The Oil Drum: The House is poised to debate and pass an Energy Bill this week…

Readers are encouraged to peruse recent coverage by CQ Today and EandENews (included below the fold) concerning the contents and status of elements in the bill. Here’s links to the actual text of the two bills – an energy bill and a tax bill. These two bills may well be combined into one bill by […]

Oil settles above $78, sets new record

NEW YORK – Oil futures settled at a record high above $78 Tuesday on expectations that crude inventories fell last week and reports of new violence in Nigeria, a large oil producer and key supplier to the U.S. Investors believe Wednesday’s inventory report by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration will show that refiners drew […]

Plateau Oil

The International Energy Agency (IEA) was created by the 26-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to monitor and report on the world Some say this is a sign of

House debates hotly contested renewable energy bill

House lawmakers are expected to debate this week a hotly contested effort to require electric utilities to produce more power from renewable sources such as wind and biomass. A proposed amendment to a broad energy package by Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., would require power companies to increase use of wind turbines, solar panels, biomass, geothermal […]

Australia: Iemma dumps coal power plan

THE NSW Government has indicated it is willing to use gas for its next power station, moving away from coal for the first time. The about-turn is the Government’s first response to plans for a national carbon trading regime. In a speech today, the Premier, Morris Iemma, will outline the case for the move to […]

$5.8 Billion More in Oil Revenues and a

Speaking from La Cabrerita in the state of Anzoategui during his weekly program Alo Presidente, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela has recuperated US$5.8 billion annually through measures to introduce

Extraordinary oil revenues as of September

According to the Ministry of Finance, the Venezuelan Treasury as of September will begin receiving oil and non-oil additional revenues. The oil industry as of September is expected to deliver extraordinary oil royalties. That month Venezuelan state oil giant Pdvsa is expected to complete royalty contributions estimated in this year’s budget at USD 12.16 billion. […]

Oil boom brings $649 billion windfall for Opec

Opec’s oil and gas export revenue surged 22 per cent to a record $649 billion in 2006 as crude prices hit an all-time high and the exporter group pumped close to full tilt, an Opec report showed on Tuesday. In the world’s biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia income from petroleum exports, including crude oil, condensates […]

Concerns Mount Over Nuclear Energy After Series of Scares

Sceptics say recent errors highlight the drawbacks of nuclear energy Irregularities at nuclear reactors in Germany and Japan in recent weeks have rekindled safety fears and raised tough questions about nuclear energy amid increasing environmental concerns. The nuclear plant at Brunsbuttel in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein is now the world’s safest. It’s not […]

Energy Bill Aids Expansion of Atomic Power

A one-sentence provision buried in the SenateThe biggest champion of the loan guarantees is Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee and one of the nuclear industry

Extreme weather brings flood chaos round the world

A round-up of extreme weather news from China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sudan, South Africa, and the UK. People in countries across the world, from China to India and Sudan to Indonesia, are coping with severe wet weather, highlighting the position of flooding as the most deadly of all natural disasters. While single events cannot be […]

Latinamerica energy future is promising but autarchic

Latinamerica is set to invest 267 billion US dollars in energy projects in the next two decades according to the United Nations Economic Committee for Latinamerica and the Caribbean, CEPAL. The funds should help to ensure energy provision and expand production from renewable sources which currently represent less than 25% of the regionBrazil is forecasted […]

The Oil Drum: ”Peak Oil: What’s Ahead?”

This is a draft of Chapter 3 of my booklet. Quite a few of analysts are saying that peak oil is here now. Suppose they are right — what kind of changes can we expect to see in the years ahead? In this section, we will look at projections of oil supply, and discuss what […]

House Moves Favor Energy Industry: Democrats Drop Some of Bill’s Provisions

Bowing to pressure from energy-state Democrats, House leaders have yanked some of the more industry-unfriendly provisions embedded in their proposed energy package. But Democratic leaders have yet to decide whether to allow a vote to raise fuel mileage standards for cars and trucks. Hoping to quell a revolt among producing-state Democrats and bring an energy […]

Unusual Culprits Cripple Farms in California

BUTTONWILLOW, Calif. Theft of scrap metal, mostly copper, has vexed many areas of American life and industry for the last 18 months, fueled largely by record-level prices for copper resulting from a building boom in Asia. Common in developing counties, metal theft is now committed in nearly every state, largely by methamphetamine users who hock […]

Oil inches near record high

LONDON (Reuters) — U.S. oil climbed above $77 a barrel Wednesday, rising toward its all-time high, on forecasts for another weekly decline in crude stocks in top consumer the United States and a recovery in world share markets. U.S. crude was up 50 cents at $77.33 a barrel in electronic trading after hitting $77.43, the […]

Rethinking Three Mile Island

(Fortune) — Ralph DeSantis was home in bed before dawn on March 28, 1979 when his phone rang. It was his shift supervisor at Three Mile Island (TMI), calling from the plant. “‘We have an emergency at Unit II and it’s serious,’” is the first thing DeSantis remembers hearing. Then he heard the alarms going […]

Russia reaps rich harvest with potash

…As population growth drives demand for foodstuffs, and the arable land available to supply food shrinks, it is the mineral fertilizers that farmers use to cover the gap between consumer demand for calories and the productivity of farmland to supply it. Thus the biggest consumers of potash are the hungriest – China and India, followed […]

White House sees black gold in melting sea ice

WASHINGTON The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic seabed and subsoil hold as much as 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas. Other resources such as nickel and diamonds also are present. The melting ice also has led to increased traffic from ships seeking a shorter route between Europe, Asia and the Western […]

China’s energy consumption per unit of GDP falls 2.78% in first half

China’s energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product dropped 2.78 percent in the first half of 2007 from the same period a year earlier, the government announced on Monday. The government has set the target of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent between 2006 and 2010. It fell 1.33 percent […]

UK oil sector needs greater investment, output study warns

The multinational oil companies are jeopardising the UK’s “energy security, and possibly future wealth” by their reluctance to invest at higher levels, according to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s UK Oil and Gas Output index, published yesterday. Despite near-record investment in the past year, it has failed to reverse the year-on-year decline in North Sea […]

Ghana’s Energy Needs

The World Bank Board of Executive Directors and the Global Environment Facility have approved US$95.5 million* in financing of the Energy Development and Access project to increase electricity access, supply, and reliability in Ghana, where rolling blackouts and inaccessibility continue to impede economic growth. Ghana has made tremendous efforts to promote growth and development, and […]

Exposed: The Truth Behind Popular Carbon Offsetting Schemes

A television documentary has uncovered flaws in a series of carbon offsetting schemes intended to make good the global warming gases emitted by flights and other polluting activities. An episode of the British show Dispatches aired “The Great Green Smoke Screen,” which revealed how academics and environmentalists are questioning the ethics and impact of offsetting […]

Indonesia sees slower palm oil expansion from 2010

Indonesia expects palm oil output to grow sharply in the next two years but stricter forest protection may then slow expansion, a senior industry official has said. Indonesia is set to take over from Malaysia as the world’s top palm oil producer this year because of rapid expansion in the last five years. “We expect […]

Chavez backs Energy Minister Ramirez despite scarcity of oil drilling rigs

President Hugo Chavez is backing Venezuela’s Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez despite repeated opposition criticism of his management of the nation’s oil industry, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and a current scarcity in oil drilling rigs. “We have a tremendous colleague at the head of PDVSA and I call for support for him … carry on Rafael, […]

European Confidence Probably Fell in July on Gains in Euro, Oil

European business and consumer confidence probably fell for a second month in July as the euro’s appreciation and higher oil prices threatened to curb economic growth, a survey of economists shows.As well as the euro’s surge to a record $1.3852 on July 24, crude oil’s 52 percent increase to $77.15 a barrel since mid- January […]

Geopolitics, Oil And Water

The most troubling element of the latter-day industrial revolutions in India and China may lie in their soaring energy demands. The rise in the consumption of natural resources is significant because of the sheer number of people involved: There are a combined 600 million Americans and Europeans, but more than a billion Chinese and a […]

New hope for uranium wealth in Dar

Tanzania is set to experience a flurry of activities in its mining industry as recent explorations have identified uranium rich sandstone formations in the country. Two foreign exploring companies — Uranium Resources Plc, a uranium mining company focusing on Southern Africa, and Australia-based Western Metals Ltd — said they had entered “a very exciting phase […]

Saudi to add half-million bpd to output capacity

State oil giant Saudi Aramco said Monday that it expects to add half-a-million barrels per day (bpd) of crude to its maximum production capacity of 10.8 million bpd next December. “Saudi Aramco’s maximum sustainable production capacity is 10.8 million bpd,” the company said in a statement on a midyear meeting of the executive committee of […]

Ethanol Scam

Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn’t that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after “solutions” that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Is It Time To Abandon the Idea of Phasing Out Oil and Gas?
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