From Benny Peiser: Global Warming Policy Foundation

Global investors are once again setting their sights on chaos in the Middle East. Even though Egypt is a minor player on the oil production front, the crisis-ravaged country plays a key role in the energy market because it controls two pivotal transit points: the Suez Canal and the Sumed Pipeline. While a disruption to the free flow of oil through Egypt appears unlikely at this point, investors are clearly monitoring the latest developments in Cairo for signs the situation is spiraling any further out of control or could spread to neighboring countries. --Matt Egan, Fox Business, 20 August 2013

Since the 1970s the developed world has shuddered whenever there has been a Middle East crisis, the latest involving fears of how an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would impact the Straits of Hormuz, the M4 bottleneck of the ocean-going tanker world. The biggest impact of shale will be on existing oil and gas producers, which is probably why one jittery Gulf state recently sponsored the trailers for Hollywood’s latest example of anti-fracking alarmism — starring Matt Damon — and why the subject gets such negative treatment in the Russian media. Shale gas is not just about affordable energy and growth. It’s about reducing dependence on the Middle East. -–Michael Burleigh, The Times, 26 August 2013

Lane Energy Poland is extracting some 8,000 cubicmetres of shale gas per day at a test well in northern Poland, an amount unseen in Europe to date, the Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper reported on Wednesday. “This is very good news for Poland and European oil geology,” Piotr Wozniak, deputy environment minister and Poland’s chief geologist, was quoted as saying. He said the results should encourage other companies to speed up work on shale gas exploration. --Reuters, 28 August 2013

Britain’s coalition Government is heading for a bitter new row over green energy as senior Tories seek to unpick carbon targets which stand in the way of Britain building more than 40 gas-fired power stations. Ministers struck an agreement in 2011 to reduce emissions by half by the mid-2020s, compared with 1990 levels, as part of Britain’s attempt to cut its share of global warming. But George Osborne, chancellor, secured a potential opt-out if a December 2013 review by the Climate Change Committee proved that Britain was moving faster than the rest of the EU. Mr Osborne privately hopes to use the results of the review to unpick the carbon budget, which he fears could undermine manufacturing and prevent the construction of a new fleet of gas-burning power stations. --Jim Pickard, Financial Times, 28 August 2013

Plans for future wind farms in Britain could be in jeopardy after a United Nations legal tribunal ruled that the UK Government acted illegally by denying the public decision-making powers over their approval and the “necessary information” over their benefits or adverse effects. The new ruling, agreed by a United Nations committee in Geneva, calls into question the legal validity of any further planning consent for all future wind-farm developments based on current policy, both onshore and offshore. --Margareta Pagano, The Independent, 28 August 2013
What makes the row over fracking so absurd is that it is being conducted by the greenies as if this is some highly dangerous new technology which has never been properly tested. The whole point about fracking is that it has already been demonstrated at thousands of sites across America to work perfectly safely, without harming the environment, and to such effect that it has more than halved US energy bills and is helping more than anything else to put the US economy back on the road to recovery. That is why the greens so hate it, because it makes a nonsense of all their scare stories about fossil fuels becoming too expensive to use; it shows up more clearly than ever the ludicrous cost of their pitifully inadequate “renewables”; and it has even slashed US “carbon emissions”, for what that is worth, to their levels of 30 years ago. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 25 August 2013

Interestingly, shale-gas production has been a major factor in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, which hit an 18-year low last year for total emissions, and fell to almost a 50-year low on a per-capita basis. Will environmentalists and their supporters in Washington and some states continue to oppose shale-gas production? Probably. But in the national discussion on fracking, we can’t ignore the significant economic and environmental benefits that the shale revolution is providing, and will continue to provide to the U.S. economy. --Mark J. Perry, The Detroit News, 26 August 2013

The ongoing “shale revolution” in U.S. oil and gas production could prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to institute economic and political reforms that would ultimately undermine his regime, experts say. Putin largely relied on oil and gas production to fuel economic expansion during his first two presidential terms from 2000 to 2008. Hydrocarbons accounted for half of Russia’s GDP growth since 2000. However, there are signs that Russia’s energy dominance is increasingly vulnerable. Russian energy giant Gazprom has lost more than $280 billion in market value since 2008. Experts on the country’s economy and governance attribute the decline to U.S. investment in the innovative oil and gas extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which dampened U.S. demand for imports and exerted downward pressure on global gas prices and Gazprom’s profits. --Daniel Wiser, The Washington Free Beacon, 14 August 2013