What's The Buzz Archives - Page 299 of 302

Opponents of Keystone XL encouraged by oil’s decline

October 27, 2014/in What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

Bloomberg has a story on how environmentalists and other opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have new momentum because oil has now dropped to around $80 a barrel. When the Canada-to-Gulf of Mexico pipeline was first floated in 2008, oil prices were around $100 a barrel.

“At $75, a government analysis said producers may be discouraged from developing Canada’s oil sands without pipelines like Keystone.”

The pipeline remains a contentious issue, and the U.S. government has repeatedly delayed action. Opponents are hoping that if Republicans take control of the Senate in next month’s elections, the two-month window between Election Day and the swearing-in of the next Congress will allow them a final chance to kill the project.

There’s also the issue of whether the pipeline will be good, bad or indifferent for consumers.

The battle between gas and electric cars isn’t new

October 27, 2014/in Environment, Featured, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

In the late 1800s, the Studebaker company was the world’s largest manufacturer of wagons and buggies. When the company began making automobiles, they chose to power their engines with electricity, not gasoline. Read more at: Tulsa World

Federal court orders DOT to respond to Sierra Club’s unsafe tank-car lawsuit

October 27, 2014/in Environment, Featured, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

A Federal court has ordered the Department of Transportation to respond to a lawsuit filed by three environmental organizations — Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and ForestEthics — in which the parties asked the court to order DOT to respond to the organizations’ request for an emergency order banning the use of DOT-111 tanks cars for the shipment of crude oil by rail. Read more at: Breaking Energy

Politico lets environmentalist respond to BP op-ed

October 26, 2014/in What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

Earlier this week Politico, the online politics magazine, allowed an environmentalist with extensive knowledge of the British Petroleum/Deepwater Horizon disaster respond to BP’s widely criticized op-ed published on the magazine last week. Kara Lankford of Ocean Conservancy says: “The full effects of 210 million gallons of oil on the Gulf cannot be easily dismissed …”

Read the full story on Politico.

Investor: If oil drops to $70, ‘bye, bye fracking’

October 24, 2014/in Economy, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

Other analysts and experts have been more circumspect about what will happen to U.S. shale-oil drilling operations is the price of crude continues to drop, from the current level of $80 a barrel. But bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach is more blunt:

“I think it’s going to $70 and if it does, it’s bye, bye fracking. Goodbye all of the great job creation from fracking because fracking becomes too expensive if you can buy oil at $70 a barrel,” Gundlach said on Wednesday at ETF.com’s Inside Fixed Income Conference.

Read the whole story on CNN Money.

(Photo credit: CNBC)

Report: ISIS keeps making money from oil despite airstrikes

October 24, 2014/in National Security, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

Islamic State, or ISIS, continues to earn millions from ill-gotten crude oil sold on the black market, according to a story by the Reuters news service.

ISIS is “still extracting and selling oil in Syria and has adapted its trading techniques despite a month of strikes by U.S.-led forces aimed at cutting off this major source of income for the group, residents, oil executives and traders say.”

This report largely contradicts a story last week by Bloomberg, which has done extensive reporting on ISIS’ finances.

(Photo credit: Shutterstock)

1 out of 3 people in Los Angeles lives within a mile of an oil well

October 23, 2014/in Economy, Environment, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

Forget those iconic palm trees. Oil rigs have become just as much a part of the Los Angeles landscape as the towering trees that line the city’s sun-drenched boulevards. Los Angeles County is home to 6,065 oil and gas wells, and one in three Angelenos lives within a mile of a drilling rig, according to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council released Wednesday.

Experts say average gas price could dip below $3

October 23, 2014/in Economy, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

It was only in July 2013 that AAA’s Chris Plaushin told a Senate committee: “The days of a national pump price below $3 is probably a thing of the past.”

Well, an unforeseen drop in the price of crude oil the past few months has sent the price of refined gasoline down so fast that the average price per gallon could soon fall below that $3 threshold, Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com, told The Christian Science Monitor.

“It’s conceivable that the national average could get down to $2.95. … Exactly when would that occur? That’s tougher to guess. It could be before Thanksgiving.”

Will U.S. take steps to keep the ‘Shale Revolution’ going?

October 22, 2014/in Economy, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

At least one observer wonders whether it’s time to start protecting up the burgeoning U.S. oil industry. Chip Register, managing director of Sapient Global Markets, writes in Forbes:

“One possibility would be for the government to level the playing field with OPEC and others by introducing tariffs on cheap foreign oil imports, with the goal of driving separation between the North American energy economy and the chaos of the international markets. While this may seem extreme, it may be necessary to protect this young yet highly strategic industry from going extinct.”

The global price of oil is off about 25 percent since June, and it’s already having an impact on U.S. drilling operations. As Real Clear Energy’s Nick Cunningham noted in a post Wednesday, there are now 1,590 active oil rigs in the country, the lowest level in six weeks.

Drilling in shale-oil formations, largely using hydraulic fracturing, helped the U.S. reach 8.95 million barrels of oil per day this month, the highest level in 29 years. But as a story in Bloomberg points out, that growth trajectory is difficult to maintain:

“Oil production from shale drilling, which bores horizontally through hard rock, declines more than 80 percent in four years, more than three times faster than conventional, vertical wells, according to the IEA [International Energy Agency].”

Shale-oil production is relatively expensive compared with imported oil, so it won’t take much of a drop in global prices to make some domestic operations unprofitable. The Bloomberg story quotes Philip Verleger (an economic adviser to President Ford and director of energy policy for President Carter), who says that if oil falls to $70 a barrel, production in the Bakken shale formation could plummet 28 percent to 800,000 barrels a day; in July the production level was 1.1 million barrels a day.

The notion Register raised isn’t new: In early October, Ed Hirs, a lecturer in energy economics at the University of Houston, touted a paper he’d written suggesting that the U.S. government intervene to restrict oil imports and protect U.S. producers.

“We need to act in our own best interest,” Hirs said at an energy symposium, according to Forbes. America’s oil growth is so strong “that we can de-link from the global market.”

Court upholds EPA’s E15 waiver

October 22, 2014/in Environment, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom Staff

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has again ruled that outside groups don’t have legal standing to file a lawsuit against the EPA’s waiver allowing E15 into the marketplace.

E15 — a blend of up to 15 percent ethanol — was allowed by the EPA waiver four years ago, for all vehicles made in model year 2001 or newer.

The waiver had been challenged by the American Petroleum Institute and the Engine Products Group.

The court had previously ruled against a similar lawsuit filed by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, deciding the group also didn’t have standing.