The Oil Drum

Matt Simmons: Look to The Oceans for New Sources of Oil

While the power of ocean waves and currents increasingly is being counted as a source of non-polluting electrical generation, Matthew Simmons says the sea’s bounty doesn’t stop there.

Simmons, the Houston energy investment banker whose concerns about a sharp falloff in global oil production have made him one of the most recognized – and controversial – figures in energy, told EnergyTechStocks.com that the micro algae found in oceans has much higher oil content than either corn or palm oil, two of the world’s leading sources for ethanol and biodiesel, respectively.

Mass Transit: Separating Delusion from Reality

In a congressional hearing on September 5, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters noted that 40 percent of highway user fees collected from drivers are diverted for uses other than roads and bridges. Committee members correctly attributed that figure to Heritage Foundation research. Representative Peter DeFazio (D–OR) defended the diversion of highway funds, noting that half of the diverted money goes to transit programs intended to alleviate congestion and reduce road use. That intention, however, does not determine the results. Transit spending has failed to reduce traffic and wasted money that should have been spent on increasing road capacity.

Senate OKs $1 billion to repair bridges

The infusion of bridge repair funds would be paid for by tapping the dwindling reserves of the highway trust fund. Gasoline tax revenues are coming in below estimates and are unlikely to be able to fund highway programs at the levels set forth by the 2005 highway bill.

IBM's Billion-Dollar Energy Pledge Highlights Data Explosion Danger

this target, while admirable, also serves to highlight the sheer scale of the challenge the IT sector faces in trying to limit its environmental impact.

In terms of carbon emissions IBM is spending a $1bn a year to stand still. To simply ensure its data centers' emissions do not continue to rise as demand for computing capacity rises the company is having to embark on a massive infrastructure overhaul involving over 850 staff and countless new technologies.

Collecting Natural Gas Savings

Lynn Millsaps, owner of Loudon Speedwash Laundromats in Loudon, Tenn., decided to take a different route to decreasing utility usage. He took the knowledge he had of heating and air conditioning and a little elbow grease and came up with his own method of providing his dryers with preheated intake air.

Things have gone well. HIs greenhouse-like solar collector on the side of his coin laundry constructed mostly from materials from a standard building supply store, has customers talking.

The Philippines: EO declares 7 geothermal sites as economic zones

Fresh from the APEC meeting in Sydney, Australia, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed an Executive Order declaring the existing seven geothermal sites nationwide as areas of industrial economic zones.

India - N-Deal: The Power Play

Unless uninterrupted supply of gas comes to India very cheap or nuclear power plants are built in quick succession, India could well be the victim of the drag-down effect. Especially since the proposed hydroelectric projects have run into problems, with social and political issues preventing quick implementation.

Iraq to Privatize Electricity

Two of Iraq's many needs right now are more electricity and more investment. A law being drafted could satisfy both, paving the way for foreign and domestic private companies to build power plants, a step toward fully privatizing the electricity sector.

The State of Green

Here's a look at some alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, and ethanol, and the challenges companies in those areas face.

India: IOC to limit petrol pumps to 550 this year

“In past three years, IOC and other public sector oil marketing firms had set up large number of petrol pumps, the growth being 85%. But with the companies making losses on fuel sale and private competition also decelerating, we have also decided to limit setting up of new petrol pumps,” said IOC Executive Director (Retail) A.M.K Sinha.

Colony of Antarctic penguins nears extinction

Today, the Adélies outnumber people in this icy patch of the world by 100 to 1. The ratio sounds impressive until Fraser notes that the penguin population has shrunk by 80 percent since he began studying it in 1974, and that he expects the knee-high birds to be extinct in eight years.

What's to blame? Fraser, president of the Polar Ocean Research Group, says global warming is part of the problem because it has made it harder for the penguins to forage and breed.

Solar-powered Antarctic climate base unveiled

A climate change research station is being shipped to Antarctica that builders say will be the world's first zero-emissions polar science station.

Robert L. Hirsch: Planning for the Mitigation of Maximum World Oil Production

A framework is needed for planning the mitigation of oil shortages created by world oil production reaching a maximum and going into decline. Some argue that normal market evolution will be adequate to avoid shortages. We assume that will not be the case.

...Considerations of oil shortages, as distinguished from simply considering oil price increases, necessitates dealing in an area in which there is no recent experience, since the world today is different from 1973 and 1979, when brief shortages occurred. We approach this challenge with the belief expressed in Oil Shockwave: “It only requires a relatively small amount of oil to be taken out of the system to have huge economic and security implications."

The Disinformation Society - Kunstler

One question that readers ask me often is why the mainstream media is doing such a poor job of reporting the nexus of the global energy emergency and the turmoil in global finance. I maintain my "allergy" to conspiracy theories. There isn't any clique of top-hatted Wall Street biggies with monocles joining with with gray-suited CIA-types to intimidate editors with tongs and electrodes. American culture has become self-dis-informing.

More refining needed to process Alberta output

U.S. refineries must be expanded to handle a rising tide of crude-oil imports from Alberta's tar sands, the world's second-biggest oil deposit, says John Hofmeister, Royal Dutch Shell PLC's U.S. chair.

Shell, Saudi Aramco, ConocoPhillips, BP PLC and Marathon Oil Corp. plan to spend a combined $15 billion (U.S.) to expand refineries from Michigan to Texas to process more low-grade oil from the tar sands.

Rebels Blow Up Pipelines in Mexico, Disrupting Service

For the third time in three months, saboteurs blew up several pipelines belonging to Mexico’s state oil monopoly, disrupting service to dozens of factories and briefly rattling financial markets, officials said, but not killing anyone.

Saudi-like oil monopoly 'ultimate goal' for Nigeria: minister

Nigeria's energy minister said on Monday that the Saudi Arabian state-owned oil monopoly Aramco was a model for his country's restructuring national oil producer.

Response to the Government’s consultative document “The Future of Nuclear Power”

Ever wondered if the clock was ticking regarding a secure electricity supply? Could new nuclear power stations actually increase carbon emissions? Could the looming shortage of uranium represent the biggest challenge to a nuclear renaissance? These are just a few of the questions answered by John Busby in his response to the Government’s consultative document “The Future of Nuclear Energy”.

Short on Labor, Farmers in U.S. Shift to Mexico

A sense of crisis prevails among American farmers who rely on immigrant laborers, more so since immigration legislation in the United States Senate failed in June and the authorities announced a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants. An increasing number of farmers have been testing the alternative of raising crops across the border where there is a stable labor supply, growers and lawmakers in the United States and Mexico said.

Green fleets, fat profits on display at Frankfurt show

Opening the world's biggest car show with raft of optimistic reports on improved earnings and greater fuel efficiency, executives from carmakers around the world were bubbling with confidence about their greener fleets and fatter profits.

Toyota confident of saying ahead of hybrid pack: Watanabe

Toyota is confident of retaining its leading position in hybrid cars despite growing competition, the Japanese firm's chairman said Monday ahead of the International Motor Show (IAA) here.

If the number of hybrid cars grows it will be good for the environment, Katsuaki Watanabe told a press conference three days before the 62nd IAA opened to the public.

OPEC and Peak Oil: Global Warming Ain’t The Only Reason to Go Green

This week, News Editor Dan Shapley presents The Daily Green’s first look at Peak Oil. We’ve timed it to coincide with OPEC’s September meeting, where all manner of postulations about oil production and prices will fill our screens. We think that regardless of what the OPEC ministers decide about output, it’s time that the discussion about Peak Oil and its implications for this country’s economy, lifestyle as well as the climate debate goes mainstream. It’s far too important not be discussed around dinner tables nationwide as well as in the presidential debates of this election cycle.

Peak Oil Now? Airing Saudi Arabia’s Dirty Little Secret

When the OPEC cartel begins its meeting Sept. 11, some analysts expect Saudi Arabia’s dirty little secret will come out: It, and the world with it, has hit peak oil.

Oil, these analysts think, is running short — leaving a yawning gap between supply and demand that will eventually send the world economy into a tailspin and could even lead to war.

Saudi Arabia, the line of reasoning goes, will refuse to increase oil production not because it doesn’t want to — but because it can’t.

“If they actually do say they’re not increasing their supply for this that or the other reason, it would give a clue that it’s a problem,” said Gail Tverberg, who blogs as Gail The Actuary on The Oil Drum blog, a leading proponent of the Peak Oil theory.

OPEC considers modest oil output rise

OPEC was meeting on Tuesday to consider a modest rise in oil output proposed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states in a gesture to consumers worried by the economic impact of $77 oil and rapidly diminishing stocks.

But the plan to add 500,000 barrels per day of oil had yet to convince all OPEC ministers and discussions were continuing, a delegate said. Venezuela, Algeria and Libya said ahead of the talks they were not in support of increasing supplies.

Peak Oil: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It

Some analysts believe the world is at or near hitting peak oil — the point at which so much oil has been pumped that demand begins to outstrip supply, leaving a yawning and persistent gap.

In a nutshell, here’s why hitting peak oil is a concern...

Sinopec to import 60,000 tons of gasoline in September

Sinopec, China's biggest oil refiner, is planning to import 60,000 tons of gasoline in September to help meet domestic demand, said an official of the company on Tuesday.

Rosneft warns China over oil supply post 2010

State-controlled Rosneft, Russia's largest oil firm, said on Tuesday it will not renew its existing crude oil supply contract to China after 2010 unless China offers better terms.

Petro-Canada Bets Big on Oil Sands

Sam La Bell, vice president at Toronto-based Veritas Investment Research Corp., still has doubts about the oil sands project. In an August research note, he calls the recent cost estimates "a careful bit of subterfuge" to disguise borderline economics. The company didn't return calls for comment.

Oil and Corruption in Iraq Part II: Smuggling Thrives in Basra

Police and government officials are accused of taking a cut of the lucrative oil smuggling business run by clans and overseen by militia groups in the southern city of Basra.

Rival Shia groups have divided up control of the city's resources - including the country's only seaport as well as its largest oilfields - in a precarious power arrangement which could implode at any time. The warring militias control the illegal oil exports from Basra, the gateway to Iran and the Gulf states, and are reportedly linked to global networks.

Iraq Oil Min: Hunt Oil Deal with Kurd Government Illegal

Hunt Oil Co.'s agreement with Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region to explore for oil is illegal, Iraq's oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani said Monday, in his first public reaction to the deal announced over the weekend.

Big Houses Are Not Green: America's McMansion Problem

The recent mansion boom produced millions of energy-wasting homes with thousands of square feet that Americans don't need - not the behavior of a society that's thinking about a sustainable future.

Expert says climate change will spread global disease

Climate change will have an overwhelmingly negative impact on health with possibly one billion more people at risk from dengue fever within 80 years, an expert said Tuesday.

As Brazil's rain forest burns down, planet heats up

As vast tracts of rain forest are cleared, Brazil has become the world's fourth-largest producer of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, after the United States , China and Indonesia , according to the most recent data from the U.S.-based World Resources Institute .

And while about three-quarters of the greenhouse gases emitted around the world come from power plants, transportation and industrial activity, more than 70 percent of Brazil's emissions comes from deforestation.