Fuel Freedom Staff

House approves Keystone XL again, Senate up next

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The U.S. House approved, for the ninth time, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, designed to carry Canadian tar-sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico.

The bill passed Friday by a vote of 252-161, but prospects in the Senate are unclear. The Senate is due to take up the bill Tuesday, but the measure must beat the 60-vote threshold to move forward.

USA Today reports:

If it overcomes a 60-vote threshold it will head to President Obama’s desk where he will either sign it into law or veto it. The president has delayed a decision on the pipeline, deferring to an ongoing review at the State Department, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggested Thursday that the president could veto it.

Obama has declared previously that he would only approve the pipeline if it could be demonstrated that the project wouldn’t increase greenhouse-gas emissions.

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has been promoting her own bill in the Senate. The bill approved Friday was sponsored by Rep. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. He will face Landrieu in a runoff election next month for the Senate. Landrieu has an uphill battle to win a fourth term: Although she beat Cassidy by 1.2 percentage points on Election Day last week, neither candidate won at least 50 percent of the total, forcing the runoff. Observers expect much of the support of the third-party candidate in that race, Rob Maness, a Tea Party favorite who won 14 percent in the election, to swing to Cassidy.

Why is Landrieu so strongly in favor of Keystone XL? A story on Slate.com tried to figure that out, as well as why the leadership in the (for now) Democratic-controlled Senate is so willing to bring her bill to the floor for a vote:

What’s befuddling isn’t that the Democrats are playing politics with Keystone—it’s that they’re playing them so poorly. Thanks to their seven-seat-and-counting gain on Election Day, Republicans will take control of the Senate next year for the first time since George W. Bush’s second term. More importantly for the Keystone crowd, the pipeline is all but certain to have a filibuster-proof 60-plus votes in the next Senate, whether Landrieu is there or not.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Pew: Support for fracking slipping, but Keystone XL still popular

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A Pew Research Center survey shows that support for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a technique for freeing oil and natural gas trapped within layers of shale rock, is falling among Americans.

As the graphic shows, 41 percent of Americans supported the drilling technique in the recent survey, down from 44 percent in September 2013 and 41 percent in March 2013.

fracking graphicBut the proportion opposed also decreased, from 49 percent in September 2013 to 47 percent. It’s the “I don’t know” response that’s on the upswing, from 7 percent to 12 percent.

The fracking survey was a key data point among a wide-ranging set of opinions Pew solicited from Americans on their views about the midterm elections and about political leaders of both major parties.

Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would deliver oil from Canada’s oil-sands formations to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, still enjoys majority support. According to Pew, 59 percent of respondents support its construction. But that’s down from March 2013, when 66 percent supported the project.

Currently, 83 percent of Republicans surveyed support it, compared with only 43 percent of Democrats.

 

Fuel Freedom Staff

Entrepreneur Jigar Shah: ‘We need fuel choice’

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Clean-energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah makes a case for investing in technology that will help the United States end its dependence on foreign oil, instead of just talking about it.

In a post for Unreasonable.is, he laments the lost opportunities: The U.S. has reduced its oil imports by 15 percent over the last two years as the country has ramped up its own oil production. But we “still imported an average 7.4 million barrels of crude oil per day during the first nine months of 2014—at a cost of more than $240 billion.”

Increasing fuel-economy standards in vehicles has gotten us only partway toward oil independence (he notes that as miles-per-gallon have vastly increased since the 1970s, so too has the weight of the cars Americans increasingly prefer: the large SUVs). He adds:

The predicted increase in oil drilling in the U.S. and Canada will get us even closer. But no matter how we slice the data, we will still depend on imported oil. Domestic drilling and fuel standards are not enough—we need fuel choice.

Shah writes that replacement fuels like methanol, hydrogen, electricity and other renewables are cheaper than gasoline or diesel.

However, the Government has not systematically put a plan in place to give American’s access to these fuels at local refueling stations. In fact, the Government regulations in place today make it difficult to add these fuel choices.

In addition to alternative fuels, vehicle efficiency technologies offer another off-ramp towards oil independence. With only one out of every seven gallons of gas being used to move the car forward, it is time to stop waging war in the Middle East and start the war against vehicle inefficiency.

He lists some interesting innovations for increasing fuel efficiency. Check them out.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Some experts say China really is serious about climate change

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The reaction to President Obama’s climate-change deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping, among congressional Republicans, was swift and negative. The prevailing sentiment is that China didn’t give up as much in the bargain as the U.S., and that China isn’t likely to live up to its end of the agreement anyway.

But Mother Jones magazine quotes some experts on U.S.-China relations, and they say China is indeed serious about cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.

MJ’s James West writes:

So I asked experts on US-China relations to explain why this deal was so attractive to the leaders of two countries that have historically locked horns over everything from human rights to lingerie imports. Here’s their explanation of why China really does want to want to act on climate change, and why the bargain makes sense for President Barack Obama, as well:

China has to act on air pollution. If it doesn’t, the country risks political instability. Top Republicans have slammed the US-China deal as ineffective and one-sided. “China won’t have to reduce anything,” complained Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.) in a statement, adding that China’s promises were “hollow and not believable.”

But the assumption that China won’t try to live up to its end of the bargain misses the powerful domestic and global incentives for China to take action. The first, and most pressing, is visible in China’s appalling air quality. President Xi Jinping needs to act now, says Jerome A. Cohen, a leading Chinese law expert at New York University. Why? Because “the environment—not only the climate—is the most serious domestic challenge he confronts.”

Fuel Freedom Staff

As lighter F-150s roll out, Ford CEO says buyers care about fuel economy

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The price of gas rises and falls in cycles, but buyers of the Ford F-150, the best-selling vehicle in the United States the past three decades, have consistently had one complaint: the poor fuel economy of the truck.

Ford Motor Co. CEO Mark Fields thinks the company has solved that problem with the 2015 model F-150 now rolling off the assembly line at Ford’s plant in Dearborn, Mich. The new version is 700 pounds lighter, owing to the body consisting almost exclusively of aluminum, instead of heavier steel.

Although the truck’s gas-mileage figures won’t be announced by the company until later this month, AP’s story notes:

The company says the 2015 truck will have from 5 percent to 20 percent better fuel economy than the current version, which gets up to 23 mpg. A figure in the higher end of that range might convince some buyers to switch brands, says Jesse Toprak, chief sales analyst for the car buying site Cars.com.

Fields told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program that better fuel efficiency has been the “biggest customer unmet need, the biggest dissatisfier” in the past.

What about the effect cheap gasoline has on buyer behavior? He was asked whether consumers care less about fuel economy when gasoline is as cheap as it has suddenly become — around $3 a gallon, or even less in some places.

“They’re much smarter these days,” Fields said, adding that prices are volatile. “Our long-term view is, over time, the price of a barrel of oil is gonna go up. It’s a non-renewable resource.”

(Photo: Ford Motor Co.)

Fuel Freedom Staff

Brent crude falls below $80 for first time since 2010

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The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, dropped Wednesday below $80 for the first time since 2010.

As Financial Times points out, the price fell despite OPEC announcing that crude output had declined by about 230,000 barrels a day in October, compared with September.

But markets didn’t perceive this as a deeper change in policy and instead focused on comments made by Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi.

Mr. Naimi broke months of silence on Wednesday to speak publicly about the Gulf nation’s stance on the oil market.

He kept mum on whether Saudi Arabia would cut output to remove surplus oil from the market in response to dramatically lower Brent crude prices. However he dismissed claims that it had triggered a “price war”.

“Talk of a price war is a sign of misunderstanding, deliberate or otherwise, and has no basis in reality,” Mr Naimi said, according to Reuters. “We do not set the oil price. The market sets the prices.”

Fuel Freedom Staff

CNNMoney: $3 gasoline can’t last

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CNNMoney’s Ivana Kottasova has a post today about the International Energy Agency’s warning about oil prices being too low:

It says plunging oil prices will damage the U.S. shale oil boom and cause supply problems down the road.

Oil prices have dropped by 30% in the past four months, putting oil producers under pressure. The low prices could deter investment in production, which will eventually hurt supply, the agency’s chief economist Fatih Birol said.

In its latest outlook, the IEA did say that lower oil prices could could help oil importing countries and their economies and even lead to increased demand.

But higher prices were needed to ensure future energy security.

Fuel Freedom Staff

U.S., China reach deal to cut emissions, but there are questions

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President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a milestone climate-change agreement in Beijing today, under which both countries would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to meet certain targets.

A major goal of the agreement, which still needs to be formalized, is to spur other nations to reduce their own carbon output.

But the deal already is coming under criticism: As The New York Times reports, at least one climate-change expert says China could do more on its end; the country is vowing to cut off peak emissions only at “around” the year 2030.

Republicans in Congress were swift to criticize the deal. As The Hill notes, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement denouncing the deal as potentially harmful to the cheap energy that middle-class families rely on.

“This announcement is yet another sign that the president intends to double down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact for America’s heartland and the country as a whole,” the statement said.

Fuel Freedom Staff

How Much Does ISIS Make on Selling Oil?

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Iraq’s Finance Ministry has said ISIS militants are selling oil for as little as $20 per barrel. Though the global market price is steadily declining, at that price (which is not confirmed) ISIS would be selling its oil extremely cheaply, at a discount of around 75 percent. The global oil market price was around $78 per barrel this Monday, down about 30 percent since June this year.

Read more at: Newsweek