Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
AP Microbes are continually converting hydrocarbon deposits in the Powder River Basin to natural gas, and if managed properly, can help turn coal-bed methane into a renewable energy source, researchers said Tuesday.
With oil prices skyrocketing, coal production is increasing in the countries like US, China and India despite environmental hazards, a media report claimed.
China says its oil imports will jump by nearly 10 percent this year to 100 million metric tons (700 million barrels), making up 40 percent of its consumption.
Municipal and state officials are reluctant to say whether the purchase of wind energy, which costs about 2 percent more than conventional sources, is in fact a violation of state law state which appears to prohibit municipalities from paying a premium for utilities, instead mandating that they accept the lowest bid.
U.S. producer prices increased 1.7 percent in October, the fastest rate in 14 years, the Labor Department estimated Tuesday. Most of the inflation in finished goods prices came from volatile food and energy categories.
The US Interior Department on Friday gave final approval to a plan by ConocoPhillips and partner Anadarko Petroleum Corp. to develop five tracts around the oil-rich Alpine field on Alaska’s North Slope.
SABOTEURS have set fire to four oil wells in Iraq’s northern fields.
Successive explosions had rocked the four wells in Khabbaza, 20km northwest of Kirkuk, the state-run Northern Oil Co said today.
It’s too early to celebrate the recent decline in oil prices after they topped $55 a barrel. None of the reasons that created the price spike — the strong thirst for crude in China and India, the dismemberment of the Russian oil giant Yukos, the terror strikes against oil facilities in the Middle East — has gone away.
Russian oil companies are less interested in unexplored deposits and are not drilling new wells.
Russia’s economic gold reserves will be exhausted in 2011, Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev said at a government meeting. According to Mr Trutnev, commercially exploitable reserves of some minerals are close to exhaustion. In particular, he said the country’s exploitable reserves of oil, uranium, copper and vein gold would be exhausted in 2015.
China, the world’s second-largest consumer of oil after the United States, has plenty of cash to secure sources of petroleum and natural gas. But as aggressively as any nation, it is also cutting deals and forging alliances to get the energy it needs.
And one thing is sure: if the US$ falls fast and far against the Euro, ¥en and likely not the Yuan then oil exporters will have little or no choice but to fully switch to Euro pricing… This will be very bad news to the US economy but could be good news for the rest of the world’s economy, especially on the front of Peak Oil and structural undersupply of world oil markets.
