Free Republic

The world continues to thirst for oil with in an ever increasing fervor, yet simultaneously struggles to fully grasp and appreciate the obstacles encountered by those who bring that oil to their local pumps. There has always been a necessary trade-off when it comes to technology and industrial advancement, as in order to experience the many benefits modern society offers us, we have to agree to give up some portion of nature and accept a certain amount of environmental damage. But recently the oil industry has been seeking ways in which they can continue to bring us the oil that...

The first time Chesapeake Energy tried to buy mineral rights from Diana Whitmore, a 74-year-old retired real estate broker in southern New York, it offered her $125 for every acre of land plus a 12 percent royalty on whatever natural gas it extracts. (snip) This corner of the state is at the forefront of an old-fashioned land rush that has implications far beyond Conklin, N.Y. Oil and gas companies are vying to stake out territory where they can tap natural gas trapped in shale rock. Just a few years ago, the industry didn't have the technology to unlock these reserves....

I've written little this year about my own personal views on climate change.  Truth be told, I've been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting and wasn't ready to speak out again.  But I've spoken out on this topic quite a bit in the past as evidenced by previous blog posts on climate change here. I've concluded that the oceans are the best gauge we have for telling us if climate change is anthropogenic or not.  The oceans are where the planet stores surface heat and it takes time for the oceans to store that heat.  Thus hurricane season begins...

A controversial economist working at the Office of Management and Budget has raised questions about whether a new air pollution rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would impose too high a cost on coal-fired power plants...Randall Lutter, who served as the Food and Drug Administration's head of policy under George W. Bush and has battled environmentalists for years on issues such as climate change and smog, has been examining the economic impact of federal rules at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Lutter is a long-time ally of OIRA's director, Cass Sunstein. While Lutter's job portfolio remains unclear,...

GELSENKIRCHEN, Germany — In this nation that embraced one of the world’s most aggressive campaigns against global warming, the Pokropp family can almost hear the cha-ching when switching off their lights. A kilowatt of electricity costs three times as much here as it does in the United States, supercharged with high taxes to discourage use and to help fund renewable energy development. Meanwhile, a 50 percent “eco-tax” has sent the price of gasoline to $8 a gallon. To manage costs, the family of three unplugs all their appliances but the refrigerator at night, avoids driving and limits steam baths —...

A year ago, high officials of the California Air Resources Board learned that the author of a statistical study on diesel soot effects had falsified his academic credentials. The CARB researcher, Hien Tran, acknowledged the deception and agreed to be demoted, but after his data were given another peer review, they remained the basis of highly controversial regulations that will cost owners of trucks, buses and other diesel-powered machinery millions of dollars to upgrade their engines. The Tran study concluded that diesel "particulate matter" was responsible for about 1,000 additional deaths each year. Only recently, with the rules on the...

As stars of entertainment prepare to lobby on climate change at the Copenhagen summit next week, Jeremy Paxman talks to veteran environmental campaigner Sting about the effect of celebrity on campaigns, accusations of green hypocrisy by globe trotting stars and his efforts to prevent the building of a hydro-electric dam in Brazil.

Cleanup efforts continued Tuesday on a three-quarter-acre area of tundra affected by a spill of oil and water near BP's Lisburne Processing Center on the North Slope. More than half of the affected area was coated by a sprayed mist from an 18-inch flow line, a pipeline that carries raw oil, water and gas to the center for separation… Late Tuesday it remained unclear how much oil had spilled or why the pipeline leaked. … The new spill was discovered Sunday afternoon. Cleanup of contaminated snow began late Monday, with 12 workers removing 40 cubic yards of contaminated snow with...

Oil tankers are the floating goldmines of the ocean and it is of little wonder that pirates see them as attractive, if not imposing, targets. But with oil supplies supposedly running low, the last thing we need is for our precious barrels of liquid gold to fall into the wrong hands. Yesterday, Somali pirates seized a tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States in the increasingly dangerous waters off East Africa, in an attack that could pose a huge environmental and security threat to the region. The Greek-owned Maran Centaurus was about 1,300km off Somalia when...

[...] In other words it is very likely that the $68 million in ARRA battery manufacturing grants that went to lead-carbon battery manufacturers will generate greater gasoline savings and C02 emission reductions than the $1.2 billion in ARRA grants that went to lithium-ion battery companies. This is not a question of faith. The numbers cannot lie and the magnitude of the differences is too big to ignore. If you really want to make a difference, you take the baby steps and harvest the low-hanging fruit first. Nobody with a spreadsheet and a rudimentary understanding of mathematics can honestly argue that...

Will 2010 be a 1930 or, comparable to 1937? Is it different this time? When one nation state of a formerly high productive stature destroys itself with inflation, the untouched others can soften the blow and in time bail out the fallen one. This was Germany’s fate in the 1920’s. In our current instance, most all of the world’s economies are on their knees with some hurting worse than others. Who can help with recovery this time? There is no one. It will not be China as some suppose as China shall suffer the same systemic collapse as the U.S,...

Somali Pirates Seize U.S.-Bound Tanker JEFFREY GETTLEMAN November 30, 2009 NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali pirates have struck again, seizing an oil tanker loaded with $20 million in crude that was headed from Saudi Arabia to the United States, naval authorities said Monday. According to European naval reports, nine pirates hijacked the tanker and its crew of about 30 about 800 miles offshore and headed back toward pirate havens along the coast of central Somalia. The Somali pirate business appears to be back in full swing after a brief lull this summer that some attributed to increased naval patrols but which...

NAIROBI, Kenya - Somali pirates seized a tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States in the increasingly dangerous waters off East Africa, an official said Monday, an attack that could pose a huge environmental or security threat to the region. The Greece-flagged Maran Centaurus was hijacked Sunday about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) off the coast of Somalia, said Cmdr. John Harbour, a spokesman for the EU Naval Force. Harbour said it originated from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and was destined for the United States. The ship has 28 crew members on board, he said. The shipping intelligence...

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

Recently, a number of emails have been hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU). Many articles have come out by atmospheric scientists and journalists indicating that the hacked emails point to one thing: the scientists at CRU were falsifying (“cooking”) their data [look here, here and here]. They appeared to be doing this to force the data to match a foregone objective: that the earth is warming as a result of carbon dioxide, methane and other so-called greenhouse gasses. CRU has been accepted by this scientific community as the foremost research organization and therefore are favored...

necro81 writes "The NY Times is reporting on a new study from Osram, a German lighting manufacturer, which has calculated the total lifecycle energy costs of three lightbulb technologies and found that both LEDs and CFLs use approximately 20% of the energy of incandescents over their lifetimes. While it is well known that the newer lighting technologies use a fraction of the energy of incandescents to produce the same amount of light, it has not been proven whether higher manufacturing energy costs kept the new lighting from offering a net gain. The study found that the manufacturing and distribution energy...

If you had something you needed in your home, would you go to the store to buy it anyway? Of course not! Strangely, however, some members of Congress seem determined to push the country toward making this counterproductive choice.   The Congressional Research Service released a report at the end of October, “U.S. Fossil Fuel Resources: Terminology, Reporting, and Summary,” which clearly showed that the U.S. has a considerable amount of oil, coal, and natural gas at its disposal—but most of it hasn't been accessed. According to the report, “the resource pyramid indicates that many of the high quality, easy to...

Pedal-powered Christmas tree lights CopenhagenBy Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com Tuesday, December 01, 2009 01:00 PM When you're the host city for international climate change negotiations, using energy-efficient LED lights on the Christmas tree apparently isn't enough. The traditional Christmas tree in Copenhagen's City Hall Square will be powered by people, rather than a distant power plant. The square has been equipped with 15 bicycles which, when pedaled, light up the 700 LED bulbs on the tree. The 17-meter-high tree went up last week during an opening ceremony in which Saint Nicholas climbed a fire truck ladder to the top of...

After 40 years of bitter opposition Environmentalists concede that Nuclear Power is essential to avert further harm from Global Warming. The Nuclear Industry has felt itself vilified, constrained and damaged by the ceaseless and sometimes pathological opposition of the environmental movement, this changing attitude is manna from on high. Although very little happened, Nov. 24 was a red letter day for the nation's nuclear power industry. No new nuclear reactors were purchased, no breakthrough in treating nuclear waste was announced, and the Obama administration did not declare that it would pay for new reactors. Instead, the source of the industry's...

Despite new evidence of manipulation of climate change data, an advocate of affordable and reliable domestic energy says there's still a lot of work to do.

The government's projection of stimulus-funded "green" jobs in reality isn't nearly as rosy as promised -- even over the next decade, some economists say. And to suggest these jobs will reinvigorate the economy, as the nation somehow weans itself from oil and coal, is sheer fallacy. "We need to put 7.3 million people back to work, and none of these ideas can make a dent of more than a few hundred thousand at best ... ," says Rajeev Dhawan of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University. For nine years Spain attempted to cultivate a green economy under a...

CHENANGO, N.Y. — Chris and Robert Lacey own 80 acres of idyllic upstate New York countryside, a place where they can fish for bass in their own pond, hike through white pines and chase deer away. But the Laceys hope that, if all goes well, a natural gas wellhead will soon occupy this bucolic landscape. Like many landowners in Broome County, which includes the town of Chenango, the Laceys could potentially earn millions of dollars from the natural gas under their feet. They live above the Marcellus Shale, a subterranean layer of rock stretching from New York to Tennessee that...

<p>NAIROBI, Kenya — The EU's anti-piracy force says Somali pirates have seized a super tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States.</p>

Authorities say an oil spill near Prudhoe Bay contaminated about 8,400 square feet of snow-covered tundra. Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman Weld Royal said oil cleanup crews rushed to the scene about 1 1/2 miles from a production center on the North Slope around 3 a.m. Sunday. She told The Associated Press that it still isn't clear how much spilled or what caused it, but the petroleum did not reach the bay. The spill occurred around an 18-inch pipeline that carried a mixture of crude oil, produced water, and natural gas, but the line was not in operation at...

Two years ago the Democrats in Congress and the Bush administration got together to deliver a payoff to farmers: they required refiners to use 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012. They did not expect that a crashing recession would lead to a reduction in the amount of gasoline the nation consumes - the first such reduction in years. And they also didn’t expect a White House to push so aggressively for higher-mileage vehicle fleets. As a result of the changed circumstance, it looks like it will be impossible for Americans to use that much ethanol. Something has to give....

Rombouillet, France- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won another victory for his aggressive energy diplomacy strategy Friday, signing a deal bringing French investment to a pipeline project. In a successful trip that worried Russia's nervous neighbours, Putin also secured French investment to save the struggling Lada car maker and a promise that France will consider selling Moscow a huge amphibious assault ship. "We have embarked upon complete cooperation with Russia," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon declared, as he and Putin addressed reporters after talks outside Paris with ministers and energy executives. Georgia and the Baltic states have expressed concern over...

As oil prices continue to hover in the high $70’s and many market commentators express their beliefs that cheap oil is a thing of the past, we find ourselves looking at the Alternative energy options and if any are a near/mid term replacement for fossil fuels. Solar, Wind and Biofuels have promised so much in the past but really aren’t delivering and will not do so for some time. Even though it’s unpalatable to some the only real alternative we have is Nuclear Energy. But is it safe and have we learned our lessons after Chernobyl? Read the full article...

BMW's EfficientDynamics Vision concept car combines the best of all worlds with incredible fuel efficiency, breaktaking performance, and sensational looks. It's powered by a three-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, lithium polymer batteries, and electric motors front and rear. The BMW Vision gets a U.S. unveiling next week at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Dec. 4-13. The only bad news: The BMW Vision is more vision than production-ready concept car. What you'd most likely see on sale would be the key components such as the drivetrain and battery technology transplanted to a more mainstream body. On a stopover from Europe en route to...

United States crude oil production for 2009 is on target to have its biggest one-year jump since 1970, according to a Platts analysis of industry data. With U.S. oil production averaging 5.268 million barrels per day (b/d) through October, the gain in U.S. output will be the most since the country produced 9.637-million b/d in 1970, which turned out to be the peak year of U.S. crude output, according to Platts' analysis of data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). If that 5.268 million b/d figure holds through December, this year would show a 6.4% boost from the...

Russia plans to invest up to $625 billion over the next two decades to raise oil production by about 10 per cent and a further $590 billion to add at least 33 per cent to its gas output, the Energy Ministry said on Thursday. The oil and gas investment, part of a $2-trillion-plus plan to develop the Russian energy sector by 2030, also envisages Asian markets taking a much larger share of Russia's exports as the country develops resource fields in Siberia and the Far East. "This will allow the Russian energy sector to lower its risk of being dependent...

NEW YORK, Nov. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Platts - United States crude oil production for 2009 is on target to have its biggest one-year jump since 1970, according to a Platts analysis of industry data. With U.S. oil production averaging 5.268 million barrels per day (b/d) through October, the gain in U.S. output will be the most since the country produced 9.637-million b/d in 1970, which turned out to be the peak year of U.S. crude output, according to Platts' analysis of data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). If that 5.268 million b/d figure holds through December, this...

Two years ago, Congress ordered the nation’s gasoline refiners to do something that is turning out to be mathematically impossible. To please the farm lobby and to help wean the nation off oil, Congress mandated that refiners blend a rising volume of ethanol and other biofuels into gasoline. They are supposed to use at least 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012, up from less than seven billion gallons in 2007. But nobody at the time counted on fuel demand falling in the United States, which is what has happened during the recession. And that decline could well continue, as...

The recently disclosed emails and documents from University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit compromise the integrity of the United Nations' global warming reports. So declares Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, taking a few minutes away from a Thanksgiving retreat with his family. "Ninety-five percent of the nails were in the coffin prior to this week. Now they are all in." If any politician might be qualified to offer last rites, it would be Mr. Inhofe. The top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee has spent the past decade in the thick of Washington's climate fight. He's seen the...

A detailed look at the largest Oil Companies, how they operate and who the major players in the field are. The Oil Companies take a lot of Flak, but are they as bad as you think? Companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell now produce only 10% of the world's oil and gas and hold a mere 3% of its reserves. Big Oil’s primary “Movers & Shakers” according to “The Financial Times,” are: Aramco of Saudi Arabia, CNPC of China, Gazprom of Russia, NIOC of Iran, PDVSA of Venezuela, , Petrobras of Brazil, as well as Petronas of...

William Klesse, chief executive of oil refiner Valero Energy, is riled up. "I think cap-and-trade is ludicrous," he says. "The whole bill is a hidden tax." The so-called climate bill wending its way through the Senate aims to create a cap-and-trade regime covering emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If it passes in anything close to its current form, the bill would milk more carbon cash (payments to the government for the right to pollute) out of refiners than any other industry--somewhere between $30 billion and $110 billion a year. Valero, as America's biggest refiner (2.4 million barrels...

Enlarge ImageWind school. Placing vertically aligned turbines closer together gives more wattage for the buck.Credit: Mariah Power Arranging wind turbines like a school of fish could reduce the amount of land they take up by 100-fold while maintaining their electrical output, say researchers. Wind farms based on the approach might also be considerably safer for migrating birds. Whether it's Lance Armstrong bicycling behind his teammates in the Tour de France or a storm of fish slicing their way through the ocean, animals benefit from drafting. The leader breaks through the calm air or water, while the followers enjoy the...

Central Asia faces a broad range of security challenges. Due to the region’s position at the crossroads between Russia, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Caspian Sea it is confronted with a range of trans-national issues such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, organised crime and terrorism. Central Asia also encounters specific regional threats including scarcity of water resources for generating power and irrigation purposes, which is currently causing tension. On a national level the five Central Asian republics face the threat of instability due to bad governance and the harsh impact of the economic crisis.

After years of over promising and under delivering, the solar Industry is finally starting to show some interesting developments which have the potential to make solar power as cheap as fossil fuel on a cost-per-watt basis within five years. Getting us to that state, called grid parity, would require solar companies to produce power for around $1 a watt. Is it possible anytime soon? Many analysts think so and the target date being touted around is 2015. The reason for this fresh optimism is a mixture of technological development and simple economics. Traditional conductive materials make up 40% to 50%...

At an event in Columbus, Ohio, this afternoon, Secretary Chu announced that the Department of Energy is awarding $620 million for projects around the country to demonstrate advanced Smart Grid technologies and integrated systems that will help build a smarter, more efficient, more resilient electrical grid. These 32 demonstration projects, which include large-scale energy storage, smart meters, distribution and transmission system monitoring devices, and a range of other smart technologies, will act as models for deploying integrated Smart Grid systems on a broader scale. This funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be leveraged with $1 billion in...

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein told us this. And while he probably wasn't referring to the last 50 years of U.S. energy policy, it certainly applies to today's situation. Volatile energy markets, high prices, instability abroad — if it feels like we've been down this road before, it's because we have. Unfortunately, reaching back over a period of more than a half-century, Washington has been a serial offender in missing key opportunities to deliver an energy policy worthy of the world's greatest nation. The year was 1859. In the small,...

Growing world oil use will likely outpace the rate of new supplies in 2010, eroding the huge stockpiles of crude which have mounted around the world since the start of the global economic crisis. According to a Reuters poll of ten top oil-tracking analysts and organizations, oil demand is predicted to rise by 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) next year to 85.9 million bpd. At the same time, the rise in production from outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and output of natural gas liquids (NGLs) from OPEC members is seen growing by just 800,000 bpd in...

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar blasted big oil trade groups Tuesday, accusing them of barring the way to a balanced US energy system that would create thousands of jobs. The oil and gas leasing program put in place by President Barack Obama's administration is "robust" and "focuses on development in the right way, in the right places and with a fair return to the American taxpayer," Salazar said as he announced plans to auction 38 oil and gas leases next year.

Delivering an update on Shell's two flagship gas projects in Qatar, which are costing the group $21bn (£12.6bn), Mr Voser admitted that one – a liquiefied natural gas (LNG) plant – would overrun by about 10 months. However, he said construction was on track for Pearl, the other development, to start producing in 2011. It will be the world's largest gas-to-liquids facility when completed, having spiralled in cost from $5bn to $19bn since 2003. Both projects will lift Shell's output by 10pc – or 350,000 barrels per day - and contribute $4bn per year in revenues. "Qatar is key to...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - China's Sinopec (0386.HK) has signed a tentative deal to provide financing of $6.5 billion for oil refinery projects in Iran, two Iranian news agencies reported on Wednesday. If such an agreement goes ahead, it would provide Iran, the world's fifth-largest crude exporter, with much needed capital to help develop its all-important energy sector, which is under U.S. sanctions.

The Indian science journal Jonwar Chodu has just released the details on some fascinating research being conducted to replace the gasoline-powered automobile. Scientists working on the volcanic island of Krakatoa have been experimenting with a new type of car that is expected to completely replace the internal combustion engine by as early as 2013. They call it the “geo-thermal hydro-electric car.” How does it work? I’m glad you asked…

The world's first power project that generates energy by mixing fresh water with sea water has opened in Norway. The Norwegian renewable power company Statkraft has built a prototype osmotic power plant on the Oslo fiord. It aims to produce enough electricity to light and heat a small town within five years by osmosis, the process that allows plants to absorb water. At first it will produce a minuscule 4 kilowatts - enough to heat a large electric kettle. But by 2015 the target is 25 megawatts - the same as a small wind farm. With the Copenhagen climate summit...

TOFTE, Norway (Reuters) - Norway opened on Tuesday the world's first osmotic power plant, which produces emissions-free electricity by mixing fresh water and sea water through a special membrane. State-owned utility Statkraft's prototype plant, which for now will produce a tiny 2-4 kilowatts of power or enough to run a coffee machine, will enable Statkraft to test and develop the technology needed to drive down production costs. The plant is driven by osmosis that naturally draws fresh water across a membrane and toward the seawater side. This creates higher pressure on the sea water side, driving a turbine and producing...

ELECTRIC UTILITIES HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY INTERESTED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE BENEFITS of energy storage systems. This has been influenced by advances in storage technologies as well as an increased need to buffer the adverse impacts of the rapidly increasing penetration of renewable energy resources. Advances in smart grid technologies are also helping utilities to aggregate and control distributed storage units as a very responsive and flexible fleet. A look at the historical deployment of energy storage in utilities indicates a migratory pattern from large central storage units to broadly distributed smaller systems. For decades, electric utilities have been storing...

TOFTE, Norway (AFP) – Norway unveiled the world's first osmotic power plant on Tuesday, harnessing the energy-unleashing encounter of freshwater and seawater to make clean electricity. > When freshwater and seawater meet on either side of a membrane -- a thin layer that retains salt but lets water pass -- freshwater is drawn towards the seawater side. The flow puts pressure on the seawater side, and that pressure can be used to drive a turbine, producing electricity. >

Under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), the EPA is required to make a determination by November 30 of each year about the projected volume of cellulosic ethanol that will be available in the next calendar year. If the projected volume is less than volume mandated by the 2007 EISA, the EPA is required to lower the mandated volume in that year to the projected volume. Therefore, in the coming days, the EPA has to assess the situation. The legal mandate for cellulosic fuel use in 2010 is 100 million gallons. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, however, is privately...