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The 2013 Energy Trust Barometer: Mixed Readings
Wednesday's panel discussion in Washington, DC on "The Trust Factor" in energy couldn't have been more timely. The stakes for lost trust seemed especially apparent against the backdrop of an EU probe into allegations of price fixing in the...
How Is Expanding Oil and Gas Production Consistent with Addressing Climate Change?
Last month the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of global energy use was essentially unchanged between 1990 and 2010, despite the implementation of global climate agreements and the...
Ex-Shell Chief Hofmeister Promotes US Fuel Diversity
Alternative fuels have lost some of their luster in the US, lately, for understandable reasons. Oil production here is booming based on shale resources that keep expanding, while the market for ethanol, our most successful alternative fuel,...
The Need for Innovation: Engineering Carbon Out of Energy
Recently I ran across an excellent article in The Atlantic on the importance of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). In light of last week's warning from the International Energy Agency that efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of global...
Will Water Limit Fracking and Natural Gas Development in Saudi Arabia?
Recent comments by Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, indicated that Saudi Aramco would soon begin exploring the country's shale gas resources. As another means of reducing oil consumption in the Kingdom's electricity sector, in order to...
How Will Oil's Current Slide Affect Gasoline Prices?
We all carry assumptions around with us. For many who follow energy one such assumption is that oil prices, and thus gasoline prices, generally rise over time. In an otherwise fairly well-reasoned blog post I read yesterday,...
Obama 2014 Budget Energy Proposals: Stuck in A Timewarp
After spending some time going through the White House's proposed budget for 2014-23, several conclusions were inescapable. First, this administration still hasn't thought through the implications of the energy revolution that's currently...
Crude Oil Rides the Rails
Last month's publication of the State Department's latest environmental impact report on the Keystone XL pipeline project has sparked great interest in the logistics of shipping crude oil by rail. As described in a long article in the Washington...
Two Energy Revolutions Vie Across the Atlantic
A front-page article in the Washington Post reported on the trend of energy-related investments in the US by European companies. This is another aspect of the competing energy revolutions I mentioned a few weeks ago, in my...
Natural Gas Vehicles Already Big in Italy, Pakistan
The sudden abundance of natural gas in the US triggered a startling divergence of crude oil and natural gas prices that, in turn, has energized the advocates of using more gas in transportation. Yet despite the availability of wholesale natural gas...
Is Small Nuclear Reactor R&D Fleecing the Public?
Two weeks ago I received an email announcing that Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), a D.C.-based watchdog organization, had awarded this year's Golden Fleece for wasting tax dollars to the federal government's efforts to promote the development...
Secretary of Energy for a Leaner DOE?
I've read a number of stories on President Obama's nomination of MIT physicist Ernest Moniz to be the next Secretary of Energy. This overview of his background from the Washington Post is as good a place as any to start. ...
