Is the story of ‘massive untapped oil reserves’ fact or fictions?

Who are we to believe? Is it logical and sane to doubt the surveys by IPC, the National Oil Company, giant foreign oil firms and recent surveys by U.S. groups and believe the I.H.S?

Saudi Electricity seeks Aramco help

Saudi Electricity Co. needs state oil firm Aramco to invest in more gas exploration and fuel pipelines to avoid the power outages that hit the world's top oil exporter last year, a document obtained by Reuters showed.

The Petrochemical Plant Strategy

We all know how it's bringing misery to many at gas pumps and making us cry when we open our heating bills. But did you realize that the rising cost of oil is also affecting an industry you might not think about too frequently? I'll let The Graduate whisper it into your ear: "Plastics."

Exxon Mobil could get an earful

Shareholder proposals up for votes include investment in renewables and adopting goals on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Management opposes both as unprofitable or redundant, recommending shareholders reject them as they have similar proposals in past years.

"The corporation's traditional business areas remain critical and promise far greater value than renewables, which currently lack the scale and economic competitiveness of our core business opportunities," the company said in its annual proxy statement.

Lawmakers Push for Big Subsidies for Coal Process

Even as Congressional leaders draft legislation to reduce greenhouse gases linked to global warming, a powerful roster of Democrats and Republicans is pushing to subsidize coal as the king of alternative fuels.

Prodded by intense lobbying from the coal industry, lawmakers from coal states are proposing that taxpayers guarantee billions of dollars in construction loans for coal-to-liquid production plants, guarantee minimum prices for the new fuel, and guarantee big government purchases for the next 25 years.

G8 must focus on energy, not just economy: Russia

The world should rethink its emphasis on unfettered economic growth and boost efforts to create environmentally-friendly sources of fuel, a draft statement by oil and gas giant Russia ahead of a G8 summit says.

Peak Oil Test Looming

World oil production may have already peaked at about 85 million barrels daily (mmbd) where it has been stuck for the past year (see chart Global Oil Production, below). With current demand near 86 mmbd, the difference has been made up by declining inventory.

The new Salem witch trials

Gasoline prices hit an all time high of $3.227 a gallon just before the Memorial Day holiday, and once again, Congress has taken the easy way out. Instead of doing anything substantive about the United States' unquenchable thirst for gasoline, it has gone searching for phony villains - and found them in the personage of mysterious "price gougers."

Fifteen killed in gang clash in Nigeria oil delta

Gun battles between rival gangs in Nigeria's southern oil-producing state of Rivers erupted on Tuesday in violence linked to a change of governor, killing 15 people, local rights activists said.

Ethanol boom may fuel shortage of tequila

Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.

South Africa: Biofuel making staple food more expensive

The rush to produce biofuels, driven by the threat of global warming and higher oil prices, is exerting price pressure on staple foods in South Africa, according to a report by the Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP), a nongovernmental organisation that highlights food security concerns.

Ethanol plan meets resistance

Mexico´s plans for a big push to encourage the use of bioethanol in fuel are caught in a wrangle with the state oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), according to Osiel Castro de la Rosa, a National Action Party (PAN) deputy from the state of Veracruz.

‘Hypermilers’ wring out every last bit of mpg

“When I see someone roar past me, I think, ‘They just used enough gas to last me a week.”

Climate change seen as greatest threat to Pacific islands

Climate change is the biggest threat facing low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean, a conference of regional agriculture ministers in the Marshall Islands was told.

States vie with US on emissions rules

Four months after making headlines with its new program to fight global warming by reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from vehicles, California finds its new plan is stalled – as do 11 other states waiting to do the same.

U.S. rejects EU emission reductions

The United States rejects the European Union's all-encompassing target on reduction of carbon emissions, President Bush's environmental adviser said Tuesday.

Life in the Sprawling Suburbs, if You Can Really Call It Living (a review of Radiant City)

James Howard Kunstler, a critic of suburbanization, appears throughout “Radiant City” and helps define its tone, which could be described as one of incredulous lament. The cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin’s eerie, sometimes monumental images italicize the experts’ statements, making the suburbs seem like an asphalt-and-Sheetrock dreamscape where democracy goes to die.

Laser fusion - the safe, clean way to produce nuclear energy

A multinational project led by British researchers aims to use a high-power laser to reproduce the physical reaction that occurs at the heart of the sun and every other star in the universe - nuclear fusion. If the project succeeds it has the potential to solve the world energy crisis without destroying the environment.

And They All Lived Technologically Ever After

And there are even darker, more negative scenarios. For example, what if a future energy crisis pushes humanity to the brink of destruction, where the struggle for basic survival tips us into a new Dark Age in which our fragile web of technology disintegrates? Or as one science writer put it, what if there’s “a smash-up on the road to singularity”? Where will that leave the human race?

Eating Radiation: A New Form of Energy?

Here's a possible solution to both the energy crisis and what to do with highly radioactive waste from nuclear reactors: use the radiation as food.

Fla. Man Invents Machine To Turn Water Into Fire

Kanzius said he showed the experiment to a handful of scientists across the country who claim they are baffled at watching salt water ignite.

Kanzius said the flame created from his machine reaches a temperature of around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. He said a chemist told him that the immense heat created from the machine breaks down the hydrogen-oxygen bond in the water, igniting the hydrogen.

Preparing for Powerdown

The short-sightedness of both public and debate and official policy is most clearly seen in the concern for “keeping things going the way we are used to” for as long as possible: any suggestion that we are facing collapse or a serious unraveling of the economy is attacked as being “gloomer-doomer”. I guess if people had a little more time to stop and smell the roses, and were not so caught up in the rat-race and trying to pay the mortgage etc… they might be able to stop long enough to realize that growth cannot continue indefinitely and that it is not in anyone’s interest for it to do so.