Secret U.S. Canada Border Deal Hides GMO Takeover: Infowars Nightly News. China’s State-Owned Oil Companies Create Oil Shortage, Analysts Say | China News. By Cheryl ChenEpoch Times Staff Created: November 1, 2011 Last Updated: November 14, 2011 Since refinery oil prices have dropped in China, the two state-owned giants, PetroChina and Sinopec, have been controlling fuel supply, causing shortages at privately owned gas stations.
(AFP/Getty Images) Since oil prices in China dropped in early October, the two state-owned oil giants, PetroChina and Sinopec, are said to be controlling oil supplies, causing privately owned gas stations in many provinces to run out of gas and diesel fuel. By only selling to certain customers and not to the general market, these companies are deliberately creating shortages in order to increase their profits, industry insiders say. Recently, fuel shortages have frequently been reported in eastern China’s Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang Provinces as well as in major central and western cities such as Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Jinan. Out of China’s 95,000 gas stations, 44,000 are privately owned. Ceigh Tolliinger: Rena #spill: Heartbreaking...
Alaskan Natives Speak Out After Obama Greenlights Oil Drilling Off Alaskan Coast | Environment. October 9, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. On October 3, 2011, the Obama administration said it was moving forward with oil-drilling leases off the coast of Alaska issued by the Bush administration in 2008. Yet the Interior Department said it would uphold nearly 500 leases issued in the Chukchi Sea, a victory for oil companies in the battle over Arctic Ocean drilling.
Those opposing the leases say there is no proven clean-up method for an oil spill in such harsh terrain and ice-choked waters, and that the environmental assessment done by oil companies for the area is inadequate. There are also Alaska Natives living off the coast of the Chukchi Sea who worry about how the drilling and its impacts will affect their way of life. Colleen Swan shared some of her thoughts on the oil leases: The oil companies and the government who issues such permits will continue with business as usual and the oil companies will recover. End Oil Speculation. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday introduced legislation to make federal commodity regulators halt excessive oil speculation that has driven up gasoline prices. A provision in last year's Wall Street reform law required federal regulators to clamp down on speculators, but the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has refused to do so.
The senator discussed the legislation in an interview with radio host Ed Schultz. Partly as a result of the failure to enforce the law, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline today is $3.69 a gallon, although supplies are greater and demand lower than two years ago when prices averaged about $2.44 a gallon. The price is $3.83 in Vermont. "We have a responsibility to do everything we can to lower gas prices so that they reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand and bring needed relief to the American people," Sanders said. When speculators push up oil prices "guess who suffers, it's the rest of us," said Sen. Rep. Native American Legend on Mankind. REJECT, Don't Just Reroute Keystone XL Pipeline! Heeding fake concerns about propriety -- instead of real matters of substance. COMMENTARY | September 29, 2011 Faced with some hot data on oil speculation, the media squawked when it should have jumped. After firebrand Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders leaked confidential data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to the Wall Street Journal last month -- data that dramatically illustrated how speculators were dominating the oil futures market during the 2008 spike in oil prices -- other news outlets jumped on the story.
In the worst possible way. The data, which exposed precisely how much Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other Wall Street speculators dominated the crude oil futures market, was a big new lead reporters could have used to further explore the dynamics behind the staggering gas price increase that resulted in a huge transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to the very rich. Another valid response to the story would have been to examine why data this revelatory isn't routinely made public. In the op-ed, James E. Not Above the Law: Revoking Massey Energy's Corporate Charter. How many times can a corporation break the law and continue to exist? Inside the fight to revoke Massey Energy’s corporate charter. posted Sep 20, 2011 Memorial to the miners who died in the Upper Big Branch disaster. A majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices and some politicians like to refer to corporations as “persons.”
Few actual people, though, could get away with years of lawless behavior resulting in injuries and deaths, and the destruction of entire communities and ways of life. To do that takes the protection of a corporate charter and a legal and regulatory system that has succumbed to concentrated money and power. On Friday, two public interest groups asked the attorney general of Delaware to revoke the charter of Massey Energy, a company they call a criminal enterprise.
“Massey Energy operates outside the law,” says Lorelei Scarbro, who lives a few miles from the West Virginia's Upper Big Branch mine, which is owned and operated by Massey Energy. “I know people who have died. Moving Planet DuPage part of global effort to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Organizers are aiming for 350 participants to bike, walk or car pool to the Prairie Path in Villa Park on Saturday, Sept. 24. Why 350? That's the safe number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Advertisement If you go What: Moving Planet DuPageWhen: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Moving Planet DuPage, sponsored by 350.org and the Sierra Club, is part of a global call to action to address concerns about climate change and help reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels. The activities take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Ruggard Gazebo on the Illinois Prairie Path at Ardmore.
Bicyclists can pick up decorative streamers for their handle bars and numbers for their jerseys at stations along the Prairie Path in Warrenville, Winfield, Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Lombard and Elmhurst. Warrenville Mayor David Brummel will lead a group of bikers to Villa Park, leaving at 10 a.m. from the Warrenville gazebo on the Prairie Path. Truths about the Keystone XL Pipeline the U.S. Chamber Does Not Want You to Hear | The U.S. Chamber Doesn't Speak For Me. Israel Prepares to Frack Its Water Supply Exploiting Oil Shale. Wyoming's smog exceeds Los Angeles' due to gas drilling - Green House. Updated 2011-03-09 11:52 AM In this Jan. 22, 2010 photo, antelope graze not far from gas drilling rigs in western Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin, where ozone levels that month exceeded the worst days in major U.S. cities in 2009. Local residents complain of runny eyes, nosebleeds and shortness of breath and say the air is hazy.
Gas industry officials say they're taking steps to reduce air pollution. Rural Wyoming, known for breathtaking vistas, now has worse smog than Los Angeles because of its boom in natural gas drilling. Residents who live near the gas fields in the state's western corner are complaining of watery eyes, shortness of breath and bloody noses, reports the Associated Press. The cause is clearer than the air: local ozone levels recently exceeded the highest levels recorded in the biggest U.S. cities last year. Last year, too, Wyoming's gas-drilling area had days when its ozone levels exceeded Los Angeles' worst for 2009. Yet, the Cowboy State is prospering.
‘Peak Oil’ Takes A Deadly Blow. I've never believed in "peak oil. " (The notion held with religious conviction by many on the left here, that world production is topping out — and will soon slide, plunging the world into economic chaos.) There's plenty of oil, with the constraints, as always, being the cost of recovery. Witness the vast new North Dakota oil shale fields. I regard oil "shortages" as contrivances by the oil companies, allied brokers and middlemen to run up the price. I fill my aging fleet of 50s and 60s era Chryslers with a light heart.
The 59 Imperial ragtop and the 62 Belevedere wagon get around 18 mpg, which is still way ahead of the SUVs. Let me wheel on a very useful report, "Exporting Energy Security: Keystone XL Exposed," issued by Oil Change International, a "clean energy" advocate. By the way, I'm by no means endorsing the rest of Oil Change International's piously trendy "clean energy" platform. There's a ninety-day review period. It's a sound bet that Obama will issue approval.
Six-Megaload Rolling Roadblock & Resident Rage 11-29-11. Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields. Susan Wallace-Babb, wearing the oxygen mask she has to wear almost every day outside, walks with her dog at home in Winnsboro, Texas, on Sept. 12, 2011. (Erin Trieb for ProPublica) The next morning Wallace-Babb was so sick she could barely move. She vomited uncontrollably and suffered explosive diarrhea. A searing pain shot up her thigh. Within days she developed burning rashes that covered her exposed skin, then lesions. As weeks passed, anytime she went outdoors, her symptoms worsened.
Wallace-Babb's doctor began to suspect she had been poisoned. "I took to wearing a respirator and swim goggles outside to tend to my animals," Wallace-Babb said. Wallace-Babb's symptoms mirror those reported by a handful of others living near her ranch in Parachute, Colo., and by dozens of residents of communities across the country that have seen the most extensive natural gas drilling. "In some communities it has been a disaster," said Christopher Portier, director of the U.S. In May, Sen. Union Claims Keystone XL Pipeline's Canadian Permit Expired. Home Page Title: Is Keystone XL's Canadian Permit Expired? The National Energy Board has given TransCanada until Oct. 14 to respond to claims by a major union that its Canadian permit for the pipeline has expired.
CALGARY, Alberta—Canada's energy regulator said on Wednesday it is looking into a complaint that TransCanada Corp's permit to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline within its own borders has expired, adding the prospect of more delays to a project environmentalists hope to block. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which opposes the $7 billion oil pipeline to Texas from Alberta, contends TransCanada had not begun construction of the project by March 11, 2011, as spelled out in the permit the National Energy Board granted in March 2010. Start-up of Keystone XL has been delayed by about a year by an extended review by the U.S. The NEB has requested that TransCanada respond by October 14. "We've had our crew all over that right-of-way. Energy policy: What the frack? HAS Britain hit the jackpot in Blackpool? On September 21st Cuadrilla Resources, the first firm to drill for shale gas in the country, estimated that 200 trillion cubic feet of gas lie in an area near the seaside town in northwest England—nearly 40 times previous projections of all of Britain's shale resources and, in theory, four times as much gas as is still recoverable from the North Sea, according to Oil & Gas UK, a lobby group.
Cuadrilla hopes to drill 400 wells in Lancashire in the next decade. There are obvious reasons to celebrate the prospective hoard. Britain faces an energy shortfall: half of its coal-fired power stations and all but one nuclear facility are due to shut by 2023; imports have increased as North Sea reserves run out. New local supplies should also cut prices: gas plants can be relatively small, cheap and easy to build. Cuadrilla thinks gas will start flowing by 2014. Alas, the finds will not solve Britain's energy problems. State Department Letting Keystone XL Contractor Manage Its Environmental Review. State Department Fountain (photo: Tom Watson) Never mind Solyndra.
That pufffed up bit of White House political interference in agency determinations is small potatoes compared to what the U.S. State Department is doing to corrupt the environmental evaluation of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Brad Johnson at Think Progress reported yesterday that the State Department has farmed out critical agency functions regarding the environmental review to a private contractor that also contracts with TransCanada. TransCanada is one of the Keystone XL pipeline sponsors and the applicant for the permit the project must obtain from the State Department.
The contractor, Cardno ENTRIX boasts on its website that it was contracted by TransCanada to assist the State Department in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and is also managing the EIS process and, shockingly, the public hearings on the EIS for the State Department. Let’s step back and talk about the role of the EIS. Analysis: Jobs and energy security seen swaying U.S. on Keystone. Brendan DeMelle | Keystone XL Lobbyists Web of Corruption Infographic. Keystone XL pipeline corruption investigation | Friends of the Earth.
Proposed Woodside gas hub project has split local communities - Radio National Breakfast - 21 September 2011. To assert its oil claims, China doesn't need a big navy. The Philippines is engaged in a muscle-flexing row with China over oil drilling in the South China Sea, writes Andy Higgins at the Washington Post. So are India and Vietnam, reports Ishaan Thardoor at Time, who wonders whether war is possible between China and India. The South China Sea is one of the world's energy flashpoints, and it's all about who has the rights to explore for a suspected treasure trove of undersea oil and gas. China asserts a historical claim to nearly the entirety of the South and East China seas, but faces competition from Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam (Vietnamese protestors pictured above). No one knows whether there actually is a motherlode of hydrocarbons under the seabed of this island-strewn region.
But there has been sufficient evidence to create a crisis of oil envy. This is not new nor surprising. Indeed in a report issued yesterday, the U.S. China is not saying that it can challenge the U.S. on the seven seas. Even More Reports of Tar Balls, Oil, and Corexit on the Gulf Beaches Right Now | blackoilredblood.com. I’m encouraged to see that local media is at least reporting on the tar balls and tar mats, but I have yet to see any reports about where the fresh oil is coming from and what will be done about it, except from. . . Al Jazeera?
What’s wrong with this picture? Meanwhile, BP continues to run television and radio commercials stating that the Gulf is fresh, clean, and open for business. They are also the U.S. Olympic Team sponsors. Methinks some of those PR millions would be better spent cleaning up the mess or compensating victims of the spill! Oil and Dead Sea Life on the Gulf Coast August-September 2011 by Emma Peel Music and Lyrics by Dr. Hancock County By Coastal Justice Pensacola Beach Florida Panhandle MSBIRDIEBLUE says: “My doctors know I’m positive for the chemicals. Fourchon Beach Video | News | Weather | Sports Tue Sep 13 15:25:11 PDT 2011 Tar mats, oil material discovered on Fourchon Beach Al Jazeera Reports on a Fresh Spill Oil in the Ditches By Laurel Lockamy Corexit on the Beach. The shale gas bonanza -- along with its critics -- comes to England. The shakeup over shale gas -- a newly available fuel that has overturned assumptions about energy, climate-change and geopolitics -- has now stretched across the Atlantic to England.
A drilling company backed by John Browne, the former CEO of BP, says it has discovered the gas equivalent of up to 35 billion barrels of oil. In oil, a find of 1 billion barrels is regarded as a supergiant. Until now, the United States has been the epicenter of the shale gas disruption. This gas is locked into barely porous shale rock a mile and more beneath the surface of the Earth. Over the last few years, drillers have extracted the gas using a method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking -- injecting a mixture of water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into the rock -- which has produced a bonanza of new supplies in the United States.
Estimates are that it is sufficient to meet current U.S. consumption for a century. Yet with the shale gas comes a backlash of local politics. America and oil: declining together? ISS - Climate-science contrarian Roy Spencer's oil-industry ties. Crisis: Who is Pulling the Strings? (Daniel Estulin, European Parliament, 01.DEC.2011) Shell's arctic drilling faces opposition. ‘Peak Coal’ comes to Appalachia. WhoWhatWhy: "pipeline fm "defense "indu. New Zealand navy joins oil spill cleanup [Al Jazeera, Doha, Qatar] Science Lags As Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields. Alaska to BP to Conoco Count On Shell’s Bounty From Arctic Oil. Oil sands environmental impact unknown: Canada audit. GLI_KeystoneXL_Reportpdf. Coal Company Massey Energy Thinks They're Above the Law -- Let's Prove Them Wrong. Gulf spill blamed on poor management decisions. Huskers cut off deal with TransCanada. Scottish nuclear leak 'will never be completely cleaned up' | Environment.
When you talk too much for Twitter. NY Times: Oil Companies Operating on 'Honor System' When It Comes to Pipeline Safety. Proposed Keystone pipeline poses threat to Midwest water supplies. Hydrofracking Leases Subject of Regrets in New York. Exporting Energy Security: Keystone XL Exposed. Dear Big Coal: You're Not Above the Law.
Traffic fumes can trigger heart attacks, say researchers | Environment.