Playing with Fire

This is the first of a four part series of articles on the natural gas and electricity price and supply risks facing the U.S. economy. The first article provides an overview and summary. Subsequent articles will examine specific issues in more detail. It After 5 years of soaring prices, where do we stand? Are the […]

Iraq to Meet Iran, Kuwait on Cross-Border Oil Fields

Iraqi officials are to meet representatives from Iran later this month and Kuwait after that to discuss sharing oil production contracts in cross-border fields, Iraq’s oil minister said Thursday. Speaking at a press briefing on the side of a Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting here, Hussein al-Shahristani said: “We will meet in a sitting […]

Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain Consumer Society

There is rapidly increasing understanding of the need to reduce use of fossil fuels. People are becoming more aware of the possibility that petroleum supply is close to peaking, and of the implications of the greenhouse problem for use of fossil fuels. However it would be difficult to find a more taken for granted, unquestioned […]

Geothermal project causes quake, is halted

Drilling work for a planned geothermal power plant in Basel triggered a small earthquake on Friday that caused minor damage to buildings. The canton Basel City prosecutor has launched an investigation to find if the company behind the Deep Heat Mining project should pay for repairs. The tremor was felt shortly before 6pm and measured […]

Interior Deals on Flawed Leases Fail to Quell Critics

Deals inked yesterday between the Interior Department and five petroleum companies on payment of royalties from flawed Gulf of Mexico leases won’t blunt Democratic plans to address the “royalty relief” issue more aggressively when the new Congress convenes. “This in no way affects our plans to move forward,” a House Democratic leadership aide said today, […]

Germany Debates the Future of Coal Mining

Some say the German mining industry is squandering too much money and that production should cease as soon as possible, whereas others argue that coal is the energy source of the future. German hard coal stopped making money a long time ago. Whereas the price for a metric ton of coal on the world market […]

R&D shale oil extraction leases granted

DENVER – The Interior Department granted leases Friday for shale oil extraction experiments, a step allowing companies to determine how to tap into an estimated 100-year supply of oil locked in rock formations under Colorado, Utah, and southwest Wyoming. The leases, the first granted in 30 years, were issued two decades after companies abandoned large-scale […]

Planting trees to save planet `pointless’ say ecologists

Planting trees to combat climate change is a waste of time, according to astudy by ecologists who say that most forests do not have any overall effect on global temperature, while those furthest from the equator could actually be making global warming worse.Professor Caldeira and his colleague Govindasamy Bala, of the LawrenceLivermore National Laboratory, also […]

THE SHORT LIFE OF COMFORTABLE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT RUSSIA’S ENERGY POLICY

The Kremlin’s confiscatory assault on Royal Dutch Shell and threats to other Western energy majors in Russia on Black Tuesday, December 12 (see EDM, December 13) is the latest in a series of moves disproving Western wishful thinking about Russia’s energy policy. That wishful thinking burgeoned, ironically, in the wake of the January 2006 Russian […]

Rice questions why Saudi might need nuclear energy

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday she wanted to know more about Gulf states’ plans to study nuclear power and questioned why Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, might need atomic energy. The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council said on Sunday it would study a joint civil atomic program, raising concerns the […]

African oil’s allure increases as other regions tighten reins

Angola is joining OPEC, African oil exploration is booming and China is investing. The stampede for African oil has continued, even as militant attacks in some countries and precarious governments in others make returns uncertain. Though much of the continent is just as conflict-ridden as the Middle East, analysts say Africa is increasingly attractive because […]

As producers flex, China urges oil consumers unite

China, hosting its first major energy summit on Saturday, urged top oil consumers to join together in the face of resurgent producer power and sought to paper over differences on how best to achieve energy security. Ministers from the United States, India, Japan and South Korea — nations that consume nearly half the world’s oil […]

Iraq`s oil smuggling — Part 2

An estimated 100,000 barrels of oil is smuggled from Iraq each day, according to Saad Rahim, manager of PFC Energy`s Country Strategies Group, and an unknown amount of petroleum products, like gasoline, is lifted as well. monstersandcritics

Iran warns of painful revenge if sanctions imposed

Iran will exact painful revenge on countries opposed to its nuclear program if the U.N. Security Council imposes sanctions on Tehran, the country’s chief nuclear negotiator said on Friday. “If they want to deprive Iran of its nuclear work they are making a big mistake. If they want to act in a way to decrease […]

The way we will live

The Government’s pledge to carbon neutralise every new British home by 2016 may sound ambitious now, but will appear pretty basic to the homeowners of the future, for whom zero carbon living will be a given. By 2080, the avant-garde may be living in houses on stilts (far right) with removable walls, kept cool by […]

Overconfidence Leads To Bias In Climate Change Estimations

According to their study, past scenarios of carbon dioxide emissions can miss as much as 40 percent of probabilistic projection, missing a large number of low-probability events. The omitted scenarios may include low-probability, high-impact events. “If low-probability, high-impact events exist, such as threshold responses of ocean currents or ice sheets, omitting these scenarios can lead […]

Who Says It’s Not Easy Being Green?

One of the best opportunities might be in lighting. About 30% of the nation’s electricity is used to fire up incandescent bulbs that haven’t evolved in a century, says Matthew W. Patsky, portfolio manager of the Winslow Green Growth Fund (WGGFX ). One of his favorite plays is Boston’s Color Kinetics Inc. (CLRK ), which […]

Shell Is in Moscow for Sakhalin-2 Talks With Gazprom

Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer traveled to Moscow for the second time in a week to discuss giving OAO Gazprom a stake in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas venture. bloomberg

Stuck On Oil Dependence

A new report from the Department of Energy shows that by staying the course with our current energy policy we will be increasing our dependence on foreign oil well into the future. Despite the Bush Administration’s rhetoric about breaking our addiction, a new energy projection from the DOE’s Energy Information Administration says well we be […]

Mergers create biofuel majors, tackle price risks

Mergers in the booming palm oil sector are creating the biofuel industry’s own ‘Big Oil’ companies, but vertical integration and economies of scale may not be enough to make exports profitable or to replace crude. theedgedaily

Soil Nutrition Affects Carbon Sequestration In Forests

“With sufficient soil nutrition, forests increase their ability to tie up, or sequester carbon in woody biomass under increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations,” says Kurt Johnsen, SRS researcher involved in the project. sciencedaily

Former Rockland Call Center Could Be Turned Into Research Institute

MAINE – An ambitious project could be getting started in Rockland. The Free Press newspaper reports that investment banker Matthew Simmons is planning to buy the former MBNA call center building on the Rockland waterfront and turn it into a new international water energy research center. The newspaper report says Simmons and two partners, also […]

The Pernicious Price of Petroleum

Our love of driving is killing us. While we think of car crashes as causing fatalities, the production and transportation of fuel also significantly undermines public health. In his book Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction, Terry Tamminen outlines the direct and indirect impact that petroleum consumption has on millions of […]

(One part of) A Unified Climate/Energy Agenda

When I talked with Terry Tamminen a while back, he said something that got me thinking. As Arnold Schwarzenegger’s top enviro advisor, he was on the inside, making policy and being lobbied from all sides. He’s also been a part of several environmental NGOs, doing the lobbying. So he’s seen policy contests from both sides. […]

Nawida 2150

by John Michael Greer This is my third and (for now) last exploration of a deindustrial future using the tools of narrative fiction. Fifty more years have passed since “Solstice 2100.” Massive climate change, including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, and the final stages of catabolic collapse have transformed the setting almost beyond […]

Truckers sue oil companies over `hot fuel’

Truck driver owner-operators file consumer fraud lawsuit against oil companies, claiming ‘hot fuel’ provides less energy. Claiming consumers are being defrauded of more than $2 billion a year, a group of truck driver owner-operators have filed a lawsuit against most of the major oil companies and several retailers who sell ”hot fuel” at gas stations […]

Insurance by the Mile

A simple way to slow global warming The world must reduce its consumption of fossil fuels in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming. This will require many long-term and expensive measures to promote alternative fuels and conservation Currently, auto insurance is viewed as a fixed expense. People pay the same amount for […]

5 oil and gas companies to pay royalties

WASHINGTON – Five oil and gas companies, including Shell, ConocoPhillips and BP, have agreed to pay royalties on future production under flawed drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico, the government said Thursday. The companies are among 59 energy producers that hold the leases at issue from 1998 and 1999. Because of a government mistake, […]

3 hostages taken from Shell oil complex

YENAGOA, Nigeria – Armed men who seized control of a Royal Dutch Shell PLC oil complex overnight fled Friday, taking three Nigerian hostages, shooting a man and forcing the oil giant to halt production at the site. The attackers kidnapped a soldier, an administrative officer and a chef who works at a base that houses […]

Chic energy goes green, keeps green in wallet

Geothermal to wind to solar, alternative sources gain glamour, efficiency Is green the new black? More than 1 million U.S. households now warm their homes in the winter with heat from the Earth instead of using furnaces or fuel lines. Elton John, Richard Branson Even President Bush has a geothermal system in his vacation home […]

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