The Oil Drum

UAE to cut oil production for rig maintenance

The United Arab Emirates will shut around a quarter of its oil output for two to three weeks of planned maintenance at two of its largest fields from the end of October, a Gulf industry source said yesterday.

The shutdown will cut output from the world’s sixth-largest oil exporter by around 630,000 barrels per day (bpd), he said. Oil traders in Asia said the total output reduction would be as high as 810,000 bpd as a third field would also undergo work.

International Companies Bid for Cyprus Oil Exploration Licenses

A U.S.-based company and an international consortium applied for licenses Thursday to explore for oil off Cyprus' coast, the Trade and Industry Ministry said.

Why watching war games is a waste of energy

Out of all the West’s worries about the SCO, the greatest should be control of energy supplies. The war games, at the moment, are a showy distraction.

Shell Alaska Drilling Project Blocked by US Appeals Court

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Royal Dutch Shell PLC must further postpone plans for exploratory drilling off the northern coast of Alaska.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also indicated that environmental and Alaska Native groups have a good chance of prevailing in their effort to keep the energy giant out of the Beaufort Sea.

Dutch crown prince warns against prioritizing biofuels over food

Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander warned against diverting water resources from food production to biofuels, saying Wednesday that feeding people is more important than fueling cars.

"Biofuels is a great way to support our Western way of life, but it's not a necessity for mankind to survive. Food is," said Willem-Alexander, who chairs the U.N. secretary-general's advisory board on water and sanitation.

Forget biofuels - burn oil and plant forests instead

It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.

Carolyn Baker: The End of the World as we Know it - Hope vs. Mindset

A friend for whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration recently challenged me on my incessant hope-bashing stance and gave me some food for thought which has caused me to reframe the concept of "hope" in my own mind in a way that I can live with. What I cannot live with is a definition of "hope" that externalizes it - that fosters denial and a false and naïve anticipation that government, religion, or to quote Lincoln, "the better angels of our nature" will somehow save humanity from slamming with lethal velocity into the brick walls of our own making-climate chaos, global energy catastrophe, planetary economic meltdown, population overshoot, species extinction and die-off - or nuclear holocaust.

Russia: Cashing Out of Gazprom

Due to government manipulation of events, the stock of Russian energy giant Gazprom has quintupled in value over the past three years. Yet Gazprom's own management is now cashing out, heralding deeper problems in the powerful -- yet bedeviled -- company.

Ukraine may face energy crisis by year end

Ukraine may face an energy crisis by the end of the year because Naftogaz Ukrayiny, the national oil and gas company, has failed to accumulate sufficient reserves of natural gas, a top official said Thursday.

The energy game: from Managua to Caracas

At the Third PetroCaribe Summit held in Caracas last weekend, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega made it clear that ethanol diplomacy would not work in his country. He is reported to have told his Summit colleagues that he had said to President Lula that even if they could use all the land in the world to produce ethanol, they could never satisfy global demand, which, according to Mr Ortega, is infinite under the "developmental model imposed by global capitalism".

Good Luck to Energy Advisor of Bangladesh

The energy situation of Bangladesh is critical and getting worse everyday. The massive flood will break the backbone of our economy and will require steady power supply in the months after the flood to recover the economy from ruins. The farmers will need steady power supply during irrigation season, will require adequate supply of diesel and fertilizers. But judging from the present situation it seems highly unlikely that it will happen. The dry season, hot summer will follow when the deficit of power supply will cause tremendous hue and cry as no additional generations are in view. The increasingly declining gas supply situation in Chittagong area will cause impediment to power generation and fertilizer production in the region. Shangu production is going down.

Uranium shortage hits nuclear plans

India’s nuclear energy ambitions have hit a major roadblock as shortage of the raw material — uranium — is threatening new capacity addition and also affecting the performance of the existing plants.

Heat wave prompts TVA rate hike

TVA put an exclamation point after the worst heat wave in North Alabama history with its announcement Thursday that it would temporarily hike rates.

Between October and December, Tennessee Valley Authority will bump electricity costs up by .432 cents per kilowatt hour, which it said will add between $3 and $6 to the typical bill for residential consumers.

The announcement comes as demand for electricity, largely to keep homes cool, is at an all-time high. Temperatures soared Thursday, topping 104 degrees and marking the ninth consecutive day of triple-digit heat.

Father of the compact fluorescent bulb looks back

Consumers with an eye to conserving energy may be snatching those swirly compact fluorescent bulbs off store shelves now, but 30 years ago they were barely a shade away from crazy.

Hurricane Dean likely to threaten Gulf of Mexico

Hurricane Dean, which could strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane over the next two days, pounded the eastern Caribbean islands of Martinique and Dominica as it churned into the Caribbean Sea.

And next week Dean will likely enter the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the region's oil and natural gas facilities, which account for roughly a third of U.S. oil production, the National Hurricane Center predicted.

Officials investigating fire at Pascagoula Chevron refinery

Chevron officials hope to know by Friday how much production at its largest U.S. refinery will be affected by an oil fire at the Pascagoula facility.

Defeating Depletion: Where should our focus be?

Solar and wind power are good alternatives. Denmark is the per-capita world leader when it comes to wind farming, with 18 percent of its power coming from wind power. But before we make an unqualified endorsement, bear in mind that the production of the components used to produce solar and wind power obviously does cause pollution.

Still, while we have cheap fossil fuels at our disposal, we ought to be directing the energies that we have available from them towards massive worldwide investments in solar and wind power, but there is a catch.

United States: Energy in Flux: The 21st Century´s Greatest Challenge - What the shifting dynamics of energy mean for corporations, governments, society and the international community

Thirty-three years ago this autumn, a crisis in the Middle East sent the price of oil soaring overnight from $3 to $5 a barrel, and to $11 within three months. A gallon of gasoline, just 30 cents that summer, skyrocketed to $1.20. In the immediate aftermath of the Arab oil embargo, the Nixon administration took decisive action, extending Daylight Savings time, winning approval for the Trans-Alaskan pipeline, establishing automotive fuel standards—even banning gasoline sales on Sundays. Three decades later, a new energy crisis—again marked by doubling oil prices and metastatic troubles in the Middle East—is upon us. But the backdrop against which it occurs is more volatile and unpredictable than in 1973.

Agri-industrial complex is on the way out, activist says

Americans are becoming disenchanted with industrial agriculture and turning more to farmers markets and locally produced food, said author and activist Bill McKibben.

...He compared industrial agriculture to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. "It's rotting from within, relying on subsidies from a central government and waiting for a shove to collapse," he said. "It can't continue to rely on cheap fossil fuels."

China's Nanpu Oil Find Shows Pitfalls of Estimating Reserves

The pitfalls of evaluating big oil finds were underlined this week when China's Ministry of Land and Resources certified PetroChina Co.'s Nanpu oil discovery as having half the reserves of market estimates.

The Nanpu block in Bohai Bay's Jidong oil field in northern China was hailed by some analysts as the biggest find in China for decades after PetroChina said in May it could hold as much as 1 billion metric tons of oil equivalent, of which 405.07 million tons were classified as total proven reserves.

Although the proven reserves figure was revised up by 10% to 445 million tons by the ministry on Tuesday, analysts instead focused on the economically recoverable reserves estimate of 86.6 million tons, which is equivalent to 632 million barrels.

Arctic sea ice expected to hit record low

The extent of Arctic sea ice will likely have melted to a record low this September partially due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, researchers at the University of Colorado said on Thursday.

There is a 92 percent chance that Arctic sea ice extent in September will melt to its lowest level at least since the 1970s, when satellite measuring efforts began, the researchers said. They had predicted a 33 percent chance of a record low in April, but changed the forecast after a rapid disintegration of sea ice during July.

Japanese automakers settle with asthma patients

Asthma patients Friday welcomed a settlement with major Japanese automakers and the government resolving a long row over air pollution blamed for killing more than 100 people in Tokyo alone.

Australian scientists call for ocean network probe

Australian scientists want to string a vast array of probes across the oceans of the southern hemisphere to warn of changes in ocean circulation that may affect the global climate.

Scientists seek new ways to feed the world amid global warming

On an agricultural research station south of Manila a group of scientists are battling against time to breed new varieties of rice as global warming threatens one of the world's major sources of food.

Urban planning needs rethink as climate change looms

According to SIWI, "climate change combined with continuing population growth and expanding urban centres presents a recipe for disaster."

Kuylenstierna suggested one measure would be to "move people from low-lying areas who live close to the rivers, close to the seas."

"These are attractive areas but maybe we have to finally understand we cannot only work against nature," he added.