BBC's Driven By Oil: Has oil production finally peaked?

Museletter: Middle East at a Crossroads

At the ASPO conference a well-connected industry insider who wishes not to be directly quoted told me that his own sources inside Saudi Arabia insist that production from Ghawar is now down to less than three million barrels per day, and that the Saudis are maintaining total production at only slowly dwindling levels by producing other fields at maximum rates. This, if true, would be a bombshell: most estimates give production from Ghawar at 5.5 Mb/d.

U.K.: Fuel poverty fear as gas price rise takes effect

Uganda develops plan to cut fuel expenditures

Uganda is developing an urban transport policy that is expected to cut the country's expenditure on fuel. Currently, the country spends Ush500 billion ($270 million) a year.

According to German Technical Co-operation, GTZ, the government's consultant, the policy should consider technical options of redesigning existing infrastructure and build cycling and walking lanes in urban centres.

Iran and Japan close to oil deal

As China Spews Pollution, Villagers Rise Up

Environment-related unrest is spreading. It's not about old-growth forests; it's about business practices that are killing people.

China keen on piped Saudi gas via Qatar, Pakistan

Energy-starved China is exploring ways to tap Saudi Arabian gas through a tie up with Gulf-South Asia (GUSA) Gas Company of Qatar that already has a joint venture for a deep sea pipeline with Pakistan.

Taiwan finds huge underwater gas hydrate reserve

aiwan geologists have confirmed the existence of more than 500 billion cubic meters of gas hydrate off the southwest coast, enough to meet the island's gas needs for over 60 years, a government geologist said on Monday.

But commercial extraction is likely much more than a decade away as techniques to tap the gas are still being developed, Wang Yunshuen, section chief of the mineral resources section, at the Central Geological Survey.

U.K.: Poor pay most for energy

The Great Energy Game

As demand soars, central Asia's oil and gas reserves are a magnet pulling in the world's powers

India: Oil companies seek 2-year moratorium on drilling

Hit by non-availability of rigs and growing shortage of manpower, oil companies are asking the Government for a two-year moratorium on all drilling and seismic commitments.

Biomass could supply 66% of U.S. gas needs

The hungry planet

Food supplies are shrinking alarmingly around the globe, plunging the world into its greatest crisis for more than 30 years. New figures show that this year's harvest will fail to produce enough to feed everyone on Earth, for the sixth time in the past seven years. Humanity has so far managed by eating its way through stockpiles built up in better times - but these have now fallen below the danger level.

'Look for unconventional energy options': Shell's senior economist peers into the future.

Solar is solution to energy crisis

Demand for the refined silicon that is the core component of solar panels, manufactured in just five plants worldwide, has grown so rapidly in the past few years that there is now a two-year lag time in the supply chain. This year for the first time, use of silicon in the manufacture of solar equipment exceeds its use for computer microprocessors.

But the full potential of the world's most plentiful and renewable energy source will not be tapped until a new, less energy-intensive non-silicon based technology is invented. Solar experts say that it is only a matter of time, perhaps as little as five to 10 years.

Innovative farmers gear up to beat foreign oil

When Rudolph Diesel introduced his engine at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, he ran it on peanut oil. Perfect for tractors and electrical generators, he figured, since farmers could grow their own fuel. A few years later Henry Ford unveiled the Model T, designed to run on ethanol for the same reason.

...The energy-efficient farm, and even the energy self-sufficient farm, are ideas that have been intriguing us since we gave up farming with mules. But with ongoing war in the Middle East, a hurricane wrecking the Gulf oil rigs, increased consumption by India and China, and petroleum prices setting new records nearly every month, those intriguing ideas have suddenly become urgent ones.