KBR pleads guilty in Nigeria bribes case

Houston-based KBR pleaded guilty today to federal criminal charges alleging it paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials to win contracts to build a massive natural gas project in the country. The engineering giant and military contractor will pay $402 million in fines and spend three years under the watch of a court-appointed […]

Fire threating water, gas supplies in Victoria

MELBOURNE’S largest water catchment, the Thomson Reservoir, and the Longford gas plant are both threatened by major bushfires burning out of control today. And a water expert says a fire that kills just half the trees in the Thomson catchment could cut water yield in the already drought-ravaged dam by 20 per cent for the […]

‘We Cannot Continue to Waste Valuable Natural Resources’

In a SPIEGEL interview, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko discusses plans for joint ventures with German engineering multinational Siemens, secure shipments of natural resources to the West and rumors that Moscow wants to start a gas cartel modeled after OPEC …SPIEGEL: Why is Russia, with its enormous energy reserves, so interested in efficient technology? Schmatko: […]

Saudi Arabia to More Than Double Spare Capacity, Al-Naimi Says

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia, the world

OPEC delays 35 oil projects to boost prices

OPEC members have delayed 35 oil projects to expand the group’s supply, its secretary-general said yesterday, as oil’s record plunge reduces their revenue and the financial crisis erodes demand. To help revive prices, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is willing to cut yet more oil output at a meeting in March, Abdullah al-Badri […]

China

(Bloomberg) — China Fuel demand growth has fallen as manufacturers shut plants and cut production because of declining export orders. China

US Oil Inventories Highest Since July 2007 – EIA

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- U.S. oil inventories are at their highest level since July 2007, and are closing in on a 16-year high. Oil stocks grew by 4.7 million barrels to reach 350.8 million barrels nationwide in the week ended Feb. 6, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s the highest level since the […]

The Great Awakening: Boomers, Your Crisis Has Arrived (Part 3 of 3)

…Oil prices below $40 a barrel will lead to a deepening of this crisis in the not too distant future. At these prices it is no longer profitable to develop alternative fuels and search for new supply. Rigs are being shutdown, deepwater projects canceled, shale and oil sands projects being delayed, and natural gas exploration […]

Who wants to buy Big West refinery?

FOR SALE: Troubled industrial complex on 650 acres along Rosedale Highway. Sure, this awkward amalgam of three small refineries is landlocked and has no proprietary access to the crude oil it needs to run. That But it can produce up to 2 percent of the state

GE Transportation to lay off 1,550 in Erie

GE Transportation Systems announced this week it will lay off 1,550 workers at its manufactuing plant in Erie to deal with a “global economic slowdown.” “The overall economic downturn is substantial, and we at GE Transportation are not immune to the global recession,” CEO Lorenzo Simonelli said in a statement. “In order to stay competitive […]

The Human Cost of Bush’s Arctic Policy

The Inupiat people lovingly refer to the ocean as “our garden.” But there are problems in the “garden” in the Beaufort Sea to the east. Rosemary lives in Nuiqsut (“new-WICK-sit”), a village over 600 miles to the east of Wainwright and near Prudhoe Bay. The ever-expanding oilfields with their associated airplane and helicopter traffic, airports, […]

Solar Shakeout Less Likely To Hit Wafers, Silicons

Solar energy companies which operate further away from end-customers — such as wafer and silicon producers — are likely to fare better during a looming shakeout in the sector than their cell and module-making peers. In recent years, solar companies have enjoyed significant growth rates and a keen appetite from investors. But the crisis in […]

Biofuels to the Rescue — If the Recipe Is Found

The United States has enough land, water and transport capability to make cellulosic ethanol that could displace one-third of its gasoline needs in 2030, according to a study by a government laboratory, in partnership with General Motors. But the study does not say how to actually make the fuel.Sandia National Laboratories, part of the Energy […]

Saudi oil minister speech to CERA conference

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, on Tuesday gave a keynote address to the CERAWeek energy conference titled “Achieving Energy Stability in Uncertain Times.” Excerpts of Naimi’s remarks are below.“Ladies and gentlemen, 2008 was a year of unprecedented turmoil and volatility, the likes of which have not been seen since the Great Depression of the […]

Focus on road building wrong for New Zealand

New Zealand’s two leading transport unions say that pouring public money only into roading and ignoring other transport infrastructure is a mistake.Rail and Maritime Transport Union General Secretary Wayne Butson says in a time when we need to lower our reliance on fossil fuel powered vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, leaving out urgent rail […]

Solar: Have We Hit The Bottom In Demand?

Has solar demand – and the slide in solar shares – finally hit bottom? The solar analysts at Merrill Lynch think so. In a piece authored by analysts Lu Yeung, Vincent Chow, Matthew Yates and Steve Millunovich, Merrill this morning asserts that “improving second derivative trends” suggest the industry is headed for a cyclical bottom.The […]

Super Solar Cells?

Certain Nanocrystals Shown To Generate More Than One Electron A team of Los Alamos researchers led by Victor Klimov has shown that carrier multiplication—when a photon creates multiple electrons—is a real phenomenon in tiny semiconductor crystals and not a false observation born of extraneous effects that mimic carrier multiplication. The research, explained in a recent […]

Renewable Energy Solar Cells Ain’t So Renewable

Sanyo’s just announced that it’s going to build a new factory in Japan dedicated to solar photovoltaic cell manufacture–the company plans to double its solar cell output to meet rising demand as the world slowly catches on to the idea of renewable energy. But in the light of some thinking about the rarity of chemical […]

Merrill Lynch says global oil production will decline further in coming years

Global oil production decline rate is set to accelerate in the coming years, according to a new research report. “The global decline rate has averaged at least 4.5 per cent year-on-year in recent years. These rates, however, could accelerate further over the next few years,” Merrill Lynch said in its recent update. The New York-based […]

UK: Up to 1,000 expected at fresh protests over foreign workers

Protests on the scale of last week’s mass picketing of Lindsey oil refinery will shift this morning to two power station sites, where hundreds of skilled British contract workers have failed to find work. Workers who took part in the action in North Lincolnshire, which led to half the jobs on a specialised plant contract […]

US Interior Secretary breaks with ‘drill-only’ energy policy

WASHINGTON (AFP) What Salazar called a “midnight action” by the previous administration favored big oil while ignoring developers of renewable energy. It would have moved forward from 2012 to 2010 the creation of a new energy development plan that would affect some 300 million offshore acres on the outer continental shelf (OCS), from the US […]

Shell

(Bloomberg) — Global demand for oil and other forms of energy will double in the next four decades, driven by population growth and rising incomes, said Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer. Most of Shell

Scientists losing war of words over climate change

Who understands the probabilities of climate change? Certainly not the general public, if psychological tests on volunteers in the US are to be believed. The public, it seems, thinks climate scientists are less certain about their conclusions than they actually are. The results could explain why the minority views of “climate sceptics” get proportionally more […]

Reduce Your Electric Bill with Google PowerMeter

Google.org is looking to help out with your electric bill. The search giant’s charitable wing has announced the Google PowerMeter, an app designed to help users track their home electricity usage. The application, which lives as a widget on iGoogle, communicates with the nation’s 40 million smart meters, and shows consumers their home energy information […]

A Visit to Chevron’s Kern River Heavy Oil Facility

Recently, I visited Chevron’s Kern River Heavy Oil field, near Bakersfield California, as a guest of the American Petroleum Institute. Kern River is an extremely old field, discovered in 1899. The oil flows a bit on its own (API=13), but really needs to be heated to be easily extracted or to be shipped by pipeline. […]

EIA Revises Nov US Gasoline Demand; Total Demand -7.5% On Year

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- The Energy Information Administration said Tuesday that November U.S. gasoline demand was slightly higher than it reported on Jan. 27 in revised data for the month. EIA said it discovered an error in calculating changes in supplies of gasoline additives, such as ethanol, and issued an upward revision for the month. […]

Pemex May Weather Crisis By Avoiding Marginal Projects: CEO

(Bloomberg) — Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, is in better shape to weather the global financial crisis because it avoids No company can escape the consequences of the global financial crisis, Reyes Heroles said in today

Time to buy oil stocks?

…Costs are also supportive of oil prices. The marginal cost of production, at roughly US$60 to US$70 per barrel according to the IEA, means that many projects are unprofitable at current prices. So capital spending is on the way down and as producers scale back on capital spending plans, oil prices will eventually rise. A […]

Green industry a field with a future

Green jobs, we’re told, will save America. President Obama wants to create millions of jobs for people installing solar panels, brewing up biofuels or making homes more energy efficient. Those jobs, he hopes, will help lift the country out of recession and fight global warming at the same time. But what green jobs are available […]

GM cutting 10,000 jobs

Troubled automaker reducing worldwide salaried staff by 14%, with a third of layoffs coming in U.S.; remaining workers to have their pay cut for 2009. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors announced Tuesday it is cutting 10,000 workers, or 14% of its salaried jobs worldwide. A third of those job losses will be in the […]

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