Norway Oil Companies Refocus Exploration Strategies

Oil companies on the Norwegian continental shelf are rethinking and prioritizing exploration strategies to ensure future growth, despite the high prices for rigs, contractors and personnel spurred by high oil prices, industry figures say.

Traditionally, exploration costs rise and fall in line with oil prices, but companies are focusing on steadier exploration investment because resources are becoming scarcer.

Irish Police Baton-charge Protestors at Shell Terminal in Ireland

Police baton-charged protestors blocking access to the construction site of a Shell gas terminal in County Mayo in west Ireland, a spokesman said.

Police said one protestor had been hospitalized and several other people, including members of the force, had suffered minor injuries during the confrontation.

The Globe & Mail has a special book review section called Are We Doomed?

Among the reviews: Heating the Ivory Tower (Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University, by Michael M'Gonigle) and If You Can't Stand the Heat (George Monbiot's How to Stop the Planet From Burning).

Solar: California's Rising Star

China to Finish Desert Oil Route Ahead of Schedule

China plans to complete a highway across the world's biggest sandy desert, near the ancient Silk Road, six months before schedule to tap oil fields in the western part of the country and reduce reliance on imports, an official said Wednesday.

World Bank: Oil Producing Countries, Companies Can Help Mitigate Impact of Climate Change by Reducing Gas Flaring

The 150 billion cubic meters flared and vented annually are equivalent to 25 per cent of the United States’ gas consumption per year, and release about 390 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere

Iran's Quiet Revolution

Without oil, Iran would have neither the money nor the wherewithal to develop nuclear energy, much less the bomb. Here, oil is seen as the reason the US overthrew the Mossadegh government half a century ago. And as the world approaches peak oil -- the point at which half of the world's reserves have been depleted, making each successive barrel harder and more expensive to extract -- oil and the atom have become the yin and yang of global energy politics.

Record palm oil exports

Peak Oil Passnotes: Will Oil Rise on the Back of Short Covering?

Last year record long positions were shorted in the last two months of the year. It forced down the price to a floor of $55, around the Christmas and New Year period. Amazingly, after that week the price immediately rebounded up to $61 within days of January 1.

Now we approach the same time in the year again. But instead of record long positions, spurred on by the hurricanes in America, we are now looking at record short positions of 172,000 lots. Could we be looking at the same pattern, in reverse, happening again this year?

Join us to look at end of cheap oil

Try recording how many miles per week you drive in your car. Now imagine that the price of gas is $6 per gallon. You cut back on movies and eating out, so you drive 20 percent less and manage to make ends meet.

Then gas goes to $10 per gallon, and you figure out that you need to decrease your driving miles by 75 percent. What would you cut?

Oil companies tackle malaria, other issues in Africa

Nigeria's savior, and menace

The leader of Africa's most populous nation is endangering not only his own legacy but his nation.

Oil Armageddon!

Oh no! We are Doomed! That's right, doomed! And no I am not talking about the outcome of the election (tough I could be) but doomed when it comes to energy and the world around us. In fact we may be so doomed that I may start walking around with a sandwich board that says we are doomed and that the end is near! Now if you think I am starting a panic, maybe I should, because it is not just me saying we are doomed, but the director of the International Energy Agency, Claude Mandil, himself.

The Nuclear Option

A threefold expansion of nuclear power could contribute significantly to staving off climate change by avoiding one billion to two billion tons of carbon emissions annually