Outrage over the US government’s broad harvest of communications data is like antioil rhetoric from activists who drive sport-utility vehicles.

The approach of Iran’s presidential election brings to mind a managerial strategy routinely employed in the West known as “buy-in.”

In a change of market strategy with geopolitical implications, Russia is increasing exports of crude oil to China at the expense of other Pacific Basin importers.

Sooner or later, the US government must allow general export of crude oil. Sooner would be better than later.

“Environmentalists don’t want safer shale gas. They want no shale gas.”

A US carbon tax has fallen subject to preemptive assault in a study released by the George C. Marshall Institute.

Tension is easing on two still-dodgy fronts in a mostly stable country supremely important in the logistics and geopolitics of energy.

The international oil and gas industry escaped a legal hazard on Apr. 17 when the US Supreme Court narrowed the geographic scope of an antique law on civil infractions involving noncitizens.

A pioneer of climate alarm has turned to full-time warfare against fossil energy.

Environmental pressure groups responded predictably to a Mar. 29 pipeline accident in Arkansas. “With stakes this high,” the Sierra Club said after crude oil leaked into a neighborhood near Little Rock, “there is no excuse for the White House to approve Keystone XL.”

Reemergence of an erstwhile reformer in a country institutionally resistant to reform adds an interesting note to the centrally choreographed politics of Iran.

Message to opponents of US exports of LNG: Price volatility is part of the energy business. Deal with it.

The state-of-the-union speech Feb. 12 smothered whispers of hope on energy policy with shrieks of delusional ambition.

An unseasonal but temporary increase in the price of gasoline has captured the attention of news media in the US, but regulations under development that could boost the price permanently have escaped notice.

Forecasts of global demand for oil, always sensitive to economic fate, weather, and geopolitical surprise, are especially fragile this year. Economic growth depends extraordinarily much on another wild variable: politics.

President Barack Obama delivered a whopper in a Jan. 14 press conference during which he pressed his campaign to marginalize political opposition.

Political opposition to LNG exports by the US brings to mind monumental energy mistakes of the past...

The regulatory activism for which Lisa P. Jackson long will be remembered hit full stride in her first year as administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Failure to articulate core belief lost the Republican Party a presidential election last month and now disarms it on fiscal policy.

A surge in natural gas production in North America and regulatory assaults in the US can give the impression that coal’s future is grim. Not so, says Energy-Facts.org.

With its iterative approach to regulation, the US Environmental Protection Agency is looking anew at air-emission standards rejected in court.

Four more years for US President Barack Obama means 4 more years of regulatory siege on the oil and gas industry.

Much about the price of crude oil this year has had to do with Iran, but Iran has to do with much beyond the price of oil.

In the Oct. 16 debate, US President Barack Obama clarified his energy hopes instructively.

Fact-checkers who can’t keep facts straight perform no service.

Many people never would cheat to make easy money. Regulation must account for the people who would and do.

The economies of two countries crucial to oil-demand growth are cooling and, in one case, might be worse than indicated by official data.

Believe it or not, support exists in the US for an energy policy that balances core objectives.

Approaches to green energy are diverging on opposing sides of the Atlantic as the incumbent US administration presses expensively forward and European governments come to their senses.

The document announcing new fuel-economy standards for US cars and light trucks contains a quiet observation that shrieks about problems of renewable-fuel mandates.

In the era of Twitter and Facebook, with information increasingly flashy and decreasingly illuminating, fine distinctions too often yield to the blur. The oil and gas industry still must keep pressing for clarification in two issues related to transparency.

Energy represents a large piece of a gaudy policy mosaic likely to influence the US presidential election in November more than might be apparent at this stage of the race.

Although new oil is much in the news these days, old oil represents big potential worth similar attention.

Finding a politically accommodating route to market for Alberta bitumen is becoming even more difficult than producing the abundant stuff.

Has hydrogen reemerged as a fuel of the day in American politics?

To the oil and gas industry, a political spat over outsourcing must seem especially ironic.

The asterisk fixed to oil market analysis has asserted itself again. Twice.

The oil and gas industry can relate to confusion over what constitutes a tax, which figured prominently in the historic June 28 decision by the US Supreme Court upholding health-care reform.

Because its biggest energy problem is price rather than supply, the US military should concentrate on lowering consumption rather than developing renewable sources.

You might have a green job and not know it.

With annual spending by the US government approaching $4 trillion and the federal deficit exceeding a quarter of that, why worry about an extra trillion bucks or two in regulatory costs?

Some arguments refute themselves with surface nonsense evident to anyone. A glittering example is the recurring argument that operators buy federal oil and gas leases in order to do nothing with them.

New job numbers, crackling with political context, suggest a potent move President Barack Obama might make in his bid for reelection—but almost certainly will not.

On its way down the proverbial slippery slope toward economic statism, Argentina has laid claim to oil and gas assets worth, oh, $18 billion or so.

Iran raised the stakes of an important meeting about its nuclear plans by insulting Arabs and picking a new fight over islands in the Strait of Hormuz.

If they were not in an election year, lawmakers might be fixing America’s fuel ethanol wreck instead of skewering consumers and hiding the damage.

An eternal mistake in the oil and gas business is believing some current trend will last forever. The ruinous mistake is betting money on it.

In service to the quality of discourse, the oil and gas industry should fall silent on energy independence and hope that others who converse about energy recognize the consequent boost to public enlightenment and do likewise.

Justifiably steaming over US inaction on the Keystone XL pipeline, members of Canada’s Conservative Party are counterattacking what they see as sovereignty incursions from the south.

When people are confident enough about their righteousness to make a public display of it, should they not also be right?

The oil sands industry of Canada has taken an important step toward refuting the “dirty oil” claims of environmental activism.

Political conflict over hydraulic fracturing turns on a semantic point crucial but perhaps not evident to the oil and gas industry.

As Congress begins its latest effort to choreograph energy choice, Americans should lock their cash drawers.

Perils linked to Iran are escalating so rapidly that an observer needs a scorecard to gauge market effects.

The trading in units of permission to emit carbon dioxide is supposed to be a market-based response to global warming. It’s really politics.

In battles over hydraulic fracturing and the Keystone XL pipeline, the oil and gas industry must never underestimate the resolve of its opponents. Groups hostile to oil and gas know they have much to lose.

Fidel Castro has raised his revolutionary voice against a well-completion method revolutionizing production of oil and natural gas.

From the perspective of the oil and gas business, campaigns by liberal commentators to make President Barack Obama look politically conservative seem otherworldly.

Because the world needs renewable energy, renewable energy needs a new lifecycle.

The US needs an election before the next round of energy legislation. Congress, with its consumption mandates and production subsidies, has done enough damage already.

The European Union has forfeited credibility needed elsewhere with forays last month into drilling and diction.

So far, oil and gas companies have been strangely absent from Democratic Party explanations for why the congressional super committee failed.

National obsessions blocking work vital to US energy supply apply just as logically to struggles against crime on the US-Mexico border. It’s just a matter of spreading fear.

By definition, only one item on a list of bad attributes can be the worst.

As the US switches off Daylight Saving Time, Americans should wonder why Congress in 2005 didn’t just fiddle with clocks and call it a day. Lawmakers instead reshaped energy policy in ways that haven't been good for crude oil and natural gas.