Article Archive | Page 4

• How the Export of Coal and Natural Gas in the U.S. has Developed over time

  The beaten and bruised US coal industry got up off the floor from the body blows of US EPA’s regulations and got back in the race as an export champion serving energy hungry Asian markets. Fourth quarter 2011 US coal exports increased 6.6 percent from the Q3: 2011 and 32.6 percent from Q4: 2010 to 27.7 metric short tonnes (mst) with exports going mostly to Europe and Asia continuing to climb.Meanwhile, total U.S. coal consumption decreased by of 18.8 percent from third quarter 2011 and 9.4 percent from fourth quarter 2010 to 227.1 mst.  This was the lowest since second…

• US States start to Battle it out to Win the Eye of the Algae Industry

  Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law a pair of bills recognizing so-called “algaculture” following passage in the Arizona state legislature that will see the Grand Canyon State encourage and support the algae industry. Arizona is the second American state, after Ohio, to classify the algae industry as agriculture. It’s a shot best heard by state legislatures nationwide, algae is going commercial in specialty chemicals right away with fuel products coming later. Florida is getting in the game in a way, too.Dr. Mark Edwards, an Arizona State University professor, author, and well known “algaevangelist,” whose work focuses on resolving world hunger…

• The Effects of Global Warming being Felt in the US

  In a recent PBS documentary, the mayor of Norfolk, Virginia, Paul Fraim, talks about how flooding has become a monthly occurrence in his town, and how global warming and sea level rise are as much a daily issue for him as education and fighting crime. In some parts of Norfolk, streets turn into rivers at high tide. Homes are flooded five out of six years. People lose their carpets, their appliances, their savings. And they can’t afford to move elsewhere.Sea levels have risen 14 inches in Norfolk since 1930–almost double the global rate. Part of this alarming change is due…

• India Decides to Invest in the Oil Potential of the Falklands

  Britain and Argentina have been feuding over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands for 180 years, and 1982 fought a brief but vicious war over them.Much has changed in the past three decades – Argentina has increasingly lined up fellow Latin American nations to support their claim to Las Malvinas, and in the past two years, intrepid British oil exploration companies have surveyed Falkland waters and found promising signs of hydrocarbon deposits.Now, an outside player has decided to take the plunge on what might be there under the stormy southern Atlantic waters and invest – India.Should the on-going Falklands offshore…

• Iran's Green Revolution may come from Energy

  Against the backdrop of discussions about pending negotiations over its controversial nuclear program and the upcoming deadline of an European embargo on Iranian oil comes a quiet push by the Islamic republic to become a major electricity exporter. Tehran had said it was expecting to secure electricity deals with Syria and Lebanon and had somehow attracted an estimated $1 billion to help build new power plants in the country. With some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world, Tehran might be able to shrug off international sanctions by embracing an ambitious electricity agenda.European restrictions on Iranian oil go…

• The Top 10 Green Energy Stories Today

  1. The Department of the Interior has given the green light to a power transmission line that is intended to bring power from Google, Inc.- backed offshore wind farms in the Northeast of the US to the mainland. Environmental impact studies will take 18 months to two years. The US, unlike Germany, so far has no offshore wind farms, and the US electricity grid needs to be re-done so as to bring power from such sources to consumers.2. Inexpensive natural gas is being preferred to coal in the US, so that coal electricity generation has fallen 19 percent in the…

• World Banks have the Power to save the Global Economy, if they want to

  The global economy appears to be headed over cliff this year.  The emerging world is experiencing a significant economic slow down, the Eurozone will probably break apart in the next few months, and the United States faces sharp austerity measures at the end of the year.  There are enough bearish developments here to make the original Mayan calendar look prescient after all.  So should we despair?  Is the global economy fated to collapse in 2012?No, says Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari of Citigroup.  Though the outlook is dire, they argue there is much more the Fed, the ECB, the Bank…

• The Strong Dollar Leads to a Fall in Commodity Prices

  Panic is on deck, to use the baseball terminology that my foreign readers are often attempting to decipher. That is the only conclusion one can reach after getting gob smacked by the price action this morning. Copper got spanked for eight cents, oil burned $2, gold shed another $26, and silver puked 70 cents. The tantrum like stock behaviour in producing and equipment companies, like Freeport McMoRan (FCX) and Caterpillar (CAT) has been atrocious. How many of you out there know that JP Morgan (JPM) is the largest holder of futures contracts in the silver market and just got hit…

• What the EIA's Short Term Energy Outlook Tells us about the Global Economy

  The US Energy information Administration (EIA) released its updated Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO) May 8, 2012.  The overview calls for falling crude oil prices, falling gasoline prices, falling electric demand but higher natural gas prices as the prospect of exports reduces fears of excess inventory.The STEO is always a volatile cocktail of near term market fluxuations and this update is no different.  The question is whether this short term forecast is good news or bad news about the economic future. In the case of global oil the answer is mixed.  Falling crude prices reflect the weakening of demand in…

• Azerbaijan's International Energy Aspirations Raise Tensions in Middle East

  Azerbaijan has been expanding its international energy aspirations further afield over the past several years, gaining assets in Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Georgia, and offering to build installations in Libya, but it wasn’t until it entered the Israeli market that anyone took much interest in these developments, with Iran particularly on edge. Last fall, a subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR bought a 5 percent stake in Israel’s main oil field Med Ashdod, working alongside Israel’s Shemen Oil & Gas Resources (SMOG) consortium. It wasn’t until late April this year that this became an issue, when…