As U.S. gasoline prices burst above $4 a gallon this summer, U.S. gasoline demand staged its biggest drop in more than a quarter of a century.

ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell.

...Due to the oil embargo of the 1970s, a number of countries have plans to mitigate the impact of an oil supply disruption. Some have their own strategic reserves to protect against short-term oil shortages. The International Energy Agency, a membership organization to address energy issues, also coordinates national reserves (PDF) among twenty-seven member countries including the United States to share oil reserves during emergencies. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a number of countries supplied oil products to the United States; even though United States has a massive strategic supply of crude, the storm knocked out a significant portion of the country's refining capacity.

The report notes that oil production in the rig-dotted Gulf, which has been seen as America's best hope for greater energy self-sufficiency, will be increasingly threatened by severe storms that continue to grow in frequency and strength in the region.

The Anglo-Canadian airline, which employed 600 people, said yesterday that it would declare itself insolvent, blaming high fuel costs for its losses.

Such infrastructure requires a lot of maintenance, which is not cheap. On the heels of two decades of low oil prices, much of the industry deferred a lot of maintenance. As Simmons says: "The entire value chain is built of steel. Steel begins to corrode the day it is cast."

In 2005, only two platforms produced more than 100,000 barrels a day; this summer, six are producing at that level or are preparing to do so. Since 2005, oil and gas production has increasingly shifted to deeper water off the coast of Louisiana, with a handful of giant platforms generating volumes once produced by dozens of small, shallow-water facilities.

Hopkins was teaching permaculture design, or the design of sustainable human settlements, when he stumbled across the idea of “peak oil,” which holds that an irreversible decline in global oil production is imminent. That led him to create “Transition Towns”—among them the village of Totnes in southwestern England where he now lives. Hopkins and his colleagues have encouraged the planting of gardens and nut trees for local food sources, the establishment of gas-free transportation (including a rickshaw service), and the support of local businesses and local skilled labor. Totnes also has its own local, transition currency, the Totnes pound.

Germany relies on Russia for about 44 percent of its gas imports, according to government information, and in recent years Moscow has cut off energy supplies to some of its neighbours on a number of occasions.

The increasing importance of the Muslim-dominated Xinjiang autonomous region as a source of the energy and minerals needed to fuel China's booming eastern cities is raising the stakes for Beijing in its battle against separatists agitating for an independent state.

The weaker outlook from the world's most profitable carmaker weighed on shares of European rivals and highlighted an increasingly difficult environment, where orders in the United States and Western Europe for high-margin, gas-thirsty vehicles is slumping.

Midlothian Council rejected the plan to build a 45-megawatt onshore wind farm neat Penicuik in February, despite the project's potential to contribute towards Britain's already challenging renewable energy targets.

The approval, announced by Australia's environment minister Peter Garrett, will allow Heathgate to produce up to 1,500 tonnes of uranium oxide a year.

The recognition that solar power represents a huge untapped potential for relatively clean energy saw PMO call a meeting on Tuesday to discuss what could be done to make this form of energy more viable in the Indian context where there is an abundance of sunshine through most of the year.