Syria will drop currency peg to dollar within a few weeks

Syria is finalising moves to drop its currency peg to the dollar to strengthen the government’s ability to defend the exchange rate, and should complete the move within weeks, central bank Governor Adib Mayaleh said yesterday. Syria depends on oil, of which it produced 380,000 barrels per day last year, to earn foreign currency. A […]

Petronas’ First Deepwater Field Starts Producing Oil

Malaysia’s state-owned Petroliam Nasional Bhd., or Petronas, said Kikeh, the country’s first deepwater field, commenced oil production Friday. The field’s initial production rate averages 20,000 barrels a day and is expected to peak at an average of 120,000 barrels a day by the end of 2008,” Petronas said in a statement. The Kikeh field is […]

Germany Plans Energy Savings Measures

The German government has reached broad agreement on a number of energy savings measures as it implements a drive by Chancellor Angela Merkel to battle climate change.An overall draft of measures is not available, but Reuters has obtained an internal economy ministry paper listing details.The bulk of additional savings — which will help reduce the […]

Mitsubishi Plans Drive on Biofuels Output

Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. aims to take a slice of the growing green fuel market with a planned annual 2 million kiloliters of green ethanol output capacity by 2017, a senior manager told Reuters on Thursday. The new plants will be in Japan and other parts of Asia, such as Thailand, where supply of feedstock is […]

Dutch crown prince warns against prioritizing biofuels over food

Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander warned against diverting water resources from food production to biofuels, saying Wednesday that feeding people is more important than fueling cars. “Biofuels is a great way to support our Western way of life, but it’s not a necessity for mankind to survive. Food is,” said Willem-Alexander, who chairs the U.N. secretary-general’s […]

Can’t See the Forest for the Biofuels

According to a new study, cutting down forests to grow crops for fuel causes more environmental damage than using biofuels can ever offset. It’s a sobering message at a time when energy crops, once a hippie dream, have gone mainstream green. Around the world, governments and industries have pledged to replace climate-fouling fossil fuels with […]

Ukraine may face energy crisis by year end

Ukraine may face an energy crisis by the end of the year because Naftogaz Ukrayiny, the national oil and gas company, has failed to accumulate sufficient reserves of natural gas, a top official said Thursday. Viktor Baloha, President Viktor Yushchenko’s chief of staff, accused Energy and Fuel Minister Yuriy Boyko of poor management of the […]

A renewable energy idea that could hold water

Around the corner from power stations pumping out carbon emissions in the Latrobe Valley, farmer and inventor Fred Sundermann has come up with an idea that he claims will revolutionise renewable energy generation. Mr Sundermann, an inventor for decades, is looking at a prototype of his latest invention, the S-Turbine. Unlike similar water turbines around […]

Argentine Economy Probably Slowed in June on Energy Shortage

Argentina’s economy, the second- largest in South America after Brazil, probably slowed in June as cold weather and a lack of investment in the energy industry led to rolling blackouts and electricity cuts for companies. Annual economic growth probably slowed to 7.6 percent in June compared with 8.5 percent in May and 8.6 percent in […]

Why watching war games is a waste of energy

Is Russia managing to build a rival to Nato? More than you would have thought last year and more than is comfortable in Europe and the US. The summit yesterday of Russia, China and their Central Asian neighbours was dubbed the “anti-Nato” by Izvestia, the Russian daily newspaper, and it has a point. Iran, as […]

Official: Chevron Refinery Fire Contained, But Still Burning

An oil fire at Chevron’s largest U.S. refinery was mostly contained about two hours after it started, a company official said Thursday. But a large plume of black smoke could still be seen over the Mississippi coast. “It’s essentially under control at this point,” Chevron spokesman Steve Renfroe told the Associated Press shortly after 4 […]

China’s Nanpu Oil Find Shows Pitfalls of Estimating Reserves

The pitfalls of evaluating big oil finds were underlined this week when China’s Ministry of Land and Resources certified PetroChina Co.’s (PTR) Nanpu oil discovery as having half the reserves of market estimates. The Nanpu block in Bohai Bay’s Jidong oil field in northern China was hailed by some analysts as the biggest find in […]

Agri-industrial complex is on the way out, activist says

Americans are becoming disenchanted with industrial agriculture and turning more to farmers markets and locally produced food, said author and activist Bill McKibben. He gave the keynote address at the annual conference of the Northeast Organic Farming Association at Hampshire College. The conference, which attracted 1,350 people last weekend, focuses on everything from biodiesel to […]

Canada: Clash over oil sands inevitable

Calgary Mr. Lougheed

Why Gulf storms make oil traders so jumpy

2007 should see more hurricanes than usual, and despite better preparations by the oil industry, only so much can be done to defend against another Katrina. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — So a little storm swirled off the Texas coast Wednesday, and oil traders got all excited. Crude prices rose nearly a dollar Wednesday as Tropical […]

OECD fails IEA reliability test

To correct for earlier over-optimistic forecasts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has reduced its estimates for non-OPEC oil production by 410 kb/d from second quarter 2007 onwards. This change has been little noticed in the press. According to the July 13 issue of the IEA’s Oil Market Report, the original non-OPEC forecasts for 2005 and […]

Charitable Efforts for the Environment

While modern nations focus efforts on reducing pollution, little effort is directed at poor nations, which include most of the worldThere are over six billion people on Earth who eat cooked food and drink purified water daily. In poor countries, most cooking heat is provided by firewood, dry brush, leaves, and trash. This denudes the […]

High asphalt costs haven’t hit Yuma – yet

…Larry Brown of Abacus Project Management Inc. assists contractors with bid estimates and is helping with building construction and parking lot expansion at Arizona Western College in Yuma. Brown said rising costs have hit California worse than Arizona but that they are bound to make a local impact soon. “It’s really a man-made shortage,” Brown […]

Michael Klare, Tough Oil on Tap

Entering the Tough Oil Era: The New Energy Pessimism When “peak oil” theory was first widely publicized in such path breaking books as Kenneth Deffeyes’ Hubbert’s Peak (2001), Richard Heinberg’s The Party’s Over (2002), David Goodstein’s Out of Gas (2004), and Paul Robert’s The End of Oil (2004), energy industry officials and their government associates […]

TOD: Peak Oil Booklet – Chapter 4: What Should We Do Now?

We know that peak oil will be here soon, and we feel like we should be doing something. But what? It is frustrating to know where to start. In this chapter, we will discuss a few ideas about what we as individuals can do. 1. What will the first few years after peak oil be […]

Global Warming Simplicities

We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. A recent Newsweek cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It’s an object lesson on how viewing the world as “good guys vs. bad guys” can lead to a vast […]

How better-fed cows could cool the planet

When cows digest, they burp methane gas, a powerful greenhouse agent. Scientists are working to try to reduce that. It may be bad manners, but it’s also necessary: Every 40 seconds or so, a cow burps. Scientists are now scrambling to make them burp less Odorless, colorless methane

For Russia, An End To Growth is In Sight

Russia’s resurgent oil production has fueled growth outside of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (non-OPEC) since 1999. The end is now likely in sight for yearly increases from the Federation. Growth has slowed since 2004, and although most analysts expect increases to continue in the near term, Russia is poised to peak or plateau […]

Perspectives on Peak Natural Resources

I have been reading more and more lately about the topic referred to as There is evidence for any and all of these positions, but, from what I have reviewed myself so far, I am inclined to accept item No. 3 above as the correct description of what is happening today. I think that if […]

Meeting growing oil demand requires utilizing natural resources — report

KUWAIT (KUNA) — The utilization of natural resources and raising the added value of existing oil industries and their competitiveness is a must if sector developments are to be faced and growing demand on oil is to be met, said a specialized oil report. “The Golden Age of Oil Refineries” report, published in the latest […]

John Michael Greer: Scrabbling around for plan B

…As J.K.Galbraith pointed out in his wry classic The Great Crash 1929 …It

Water for biofuels or for food: it’s one or the other

Biofuels, hailed by many as the green solution to offset a coming oil shortage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are not a cure-all solution, experts at a water conference in Stockholm warned this week. Biofuels, which are made from crops, require huge amounts of water, a resource that is already in short supply in many […]

Amory Lovins: How to Face Today’s Greatest Energy Challenges

DR: After all you’ve done to shift the energy debate, why do supply-side questions still dominate the discussion in Congress? AL: Congress is a creature of constituencies, and the money and power of the constituencies are almost all on the supply side. There is not a powerful and organized constituency for efficient use, and there’s […]

Blaming labor for peak oil problems

A labor shortage is “wracking” the province of Alberta, Macleans tell us, brought on by the mad rush to exploit the vast reserves of petroleum locked in the fabled oil sands of Canada’s Wild West. The jobless rate in Alberta is a “historically low” 3.4 percent even with net inward migration in 2006 hitting 62,000. […]

Exit Iran’s oil minister, and a pipeline too

India’s quest to expand the use of natural gas as a major energy source has experienced several recent setbacks. The prospects for the US$7.5 billion Iran-India-Pakistan (IPI) gas pipeline took a big hit with the dramatic firing of Iran’s oil minister, who had reportedly agreed to sell gas to the two countries at a discount. […]

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