Canadian Oil Sands Nuclear Plant Seen for 2016

The first in a series of nuclear power plants planned for the oil-rich tar sands of Western Canada should be operating by 2016, the head of the project said Thursday. The Energy Alberta Corporation says it wants to place a C$5.5 billion (US$4.3 billion) Canadian-built Candu twin reactor plant in northern Alberta to provide the […]

Indonesia’s biofuel drive not fully thought through

The current craze for the breakneck development of biofuels ignores the fact that biofuels by themselves cannot fully replace fossil fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, but always have to be used as a blend (e.g. ethanol blended with gasoline or “gasohol”, or palm oil blended with diesel), and that to the extent edible products […]

Citizens and business split on future EU energy supply

According to a Eurobarometer opinion survey published on 5 March 2007, 83% of citizens agree that the EU should set a minimum percentage for the share of renewable energy in overall EU energy consumption. However, Europe’s major business lobby BusinessEurope has expressed its concern about EU plans to set a binding 20% target for renewables. […]

The Political Economy of Alternative Energy

The idea of a “carbon offset” is that when you do something that causes carbon dioxide emissions to increase you might at the same time donate money to a cause that reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide by a similar amount. However, not all “carbon offsets” truly offer the sort of straightforward one-for-one trade that the term […]

GCC pushes for atomic programme

Saudi Arabia said yesterday Iran’s nuclear programme was an extra burden for the Middle East, but Gulf Arab allies had the right to their own atomic ambitions. Arab foreign ministers of the six-member Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) met in Saudi Arabia to discuss progress in plans agreed in December for a joint civilian atomic programme […]

Merkel risks rift at EU summit over energy

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Monday faced the risk that Europe’s drive to fight climate change could provoke an east-west split at a European Union summit in Brussels this week. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary are among seven new EU member states resisting binding targets forcing them to invest heavily in renewable energy […]

East Africa: Uganda Oil Can Feed EA Region

Heritage Oil and Gas Company will this week hold negotiations with the Government to construct a refinery that will supply the East African region with petroleum products, a senior company official said. Last week, Uganda’s single biggest oil find was announced by the oil company at Kingfisher well in Bunyoro with a flow rate close […]

Saudi Arabia: Exploring away from oil

At an economic forum in Saudi Arabia, delegates mill around a model city, admiring its ultramodern, dome-shaped sports stadium, yachts sailing in the estuary, luxurious villas looking out over the Red Sea and a huge state-of-the-art port decked out with shore cranes. “Welcome to the city that embraces the future,” a voice booms in a […]

Imperial poised to reveal huge oil reserves in Russia

One of the biggest oil explorers on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) is poised to disclose that it is sitting on reserves of more than three billion barrels in Russia, The Times has learnt. An independent report by DeGolyer & MacNaughton, the American energy expert, will hand Imperial Energy a material reserves upgrade across ten […]

Venezuela makes deals on oil projects

Several major oil companies reached agreements Monday with the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela over his plan to nationalize multibillion dollar projects in the Orinoco belt. Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, has agreed to cede the Cerro Negro heavy oil project that it runs by May 1 in compliance with […]

Brazil Oil Deal Finalized

A member of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Board of Directors said on Monday that Brazil iran-daily

Greenhouse gas credit-trading beckons investors

The United States might have turned its back on the Kyoto Protocol but U.S. investors have not, tapping the roughly $25 billion in carbon emissions trading that’s a direct result of the global environmental agreement. And investors are gearing up for what they hope will be a huge market once the United States establishes its […]

Japan finds 40 trillion cubic feet of gas hydrate reserves

Japan’s government said an offshore field in the Pacific Ocean holds an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of frozen natural gas, equivalent to the country’s gas demand for about 14 years. The gas, in methane hydrate deposits, lies under the seabed of eastern Nankai Trough area, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) offshore, the trade ministry […]

Racing the Oil Endgame

The Saudis may only be seeking even further contol over world energy prices — that’s the good news. The bad news is that oil production may be spiraling down faster than anyone anticipated. Just a few days ago, cookiebear’s diary on T. Boone Pickens showed that the Oklahoma oil man also believes that world oil […]

NHTSA Requests 10-Yr Product Plan Info from Automakers for CAFE Planning

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has requested product plan information through Model Year (MY) 2017 from automakers and truckmakers in anticipation of obtaining statutory authority to reform the passenger car Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program and to set standards under that structure for MY 2010 greencarcongress

New Nanoscale Engineering Breakthrough Points To Hydrogen-powered Vehicles

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have developed an advanced concept in nanoscale catalyst engineering sciencedaily

Dems’ Big Chance

We could deal Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela a crippling blow by pushing crude from its current $60 a barrel to $40. We use a third of the world’s crude. If we acted to both cut that demand here and increase our own supply, it could do the trick. Here’s how: yahoo

US, Brazil to Talk Up Biofuels ‘Cartel’

President Bush and his Brazilian counterpart are expected to agree on Friday to create a global forum on ethanol, which would provide standards and foster cooperation among business and governments. “Biofuels will be in the future the main link between Brazilians and Americans,” said Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs. The proposed […]

Venture Capitalists Move From Web to Algae

One Seattle-based start-up, Prometheus Energy, attracted enough equity capital in the last three years to open a plant in Orange County in January that for the first time produces liquid natural gas commercially out of landfill methane gas that would otherwise waft greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Another venture capital favorite, Jadoo Power of Folsom, […]

Non-OPEC oil supply plagued by uncertainty and high costs – CGES

LONDON (AFX) – High costs and the uncertainty of the oil market have prompted the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) to revise downward its forecast for supply growth from non-OPEC producers The CGES calculated that actual growth in non-OPEC supplies had been over-estimated by an average of more than 400,000 bpd in recent years, […]

Gas Prices Up 33 Cents In Past Month

Record Profits At Exxon, Declining Production At Oil Fields …Prices at the pump reflect prices in crude oil, according to Barkley Rosser, professor of economics at James Madison University. …Rosser identifies two disturbing elements in the oil industry. Production in Saudi Arabia, which produces 5 percent of the world At al Ghawar, the world

Goldman Sachs and Wall St. Go Green

Goldman Sachs got environmentalists to embrace a utility they loved to hate What to do? Paint the utility green, naturally. Goldman advised its clients to strike a massive compromise with environmentalists: First, nix plans for all but three of 11 coal-fired plants TXU intended to build. And invest $400 million in energy-saving initiatives, like wind […]

Super-fermenting fungus genome sequenced, to be harnessed for biofuels

Today, another major research step was announced by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) (earlier post)and collaborators at the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL). They succeeded in characterising the genetic blueprint of the fungus Pichia stipitis and identified the numerous genes responsible for its fermenting and cellulose-bioconverting […]

The Oil Drum: Siberian Weather and Oil Logistics

Yesterday I was discussing some of the political problems that are likely to make gas and oil supplies an ongoing news story for a few years yet. There is, however, also a potentially growing physical problem that might also impact the logistics of supply somewhat faster than we might think.Much more after the jump to […]

CO2 output from shipping twice as much as airlines

Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are double those of aviation and increasing at an alarming rate which will have a serious impact on global warming, according to research by the industry and European academics. Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much […]

Feds say ‘no’ to off-road fuel relief; Truckers ‘on their own’

TORONTO– The federal Conservative government won’t find a way to allow Ontario truckers to fill up temporarily with off-road diesel until the fuel supply disruption in that province settles. At a press conference in Victoria following a meeting of the country The minister was short on specifics of what the federal government might do instead, […]

The Climate-Change Precipice

The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over. A leading international group of climate scientists reported last month that the evidence for global warming is “unequivocal” and that the likelihood it is caused by humans is more than 90 percent. Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, […]

Gas price cap could spark a shortage, MLA says

Surrey-White Rock MLA Gordon Hogg says a private member Horgan says the bill is designed to protect consumers from

Global warming is human rights issue: Nobel nominee

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It sounds like a sick joke about global warming, with a series of horrible punch lines: How hot is it? So hot that Inuit people around the Arctic Circle are using air conditioners for the first time. And running out of the hard-packed snow they need to build igloos. And falling through […]

Evangelical Angers Peers With Call for Action on Global Warming

Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson and other conservative Christian leaders are calling for the National Association of Evangelicals to silence or fire an official who has urged evangelicals to take global warming seriously. In a letter this week to the board of the NAE, which claims 30 million members, Dobson and his […]

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