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a community peak oil portal
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| U.S. must move on climate change at G8: Barroso |
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 BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States must take another step towards a global climate change pact when major industrialized countries meet in Japan next week, the head of the European Union's executive said on Friday.
"In this G8 summit we will expect the United States to show more ambition than they have shown so far," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters.
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| Ethanol in Center of Price Storm |
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 For many months, an intense debate has been waged among interest groups and politicians in Washington over the role of corn-based ethanol in higher food prices.
The issue is coming to a head now, with the Environmental Protection Agency poised to decide soon whether to roll back the Renewable Fuel Standard. That's the federal mandate calling for the production of 9 billion gallons of biofuels in 2008 and even greater amounts in the future.
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| Energy challenge: We’ll have to fix it ourselves |
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 IT’S ON US hard and fast, and it’s real. It’s been coming for 35 years, just as those bedraggled environmentalists said, but we chose to ignore it and party on. What do we do now?
In the short term, say next winter and maybe many winters beyond, we’re basically on our own. What we can’t do is depend on governments for much. The structural adjustments, the tax changes, the psychological preparations that began a couple of decades ago in Europe have not been made in North America. Hopefully they’ll come, but it’s late, and governments are mostly confused and scrambling and into patchwork and emergency relief.
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| High oil prices spur demand for low energy electronics |
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 SEOUL (Reuters) - These days when customers walk into electronics stores, the first question they ask is how much electricity the fridge, washing machine or laptop computer they are contemplating buying consumes.
"Energy savings were not exactly a hot topic among customers last year," said Kim Dong-han at South Korean electronics retailer Hi-Mart. "But this year, nine out of ten people ask point blank whether a product will help them save money."
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| EU backs away from biofuel goal |
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PARIS (Reuters) - European Union energy chiefs considered an accord with Brazil over biofuels on Saturday at the end of a three day meeting in Paris during which they backed away from the EU's controversial biofuels target.
Though no concrete changes were made to proposed biofuel legislation, ministers said the EU had failed to properly communicate plans to get 10 percent road transport fuels from renewable sources, such as biofuels, by 2020.
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| At $100 for Tank of Gas, Some Choke on ‘Fill It’ |
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 With gasoline prices high and rising, a new financial milestone has arrived: the $100 tank of gas.
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| Responses to green energy programs lack energy |
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ALBANY, N.Y. - Even as more Americans look to shrink their carbon footprints, relatively few have switched to providers of electricity generated by wind, water and sun.
"Green power" programs allow consumers to purchase renewable energy, usually at a premium, without having to go through the far greater expense of erecting a windmill or installing a solar panel. The programs are widely available, yet there are estimates that fewer than 1 percent of residential consumers nationwide receive their electricity from "green power" providers.
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Remembered more for his apocalyptic pessimism than his economics, 18th-century parson and thinker Thomas Malthus reasoned that too many people and too little food would eventually lead to rampant starvation. It didn't. Two hundred years later, the same rigid law of supply and demand is being applied to oil. There is only so much black gold left, doomsdayers say, and a fuel-starved world is looking at the bottom of the barrel.
If we are truly reaching the end of petroleum production–a scenario known as "peak oil"–there are all kinds of gloomy predictions one could make. Facing the future of $200 barrels of oil, analysts are already using terms like "financial tsunami." They predict that inflation will skyrocket with the price of gas, creating a flashback of mid-70s stagflation. Commuters will become energy refugees, abandoning their homes and their SUV's and invading the cities. In the meantime, production costs will cripple manufacturers, a scenario that would turn Central Canada's factories into a scrap heap of rust. "I can't think of any upside to $200-oil," former EnCana chief executive Gwyn Morgan told the National Post.
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| Teens alter summer plans amid soaring prices |
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| Anthony Squires knows exactly what he wants to do.
Squires, 18, attends San Diego City College. He wants to transfer to the University of San Diego. He wants to study medicine. More immediately, though, he wants to volunteer at a hospital so he can start preparing for a future in medicine.
But he can't do that.
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| American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot |
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| ...Over the last 25 years, opportunities to head off the current crisis were ignored, missed or deliberately blocked, according to analysts, politicians and veterans of the oil and automobile industries. What’s more, for all the surprise at just how high oil prices have climbed, and fears for the future, this is one crisis we were warned about. Ever since the oil shortages of the 1970s, one report after another has cautioned against America’s oil addiction.
Even as politicians heatedly debate opening new regions to drilling, corralling energy speculators, or starting an Apollo-like effort to find renewable energy supplies, analysts say the real source of the problem is closer to home. In fact, it’s parked in our driveways.
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| Maine doesn’t have reserves of oil or gas, but that doesn’t mean steps can’t be taken to reduce residents’ heating bills. Environment Northeast, an advocacy group in New England and eastern Canada, has proposed a national efficiency program to reduce heating oil usage. Such programs exist for electricity and natural gas. Expanding the concept to heating oil, which 80 percent of Maine homes rely on, makes sense.
"Energy efficiency means standing up and taking control of the situation, not sitting back to let the situation control us," Michael Stoddard, a lawyer with the group, told the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee last week. Sen. Olympia Snowe is the committee’s senior Republican member.
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| Pakistan textile sector staggers under double blow |
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| Pakistan's textile industry, its biggest source of exports and manufacturing employer, could collapse under the double blow of surging fuel prices and chronic power cuts, industry officials say.
Textiles accounts for about 70 per cent of Pakistan's exports and the sector contributed 8.5 per cent to gross domestic product in the first eight months of the 2007/08 fiscal year to February.
Pakistan faces stiff competition from China, India and Bangladesh because of lower unit prices and quality, and buyers were also worried about the reliability of Pakistani supplies because of instability and militant violence.
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| Inflation, not credit crunch, is top concern worldwide: Paulson |
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| Inflation, and not the credit crunch, is the biggest economic concern worldwide, especially in developing countries, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in an interview Thursday.
Speaking to the BBC on a visit to London, Paulson also said the comparison of the current economic climate in the United States to the Great Depression in the 1920s and 1930s was "hyperbole".
Asked by the broadcaster whether the credit crunch or price rises were more of an issue, he said: "When you look around the world broadly, I think inflation ... is getting the number one focus, when you look at emerging markets, whether its China, or Russia."
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| Kazakhstan Seeking to Export Oil to Europe via Iran |
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| Kazakhstan, which already transports oil through Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, gives a preference to the last one as an alternative route for deliveries to Europe, a Kazakh diplomat said.
Kazakhstan's ambassador to Azerbaijan Serik Primbetov said during a press conference today that alternative and most advantageous route for transporting oil to Europe lays through "Iran".
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| EU, Russia optimistic about new energy deal |
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| The European Union and Russia said Friday they would discuss all aspects of energy cooperation — including access to energy markets — during negotiations on broader political and economic ties.
But neither side committed to a deadline for a new cooperation deal that would replace the existing 1997 agreement, which is now outdated given Russia's oil and gas wealth and more assertive foreign policy stance.
Russia is Europe's key oil and gas supplier.
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