Texas City plant churns out fuel

Fuel production resumed at BP’s Texas City refinery over the weekend, more than half a year after the London-based company shuttered it in anticipation of Hurricane Rita’s landfall. In February, the company said it planned to restart processing at about 200,000 barrels of oil a day chron

Rapid Switch From Oil To Coal Possible?

Suppose we really are hitting or getting close to hitting peak oil. An obvious question comes to mind: How long would it take to scale up Coal-To-Gas (CTG) and Coal-To-Liquid (CTL) plants? The answer to that question depends on many factors. One of those factors is how rapidly plants could be built that would do […]

Poll: Americans Accept Fossil-fuel Link To Global Warming

A new national opinion poll on environmental issues shows two-thirds of Americans agree with most scientists that global warming is being caused by carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The poll revealed one seeming contradiction in public attitudes about the environment. Despite agreement on the threat of global warming, Americans are unconvinced […]

GE Invests in OPD, Supplier of World

GE greencarcongress

GM Continues E85 Push with 20 More Stations in Michigan

General Motors continued to focus on its national ethanol campaign (earlier post) with plans for the addition of approximately 20 new E85 ethanol fueling sites in the southeast Michigan area through a collaborative partnership with Meijer and CleanFUEL USA. greencarcongress

New Toroidal Internal Combustion Engine

A California inventor is developing a new compact and highly efficient enginegreencarcongress

Tilting at Windmills

But to those who dislike them, the modern wind turbine is worse than ugly. It is an aesthetic blight, a source of noise pollution, a murderer of birds and bats. As for the still-young wind industry, it is “an environmental plunderer, with its hirelings and parasites using a few truths and the politics of wishful […]

Shell pioneers solar-powered gas

The world’s first gas platform powered solely by wind and solar energy has begun production, in a breakthrough for the offshore industry in low-cost exploitation of marginal fields. Royal Dutch Shell will announce today that it has begun pumping gas from its Cutter platform in the UK southern North Sea. The tiny platform, powered by […]

Wartime Mobilization-Style Effort Needed to Save Environment & Civilization

Since the first Earth Day 36 years ago, we have won many environmental battles but we are losing the war. Our early twenty-first century civilization is on an economic path that is destroying and disrupting the natural systems on which it depends. We are consuming renewable resources faster than they can regenerate. Forests are shrinking, […]

Oil Prices Could Put Consumers Over a Barrel

This week’s surge in oil prices to record highs could hurt the economy more than other increases in recent years because consumers no longer have the cushion of low interest rates to help ease the pain. Economic growth has proved hardy in the face of rising energy prices. But that could change, assuming the latest […]

Growing demand for non-food crops

Since then, societies around the globe have not looked back. Coal and oil have fuelled economic growth for more than 200 years. But today, political leaders of all persuasions are having to think the unthinkable and look beyond the age of oil. The upward trend in the cost of oil, fears over security of supplies, […]

Big Oil asks for a truce

An industry bigwig sits down with green energy-policy wonks, and says the oil companies are not anti-ethanol. Believe it? NEW YORK – As oil prices creep ever higher, the petroleum industry has begun keeping some strange company. No, not the usual gang of high-priced oil lobbyists, dubious foreign (and domestic) despots, Texas politicians, and so […]

Fuel costs drive US prices higher

Surging fuel prices pushed US wholesale prices higher in March, after falling a month earlier, official figures show. The Labor Department’s producer price index (PPI) jumped 0.5% in March, its fastest rise in three months. But core producer prices, which strip out volatile energy and food prices, rose by 0.1% – its smallest increase in […]

Oil world in decline

Q&A with State Geologist Vincent Matthews Vincent Matthews was among the 275 people who attended a conference held in Denver last winter on the topic of the world reaching its peak in oil production. For Matthews, a former petroleum geologist who now directs the Colorado Geological Survey, the topic was not new, as his own […]

Greenpeace rejects Chernobyl toll

The health effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine 20 years ago have been grossly under-estimated, says an environmental charity. Official UN figures predicted up to 9,000 Chernobyl-related cancer deaths. But Greenpeace says in a report released on Tuesday that recent studies estimate that the actual number of such deaths will be 93,000. Stressing […]

Alternative Energy and the American Enterprise

If traditional energy resources are going to become increasingly expensive, and sporadically unavailable, then business consumers will be forced to deal with these challenges in a traditional way: curtail operations and lay off employees. Hunker down until things (somehow) get better. If we are lucky, our economy will only experience a mild (though annoyingly chronic) […]

Spring Fever at the Pump

There’s nothing unusual about gasoline prices rising at this time of year. There is about $70-a-barrel oil, however It has become an annual rite of spring. Along with the rain and blooming flowers comes pain at the pump. Gas prices have risen between March and May in 21 out of the past 22 years. Like […]

Bush: US to watch for gas price-gouging

WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush said on Tuesday he is “concerned” about high gasoline prices, and pledged that the U.S. government will keep a close watch out for profiteering. “I’m concerned about higher gasoline prices,” Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference to name new staff appointments. “The government has the responsibility to […]

BA raises fuel surcharge further

British Airways has announced a further round of increases in fuel surcharges for its long-haul flights. From 21 April, customers buying tickets in the UK will pay a BA last raised its fuel surcharge for long-haul flights to

Oil and Bonds – Stephen Roach

In the macro realm, bad things usually come in pairs.  The confluence of yet another surge in oil prices and a long-overdue back-up in bond yields has piqued my interest in that regard.  Crude oil prices are back near $70 and bond yields are at important thresholds — closing in on 2% in Japan, 4% […]

Did Uncle Sam cause high gas prices?

Critics say ill-timed legislation is partly responsible for prices at the pump, but others say the industry should have seen what was coming. NEW YORK – As gasoline prices spiral upward ahead of the high-demand summer season, some traders and consumer advocates are laying at least part of the blame squarely on the doorstep of […]

Royse City schools chief put on paid leave

Official says he’s innocent in missing gasoline case TEXAS – A unanimous Royse City school board placed Superintendent Mike Harris on paid leave Monday while police investigate the disappearance of several hundred dollars’ worth of gasoline from the district’s stocks last fall. “As of right now, he is considered a prime suspect,” Royse City Police […]

Oil Prices Climb to New Highs

LONDON – Oil surged to a record high above $72 on Tuesday on concern that Iran’s nuclear stand-off with the West could cut oil exports from the world’s fourth-largest crude exporter. In London, North Sea Brent crude oil jumped 74 cents to an all-time high of $72.20 a barrel as Iran and the West exchanged […]

Record heat leads to power outages in Texas

Conservation urged to avoid more rolling blackouts HOUSTON, Texas — Faced with the prospect of another day of record heat, the state’s power suppliers urged Texans to cut down on their electricity use in the hope of avoiding more rolling blackouts. Power companies throughout the state imposed the blackouts Monday because of an electricity shortage […]

High energy costs revive coal industry

Coal mining on the rebound amid rising costs of oil, new pollution controls CADIZ, Ohio – There are new signs of life in Ohio With the skyrocketing cost of oil and new pollution controls, coal is on the rebound. Mines are being reopened, and new miners are being hired.

Tax policy is energy policy

Study after study in many different nations and economies has shown, for example, that the best way to avoid having to scramble for new supply sources of oil is to control the growth of demand, if not outright to reduce absolute demand. In other words, it is not about “imports from the Middle East,” as […]

More uranium: when and from where?

With uranium prices at their current level, can we expect to see significant increases in production? If so, where will it come from There are, however, few obvious signs that more uranium is on its way, in the short term at least. World production of uranium was around 40,000 tonnes in both 2004 and 2005 […]

Environmentalists Coming Around to Nuclear Power

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That’s the conviction that inspired Greenpeace’s first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my […]

Petrocollapse – chaos or sustainability

Jan Lundberg, former analyst for the petroleum industries and founder of CultureChange.org, discusses peak oil and the upcoming Petrocollapse Conference, May 6 in Washington DC. The following are excerpts from the interview (AUDIO at Global Public Media: Jan Lundberg: “On May 6th in Washington DC we hold the DC Petrocollapse Conference, and this takes the […]

The Coming Oil Crisis

How many of you are old enough to have been working in 1973? If so, you would’ve had the kind of economic experience I did at that time. But if you were in school or missed the period of the oil crisis, get ready because those times could return with a vengeance. The problem today […]

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