaporating earnings and shrinking values of oil and gas reserves will put the crunch on oil companies’ ability to refinance loans, let alone borrow new cash or sell shares. Last week two companies showed that having a heroic name is no defense. Hercules Offshore, a Gulf of Mexico drilling contractor, announced it had reached a prepackaged...

WASHINGTON – U.S. authorities on Tuesday proposed the first-ever federal regulations to cut the potent greenhouse gas methane by limiting emissions from the oil and gas industry. The four-part proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency is part of President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan, aimed at reducing pollution that is hastening human-caused climate change. However, the suggested changes will not, on their own, get the United States to its goal of cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025, officials said. “We do project that our proposal will achieve...