Energy Secretary says pump price may hit $3.50/gallon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Monday he is concerned that average U.S. gasoline pump prices could hit $3.50 a gallon this summer, and said he is “optimistic” that OPEC will come to the rescue of U.S. drivers. The U.S. retail price of gasoline set a new high of $3.29 a gallon […]

Insight: Opec

Opec …Economic growth, population growth, and urbanisation in the Gulf have increased demand for electricity to the extent that power shortages will be the norm in the next few years. Power shortages and inadequate generation capacity have delayed several development projects, industrial plants, and other construction projects in several Gulf cities. A large number of […]

Kazakhstan may impose oil duty from 2008

ASTANA (Reuters) – Kazakhstan may impose an oil export duty as soon as mid-2008 to stabilise domestic supplies, a senior government official said on Monday, in a development likely to worry potential newcomers to its oil business. Officials have said that Western oil and gas companies’ existing operations in the Central Asian state will not […]

How Realistic is EIA’s US Domestic Oil Supply and Demand Forecast?

I was invited to a blogger’s conference call on April 1, hosted by the American Petroleum Institute (API). We were told that each blogger would be allowed to ask one question of Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation. The material we were provided in advance was the written statement […]

Climate target is not radical enough – study

Nasa scientist warns the world must urgently make huge CO2 reductions One of the world’s leading climate scientists warns today that the EU and its international partners must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem. In a startling reappraisal of […]

Peak Oil: Russia’s oil production is coming down

MOSCOW: Oil production in Russia, the second largest oil exporter in the world, is coming down drastically, says a new study. Studies on Russian oil production by Aram Makivierikko say that the country has not been able to increase its oil production for three months in a row now. The production have been hanging slightly […]

The Age of Scarcity?

Rising populations. Skyrocketing commodity prices. Strains on natural resources. Is this our Malthusian moment? Is the ghost of Thomas Robert Malthus stalking the global economy? Sad to say, it sure seems like it. Malthus was a key figure in the 18th and early 19th century in developing modern mainstream economics. (And Darwin hit on the […]

China to give crude tax rebate to help refiners

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has agreed to grant a hefty tax rebate on crude imports to help oil firms limit heavy refining losses, instead of increasing fuel prices that would stoke inflation, a government source said on Monday. Under the scheme proposed by oil firms and endorsed by the State Council last month, Beijing is […]

Volt plug-in hybrid is ‘No. 1 priority,’ GM says

Battery, design labs opened to journalists as part of ‘reality’ check DETROIT – General Motors Corp showed off its progress in developing the highly anticipated Chevrolet Volt and detailed its road map for bringing the rechargeable car to the market by 2010, an ambitious timeline challenged by some rivals. “We are moving with incredible speed,” […]

Brother, Can You Spare Me a Planet?

Mainstream Economics and the Environmental Crisis The causes of the environmental crisis may be hugely complex, but the most effective way to deal with it in economic terms seems rather obvious. We must use our best scientific understanding of how environmental problems can be resolved as the basis for implementing scientifically viable economic policies and […]

Web site restores

Johns Hopkins site had restricted its use after inquires by USAID BALTIMORE – A prominent public health school has restored the word “abortion” as an acceptable search term on a reproductive health Web site funded by a federal agency that restricts references to abortions. The move by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health […]

Londoners could pay $50 a day to drive in city

Mayor Livingstone stakes re-election bid on hefty tax for big vehicles LONDON – As New York commuters brace for possible charges for driving into the midtown area, they can at least be thankful they don’t live in London, where Mayor Ken Livingstone has staked his re-election hopes on boosting the “congestion tax” to as much […]

Government failing to fund UK’s nuclear clean-up, say MPs

The Government is failing to provide adequate funding for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the body responsible for cleaning up Britain

UK: Paper-bag trade protest at Government’s supermarket curbs

BritainMr Tomkins, a director of Welton, Bibby and Baron (WBB), a company founded in 1858 and which is Europe

Iran joined militias in battle for Basra

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week. Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions […]

In Egypt, Upper Crust Gets the Bread

Shortage Exposes Inequities CAIRO — The line started forming before dawn, as soon as the day’s first call to prayer had faded from the trash-strewn streets of the Egyptian capital’s Zelzal neighborhood. Men began pounding on the green metal shutters of the district’s sole bakery. “Aish! Aish!” — Bread! Bread! — the stubble-faced men yelled, […]

Wanted: world environmental leader

Next president must emulate FDR, have courage to force change SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) — To save the world, we need a leader who will make a stand as Franklin Delano Roosevelt did during World War II and force change upon us. That pretty much sums up the conclusions of many of the world’s best […]

The Economist Has No Clothes

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems The 19th-century creators of neoclassical economics The physical theory that the creators of neoclassical economics used as a template was conceived in response to the inability of Newtonian physics to account for the phenomena of heat, light and electricity. In 1847 German physicist […]

Asking The Right Business Questions About High Gas Prices

It is time for organizations to seriously consider the impacts of continuing to use petroleum fuels when their competitors are starting to convert to alternative fuels. (SAUSALITO, Calif.) – The notion of “peak oil” — which holds that the world’s production of oil is at it’s all-time high this year, or within a few years […]

Rockets fired at villas housing US oilmen in Yemen

SANAA (AFP) Residents told AFP that three rockets struck near the villas where American oil experts from the former Hunt Oil firm, now called Safer and owned by Yemen, live. The villas are behind a residential compound in the Al-Hadda neighbourhood of southwestern Sanaa. Foreigners, including Westerners and Arabs, live in the compound which also […]

Australian doctors warn of health impacts of climate change

SYDNEY (AFP) – Climate change is likely to lead to higher rates of some infectious and respiratory diseases as well as more injuries from storms and bushfires, a report by Australian doctors warned Sunday. The Doctors for the Environment Australia report found that over the next decade, the health of children and the elderly would […]

Iranian president wants OPEC off dollars

Calls for cartel to price deals with a common currency, use joint bank TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is urging OPEC members to form a joint bank and stop pricing oil trades in U.S. dollars. According to the Iranian government’s Web site, Ahmadinejad told OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri the cartel “should […]

Cooking up a load of bioethanol

Vast volumes of potential transport fuels are being buried in refuse landfills, says a visiting United States scientist searching for non-food sources of bioethanol for petrol and diesel substitution. Bill Orts, a Californian-based Department of Agriculture research leader, says a high proportion of cellulose from discarded paper packaging makes municipal refuse a lucrative would-be fuel […]

China denies providing arms to Sudan in return for oil

KHARTOUM, April 6 (KUNA) — China anew Sunday denied providing arms for Sudan in return for oil, and asserted that it was complying with international agreements banning this method. Chinese ambassador in Khartoum Li Chengwen called at a news conference the armed rebel movements in Darfur to sit at the negotiations’ table with the Sudanese […]

Duck and Cover: It

THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition. It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs

The Gas Storage Curve

Last fall, the amount of natural gas in storage in the United States set a new five-year record. Since then it has plummeted, and it is now approaching the bottom of the average in this chart. The pattern is normal, of course. Like squirrels with their nuts, we store natural gas when it As chart […]

Debate to replace Saudi oil with Canadian oil sands

RIYADH: With the world looking to explore new, feasible and sustainable alternatives sources of energy, the ongoing debate — if the Canadian oil sands is clean enough to be used or not — has immense connotations for the energy balance of the world. And interestingly enough, Riyadh is getting dragged, too, in the debate. Virtually, […]

New Focus on Coal’s Part in Warming

James E. Hansen, perhaps the best-known scientific advocate for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, sent a letter recently to the head of one of the nation’s largest power companies, calling on him to confront the role that his coal-fired plants play in global warming. Hansen proposed they meet. On Wednesday, James E. Rogers of Duke Energy accepted […]

A Shift in the Debate Over Global Warming

The charged and complex debate over how to slow down global warming has become a lot more complicated. Most of the focus in the last few years has centered on imposing caps on greenhouse gas emissions to prod energy users to conserve or switch to nonpolluting technologies.Leaders of the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change

Top Asia oil refiner Sinopec Q4 dives two-thirds

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Top Asian oil refiner Sinopec Corp posted a nearly two-thirds fall in quarterly net profit, as high oil prices squeezed its refining business into the red, and it faces an even tougher 2008. Sinopec, which vies with PetroChina and CNOOC Ltd to fuel the world’s largest oil market after the United […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy