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The Clinton campaign debated whether to come out against the Keystone XL pipeline in August 2015 as a way to turn attention away from her secret email server and the bad press she was generating, according to messages hacked from her campaign chairman’s account and released Monday by WikiLeaks. ... The campaign’s willingness to use Keystone to shift attention from Mrs. Clinton’s troubles over her secret email server is a signal of just how troublesome those emails were.

The Obama administration shocked the oil industry last week, pulling the plug on a major oil pipeline from the Bakken that had become a flashpoint between a pipeline company on the one hand, and a growing coalition of Native American tribes and environmentalists on the other. Everyone was anxiously waiting a Friday ruling from a U.S. federal judge, who was weighing a request from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to stop construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.8 billion 1,168-mile oil pipeline that would run from North Dakota to Iowa and Illinois. The pipeline would threaten sacred lands and...

Remember the Keystone XL Pipeline project? Remember what a cause célèbre it was for both the left and right? What the heck ever happened to it? Have you wondered that?Well, in short it was killed pretty much for good, or at least the foreseeable future – both here in the USSA and now in Canada. As you are no doubt aware, it was Obama who, with the left in the federal and various state legislatures – and with some help from Choo-choo Warren Buffet who owns most of the rail cars now hauling crude down south, vetoed the pipeline. And...

Seven years of foot-dragging followed by a political denial cost the company a fortune. The boss explained in detail back in November why Obama’s refusal to permit the Keystone XL pipeline was a load of crap. We’ve talked about it a lot here, and when we do, we usually focus on all the economic benefits to the United States that were lost because Obama chose to cater to his extreme leftist environmentalist base rather than govern like a serious person. But we didn’t focus quite as much on the blow this dealt to TransCanada, the company that proposed to build...

TransCanada Corp is formally requesting arbitration over U.S. President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, seeking $15 billion in damages, the company said in legal papers dated Friday. TransCanada submitted a notice for an arbitration claim in January and had then tried to negotiate with the U.S. government to “reach an amicable settlement,” the company said in files posted on the pipeline’s website. “Unfortunately, the parties were unable to settle the dispute.” TransCanada said it then filed its formal arbitration request under North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provisions, seeking to recover what it says are costs and...

A new super PAC partnership between billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, the AFL-CIO and major public sector employee unions has triggered an angry backlash among the building trade unions -- dividing organized labor just as it ramps up its 2016 political programs. In letters delivered Monday to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the presidents of eight building trade organizations called on the AFL-CIO to cut ties with Steyer, whose opposition to an extension of the Keystone XL Pipeline infuriated unions that had championed the jobs that the oil pipeline would have created.

Montana and five other states say resident Barack Obama overstepped his power by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, whose developers are now suing four presidential cabinet members. The states along the pipeline’s route filed a friend-of-the-court brief this week arguing that Congress, not the executive, has the right to regulate interstate and international commerce. The pipeline, which would have crossed the Canadian border, was being developed by TransCanada, which is now suing the government. Because of the resident’s representations to the rest of the world that America would lead in reducing its carbon footprint, that that was the sole reason...

American billionaire Warren Buffett, through his Nebraska-based company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A), has acquired a $400 million stake in struggling pipeline company, Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI). According to a Berkshire Hathaway US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the 26.53 million shares of Kinder Morgan are valued at $395.8 million. The purchase adds to Buffett’s oil interests, which includes a recently purchased 14.3 percent stake in oil refiner Phillips 66 at a time when other oil and gas investors are looking for the exit. True to Buffett’s form, the Kinder Morgan purchase came shortly after its stock price fell 53...

Saudis, Russia Agree to Freeze Oil Output; Iran Still Resists by Reuters Feb 16 2016, 9:34 am ET Top oil exporters Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed on Tuesday to freeze output levels but said the deal was contingent on other producers joining in - a major sticking point with Iran absent from the talks and determined to raise production. The Saudi, Russian, Qatari and Venezuelan oil ministers announced the proposal after a previously undisclosed meeting in Doha. It could become the first joint OPEC and non-OPEC deal in 15 years, aimed at tackling a growing oversupply of crude and helping...

There's no question that one of the most memorable exchanges in last night's GOP debate in New Hampshire came over the question of eminent domain, the constitutionally sanctioned taking of private property for public use. Donald Trump is for robust use of eminent domain, including instances that most people would agree constitute eminent-domain abuse. That is, situations in which the property being seized is delivered either immediately or soon after to a private entity (such as the egregious case in which Trump himself worked with Atlantic City officials to kick a widow out of her house so he could expand...

Let us all hope the good people of New Hampshire spot the insufferable and poorly briefed politicians who want to lead the nation. In a recent South Carolina GOP debate Jeb Bush talked about trade with China and showed how much he relies on briefings by his team to create his talking points. Bush did not realize Boeing was moving a manufacturing plant to China, and with it American Jobs - SEE HERE Bush v Trump Similarly, last night in New Hampshire, to bolster his propositions about eminent domain, Governor Jeb Bush made the gobsmacking assertion the Keystone Pipeline project...

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Hillary Clinton predicted Saturday that just electing her President will cut the price of oil. When the world hears her commitment at her inauguration about ending American dependence on foreign fuel, Clinton says, oil-pumping countries will lower prices to stifle America's incentive to develop alternative energy. "I predict to you, the oil-producing countries will drop the price of oil," Clinton said, speaking at the Manchester YWCA. "They will once again assume, once the cost pressure is off, Americans and our political process will recede."

There's a reason Hillary Clinton finished third in the 2008 Iowa Caucus, behind Barack Obama and John Edwards. In addition to her costly vote supporting the war in Iraq, Clinton has always pleaded "guilty" to being a moderate. It's this centrism (even when progressive values are now popular throughout the nation) that fuels questions about why she opposed gay marriage or as The Huffington Post writes, accepted "$133,246 to the Ready for Hillary PAC" from major prison lobbyists. The Iowa Caucus was once labeled as part of the Democratic Party's "extremes" by Hillary Clinton in a recently disclosed State Department...

When TransCanada filed its two lawsuits on January 6, company spokesman Mark Cooper said, "TransCanada has undertaken a careful evaluation of the [Obama] Administration's action and believe there has been a clear violation of NAFTA, and the U.S. Constitution, in these circumstances." In the federal lawsuit, filed in Texas, TransCanada is seeking to limit presidential powers to prohibit future presidents from unilaterally rejecting such projects based on how the United States might be perceived by the international community. Environmentalists want to leave untapped oil reserves in the ground and fought successfully over the past seven years to have the president...

The “fair and equitable” piece is where the Obama administration is most vulnerable, said David Gantz, a trade law professor at the University of Arizona College of Law. “The issue becomes, if there is a very detailed procedure for approval or disapproval of pipelines, whether the U.S. followed those procedures or whether it went beyond the criteria or procedures,” Gantz said. “I would say the U.S. is pretty vulnerable on that one issue,” he said, “in part because the White House staff and others essentially said, ‘we know we’re doing this politically and to make a statement,’ but the regulations...

Obama Plans Takedown of Another U.S. Ally Cliff Kincaid President Obama failed to take out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but now he’s going after Canada’s Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a big supporter of Israel and opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s a story the U.S. media won’t cover. But Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press has been documenting how Obama is planning the “fundamental transformation” of Canada by taking down Harper’s government and bringing to power a progressive majority assembled from Canada’s Liberal Party and New Democratic Party (NDP), an affiliate of the Socialist International....

The Keystone XL saga has taken a new twist in the New Year. On Jan. 6, TransCanada (the company that would have built and operated the Alberta to Texas pipeline) launched two lawsuits over President Obama's November rejection of the pipeline. One of the lawsuits will challenge the president's constitutional authority to grant permits when Congress has already acted, as it did in early 2015 when a bipartisan bill was passed approving the construction of the pipeline. The second lawsuit seeks damages of more than US$15 billion by issuing a claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade...

Mary Kay Henry, the head of the Service Employees International Union is very nervous about the amount of popularity GOP front-runner Donald Trump has garnered. She recently said her organization is going into "hyperdrive" to stand up against Trump, because she saw him as a real threat. Henry was interviewed by David Axelrod for his podcast, "The Axe Files" on Thursday, when she admitted that her organization was worried about what Donald Trump was stirring up in the SEIU's 2.1 million members. She was worried because she believed Trump has the ability to win the White House in November. During...

TransCanada Corp. said it will submit a claim that US President Barack Obama’s Nov. 6 denial of the company’s Keystone XL crude oil pipeline’s cross-border permit application was arbitrary and unjustified under Section 6 of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The president’s decision also exceeded his power under the US Constitution, the Calgary-based transmission company said in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 6 in the US District Court for Southern Texas’s Houston Division. The actions challenge the Obama administration’s ruling that approving the project’s cross-border permit would not be in the US national interest more than 7 years after...

CALGARY, Alberta, Jan 6 (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp sued the U.S. government in U.S. federal court on Wednesday, alleging President Barack Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline exceeded his power under the U.S. Constitution. Obama rejected the cross-border crude oil pipeline late last year, seven years after it was first proposed. TransCanada also filed legal action under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), saying the pipeline permit denial was "arbitrary and unjustified." As part of the NAFTA claim, the company was seeking $15 billion.