NY Daily News
Government officials who failed to collect millions of dollars in fees from oil companies for drilling on America’s public lands were having sex with energy executives, a bombshell report revealed Wednesday.
A two-year internal Interior Department probe concluded that officials in the Denver-based Minerals Management Service had improperly cozied up to oil companies: rigging [...]
Archive for the ‘Energy’ Category
Internal Investigation Finds Gross Corruption in Dept. of Interior’s Minerals Management Service
Posted in Energy, Politics, tagged corruption on September 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Keep CO2 Waste Out of the Atmosphere by Recycling it Into Cement?
Posted in Energy, Environment, tagged carbon dioxide, co2, Energy on August 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Scientific American
Today, this flue gas wafts up and out of the power plant’s enormous smokestacks, but by simply bubbling it through the nearby seawater, a new California-based company called Calera says it can use more than 90 percent of that CO2 to make something useful: cement.
It’s a twist that could make a polluting substance into [...]
Obama’s NIMBY Ad
Posted in 2008 Presidential Election, Energy, NIMBY, tagged mccain, NIMBY, yucca on August 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
With an opponent like McCain, these types of ads should be easy to churn out. I don’t much care for a concentration on attack ads but McCain has dictated the tone of the campaign and Obama has no choice but to follow suit.
The New Energy Reform Act
Posted in 2008 Presidential Election, Energy, Politics, tagged obama, offshore drilling on August 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The “Gang of 10″ behind the Senate proposal to expand offshore drilling along the east coast:
Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)
Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)
John Thune (R-S.D.)
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.)
Mary Landrieu (D-La.)
Johnny Isakson (R-Ga)
Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)
Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)
Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)
I’m on record here rejecting the idea that setting the wheels in motion today for increased crude oil production [...]
Breakthrough Technology in Storing Energy
Posted in Energy on August 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Science Daily:
“This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think [...]
US Exports Record Quantity of Petrolium Products in May
Posted in Economics, Energy, tagged oil, petrolium, refinery capacity on July 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Reuters:
Critics of the offshore drilling plan noted that the Energy Department released data this week showing that U.S. exports of finished petroleum products, including gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel, soared to 1.592 million barrels per day in May.
The exports set a record for the month and were up 31 percent from a year ago.
Jim [...]
Brew Your Own Auto Fuel at Home?
Posted in Energy, tagged alternative fuel on July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Economist (requires subscription)
The brain behind this idea is Donald Highgate, a polymers expert, who made his name in the 1970s by developing soft contact lenses. The polymer he has come up with this time is used to make what are known as proton-exchange membranes. These, depending on how the device containing them is set [...]
The Straight Talk Express II
Posted in 2008 Presidential Election, Economics, Energy, The Straight Talk Express on July 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
McCain credits President Bush with the recent oil price drop. The White House did not stand by that assessment:
Presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino said the price drop also could reflect diminished demand.
“I don’t know if we fully deserve the credit,” Perino said.
“We don’t predict what happens in the market,” she said. “We can’t really [...]
What Happened to the Cheap Fuel-Efficient Sub-Compact?
Posted in Energy on July 16, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Checking Consumer Reports for mileage stats on the most fuel efficient cars on the market has me shaking my head. The Toyota Yaris Base with manual transmission at 26/44 mpg is apparently the most fuel-efficient non-hybrid car on the road. The best rating overall went to the Toyota Prius Base, at 35/50 mpg.
What [...]
Introducing the Zero Truck
Posted in Energy, tagged alternative fuels, electric cars, Energy, fuel on July 14, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Popular Mechanics reviews Electroride’s zero emission commercial box truck:
The Specs
The Zero Truck is a Class 4 or 5 (depending on configuration) commercial truck based on the Isuzu NPR—one of the best sellers in the industry. The Zero Truck is an “Integration Package.” In other words, participating dealers receive the Zero Truck conversion components in a [...]
The Power of Speculation (continued)
Posted in Economics, Energy, Politics on July 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
From CNN Money/Fortune Oil speculation: Why we don’t have answers
The case for Congress to regulate oil futures markets:
The problem is that the futures market has gotten so big, and the trading rules in the markets so lax, that it’s not easy to dismiss the speculation theory.
The infamous December 2000 “Enron loophole” is the topic [...]
Ethanol and the Global Food Crisis
Posted in Economics, Energy, Politics on July 6, 2008 | 1 Comment »
On Friday the Guardian UK claimed an unpublished World Bank study found that production of biofuels are responsible for more than half of the increase in global food prices:
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington [...]
The Power of Speculation (In Crude Terms)
Posted in Economics, Energy, Politics on July 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Do you buy it? I can’t say I pay any better than cursory attention to economic news and am admittedly a little insecure about my general grasp of economics topics. Perhaps this new writing endeavor I’ve undertaken will motivate me to better familiarize myself with that field.
But it only requires cursory attention to see that [...]
