A Free-Market Energy Blog

Domestic Oil & Gas Production: America's Hadrian Wall

By Gary Hunt -- September 15, 2011

Hadrian, the third of the “five good emperors” of Rome, ruled from 117 to 138 in a time of consolidation of the Roman Empire.  Best known for building Hadrian’s Wall, which marked the northern most reach of the Roman Empire, his policy focus was securing the Empire by leveraging its strengths rather than overextending its reach. Hadrian had a disciplined attention to detail and focused on the infrastructure needed not only to defend the Empire’s territory but leverage its resource potential and revenue growth. 

Today’s economy is marked by uncertainty and volatility at home and abroad. This uncertainty is causing businesses to hoard cash—at last estimate about $1.4 trillion worth.

We have a huge federal deficit, a broken housing situation, and looming costs for unsustainable entitlement programs promised for generations by spend-now, pay-later politicians. …

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Twenty More Gulf Rigs at Risk: 'Mikhail Obama, Tear Down This Wall'

By Kevin Mooney -- September 14, 2011

[Editor note: Mr. Mooney’s Collateral Damage: Lost Rigs from Obama Obstructionism appeared last month at MasterResource. His reports originally appear at the Pelican Post, Louisiana news and commentary from the Pelican Institute for Public Policy.]

Up to 20 oil rigs could leave the Gulf of Mexico, in addition to the 11 that have already left, since the Obama Administration imposed a moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling in May 2010, a new report from FBR Capital Markets has concluded.

Unless the permitting process is accelerated, FBR analysts anticipate that anywhere from eight to 20 rigs could depart the deep waters within the Gulf. The moratorium was imposed in response to the explosion of British Petroleum’s (BP) Macondo oil well on April 20 of last year. The accident resulted in the death of 11 workers and caused an estimated five million barrels of crude oil to spill into the Gulf.…

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Response to David Appell: Is Climate-Policy Activism Merited?

By -- September 13, 2011

[Editor note: Marlo Lewis’s extensive rebuttal to Scientific American writer David Appell in the comments section to yesterday’s post (Andrew Dessler Challenges Rick Perry: How Should Perry Respond?) is presented as a full post today.]

Yesterday, Rob Bradley excerpted portions of a post I wrote last Friday on whether Gov. Rick Perry’s remarks about global warming at the GOP candidates forum in California were “anti-science.” My objective was to immunize the candidates — and the public generally — against a rhetorical trick that Al Gore and other alarmists have been using to great effect for years.

Alarmists would have us believe that all they have to do is establish that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, and then everything else they say follows as night follows day. If mankind is mainly or even partly responsible for the warmth of recent decades, then, supposedly, we are in the midst of a “planetary emergency” that “threatens the survival of civilization and the habitability of the Earth” (Al Gore’s phrase).…

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Andrew Dessler Challenges Rick Perry: How Should Perry Respond?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 12, 2011
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"The Skeptical Environmentalist": A Ten Year Appreciation (Bjørn Lomborg vindication of the late Julian Simon continues to resonate today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 9, 2011
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Obama Speech Shocker: "Keynesianism, Malthusianism Have Compromised My Presidency" (Credits IHS seminars for his intellectual turnaround)

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Free Market Recommendations for Congress & Obama (oil and gas prominent in potential job bonanza)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 8, 2011
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Rapid Sea Level Rise? To the Contrary, Nature Says

By Chip Knappenberger -- September 7, 2011
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Vermont Environmentalists: 'Time Out' to Industrial Wind (Whoa moment in the Green Mountain State)

By Sherri Lange -- September 6, 2011
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Capitalism Vindicated: The Real History of Standard Oil (Part V: Lessons)

By -- September 2, 2011
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