In spite of the EPA and the rest of the greenie weenies in Washington DC, the great American private industry dynamo has triumphed once again. The American entrepreneurs, the progeny of the pioneers that founded this great nation, demonstrate once again that our people say “Yes We Can”, and then they DO it!

From Bloomberg News:

U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today. The country became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2010. The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids.
“The U.S. increase in supply is a very meaningful chunk of oil,” Francisco Blanch, the bank’s head of commodities research, said by phone from New York. “The shale boom is playing a key role in the U.S. recovery. If the U.S. didn’t have this energy supply, prices at the pump would be completely unaffordable.”
Oil extraction is soaring at shale formations in Texas and North Dakota as companies split rocks using high-pressure liquid, a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The surge in supply combined with restrictions on exporting crude is curbing the price of West Texas Intermediate, America’s oil benchmark. The U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, still imported an average of 7.5 million barrels a day of crude in April, according to the Department of Energy’s statistical arm.

To all of our friends in the business, a big THANKS!

This undercover video is brilliant. James O’Keefe creates a sting where he is willing to finance an anti-fracking movie for Hollywood environmentalists. His approach is to use a fictitious character named Muhammad who will only finance the film under the agreement the film’s intent must be to undermine U.S. energy independence.

The Hollywood crew consisting of Ed Begley Jr, Mariel Hemingway, and producers Josh and Rebecca Tickell are totally willing to disguise the source of the funding, and they each agree to conspire to undermine the U.S. Energy Economy.

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“I happen to be one who cheers and supports the Sagebrush Rebellion. Count me in as a rebel.” Ronald Reagan

Watching the drama recently on the Bundy ranch and surrounding public land in Nevada, we may be forgiven if we didn’t remember, or even know, that this is only the most recent skirmish in a years-long battle over local control of public lands.

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The studies -which have previously been highly accurate- now show that electricity prices will soon double.     They have risen 30% since President Obama took office.   The average family electricity bill is anticipated to be $600/monthly, by the end of Obama’s term….

(LA Times) As temperatures plunged to 16 below zero in Chicago in early January and set record lows across the eastern U.S., electrical system managers implored the public to turn off stoves, dryers and even lights or risk blackouts.
A fifth of all power-generating capacity in a grid serving 60 million people went suddenly offline, as coal piles froze, sensitive electrical equipment went haywire and utility operators had trouble finding enough natural gas to keep power plants running.
The wholesale price of electricity skyrocketed to nearly $2 per kilowatt hour, more than 40 times the normal rate. The price hikes cascaded quickly down to consumers. Robert Thompson, who lives in the suburbs of Allentown, Pa., got a $1,250 bill for January.
“I thought, how am I going to pay this?” he recalled. “This was going to put us in the poorhouse.” (more…)

I’ve been reading articles for years now about energy initiatives in Great Britain, in a politically-motivated effort to force green energy on the citizens of the British Isles.

Today The Daily Caller News Foundation published this report:
Energy wars: Britain faces massive blackouts due to green politics (more…)

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Guest posted by:  GruntOfMonteCristo

Fourteen ton spacecraft still has 11 tons of toxic rocket fuel on board…(rollover below)

After a long delay in the posting of the late-Saturday NORAD tracking fit for Phobos-Grunt, internet watchers were beginning to worry that the spacecraft had already broken up in the atmosphere about a day before most predictions.  That vigil ended last night, at around 10:40pm Treehouse time.  One thing that can be concluded from this update, other than the vehicle being intact, is that the orbit decay trends are continuing fairly smoothly.  You probably won’t hear this elsewhere, but that may indicate that the Russian space agency ROSCOSMOS has not been completely straight about the tank material housing the toxic propellants.  If it were aluminum as stated, the tanks likely would have ruptured after more than a day of being engulfed by plasma, especially since the vehicle seems to be flying in a tanks-first attitude.  The propellants would have been scattered by now, dramatically decreasing the mass of the vehicle, and causing a spike in the decay rate.  This apparently hasn’t happened.  The vehicle seems to have held together so far, and that’s a bad sign.  In my opinion, it supports the suspicion that the tanks are really titanium, which will probably survive the reentry all the way to the ground.    (more…)