The price of crude oil touched its highest level in nearly 11 years on Wednesday amid the ongoing Ukraine crisis which has roiled energy markets.
The WTI index, the U.S. benchmark index, surged to $112.09 per barrel, its highest level since May 2011, early Wednesday before receding near $108 per barrel, marketplace data showed. The global Brent crude benchmark approached $114 per barrel then dropped below $111 a barrel.
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The top House Republican on a key oversight subcommittee has pushed a series of conflict-of-interest probes into the Biden administration over its ties to the renewable energy industry.
Republican South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, the ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee on Environment, has probed leadership in the White House, Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demanding accountability for potential conflicts of interests since President Joe Biden took office more than a year ago. While committee Democrats haven’t cooperated with the investigations, Norman and Oversight Ranking Member James Comer have forged ahead.
“The people in the administrations have no regard for the office that they hold,” Norman told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.
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The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Tuesday the release of millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to combat soaring gas prices.
The DOE approved the release of 13.4 million barrels from its SPR, marking the second-largest exchange from the reserve and bringing the total amount of oil released from the cache to almost 40 million barrels.
Exchange contracts for the released oil have were awarded to seven companies. President Joe Biden authorized a plan in November 2021 to release 50 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR in a coordinated effort with China, India, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. to combat surging gas prices and assist in the COVID-19 pandemic recovery.
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The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Thursday that it would begin hiring 1,000 employees for its so-called Clean Energy Corps which will be tasked with fighting climate change.
The new climate unit will be composed of both current DOE employees and the 1,000 recruits, according to the announcement. The Clean Energy Corps was created by the recently-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, which appropriated $62 billion to the DOE for accelerating the nation’s transition to renewables.
“This is an open call for all Americans who are passionate about taking a proactive role in tackling the climate crisis and want to join the team that is best positioned to lead this transformative work,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a message to applicants.
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A large group of House Republicans penned a letter to top Biden administration officials Friday, urging them not to ban U.S. crude oil exports.
The GOP lawmakers, led by Texas Reps. Roger Williams and August Pfluger, said the move would be a “catastrophic mistake” and further exacerbate high energy prices in the letter addressed to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The congressmen noted that a previous crude oil export ban had been opposed by Democrats and Republicans alike.
“President Biden’s war on American energy continues with his Administration’s latest discussions to reinstate the export ban on crude oil, which was repealed in 2015 on a bipartisan vote,” Williams said in a statement.
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Expanding U.S. nuclear power — an energy source that many environmentalists and lawmakers oppose — could be the most reliable way to achieve a carbon-free electricity grid, according to experts.
Nuclear energy is considered a renewable energy source because it produces zero emissions through fission, the process of splitting uranium atoms, according to the Department of Energy. Currently, nuclear accounts for about 9% of total U.S. energy consumption, slightly less than all other renewable energy sources combined and coal, government data showed.
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As the supply chain crisis continues to worsen, Americans can expect to pay higher energy costs in order to maintain heating in the coming winter, says Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, Granholm said “this is going to happen…it will be more expensive this year than last year.”
While Granholm claimed that “we are in a slightly beneficial position…relative to Europe,” she nonetheless admitted that the United States has “the same problem in fuels that the supply chains have, which is that the oil and gas companies are not flipping the switch as quickly as the demand requires.”
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The U.S. has reduced emissions more than any other country in the world despite former President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Climate Accords.
“In the last 10 years, the emissions reduction in the United States has been the largest in the history of energy,” International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol said at a Department of Energy press conference in 2019. “Almost 800 million tons. This is a huge decline of emissions.”
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The Democrats’ reconciliation package will likely include more than $500 billion worth of climate provisions, more than the entire Department of Energy budget, the White House said, according to The Hill.
The budget represents an opportunity for “historic investment in climate change,” White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said during an event hosted by The Hill on Tuesday evening. The likely price tag for climate programs included in the bill is likely to fall somewhere between $500 billion and $555 billion, Axios previously reported.
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The U.S. Justice Department unsealed a criminal complaint Sunday alleging that a Navy engineer and his wife repeatedly tried to pass secrets about U.S. nuclear submarines to a foreign power in a plot thwarted by an undercover FBI agent.
Jonathan Toebbe, 42, and his wife Diana, 45, both of Annapolis, Md,. were arrested Saturday in West Virginia by the FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service on espionage-related charges of violating the Atomic Energy Act, officials said.
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Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso asked the Department of Energy’s watchdog to investigate Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s continued involvement with an electric car company.
Sen. John Barrasso, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, wrote a letter of concern to Department of Energy Inspector General Teri Donaldson Tuesday, warning of the potential conflict of interest. Barrasso said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm continues to own millions of dollars worth of stock in Proterra, a company that has a direct stake in her department’s work.
“Proterra, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of electric buses, batteries, and charging stations — and has been described as such by officials within the Biden Administration,” Barrasso wrote.
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Former Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry is preparing to step down as the Department of Energy secretary at the end of the year, Politico reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources.
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The Department of Energy has announced an investment of just under $9.2 million into Ohio’s Davis-Besse power plant, which was prevented from going into bankruptcy thanks to a state government bailout.
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by Riley Walters The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. is often compared to a black box. Investors may be aware of what it does, but few know what really goes on inside. The nine members of the committee, drawn from various federal agencies, are in charge of reviewing foreign investments to determine whether or not they may pose a threat to U.S. national security. Glimpses of the committee’s activities are largely limited to what’s reported in its annual publications and the occasional breaking news story – such as the recent report that the committee wants Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. Ltd. to sell its dating application, Grindr. It can be difficult to keep up with the committee given limitations on the information that is shared publicly – especially given its obligation to protect investors’ proprietary information as well as information sensitive to U.S. national security. Still, the limited information that becomes available can help inform investors of potential hurdles and costs they may face when seeking the committee’s blessings. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] Over the last few years, the number of…
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by Michael Bastasch The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) broke a two-year partisan deadlock Thursday night to approve a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Louisiana. Top Department of Energy (DOE) officials said this was a major breakthrough that will alleviate a growing problem for U.S. energy producers — a lack of export infrastructure. “We have been promoting US energy around the world and today’s decision by the FERC is a very important one,” DOE Deputy Secretary Dan Brouillette told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. The Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal is the first such project to get FERC approval in two years. Republican FERC commissioners Neil Chatterjee, the chairman and Bernard McNamee worked with Democrat Cheryl LaFleur to hash out an agreement to get her support. Chatterjee and McNamee needed LaFleur’s vote to approve Calcasieu Pass, which they secured after working out a new approach to account for greenhouse gas emissions from the export facility. “This is a tremendous breakthrough,” DOE Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes told TheDCNF. “We hope it will serve as an analytical template going forward.” Once complete, Calcasieu Pass terminal will export up 12 million metric tons of LNG…
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by Tim Pearce Multiple federal agencies are pushing agenda-driven climate science on their websites, according to The Heartland Institute. The Trump administration has taken a public stance supporting fossil fuels and questioning the scientific “consensus” of climate change research. Parts of federal websites should be overhauled or taken down completely to conform to the administration’s stance on climate change and fossil fuel energy production, Heartland says. Trump administration agencies continue to push “climate alarmism” and publish “propaganda” on their websites despite President Donald Trump’s position on climate change and the use of fossil fuels, according to The Heartland Institute. Heartland researchers audited the websites of federal agencies for information that seemed to contradict the public stance of President Donald Trump and his administration’s agenda to expand American energy production, including fossil fuel production. Heartland researchers found numerous examples of federal agencies pushing an anti-fossil fuel narrative, according to sections of a draft report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Federal executive branch websites are littered with political propaganda instead of objective science,” Heartland senior environment and energy policy fellow James Taylor said in a statement to TheDCNF. “To the extent scientific issues are discussed, they are presented in a…
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By Printus LeBlanc The ethanol lobby and corn farmers are teaming up to keep the government mandated gravy train flowing into their bank accounts. After a deal was reached between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), several Senators, and oil refiners regarding the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the deal suddenly collapsed when it got to the White House. The deal made sense for everyone involved, so the question must be asked, what happened and why? The RFS is a government rule, established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The rule mandates renewable fuels, mostly corn ethanol, be blended with gasoline. Of course, this became an instant cash cow for corn farmers and ethanol refiners. The government had just mandated anyone that drives a vehicle must use their product. But just like Obamacare didn’t do what it was supposed to do, the RFS didn’t do what it was supposed to do. The first problem is ethanol efficiency. According to the Department of Energy, E10 and E15 get 3 to 5 percent fewer miles per gallon than regular gasoline. E85, the flex fuel, gets a horrible 15 to 27 percent fewer miles per gallon. If the purpose of the RFS was to increase…
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