gasoline

For the first time since at least the 1940s, the United States is exporting more oil and petroleum than it imports, spurring economic growth.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Rep. David B. McKinley of West Virginia recently introduced a congressional resolution stating a carbon-dioxide tax would harm the economy and therefore should not be enacted.

World fund managers predict a fall in the value of oil companies.

John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal present episode #120 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the Cascade Policy Institute, Senator James Lankford, Americans for Tax Reform and The Heartland Institute.

Energy has long lost media attention; so we no longer think about ways we use energy and its effect on national policy or our pocketbooks. However, problems of energy supply we deemed a crisis in the 1970’s are still with us. U. S. warships still protect Persian Gulf supply of Middle East oil which accounts for one-quarter world’s oil production.

As Americans hit the road during summer driving season, one thing that’s probably not on their minds is how the maintenance of those roads gets funded.

In today’s edition of the Heartland Daily Podcast, Dr. Keli’i Akina, President of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, joins host H. Sterling Burnett to talk about the efforts to ban gasoline and diesel vehicles in the state of Hawaii and more.

“We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices,” President Obama told an audience four years ago at the University of Miami. Like this year, it was an election year and Obama was running for re-election. Later in his speech, he added: “anybody who tells you that we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or just isn’t telling you the truth.”

Environmentalists like a good crisis. Spreading fear is a proven fundraising technique—with manmade climate change as the fear du jour. But, back in 2005, the “looming crisis,” according to the Kansas Sierra Club, was the end of cheap oil. The post concludes: “The end of cheap oil, followed by the end of cheap natural gas, threatens to cripple strong economies and devastate weak ones.” The author posits: “The world burns oil faster than new oil is discovered.”

As predicted, President Barack Obama on Friday, November 6, 2015, rejected the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada in a victory for environmentalists who campaigned against the project for more than seven years. His reasons include protection of the environment, no “lasting” economic benefits for the U.S., and the current low price of petroleum.

Sustainability issues have been at the center of public discussion in Ohio since 2014, when the state became the first in the nation to freeze its renewable energy mandate. Discussions of state mandates for wind and solar power and policies requiring the use of ethanol in fuels are common in statehouses around the country.

I would like to thank Crain’s Chicago Business for the opportunity to respond to the article published on September 10th: “Is U.S. commitment to renewable fuels waning?” Frankly, the article was either poorly researched or intellectually dishonest to an incredible degree. Contrary to the author’s claims, the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) has been a failure in almost every respect. Rather than mandating more ethanol be used, we should realize ethanol is a corncob pipedream, and do away with RFS, also known as the ethanol mandate, once and for all.

In a recent article promoting his Protect Our Public Lands Act, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) argues the government should ban hydraulic fracturing on public lands. Pocan cites concerns about potential environmental and economic impacts of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” and raises concerns about fracking in national parks. The article has critical shortcomings regarding the environmental and economic impacts of fracking, and it misrepresents oil and gas activity in national parks.