Methanol is a bit of a mystery. It is the simplest form of hydrocarbon, one oxygen atom attached to a simple methane molecule. Therefore it burns. It is manufactured in small quantities, but production could be ramped up at any time. Read more at: Real Clear Politics
A story in BusinessWeek highlights a Goldman Sachs report from this week hinting that U.S. drillers might want to let up a bit, in the face of still-plummeting worldwide prices. The shale boom in the U.S. isn’t likely to pull back until oil gets so cheap that people can’t make money drilling for it. There […]
The United States has been in protracted negotiations with Iran over a settlement that would reduce or eliminate economic sanctions against Iran, in exchange for that country delaying its nuclear program. With oil prices falling — one expert notes that Iran needs a price of $140 per barrel to balance its national budget — the […]
North Dakota flares more than 25 percent of the natural gas it extracts from the Bakken oil-shale play. Not only is natural gas cheaper (i.e. not as profitable) than the oil that comes out of the same wells, there’s a lack of pipeline and storage capacity in that region. Texas, by comparison, flares only 1 […]
Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, shared his thoughts last week on the U.S. ban on oil exports, saying on API’s Marketplace program that with global prices so low, it might not make sense for American drillers to increase production. “I don’t think anyone knows what […]
U.S.-based Genie Energy could turn to the courts or even Mongolia in its effort to challenge a local government decision that has blocked its hunt for oil just over 40 kilometers from Jerusalem, a senior official at the group said. Read more at: Reuters UK
Everything about Alberta’s oil sands is huge–from the sheer scale of the 170-billion-barrel resource in the ground, to the two-storey trucks that haul bitumen ore in the mines, to the $30-billion per year in capital investment to expand the flow of crude. Read more at: The Globe and Mail
Take off from Aspen’s tiny airport and head straight west, and you’ll soon find yourself over an area known as the Thompson Divide – 221,500 acres of what Teddy Roosevelt described as “great, wild country… where the mountains crowded together in chain, peak, and tableland; all of the higher ones wrapped in a shroud of […]
Scientists are using biotechnology to chip away at barriers to producing biofuels from woody plants and grasses instead of the corn and sugarcane used to make ethanol. NC State’s Forest Biotechnology Group, which has been responsible for several research milestones published this year, summed up biofuel research progress and challenges for a special issue of […]
While the debate rages about what the threshold for biofuels should be in the government’s next (and long-delayed) Renewable Fuel Standard, Breaking Energy’s Jared Anderson has a timely post about the makeup of the current RFS, as it was proposed by the EPA last November. There are thresholds within the larger thresholds, and it looks […]
