Jonah Bennett The U.S. is finally taking the fight to one of Islamic State’s main revenue generators: oil. As part of a new campaign called Tidal Wave II, a group of four A-10 jets and two AC-130 gunships struck hundreds of trucks used to transport oil in eastern Syria Monday. The plans for the strike…
Andrew Follett Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that former President George W. Bush should have “kept the oil” after invading Iraq. “And, I said, keep the oil,” Trump said during the Republican presidential debate Tuesday night. “And we should have kept the oil, believe me. We should have kept the oil.” Trump was responding to a question about…
Andrew Follett The biggest cause of CO2 emissions reduction is America’s fracking natural gas boom, not solar or wind power, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute. The study shows that solar power is responsible for 1 percent of the decline in U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions, while natural gas is responsible for nearly 20 percent. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by…
Steve Birr With pipeline projects mired in environmental battles and oil prices trapped below $50 a barrel, Royal Dutch Shell announced Wednesday it is halting its oil sands project in Canada. Shell stopped development at its Carmon Creek facility in Alberta, a project that would produce 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The loss will…
Andrew Follett The amount of methane leaked from shale gas production has been massively overestimated according to a new study. The study was authored by University of California Professor of Physics and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory senior scientist Dr. Richard Muller and his daughter Elizabeth Muller, a former policy adviser for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation…
Steve Birr The U.S. will start selling millions of barrels of oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as part of the bipartisan budget deal reached Monday night, as China continues to add to their oil stockpile. Beginning in 2018 and extending through 2025, the U.S. will sell a total of 58 million barrels of…
Michael Bastasch on September 30, 2015 A federal district court judge has sided with the petroleum industry and granted an injunction against enforcing the Obama administration regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on federal lands. “At this point, the Court does not believe Congress has granted or delegated to the [Bureau of Land Management] authority…
By Michael Bastasch U.S. and Iranian diplomats have agreed to end sanctions on the world’s largest Shi’ite Muslim country, causing oil prices to tumble as markets feared more crude will be added to global supplies. Bad news for Saudi Arabia, but good new for Iran which will soon be able to sell oil to eager…
By Michael Bastasch Published: December 4, 2014 It was only four years ago that economist and New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman sounded the alarm on peak oil, lamenting that high oil and commodity prices reflect the fact that we live in a “finite world.” But now oil prices are plummeting as U.S. oil production…
By Michael Bastasch Oil production is booming in North Dakota, hitting more than one million barrels per day in April and May, according to government data. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling have played a major role. According to the Energy Information Administration, increased production from the “Williston Basin’s Bakken and Three Forks formations”…