Free Republic

President Biden's decision to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to its lowest level in decades is back in the spotlight amid the war between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has caused oil prices to surge. On Monday, the Brent crude index, the worldwide oil benchmark, and the U.S. WTI index both surged more than 4% and inched closer to $90 a barrel as a result of volatility created by the Middle East crisis. According to analysts, the conflict — triggered over the weekend after a series of unprovoked attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis — may lead...

PM Netanyahu at Cabinet: I just met US Senate Republican leader McConnell. Over the weekend I spoke with US Senate Democratic leader Reid. » I heard from both of them about strong and continuing bipartisan support for Israel and of course this is very important. » I expressed our concern over the agreement formulated with Iran in the nuclear talks, which appears to confirm all of our concerns and more» Even as meetings proceed on this dangerous agreement, Iran's proxies in Yemen are overrunning large sections of that country, » and are attempting to seize control of the strategic Bab-el-Mandeb...

Hurricane Ida’s disruption to the U.S. offshore energy production in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst in 16 years. It has already stressed domestic and global supply chains, further testing the Federal Reserve’s “transitory” inflation narrative. Gulf Coast hurricanes usually cause minor disruptions in offshore oil and gas production, but this time around, output from the region has been significantly reduced due to Ida’s 150 mph winds that damaged platforms and onshore support facilities. What this will mean is a long recovery for offshore energy production to return. Reuters notes 79% of the region’s offshore oil production remains offline....

Oil prices plunged on Monday to their lowest levels in eighteen years, below $20 per barrel, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to cripple global oil demand with no signs of Saudi Arabia backing down on its promised supply surge.

The clash of oil titans Saudi Arabia and Russia sparked a 25% slump in crude prices on Monday, triggering panic selling and heavy losses on Wall Street's main stock indexes, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a call on Monday to discuss global energy markets, the White House said on Tuesday. Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco said the oil giant would increase supply to 12.3 million barrels per day in April for customers inside the kingdom and abroad. That's 300,000 bpd above its maximum production capacity, indicating Aramco may also free...

Moscow — Leaders of Turkey and Russia signed a long-delayed deal Monday to build the TurkStream gas pipeline under the Black Sea to deliver Russian gas to Europe's doorstep within three years. The rapid warming trend in Russo-Turkish relations holds deep implications for Syria's immediate crisis, which dominated the talks and the subsequent headlines, but the fallout from that pipeline deal is a potentially crushing blow to struggling pro-Western Ukraine and may be rearranging strategic realities around the region for many years to come. Analysts say that if TurkStream goes ahead it will enable Moscow to cut its former main...

Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters. Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Saudi Arabia’s inaction in the face of a six-month slide in oil prices as a strategic mistake and said he still hoped the kingdom, Tehran’s main rival in the Gulf, would respond. Oil prices closed on Wednesday at a 5½ year low, registering their second-biggest ever annual decline after OPEC oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, chose to maintain oil output despite a global glut...

(Reuters) - A third day of gasoline "panic buying" among storm-stricken motorists in the New York area and New Jersey prompted authorities to tap emergency oil reserves and ordered the military to dispatch fuel on Friday, while limited deliveries from pipelines and oil barges offered a glimmer of relief. Four days before the U.S. presidential election, the Obama administration made an all-out effort to ease the crisis, authorizing the Defense Logistics Agency to buy and deliver up to 22 million gallons of fuel for the region, waiving a rule barring foreign-flagged vessels transiting U.S. ports and loaning out diesel from...

Former detainee at Guantánamo Bay has taken a leading role in the military opposition to Col Muammar Gaddafi, it has emerged, alongside at least one other former Afghan Mujahideen fighter. Rebel recruits in the eastern port city of Derna are being trained by Sufyan Bin Qumu, a Libyan who was arrested following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and held at Guantánamo for six years. Port city of Derna, Libya Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi, a senior Libyan rebel commander in Derna, was also held following the invasion of Afghanistan and handed over to Libyan custody two months later. Both men...

When you include oil shale, the U.S. has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research, enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years, without any imports.

OPEC tells us it has lots of spare capacity, but how much should we believe them? Even when prices were much higher than they are now, back in 2008, they did not make use of all of the spare capacity that they supposedly had. Figure 1 When one looks at a history of estimates of future productive capacity, we find too, that they have tended to decrease over time (up until the new 2010 report)--also raising questions about current estimates. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently put out its Mid Term Oil and Gas Market Report 2010 (MTOMR 2010). Although...

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...

Canadian oil sands will probably become the No. 1 source of U.S. crude oil imports this year, and could make up more than a third of the nation’s oil and refined product imports by 2030, according to a new study. The Role of Canadian Oil Sands in U.S. Oil Supply, a report from Cambridge, Mass.-based IHS CERA, says that in a fast-growth scenario, oil sands could represent 36% of oil imports by 2030, or 20% in a more moderate growth scenario, compared with 8% in 2009. Production of 1.35 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2009 could rise to between...

The BP Spill: Tuesday on Capitol Hill, oil executives were subjected to the Senate's latest show trial. Senators did not say the accident in federal waters was a federal responsibility or that nature spills more oil every day. The morning hearing by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and the afternoon session before California Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environmental and Public Works Committee prove White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's dictum that a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste — especially when your goal is exploiting the Deepwater Horizon disaster...

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way. The explosion that blew apart an oil...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Energy: A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit. From trying to stimulate jobs in nonexistent ZIP codes at great expense to worshiping the false gods of climate change, our biggest deficit these days may be in the area of common sense. A new study shows that many of our wounds are self-inflicted as we forgo the wealth and jobs to be found in our waters and under our feet. The study by Science Applications International Corp....

Energy The administration asked for public comments on a plan to expand offshore drilling. When they came in 2-to-1 in favor, the Interior Department sat on the news. Time for a "Texas tea" party? When you ask for public comment on a major policy issue, at some point you should make the results public, not hide them until you can figure out a way to spin the public reaction to support a conclusion you've already drawn. On its last business day in office, the Bush administration published a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic...

Iran's nuclear weapons program is about so much more than destroying the "Zionist Entity." Iran wants to be a super power on the scale of the United States. Iraq acts like a super power feeding little satellite countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Nothing makes Iran happier than tweaking at the United States because its leadership feels that once it develops nuclear weapons Iran will be on par with the evil Satan, the USA. In September 2008, Iranian Elite forces took charge of the Strait of Hormuz. If they close the Strait, they stop 30%...