Free Republic

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...

This has been a colder-than-usual winter in the Midwest and Northeast, so many Americans are facing high home heating and electric bills. In some areas, these bills can reach $1,000 a month. Liberals, of course, charge that Donald Trump is the culprit. An AP story last week screamed: "Trump Once Again Wants to Cut Energy Assistance to the Poor." Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders charged that if Trump has his way and eliminates the Low Income Heating Assistance Program, people might "freeze to death." But wait. Donald Trump is pro-American energy development. He isn't the one who is making energy bills...

Since Donald Trump's election, environmental zealots have mostly had a very rough two weeks — and Donald Trump has had nothing to do with any of it. Two developments they consider really bad (meaning good for the rest of us) far outweigh the single item they're celebrating. First, in Wyoming, just two days after the election, their "fracking is bad" Exhibit A in Pavillion, Wyoming was completely discredited. Second, in Texas this week, a huge oil discovery was reported — so big and unprecedented that the only commenter at the Associated Press's coverage of the story at the Washington Post...

On Monday, President Trump announced his plan to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent, while also cutting Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by half, a move that could open up Utah to more oil and gas drilling. More than 90 percent of the Bears Ears territory is thought to overlap with oil, gas and coal reserves, according to Bloomberg. Last year, EOG Resources, a prominent shale producer that is well-known in other shale basins, such as the Permian, is one of the few companies chomping at the bit in Utah. Last year, the shale driller won an approval from...

>The green energy, “keep it in the ground” folks are off to a bad start in 2018. It turns out that another one of Barack Obama’s signature “achievements” in energy regulation, the one which would heavily regulate fracking on federal lands, is going away. Given what a dirty word “fracking” has become in liberal circles, this is causing all manner of outrage on the left. There’s only one catch here… the rule in question never even went into effect for even a single day. (Washington Times) The Obama administration’s 2015 fracking rule was never actually implemented, thanks to an ongoing...

Superheroes may have met their greatest adversary — Jodie Foster. The 55-year-old has claimed Comic book movies are ruining cinema. In an interview with Radio Times Magazine, the actor and director slammed the likes of Marvel and DC production as the cinematic equivalent of fracking. 'Going to the movies has become like a theme park,' she said. 'Studios making bad content in order to appeal to the masses and shareholders is like fracking — you get the best return right now but you wreck the earth.' She continued: 'It’s ruining the viewing habits of the American population and then ultimately...

President Donald Trump’s administration is rescinding proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing and other oil- and gas-drilling practices on government lands. The U.S. Department of the Interior announced Thursday the rescission would take effect Friday. The rules developed under President Barack Obama would have applied to drilling on federal lands located mainly in the West. They were set to take effect in 2015 but a judge in Wyoming sided with petroleum industry groups and blocked them at the last minute. …

A federal appeals court said Wednesday it will not reconsider its September decision overturning a lower court's order to block the Obama administration’s fracking rule. The Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said it was not interested in rehearing arguments to block the Bureau of Land Management's regulations on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. In September, it said that the case was moot since the Trump administration's Interior Department is moving to repeal the regulation on oil and natural gas drilling on federal lands.

There was little sleep the first night. Everyone was too wired with nerves and excitement. They expected the police to barrel in at any moment. The encampment went up on Nov. 17, a guerrilla whirlwind of tents, tarps, wooden pallets and two-by-four studs. In just a few hours, the intersection at Jefferson Street SE and Seventh Avenue in downtown Olympia, Wash., was transformed from a drab piece of asphalt into a hulking structure, somewhere between a refugee camp and a carnival tent. As impressive as the camp was, however, most of the 100 people who collected behind its barricades the...

SUPPORTERS OF Olympia Stand, a climate justice coalition in Olympia, Washington, has constructed an encampment blocking the railroad tracks to the Port of Olympia--under a banner reading "No Fracking Sand in Our Port." The purpose of the blockade is to prevent fracking sands, known as ceramic proppants, from being shipped from the port to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and other places. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of extracting oil and natural gas from source rock, primarily shale. This is done by pumping a mixture of fracking sands, and large amounts of water and chemicals into...

Liberal mega-donor Tom “Rhymes With Liar” Steyer has been ranting on Twitter about Donald Trump and the Russians But isn’t this a bit rich coming from someone whose NextGen Super PAC was dedicated to putting notorious uranium-to-the-Russkies saleswoman Hillary Clinton into the White House? A guy who, furthermore, has genuine connections – as opposed to #fakenews connections – with Putin’s inner circle? Someone who, just like Hillary, made huge chunks of his vast fortune prostituting himself so flagrantly to the Russian bear it resembled a horror out-take version of Leo Di Caprio’s ursine rape scene in The Revenant? A green...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- The first company to obtain a permit for fracking in Illinois announced Friday it won't use it, citing market conditions and the state's "burdensome and costly" regulations. "The process we have gone through to receive a permit was burdensome, time consuming and costly due to the current rules and regulations of the state of Illinois, and it appears that this process would continue for future permit applications," Woolsey vice president Mark Sooter said in a statement. The Illinois Legislature in 2013 passed a law regulating fracking. At the time, the law was considered one of the...

GENEVA - Greenhouse gas emissions are on course to be about 30 percent above the 2030 global target, but there are signs of a move away from fossil fuels that not even U.S. President Donald Trump can stop, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Trump has announced he will pull out of the Paris climate agreement under which 195 countries pledged to try to keep global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. An annual U.N. audit of progress toward that goal showed emissions are likely to be 53.0-55.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - OPEC’s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo on Tuesday called on U.S. shale oil producers to help curtail global oil supply, warning extraordinary measures might be needed next year to sustain the rebalanced market in the medium to long term. “We urge our friends, in the shale basins of North America to take this shared responsibility with all seriousness it deserves, as one of the key lessons learnt from the current unique supply-driven cycle,” said Barkindo.

Full Title:10/07/2017 -- New Earthquake activity brewing -- West Coast USA + New deep EQ event coming? Video at link. USA coverage extends from 6:43 to 29:25 with a brief break in between (discussion of non-US activity). He makes the point that the USGS did not report a 5+ earthquake off the coast of Northern California but Alaska resources did report it. His USA predictions are mild and mostly effect west coast, Nevada, Colorado, Kansas etc. Off the coast of northern California he predicts a possible 5.1 and that the energy would transfer to movement in other US locations (smaller...

CANONSBURG, Pa.–West Virginia University researchers believe a Marcellus and Utica shale ethane storage hub could help create $36 billion in investment and more than 100,000 permanent jobs — some of which could occur at industrial sites left behind by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, Weirton Steel and Ormet Corp. During a Tuesday conference, WVU Energy Institute Director Brian Anderson said drillers throughout the region are now producing about 460,000 barrels of ethane per day — almost three times the total amount of ethane expected to be used per day at the Royal Dutch Shell ethane cracker set for Beaver County, Pa. and the...

I do hope that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo runs for president in 2020, and further that he is the Democratic nominee. He appears determined to make upstate New York into the East Germany of America by his intransigent refusal to allow fracking to produce natural gas, this keeping shale gas-rich upstate New York from enjoying the same kind of prosperity as western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Cuomo’s anti-gas bias extends to using state power to block natural gas pipelines intended to serve New England that have received federal approval. So lots of New Englanders will have continue using more...

Amid the fracking boom that brought natural gas prices to historic lows and led to the transition of a lot of power generation capacity from coal to gas, New York and New England may face power shortages tantamount to an “energy crisis” due to state policies in recent years that have effectively banned fracking and blocked pipelines that would bring in gas, writes the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Ever since the previous governor, David Paterson, introduced a moratorium on fracking in New York back in 2010, the state has become a poster city for the drive towards...

Russian scientists and local oil field services companies claim to have created a technology for thermochemical gas fracturing that could be an alternative to hydraulic fracturing and could increase oil production by between 1.7 and 6 times, Russia’s news agency RIA Novosti reports, citing the University of Tyumen’s press service.The chemicals react and emit heat and gas, which makes extraction easier and lifts well productivity, according to the scientists and researchers. The other upside in the technology, the Russians claim, is that the main component in the chemical reactions is ammonium nitrate, which is often used as fertilizer.According to Professor...

Russian scientists and local oil field services companies claim to have created a technology for thermochemical gas fracturing that could be an alternative to hydraulic fracturing and could increase oil production by between 1.7 and 6 times, Russia’s news agency RIA Novosti reports, citing the University of Tyumen’s press service. In hydraulic fracturing, rocks are fractured with high-pressure injection of fluids, while the new breakthrough technology, as claimed by Russian scientists and media, is creating chemical reactions in the strata that contain oil. The chemicals react and emit heat and gas, which makes extraction easier and lifts well productivity, according...