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Insanity of Environmentalists’ Opposition to Keystone Pipeline Revealed in Last Week’s Canadian Explosion

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Photo Credit: Paul Chiasson/APAs environmental disasters go, the explosion Saturday of a runaway train that destroyed much of the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, about 20 miles from the Maine border, will probably go down the memory hole.

It lacks the correct moral and contains an inconvenient truth.

Not that the disaster lacks the usual ingredients of such a moral. The derailed 72-car train belonged to a subsidiary of Illinois-based multinational Rail World, whose self-declared aim is to “promote rail industry privatization.” The train was carrying North Dakota shale oil (likely extracted by fracking) to the massive Irving Oil refinery in the port city of Saint John, to be shipped to the global market. At least five people were killed in the blast (a number that’s likely to rise) and 1,000 people were forced to evacuate. Quebec’s environment minister reports that some 100,000 liters (26,000 gallons) of crude have spilled into the Chaudière River, meaning it could reach Quebec City and the St. Lawrence River before too long.

Environmentalists should be howling. But this brings us to the inconvenient truth.

The reason oil is moved on trains from places like North Dakota and Alberta is because there aren’t enough pipelines to carry it. The provincial governments of Alberta and New Brunswick are talking about building a pipeline to cover the 3,000-odd mile distance. But last month President Obama put the future of the Keystone XL pipeline again in doubt, telling a Georgetown University audience “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Russia, China Ink Enormous $270 Billion Energy Deal, Strengthen Axis vs. US

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Photo Credit: WNDBy F. Michael Maloof. Russia and China have just signed a $270 billion energy agreement that quickly could lead to other lucrative energy projects, with the byproduct of strengthening not only economic but political ties between them, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

The deal was between Russia’s state-controlled oil company, Rosneft, and the China National Petroleum Corporation.

China will now become Rosneft’s largest customer, obviating Moscow’s major reliance on European markets which continue to experience serious economic difficulties and, in some countries, a lingering recession.

It will help ensure that Russia continues to receive the revenue it needs for its own infrastructure development and military reform.

Having Rosneft’s boss, Igor Sechin, as one of the most trusted advisers to Russian President Vladimir Putin also has been a big asset in pushing the Russian president’s political agenda. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Sergei IlnitskyA New Anti-American Axis?

By Leslie H. Gelb and Dimitri K. Simes. THE flight of the leaker Edward J. Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow last month would not have been possible without the cooperation of Russia and China. The two countries’ behavior in the Snowden affair demonstrates their growing assertiveness and their willingness to take action at America’s expense.

Beyond their protection of Mr. Snowden, Chinese-Russian policies toward Syria have paralyzed the United Nations Security Council for two years, preventing joint international action. Chinese hacking of American companies and Russia’s cyberattacks against its neighbors have also caused concern in Washington. While Moscow and Beijing have generally supported international efforts to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program, they clearly were not prepared to go as far as Washington was, and any coordinated shift in their approach could instantly gut America’s policy on the issue and endanger its security and energy interests. To punctuate the new potential for cooperation, China is now carrying out its largest ever joint naval exercises — with Russia.

Russia and China appear to have decided that, to better advance their own interests, they need to knock Washington down a peg or two. Neither probably wants to kick off a new cold war, let alone hot conflicts, and their actions in the case of Mr. Snowden show it. China allowed him into Hong Kong, but gently nudged his departure, while Russia, after some provocative rhetoric, seems to have now softened its tone.

Still, both countries are seeking greater diplomatic clout that they apparently reckon they can acquire only by constraining the United States. And in world affairs, there’s no better way to flex one’s muscles than to visibly diminish the strongest power.

This new approach appears based in part on a sense of their growing strength relative to America and their increasing emphasis on differences over issues like Syria. Both Moscow and Beijing oppose the principle of international action to interfere in a country’s sovereign affairs, much less overthrow a government, as happened in Libya in 2011. After all, that principle could always backfire on them. Read more from this story HERE.

Train Carrying Crude Derails, Destroys Large Part of Canadian Town (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsA large swath of a town in eastern Quebec was destroyed Saturday after a train carrying crude oil derailed, sparking several explosions forcing the evacuation of up to 1,000 people, killing at least one.

Several people were reported missing and officials reported one death in the town of Lac-Megantic (Lack-MAH-Gan-Tic), about 155 miles east of Montreal.

The explosions ignited a blaze that sent flames shooting into the sky, and billowing smoke could be seen from several miles (kilometers) away hours after the derailment. Some of the train’s 73 cars exploded and the fire spread to a number of homes in the town of 6,000 people.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska Makes Obama an Offer He Should, But Won’t Take

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Photo Credit: Human Events

Photo Credit: Human Events

When President Ronald Reagan recommended in 1987 that Congress should reopen a small sliver of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to oil and gas exploration, it started an epic battle between those who believe more U.S. energy supplies make us more energetic and those who argue that we should not use or produce any more oil. Now, in an unexpected but bold move, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell has proposed that the Department of Interior join with the State of Alaska to fund a new, updated assessment of just how much oil and gas might exist under ANWR’s frozen tundra. It is a deal Obama should take, as it could settle once and for all the issue by providing ANWR’s owners — the American public – the information they need to make a decision.

Over almost 30 years, numerous bills to open ANWR have passed either the House or the Senate, and in one case, both bodies passed the bill, only to have it be vetoed by President Clinton. President Obama has stood firmly on the side of the anti-energy environmentalists against opening ANWR – the same ones who forced him to keep studying the Keystone XL pipeline to death – and therefore no one has expected any bill that might pass the House to be given a vote in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid decides what gets on the Senate calendar after getting his marching orders from President Obama. Part of the argument over ANWR has been over how much oil and gas might exist there.

Over those same 30 years, the information President Reagan based his decision on has gotten older and less relevant, given today’s technology for finding and producing oil. In 1984 and 1985, when the winter government seismic assessment program took place, technology was limited to 2 dimensional images (2D) with very little clarity and interpretative value. The government’s estimate of 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil at well below today’s prices, would be worth $1 trillion or more to our economy at today’s oil prices. But the government also estimated that the total oil in ANWR was between 16 and 42 billion barrels. Any of these numbers place ANWR in the highest class of oil reserves in the world. But the story could get much, much better.

In the thirty years since those estimates, the technology in the oil and gas business has gotten spectacularly better. Computers were very limited then, but today, the likelihood of oil and gas is found using 3 dimensional (3D) and even 4 dimensional (4D) analysis which shows what might have happened to hydrocarbons underground over time. When combined with new drilling as well as interpretive computing and materials technologies which would make NASA jealous, these amazing breakthroughs are remaking the United States and North America into the energy supergiant of the world. Governor Parnell’s proposal simply asks the president to join Alaska in the search for more information for the public about what they own, using the best technologies in the world in the dead of winter on some of the most forbidding territory in the world. An area, by the way, where the indigenous Inupiat Eskimo people overwhelming support efforts to find oil and gas in their traditional lands.

The implications of such new information could be staggering. In 1995 – 10 years after the ANWR report — the government estimated that the area around the famous Bakken formation in North Dakota held 151 million barrels of recoverable oil. Their estimate today is that the area holds 7.5 billion barrels, almost 50 times as much! If new information and new technologies had the same effect in ANWR that they have had on the Bakken, that would equate to about 500 billion barrels of oil, worth $50 trillion to our economy over its development.

Read more from this story HERE.

US Military Freed, Protects Iraqi Oil Fields for … the Communist Chinese (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom

By Tim Arango and Clifford Krauss. Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.

China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields.

“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.”

Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves. Chinese state-owned companies seized the opportunity, pouring more than $2 billion a year and hundreds of workers into Iraq, and just as important, showing a willingness to play by the new Iraqi government’s rules and to accept lower profits to win contracts.

“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.” Read more from this story HERE.

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China’s Development a ‘Threat’ to Democracies

By Didi Kirsten Tatlow. When China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, told the United States late on Saturday that it should “correctly treat China’s development,” what did he mean?

The reprimand came after the U.S. State Department on Friday called on China to “fully account for those killed, detained or missing in the 1989 bloody military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square,” The Associated Press reported. Mr. Hong also told the U.S. to “discard” its “political prejudice” toward China.

China often emphasizes that it seeks peaceful development. But the authors Heriberto Araújo and Juan Pablo Cardenal believe there is more to it.

In an opinion piece in The New York Times, they write that the state capitalist model behind China’s increasingly successful global push threatens the values of the established democracies. Read more from this story HERE.

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Trump: China Gets Iraq Oil; US Gets Nothing

By Courtney Coren. Donald Trump tore into President Barack Obama’s administration Monday for allowing China access to Iraqi oil while, he claimed, the United States gets “nothing” after it lost 4,500 troops in the war there.

“I’m not knocking China; I’m knocking our leadership,” the real estate millionaire said on Fox and Friends. “How can they allow this to happen? Read more from this story HERE.

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian Wing Takes Over the Oilfields Once Belonging to Assad (+video)

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Photo Credit: telegraph.co.ukUp to 380,000 barrels of crude oil were previously produced by wells around the city of Raqqa and in the desert region to its east that are now in rebel hands – in particular Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda off-shoot which is the strongest faction in this part of the country.

Now the violently anti-Western jihadist group, which has been steadily extending its control in the region, is selling the crude oil to local entrepreneurs, who use home-made refineries to produce low-grade petrol and other fuels for Syrians facing acute shortages.

Read more from this story HERE.

The U.S. Has Much, Much More Gas and Oil Than We Thought

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Photo Credit: APThe United States has double the amount of oil and three times the amount of natural gas than previously thought, stored deep under the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, according to new data the Obama administration released Tuesday.

In announcing the new data in a conference call, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell also said the administration will release within weeks draft rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing, technology that has come under scrutiny for its environmental impact but that is essential to developing all of this energy.

“These world-class formations contain even more energy-resource potential than previously understood, which is important information as we continue to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil,” Jewell said in a statement.

The formations, called Bakken and Three Forks, span much of western North Dakota, the northern tip of South Dakota and the northeastern tip of Montana. The last time the United States Geological Survey assessed this area for its oil and gas reserves was in 2008. But that assessment did not include the Three Forks formation, which explains the substantial increase in the estimates. USGS estimates that these two formations together hold 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered—but technically recoverable—oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Read more from this story HERE.

Israel Strikes It Rich: Enormous Natural Gas Field Begins Production

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Photo Credit: AP

Natural gas began to flow into Israel over the weekend from a large offshore field, ending Israel’s status as a dry patch in an oil-rich region.

The flow came from the first of two enormous gas fields discovered off Israel’s coast in the past three years. The two fields, known as Tamar and Leviathan, are sufficient to supply Israel for 150 years, according to Bloomberg Business Week.

The Bank of Israel estimated that the flow this year from Tamar, the smaller of the two fields, would contribute one percent to Israel’s gross domestic product. Overall, the bank expects Israel’s economy to grow 3.8 percent this year.

The field is located 56 miles west of the Haifa port. The Leviathan field is slated to come online in 2016. The long-term value of the fields at today’s prices has been estimated at about $240 billion. More than half of profits are to be paid in taxes to the Israeli government.

“This is the beginning of a new era,” Isaac Tshuva, controlling shareholder of Delek Group Ltd., which holds a major stake in Tamar, told Business Week. “The Israeli economy will be able to exploit natural gas environmentally, geopolitically, socially and economically.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Obama Intentionally Blocking Oil And Gas Production

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Photo Credit: AP

Delays in federal permitting for oil and gas exploration on public land is likely reducing national energy production and depriving the federal government of revenue, according to a federal report released Friday.

The report is the latest addition to a mounting body of evidence undercutting the administration’s claims that it has fostered increased oil and gas production, critics say. Production on lands the federal government controls has plummeted during Barack Obama’s presidency.

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) inspector general examined 1,881 applications for drilling permits on public land. Fewer than 4 percent of those applications were “recent,” or filed in the last 180 days. The rest had experienced prolonged delays.

“By not processing these nominations as expeditiously as possible,” the Forest Service, a division of the USDA, “may be causing the federal government to forego revenue or prevent or delay the efforts of the private sector to provide energy to the public.”

The report is the second analysis by a federal body this month to support claims by administration critics that its energy policies have restricted domestic oil and gas production.

Read more from this story HERE.

Public Citizen, Greenpeace Target Chevron

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Photo Credit: Free Beacon A consortium of environmental and consumer advocacy groups filed a Federal Elections Commission complaint Tuesday alleging that oil giant Chevron violated pay-to-play laws when it donated $2.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a “super” political action committee tied to House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio).

Consumer advocate Public Citizen, as well as environmentalist groups Greenpeace, Oil Change International, and Friends of the Earth, called on the FEC to “undertake an investigation into and enforcement action against Chevron USA, Inc., a federal government contractor, for making a $2.5 million contribution to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC, for the purpose of influencing the 2012 federal elections.”

“This is an obvious, coordinated intimidation tactic from the left masquerading as another baseless complaint,” Congressional Leadership Fund spokesman Dan Conston said.

The complaint comes two months after Greenpeace met with dozens of other liberal interest groups at the National Education Association to discuss, among other things, punishing Chevron for contributing to the GOP, according to Mother Jones.

Some D.C. insiders say the FEC complaint is the realization of that meeting. “You had an event in January where you had these liberal donors get together and say let’s go after our enemies … now they have an FEC complaint, a weak complaint at that,” one source said. “It’s a pretty blatant connection; it’s a scary thing.”

Read more from this story HERE.