One Crude Oil Languishes, Another Spikes

NEW YORK Crude oil on the Nymex ended 2006 at $61.05 a barrel, while Europe’s Brent crude closed the year at a slight discount of $60.86 a barrel. That relationship was the normal order of things for years: Nymex crude oil _ pegged to high quality light, sweet West Texas Intermediate _ has enjoyed benchmark […]

Episode 36: Locus of Agency

KMO talks with Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization about the fragility of out vast centralized systems, the need for resiliency & diversity, and the possibilities for renewal and reinvention which only present themselves in historical moments of disintegration and collapse. Podcast: C-Realm

American Gluttony – We Must Change Our Habits

An economic expert recently claimed that if every American driver pledged to save one gallon of gas per week, the prices at the pump would plunge. Tom Kloza, analyst for the New Jersey-based Oil Price Information Service, said that a 1-percent dip in demand could shave as much as 50 cents a gallon off the […]

Alternative Fuel Vehicles Will Be Tough Sell

Imagine a vehicle that runs on hydrogen or biofuels and offers the same features, performance and price as today’s gasoline vehicle. Will it capture half the market? Not likely, concludes a new MIT analysis of the challenges behind introducing alternative-fuel vehicles to the marketplace. Not even if it’s three times more fuel-efficient. Among the barriers: […]

What if the Oil Runs Out?

Though the government is planning a massive expansion of transport networks, it has never considered this question. Motorised transport is a form of time travel. We mine the compressed time of other eras – the infinitisimal rain of plankton onto the ocean floor, the settlement of trees in anoxic swamps – and use it to […]

Because we’re worth it

The baby-boomers Sally asked her mother what she should do for her summer holidays that would look good on her CV.

Chinese city panics over undrinkable water supply

Panic water buying in a major eastern Chinese city has broken out with millions hoarding drinking supplies after public taps became tainted with polluted lake water, state press reported Thursday. Stores in Wuxi city, Jiangsu province, began rationing sales of bottled water after the outbreak of blue-green algae contaminated the drinking supplies of the city […]

ExxonMobil shareholders rebuff concerns on climate change

ExxonMobil shareholders on Wednesday voted strongly against several measures that dissident investors proposed to reform the climate policies of world’s largest oil company. A majority of ExxonMobil shareholders defeated resolutions, urging the oil giant to set goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and to boost its use of renewable energy, at ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder […]

Who Owns the Wind?

With a growing number of wind power stations in Germany, a new kind of legal case is rearing its ugly head. The crime: stealing wind. It’s an offense not mentioned in the bible or the statute books. But in a broader sense it is about theft, even when the booty itself is invisible. But it […]

US urges G8 deal on gas emissions

US President George W Bush has urged countries to agree on long-term goals for cutting greenhouse emissions. He called for 15 countries identified as major emitters, including developing nations, to meet in the coming months. The call came in a statement outlining US policy ahead of next week’s G8 summit, in which the German hosts […]

Energy wisdom is knowing that you do not know

The great Victorian economist, Stanley Jevons, published an exhaustive study of the coal industry in 1865. An exemplary exercise in applied economics, comprehensive in its analysis of supply and demand, geology and technology, it proved influential. William Gladstone, then chancellor of the exchequer, devoted much of his Budget speech to praising Jevons’s achievement and implementing […]

Shell Shuts in Production at Bonny Light Terminal Due to Attacks

Oil prices rebounded slightly on news of further militant attacks in key producer Nigeria, after falling sharply yesterday. Shell announced today that 150,000 bpd of crude oil production has been locked in at its Bonny Light terminal in Nigeria after pipelines were sabotaged. The attack comes the day after new Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua found […]

White water torrent to die as nation gambles on huge Nile dam project

Climate change fears dampen hopes of power from tourist attraction Six miles north of Lake Victoria, the Nile awakens, exploding into a cauldron of white water known as the Bujagali Falls. Offering some of the world’s most spectacular rafting, it is one of Uganda’s top attractions. Soon it will be destroyed. After 13 years of […]

Earth nears tipping point on climate change

A rise of 1 degree Celsius could be enough to trigger ‘dangerous’ warming, scientists warn. Dangerous climate change has not yet arrived, but the tipping point may not be far off. And it may be reached with a smaller temperature rise than recent studies suggest. Those are among the conclusions from an international team of […]

Scientists warn on biofuels

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Biofuels are likely to speed up global warming as they are encouraging farmers to burn tropical forests that have absorbed a large portion of greenhouse gases, climate scientists warned. The specialists, who gathered for an international conference in Hong Kong, rang the alarm bell as Malaysian palm oil futures prices hit […]

Backlash warning to biofuel investors

Soaring investment in biofuels could expose companies to financial and social risk because of the environmental problems they can cause, Co-operative Insurance of the UK has warned. In a report published Monday, Co-operative Insurance calls on the companies in which it invests to tackle the problems associated with biofuels, saying it plans to “engage with […]

The false hope of a biofuel free lunch

The recent frenzy in the U.S. over so-called renewable energy from biofuels, particularly corn-based ethanol, is yet one more example of why government should not be in the business of choosing technologies to solve social problems. Just like the failed synthetic fuels program spawned by the 1970s energy crisis, the federal government once again is […]

Russia to Cut Natural Gas Production Amid Warm Weather

Unusually warm weather this year has forced Russian natural gas producers to lower 2007 production targets by billions of cubic meters, gas industry leaders said after a meeting Wednesday. Gazprom, the country’s gas giant that has a monopoly on natural gas exports, said it would cut production this year by 4 billion cubic meters.And smaller […]

Air-Car Ready for Mass Production

The world’s first commercial compressed air-powered vehicle is rolling towards the production line. The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Negre, will be built by India’s largest automaker, Tata Motors. The Air Car uses compressed air to push its engine’s pistons. It is anticipated that approximately 6000 Air Cars will be cruising the […]

Sinopec shares jump 9.7 per cent on news of oil find in northwestern China

Shares of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. jumped 9.7 per cent Thursday, a day after its parent company said Sinopec had found more crude oil in northwestern China. Sinopec, AsiaOilweek

South Korean consortium finds huge oil deposit in Russia

A South Korean energy development consortium said today that it has confirmed the existence of a huge offshore oil deposit in Russia’s Kamchatka region. The field, jointly controlled by South Korean oil developers and Russia’s state-run oil company Rosneft, is estimated to hold 10 billion barrels of crude, the state-run Korea National Oil Corp. Antara

US motor gasoline demand remains resilient

Motor gasoline demand growth remains resilient despite the record high retail motor gasoline prices and soft economic growth environment in the United States, which in turn has renewed concerns about the reliability of the official demand data, according to market research by Goldman Sachs. “In our view these concerns are unfounded as gasoline demand growth […]

A Call To Lower the Speed Limit to 55

Fifty-five! Now there’s a number that used to unite the United States. Coast to coast the law of the land was fifty-five miles an hour. Just as patriotic Americans worked together and planted victory gardens to fight food shortages during WWII, in the 1970s, with help from the insightful policies of an enlightened congress, Americans […]

Iraq to Set Up National Oil Firm

The Iraqi parliament will vote in weeks on founding the state-owned National Iraqi Oil Company, former Iraqi Oil Minister said on Tuesday. “The main goal of the new Iraqi oil and gas bill is founding a National Iraqi Oil Company which can regulate the oil and gas sectors which suffer from lack of coordination between […]

Peace in Nigeria could help boost oil supply

President Umaru Yar’Adua used his inaugural address Tuesday to appeal for an immediate end to the violence that has slashed crude production in Nigeria’s oil heartland, and the largest militant group said it would consider the overture. The prospect of increased output for Africa’s biggest oil country and a major U.S. supplier sent prices down […]

BP inks largest exploration commitment in Libya

BP and its Libyan partner, the Libya Investment Corporation (LIC) have signed a major exploration and production agreement with Libya’s National Oil Company (NOC). The initial exploration commitment is set at a minimum of $900 million, with significant additional appraisal and development expenditures upon exploration success. “This is a welcome return to the country for […]

Dennis J. Kucinich: It’s All About Oil

The Iraqi “Hydrocarbon Law” is an issue of critical importance, but has been seriously mischaracterized and I want to provide the House of Representatives the facts and evidence to support the concerns I have expressed. As you know, the Administration set several benchmarks for the Iraqi government, including passage of the “Hydrocarbon Law” by the […]

Oil refinery boom skips U.S.

With gasoline prices averaging $3.21 for a gallon of regular nationwide over the Memorial Day weekend, traditional economic logic might suggest that this would be a good time to invest in new U.S. oil refineries and increase the supply of gasoline. Yet no new refinery has been built in the United States in three decades, […]

Was Iraq invaded to boost oil prices? Value of Exxon reserves rose by $666bn

Iraq was invaded in order to limit its oil production and thus keep world oil prices artificially high, a noted investigative journalist reports. “Iraq’s output in 2003, 2004, and 2005 was less than produced under the restrictive oil-for-food program,” writes Greg Palast in his new book Armed Madhouse (Plume). Oil-for-food allowed Iraq to sell 2 […]

EU, OPEC See World Still Hooked on Oil

Oil will remain the world’s major energy source, despite Europe’s recent efforts to shift toward renewable energy, the European Union and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said Wednesday. forbes euronews

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