Free Republic

WASHINGTON — On Dec. 31, just hours before a New Year's Eve celebration, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1245 of the law contains language providing authority to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to deter the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. White House efforts to have the sanctions provision stripped from the bill failed, and the measure became law with a quiet flourish of the presidential pen. Ever since, Washington and Tehran have been waging a war of words. None of this works to the advantage of the American...

The political and environmental debates swirling around the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas miss a crucial point, energy analysts say: The Canadian oil is needed to replace fast-dwindling production from two other major suppliers of oil Mexico and Venezuela. The United States remains the largest consumer of oil in the world, requiring more than 8 million barrels a day of fuel imports to feed its appetite, with nearly half of that coming from oil-rich neighbors in Latin America as recently as 2005. But oil production south of the border has fallen off dramatically, and Canadian...

GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Public hearings in Montana are being held this week to discuss a plan to build a pipeline through eastern Montana to move crude extracted from Canada's oil sands to refineries in the United States. Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. aims to start construction this year on the 1,980-mile Keystone XL pipeline. The first of six meetings is planned for Monday in Malta. Additional meetings are set in Glasgow, Terry, Circle and Glendive. The final meeting is Thursday in Baker.

Turkey and Russia signed 17 agreements on Wednesday to enhance cooperation in energy and other fields, including pacts to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and furthering plans for an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The pipeline would allow Russia to expand its oil exports from the Black Sea, bypassing the Bosporus, whose shipping lines are already at capacity. The deal follows several rounds of agreements between Russia and Turkey in recent years that have helped Russia maintain its dominance of Eurasian energy routes. On his first official visit to Turkey, the Russian president, Dmitri A....

MOSCOW, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will witness the celebratory launch of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline, officials say. During Putin's visit to the Russian Far East, he is expected to witness the inauguration of the first leg of the project, which should pump 1.6 million barrels of crude oil per day, the news agency RIA Novosti said Sunday The oil will flow from Siberia to Russia's Far East and on to China and the Asia-Pacific region, the news agency said. The second part of the pipeline is expected to run about 1,300 miles from...

NIGERIAN militants claim to have blown up for a second time a recently repaired oil pipeline operated by US petroleum giant Chevron. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the country's most prominent armed group, said it destroyed the pipe around 1900 GMT on Friday (5am AEST Saturday). The pipeline was first hit in May. "Our fighters revisited the recently repaired Chevron pipeline linking Alero creek through Abiteye to the Chevron export terminal in Delta state and destroyed it again," the group said. Nigeria's main rebel group, which claims it's fighting for a greater share of the...

U.S. concentrating forces near Syrian border <!****************************Cut and Paste Headline Above*****************> SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMWednesday, April 16, 2003 <!********************Cut and Paste Article Below********************>The United States has bolstered its military presence near the Iraqi- Syrian border. U.S. officials said Central Command has ordered a buildup of assets in western Iraq. They said the buildup is centered at Al Rutba and includes M1A1 main battle tanks, AH-64A attack helicopters and A-10 ground-support fighter-jets. The U.S. move aims to prevent the escape of Iraqi leaders and nonconventional military assets to Syria. They said U.S. forces will also ensure that Arab foreign volunteers...

GORI, Georgia — The conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia moved toward full-scale war on Saturday, as Russia sent warships to land ground troops in the disputed territory of Abkhazia and broadened its bombing campaign across Georgia. The fighting that had sharply escalated when Georgian forces tried to retake the capital of South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in the early 1990s, appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Shortly before dawn on Sunday, Georgia’s Interior...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

BAGHDAD: A bomb struck an oil pipeline Thursday in Iraq's southern city of Basra where Iraqi security forces have been clashing with Shiite militia fighters, an oil official said, the second such attack this week

On February 17, Kosovo broke away from Serbia and declared its independence. Not surprisingly it was instantly recognized as a state by the U.S., Germany, Britain and France. With 4203 square miles area, Kosovo may be a tiny territory but in the great game of oil politics it holds great importance which is in inverse proportion to its size. Kosovo does not have oil but its location is strategic as the trans-Balkan pipeline - known as AMBO pipeline after its builder and operator the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation - will pass through it. The pipeline will pump Caspian...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO: Quote, Profile , Research) has shut down four of its main pipelines that supply over 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of Canadian oil to the U.S. Midwest due to an explosion and a fire in Minnesota, the company said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO) has shut down four of its main pipelines that supply over 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of Canadian oil to the U.S. Midwest due to an explosion and a fire in Minnesota, the company said on Wednesday. The Calgary, Alberta-based company said all Enbridge pipelines in the vicinity of its Clearbrook, Minnesota, terminal -- Lines 1, 2, 3, and 4 -- were immediately shut down and isolated and emergency crews dispatched to the site of the fire.

<p>Has the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries infiltrated Congress? If so, that sure would explain the latest energy bill.</p> <p>Make that the anti-energy bill. Both the already-passed Senate version and the upcoming House one are bad enough for what they do contain. But they're worse for what they don't — even one drop of additional domestic oil.</p>

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=641172

21:02 - 05.11.2004Experts From Bulgaria, Greece and Russia Agree on Controversial Oil Pipe Project SOFIA (bnn)- Experts from Bulgaria, Greece and Russia have ironed out differences on a joint project to pipe Russian oil from the Black Sea to the Aegean bypassing the Bosporus strait in Turkey, Bulgaria’s Ministry of Regional Development said Friday.

Translation from Hebrew to English by me: The Islamic Jihad organization has called upon the loyal followers of the Shiite radical leader, Muqata Al Sadr, to continue and hit oil pipelines in Iraq. "Al-Sadr has to continue his resistance and call upon his men to continue to hit the oil sources which provide revenue for the occupies," the words of the organization went. Yesterday Al-Sadr's men struck a oil pipeline using an explosive device in the south of the country.

Reagan 'sabotaged Soviet economy' Booby-trapped software passed on by CIA caused pipeline blast WASHINGTON - Former US president Ronald Reagan approved a Cold War plan by the CIA to sabotage the Soviet Union's economy with technology that malfunctioned. The flawed technology included computer software that triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by former Reagan White House official Thomas Reed. The former Air Force secretary, who was serving with the National Security Council at the time, described the episode in At The Abyss: An Insider's History Of The Cold War, to be published...

<p>Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc expects that the revolution in Georgia will have no bearing on a planned $3.6 billion oil pipeline that crosses the country, said Chief Executive Officer Lord Browne.</p> <p>A BP-led group is building a 1 million barrel-a-day capacity pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, that will cross Georgia and Turkey, ending at Ceyhan, on the Mediterranean Sea.</p>