Oil on troubled waters

UNTIL Iraq's economy recovers fully is there any chance of tackling its other woes? The prospects seem dim. Getting the economy in shape means, mostly, getting the oil industry back on its feet. Iraq has the world’s third-largest reserves but they are of little use as long as the crude remains mostly beneath the ground. The oil infrastructure is in parlous condition after 17 years of war and sanctions. Output remains well below the (depressed) pre-war peak of 2.5m barrels a day.

Iran admits sanctions hurting oil industry

Iran admitted on Tuesday that international sanctions imposed over its controversial nuclear programme were harming its ability to invest in oil infrastructure.

"The problems that they have made for banks have troubled financing of some projects," Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh told the official IRNA news agency.

Brown says UK energy supply would be 'safeguarded' by new nuclear power

Speaking at his first Prime Minister's Questions, Brown said last year's events in Europe, where Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, 'should make it clear to everyone that we cannot rely on an energy policy that makes us wholly dependent on one or two countries or one or two regions around the world'.

Statoil makes new gas discovery in Norwegian Sea

Oil officials said preliminary estimates of the find showed between one and three bln standard cubic metres (Sm3) of recoverable gas.

Britain has slashed its reliance on Mideast oil

Britain is now importing only the tiniest fraction of its oil from the Middle East, sourcing its crude instead from the Americas, Africa and Norway, according to intriguing new Government figures.

Ideas panel: Oil dependency comes with consequences

Oil is a valuable commodity now but 200 years ago, before the invention of refrigeration, so was salt, said R. James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA and current vice president of the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

"People fought wars over salt mines. It was very valuable back in its day," he said. "Then toward the end of the 19th century, electricity and refrigeration destroyed salt as a means of preserving meat. Most of the developed world is totally dependent on oil for transportation like people in the early 19th century depended on salt to preserve meat.

"We need to decide it is an important national objective to break our oil dependence," he said.

Change will "kill humanity"

HUMANS will have to learn to use the planet to save themselves if they hope to combat climate change, says Festival of Ideas speaker James Lovelock.

King Coal on way back with £50m Russian boost

The prospects for coal have been helped by resurgent prices and a pressing need for energy diversity because of the decline in North Sea oil.

Kirchner denies energy cuts and blames “lobby of companies”

Argentine president Nestor Kirchner denied emphatically on Wednesday that his administration was assessing the “rationalization” of electricity supply to homes and insisted that those versions are only looking “to destabilize his government”.

EU states slow on energy-efficiency, environment

Only Finland, the UK and Denmark have met a 30 June deadline for submitting national action plans on energy-efficiency and the European Commission recently reported that environmental policies are the most poorly implemented across the EU.

Few Are Investing in Alternative Energy

Most U.S. investors see putting money into alternative energy companies as both potentially lucrative and a way to support the environment. But while many might see opportunity, few are taking it.

Wilmar reacts angrily to "defamatory" FoE palm oil report

Wilmar, one of the world's largest players in the palm oil market, has reacted angrily to what it sees as an "erroneous, misleading and defamatory" report about the conduct of its palm oil operation in Indonesia.

North Sea is running too dry to meet target

The energy industry warned yesterday that government targets of keeping Britain's oil and gas production at 3m barrels a day by 2010 look like being missed. North Sea competitiveness is falling and financial backers are losing confidence in the wake of tax increases introduced 18 months ago.

Energy guru: $4 per gallon gas still likely

An exclusive interview with one of America's leading energy gurus, Phil Flynn, in Chicago last week disclosed the hard facts U.S. oil producers and consumers will be facing this year.

Some Coffeyville workers back at flooded refinery

Office staff returned to work at the Coffeyville Resources refinery in Coffeyville, Kansas, which was shut by severe flooding earlier this week, the company said in a press release.

Part of the 108,000 barrel-per-day refinery remained under water. Workers will wait until the floodwaters subside before making damage assessments and determining when the refinery can restart.

Nelson: Oil a factor in Iraq deployment

The Howard Government has today admitted that securing oil supplies is a factor in Australia's continued military involvement in Iraq.

Australia PM: Oil not reason for staying in Iraq

Prime Minister John Howard insisted oil had nothing to do with Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war, contradicting his defense minister who said Thursday that protecting Iraq’s oil supplies is one of his country’s motivations for keeping troops there.

More than half of Finns find fuel too dear

More than half of Finns are of the opinion that current fuel prices are too high, according to a survey carried out for Royal Dutch Shell and made public Thursday.

Almost 90 per cent of the respondents said they expected prices to rise further in the future.

Mexican natgas pipes explode, no casualties

Three pipelines carrying natural gas for domestic use and owned by Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex exploded early Thursday, Pemex said.

...The reason for the explosions on the pipeline was unclear, but Pemex regularly suffers accidents and spills because of its aging pipelines.

How We Can Survive the Age of Energy Anxiety

There is a way to attract a sustainable majority of Americans who will enact, and then defend, comprehensive policies to solve the climate crisis.

Kathmandu’s Fuel Crisis (includes photos and video)

An unprecedented growth rate in the number of privately owned small and large motor vehicles as well as an unmonitored influx of mini vans and buses used for mass transit during the last five years in Nepal have helped steadily increased the country’s demand for petrol and diesel. However, Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has been consistently unable to clear their dues with the Indian Oil Corporation, largely because of their monthly losses which run up to millions of rupees.

Australia: Oil shortage pumps up price

FUEL prices appear set to jump by month's end after the International Energy Agency warned many refineries around the world seemed unable to process sufficient quantities of crude oil.

A dark future

PAKISTAN’S chronic power shortage is now assuming critical proportions. And what is worse than the unending electricity breakdowns is the lack of any planning to correct the situation.

Not all that long ago, there were many discussions about selling surplus electricity to India. Already, that moment seems an eternity away. With relentless population growth and economic expansion, there is a growing and entirely predictable shortfall between the supply and demand of energy.

Biofuels Could Reduce Poverty Gap

Biofuels will help reduce the global gap between rich and poor nations by making many developing countries energy exporters, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva said Thursday.

"Consider that everyone has the technology and the knowledge to dig a little hole of 30 centimeters to plant an oil plant that could produce energy, the energy they couldn't produce in the 20th century," he said.

Inflation fears smother China's ethanol drive

Beijing is putting the brakes to China's ethanol production drive after increases in corn prices worldwide rekindled worries over inflation and food security.

A shortage of raw materials -- because of dwindling arable land, difficulties in importing and a rush enmasse by state firms into the once Beijing-sanctioned arena -- is pushing up grain prices and could throw a spanner in the works of one of the world's largest ethanol production campaigns.

Technology's the answer, but what's the question?

We've reached the point where technology is not only an answer, but the answer to repairing some of the effects of our huge footprint, and it's high time we used those new technologies to clean up our environment.

Is Oil's Next Stop US$85?

Back on February 25th I made this post: Get Ready for $70 Per Barrel Oil Again. Okay, so every so often I get something right. The real lesson in this is that worldwide supply versus demand is the key issue. We do not live in an energy vacuum. These two pictures tell why crude oil will soon take out the all time high in the $78 range and move higher from there over the next several months:

Saudi Aramco Raises Oil Prices for Europe to a Three-Year High

Saudi Aramco, the world's largest state oil company, increased prices of most crude oil grades for export to Europe to a three-year high as maintenance at North Sea fields increased demand for Middle Eastern and Russian supplies.

Localized way of life cuts demand for oil

Peak oil is here and the U.S. is unprepared.

This is my opinion and the opinion of Eugene Linden in his article "From Peak Oil to Dark Age" in a recent edition of Business Week. Recently, the online "Drudge Report" posted an excerpt from a story critical of British Petroleum's optimistic Statistical Review of World Energy. In other words, the idea of a diminishing world supply of oil combined with increasing demand is suddenly mainstream.

Argentina: Power Play

Power and natural gas shortages have meant rolling blackouts and rationing to businesses, underlining the fragility of the surprising recovery since the country's economic crisis and devaluation in 2001. With residential power cuts looking increasingly likely, it has also put at risk the political popularity of the center-left Peronist government that engineered the recovery, led by President Nestor Kirchner, whose four-year term ends in October.

3-year-old girl kidnapped in Nigeria

Kidnappers snatched the 3-year-old daughter of a British worker as she was being taken to school Thursday in Nigeria's lawless southern oil region, police said.

UN official: Cuba solved energy crisis

Cuba has solved crippling energy shortages that plagued the island as recently as 2004 without sacrificing a long-term commitment to promoting environmentally friendly fuels, the head of the U.N. Environment Program said Wednesday.

China's Natural and CBM Gas Ambitions Include Beijing Olympiad

Beijing has a more serious problem. It is one of the more toxic and polluted cities in the world.

This calls for a different recipe – using more natural gas in the ramp up time before the 2008 Olympics, which will be held about 13 months from now.

Residents urged to cut electricity use; Program will save money, help environment

Brantford Power and Brant County Power, along with Ontario Power Authority, used the new transformer station on Powerline Road on Wednesday to launch the Summer Savings Program, designed to encourage customers to conserve electricity, save money and help the environment.

Toyota, Ford post strong China vehicle sales

Toyota Motor Corp. sold 212,000 vehicles during the period, up 77 percent from a year earlier, powered by brisk demand for its Camry sedans, the best-selling car in the United States in eight of the past nine years.

...Ford Motor Co. said retail sales of its wholly owned brands in China rose 25 percent during the first half to 93,206 vehicles.

Nearly half of electricity from renewable resources by 2030: Berlin

Germany plans to boost the percentage of electricity generated by renewable resources to 45 percent by 2030 in a bid to curb global warming, environment minister Sigmar Gabriel said Thursday.

Global warming in Asia: Six degrees and China

The discussion centred on the most critical issues in the coming years in China: “climate change” said our friend, “there’s no getting away from it.” Then he and the partner consultants in the room were taken aback when the China head launched into a tirade about climate change. “All rubbish,” he said, “So what if the world heats up a few degrees? If it’s 80°C today and next year 82°C, or 83°C, who’ll notice? Next?”

The room sat aghast, and nobody said anything as they needed their jobs and our friend was pitching a bit of business. So as a service to the outraged China chairman, we’ll spell out what a few degrees of global warning means for China.

Motorists sue oil titans, retailers over 'hot fuel' losses

Think gas is expensive? It's even more expensive on hot summer days. Gasoline expands as temperatures rise. That means motorists get less energy from a gallon of so-called "hot fuel" than from a cold one.

When Brent Donaldson, a restaurant owner in Kansas City, Mo., discovered that fact earlier this year, he joined hundreds of consumers in more than a dozen states who are suing oil companies and gas retailers, alleging that they have been overcharged by billions of dollars.

Steorn's Orbo a No-Go

Last night at 11pm, a device by Irish technology company Steorn that claims to create energy out of thin air, failed to make its first public appearance, as promised, live on the internet.

As members of the public milled around outside the Kinetica museum, and many others logged on to the webcam last night, it was revealed that the hypothetical perpetual motion machine fell victim to the laws of physics and failed to continuously power the rotating outer wheel.

The intense spotlights surrounding the perspex case in which Orbo is enclosed have been cited as a possible reason for its malfunction, although engineers are still investigating.

“The display case itself is under a lot of lighting, it’s very hot. We think we’ve destroyed one of the bearings on the system, it’s not the technology itself,” said CEO of Steorn, Sean McCarthy, speaking to SiliconRepublic.

Aramco project 'on schedule'

The world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is on track to complete in December the project that will give the largest boost to global output capacity this year, the state oil company Saudi Aramco said yesterday.

The Khursaniyah project to bring online around 500,000 barrels per day of light crude is more than double the next largest Opec capacity boost due this year.

Oil sands no quick fix as Big Oil leaves Venezuela

For Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips it may appear simple: shift efforts, people and resources to Canada's oil sands now that the oil majors have retreated from Venezuela.

In reality, it's no simple matter.

The oil sands have their own set of risks: surging costs due to a squeezed labor force, technical complexity and a shrinking pool of attractive available properties.

Governor's order allows truckers to cross the border for fuel

Commercial truck drivers hauling fuel are allowed to cross the border into neighboring states in search of gasoline, under an emergency order issued by Gov. John Hoeven.

Texas Begins Desalinating Sea Water

Desalting sea water is expensive, mostly because of the energy required. Current cost estimates run at about $650 per acre foot (326,000 gallons), as opposed to $200 for purifying the same amount of fresh water.

However, it is a growing field around the world as governments and private investors ante up where water drinkable needs are crucial.

James Hansen, NASA GISS live at Zero Emissions Conference, Melbourne Australia (Powerpoint with audio)

James Hansen opened the Zero Emissions Conference to a full house at RMIT University yesterday in Melbourne, Australia.

Hansen, speaking via conference link from Sweden, spoke about the latest scientific predictions on climate change.