Chevron: Athabasca Oil Sands Expansion to Start Up in 2011

A 100,000-barrel-a-day expansion at Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s (RDSA) Athabasca Oil Sands Project is expected to be completed and start up in 2011, slightly behind schedule, a top executive of partner Chevron Corp. (CVX) said Thursday. “It’s going to start more likely next year, which is little behind the original schedule,” Gary Luquette, Chevron’s president […]

Cleanup funding benefits energy giants

The program was established to help mom-and-pop companies repair the environment. But large firms get the money. Reporting from Sacramento — Some of the country’s wealthiest oil companies and gas station chains have collected hundreds of millions of dollars from a cleanup fund conceived to help smaller, financially struggling entities. Environmentalists and former lawmakers who […]

Major find in age of shrinking resources

Oil firm’s ‘transformational’ discovery in northern Iraq a shot of hope to those who gamble on volatile region CALGARY On Wednesday, Heritage Oil Corp.HOC-T announced what is believed to be the biggest discovery in the area in recent decades. Based on the results of a seismic exploration program and a single drilling well, Heritage said […]

Analyst Says Oil Outlook Cloudy

The economy is probably rebounding better than most realize, says Houston energy analyst Dan Pickering, but if oil demand continues to drop, the damage to the energy business will be significant. “We could be at $70 oil much faster than we predict,” Pickering told a crowd Thursday on the final day of the 2009 Offshore […]

The rewards of solar panels

We live in an old terraced house on a cloudy, rainy island. Yet the solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on our roof, put up two years ago, are supplying around 90% of all the electricity used by my family. The initial cost is high, but don’t let that put you off. Two key developments in recent […]

Oil industry eager to take case to public

Call goes out to defend energy producers amid policy changes Facing unwelcome changes to U.S. energy policy, some oil and gas industry leaders are calling for stepped-up efforts to defend the business publicly and dispel what they view as myths about the potential of renewables to meet the nation

Saudi Aramco plans gas plant at Moneefa oilfield

State hydrocarbon giant Saudi Aramco will build a gas plant at its Moneefa oilfield to process 1 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of gas, an Aramco executive said on Saturday. The plant would process gas from Aramco’s newly discovered offshore gas fields Arabiyah and Hasbah, the executive said adding that it is a “sizeable […]

Report examines limits of national power grid simulations

ARGONNE, Ill. (May 4, 2009) “Implementing smart grid technologies on a large scale will not be trivial,” Petri added. “The challenges go beyond technical and economic issues. The smart grid technologies could fundamentally change how national power grid systems operate and respond to disruptions.” The workshop, which was sponsored by U.S. Department of Homeland Security […]

US-Canadian shale could neutralize Russian energy threat to Europeans

Rising shale gas production in the United States and Canada as well as potential natural gas supplies from Iraq could be pivotal in curbing Russia

Canada's reckless carbon habit

Here’s the situation, and it’s a dangerous one. In the past 150 years, the human tribe willingly became eager slaves to oil and got teenage-drunk on the fumes. But carbon is now the insidious master of our house and garden. Man-made volcanoes of CO{-2} have wrecked the climate thermostat, dried up water supplies, killed forests, […]

Saudi slashes spending on five year energy plan

Saudi Arabia The report failed to say where it had gained the information on the delays but added that state-run Saudi Aramco was planning to also slash spending on the so-called Maintain Potential programme. Investment in the project, which includes the 1.2 million-barrel-a-day Safaniyah field, will be halved to around $500m this year and %400m […]

Global warming's toll: Glacier in Bolivia is gone

CHACALTAYA, Bolivia Chacaltaya (the name in Aymara means ”cold road”) began melting in the mid-1980s. Ramirez, the assistant director of the Institute of Hydraulics and Hydrology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in nearby La Paz , documented its disappearance in March. Approximately 35 miles from La Paz , it takes an hour and […]

Pdvsa debt increases by 146 percent in 2008

Venezuela Increased revenues were the result of booming oil prices. Although oil prices fell in the last quarter of 2008, in the first half of 2008 they exceeded USD 100, with the Venezuelan oil basket price averaging USD 86. Gross income, including domestic and foreign operations, amounted to USD 134.5 billion, which represents a 40 […]

What If the Economy Never Recovers?

Economic growth means progress, general well-being, and all things good, right? We all know that. In the midst of what some are calling the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it’s almost unthinkable to suggest that growth should not be our goal Given the circumstances, it’s entirely understandable that President Obama, Congress, the private […]

The Usefulness of Fear

Fear has been unfashionable for the last half century. Since the end of the Great Depression and World War II, modern civilization has adopted a persona of happy optimism. The industrial and technological energy that was unleashed during the war years transformed itself into consumerism and a boundless confidence that human ingenuity could materialize and […]

Many gains and a big constraint for wind industry

CHICAGO “In some ways we’re reaching the glass ceiling,” said Rob Gramlich, vice president of policy at the American Wind Energy Association. It was the organization’s biggest annual conference to date, drawing 1,200 exhibitors and more than 20,000 people. The country’s grid is aging, often overloaded and, in the case of wide-open states like Wyoming […]

Interior will keep Bush's polar bear rule

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today that he will retain the Bush administration’s controversial rule on polar bear protections, rejecting special authority given to him by Congress and the pleas of Democratic lawmakers, environmentalists and scientists to overturn the regulation. While keeping the rule — which limits use of the Endangered Species Act to curb […]

5 Feasible Renewable Energy Sources

(PhysOrg.com) — President Barack Obama has made no secret of his desire to develop a “green economy” that includes renewable energy projects meant to benefit the environment. He has said that part of the economic recovery in the U.S. will come from money for, and jobs created by, renewable energy projects. Around the world, politicians, […]

Renewable industry cheers Obama budget while coal and nuclear jeer

It was a tale of two budgets. For many environmentalists and the renewable power sector, President Obama’s $3.6 trillion blueprint released yesterday would provide a flush of new cash to spur the development of energy-efficient buildings and carbon-free wind and solar farms. It also would add new money to ready U.S. EPA for the global […]

In Industrial Manufacturing, Efficiency Falls as Technology Advances

A study of manufacturing processes shows that more advanced technologies are less energy efficient A century ago, industrial manufacturing was dominated by large-scale, energy-hungry processes such as smelting ores and machining metals. Today, the industrial landscape features an array of novel techniques operating on much smaller scales, making computer chips, carbon nanofibers, and other sophisticated […]

Kurds Set Plans to Begin Exporting Oil in June

The autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq said it will start exporting crude oil in June, without seeking official clearance from the central government in Baghdad. The Kurds and the central government, which grants all oil-export licenses, have been at odds over Iraq’s draft oil law as well as oil contracts the Kurds signed with […]

Peak oil review – May 4

1. Production and Prices 2. Iraq 3. Detroit 4. Briefs 1. Production and Prices Oil prices had a good week, closing out above $53 barrel despite much bad economic news. After concern about the possible consequences of the swine flu on Monday and Tuesday, prices moved up on reports of increased consumer confidence and investor […]

UK "green" job market swelling amid recession

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s “green” job market is thriving despite tough economic times and mounting redundancies in other sectors, environmental recruiters said on Friday. Acre Resources saw job opportunities in Britain’s renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainability and corporate social responsibility sectors grow by 58 percent in the past year, but gave no absolute figures on […]

Mexico could pump 250,000 bpd from Tamil

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A complex of four oil fields anchored by the deepwater Tamil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico could eventually produce up to 250,000 barrels per day of oil, a senior executive of Mexican state oil company Pemex said on Friday. The Tamil find, Mexico’s first commercial oil discovery in the deep […]

Oil rally may draw rush of consumer hedging

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A nearly 70 percent run up in oil prices since February may trigger a round of hedging by big energy consumer industries, like airlines, seeking to protect themselves from a further hike in costs. Already experts say there have been signs more companies are wading into the market to take out […]

Venezuela Seizes 60 Oilfield Services Company Assets

(Bloomberg) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez seized assets from 60 oilfield services companies including Oklahoma-based Williams Cos., using a law the national assembly passed yesterday. Employees at state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA worked through the night to take over operations from companies that provided services such as water and gas compression and maritime […]

Acolytes of neo-Malthusian Apocalypticism

…The key to understanding this graph, and indeed the entire Limits To Growth mindset, is that they assume there is a fixed amount of something we can First, rising prices spur development and new technologies make recovery of hitherto expensive resources cheap. This effectively increases the supply. Second, in the case of energy, other ways […]

With Easy Oil Gone, Pemex Sobers Up

After coasting through the ’80s and ’90s, the Mexican national oil company is playing catch up to develop the ability to operate in deep water. HOUSTON — Thirty years ago, a fisherman saw an oil slick in the shallow waters off the coast of Mexico. The discovery would lead to one of the largest crude […]

Next Gen Biofuel: Verenium

The Obama administration According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. will rely mostly on so-called cellulosic ethanol to meet its biofuel requirements over the next decade: About $50 billion of the $59 billion projected investment in renewable fuels through 2022 will come in cellulosic ethanol, the EPA figures. We chatted with Verenium chief executive […]

Ethanol vs. electricity

Suppose you take an acre’s worth of switchgrass and turn it into ethanol for your flex-fuel car, while your neighbors take their acre’s worth and burn it in a power plant to generate electricity for their plug-in hybrid. Which car would go farther? If you guessed that your car would, you’d be way off. About […]

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