Oil // Current

Pirates take 'super tanker' towards Somalia

On Saturday, a crude "super tanker" was attacked by pirates off the coast of Kenya. Now the tanker is headed for... more

nazbags
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Pirates hijack Saudi 'super tanker'

This brings the number of vessels they're holding to 11. "U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet Cmdr. Jane Campbell told CNN the... more

nickwe3d
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Turning Boom into Bust

America has adopted anti-energy policies because of incessant environmental propaganda about “dirty” coal, out of the... more

HansGruen
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Obama ties automaker rescue to regulation

The term energy efficient autos have been lingering in the back burner of these companies for at least 10 years. Unless the autos do not sell? They haven't had any insight or desire to retool and even help to keep the air cleaner by using energy efficient motors ... Should they get a blank check? "No", Obama says ... But, should they just file bankruptcy and investors reinvest into individuals that have waited 20 years trying to promote a new energy auto?

I think they held on to the skirt tale of the oil industries too long.

"Top advisers to President-elect Barack Obama are helping to draft an auto industry rescue plan that would bring new government oversight, including the possibility of an auto czar who could ensure the money was being used wisely.

Aides said Obama is also open to an oversight board that would perform the same function as one individual. The proposals come as the estimates of the cost to fix Detroit's three largest automakers continue to mount.

Any plan, however, is likely to face an uphill battle in the Senate, where Republicans control 49 seats until the new Congress convenes in January.

"Right now, I don't think there are the votes. I don't know of a single Republican who's willing to support" the auto bailout, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said yesterday. While Dodd said he supports a bailout, he cautioned against "bringing up a proposition that might fail" and suggested that Congress wait until Obama takes office.

A few months ago, a $25 billion loan package to boost Detroit's production of energy-efficient vehicles seemed sufficient to help automakers and suppliers get over a rough patch and steer the industry towards a greener future. The legislation was rushed through Congress. The Energy Department wrote the rules of the program in half of the time it was allotted.

Obama believes action cannot wait until his administration begins, his aide said.

"The options that you have in dealing with these problems get worse and worse. The sooner you address it, the more time you have to bring the parties to the table," the adviser said. "He really feels the sooner you act, the better"."The term energy efficient autos have been lingering in the back burner of these companies for at least 10 years. Unless the autos... more

wlwatkins
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4 responses

3 days ago

Activists prevent oil tankerloading in Indonesia

Dumai/Jakarta, 14 November 2008 - Greenpeace today prevented the loading of crude palm oil on the Isola Corallo, a Rotterdam-bound... more

arcticspirit
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2 responses

3 days ago

Lower gas prices don’t make Americans feel rich

Drivers are breathing a sigh of relief as gasoline prices plunge across the country. Gas below $1.50 a gallon has appeared in a... more

bmltv
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0 responses

3 days ago

Political Cortex: Nationalizing Oil Could Help Solve U.S.A.'s Economic Collapse!

This should turn some heads and start a nice debate? Why not nationalize oil? If the Treasury Department can bail out banks... more

pokesmot
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2 responses

3 days ago

US Government studies offshore drilling in mid-Atlantic

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The federal government has taken the first step in 25 years toward offshore drilling in the mid-Atlantic,... more

bansheewail
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4 responses

4 days ago

US government begins offshore drilling study on Atlantic coast

The US government has taken the first step in 25 years toward offshore drilling in the mid-Atlantic region, launching a study of a... more

jefftego
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0 responses

5 days ago

Why bail out the car companies when they bailed out on us?

Detroit has been lobbying against the future of all Americans who want to end our oil addiction. There is also a link to some... more

pokesmot
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39 responses

5 days ago

Pickens Plan, Yes or No, Tell Us Why

T. Boone Pickens has a plan to change the way we use energy in our country, how do you feel about it? Read the plan at this... more

justright
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0 responses

5 days ago

Oil companies say price 'could soon reach $100' again

"Current trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable - environmentally, economically and socially -... more

Katmai512
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41 responses

5 days ago

Oil hovers near $59 as slowdown squeezes demand

Oil inched lower on Wednesday, after falling 5 percent a day ago to close below $60 for the first time since March 2007, as... more

Kepano
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6 days ago

US appetite for black gold from Alberta oilsands is fueling a nightmarish scenerio.

Check out all of the articles as well as links to other news providers following this crisis as it unfolds.

biffmorton
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6 days ago

The Climate for Change

Here’s what we can do — now: we can make an immediate and large strategic investment to put people to work replacing 19th-century energy technologies that depend on dangerous and expensive carbon-based fuels with 21st-century technologies that use fuel that is free forever: the sun, the wind and the natural heat of the earth.

What follows is a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.

First, the new president and the new Congress should offer large-scale investment in incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants in the Southwestern deserts, wind farms in the corridor stretching from Texas to the Dakotas and advanced plants in geothermal hot spots that could produce large amounts of electricity.

Second, we should begin the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places where it is mostly generated to the cities where it is mostly used. New high-voltage, low-loss underground lines can be designed with “smart” features that provide consumers with sophisticated information and easy-to-use tools for conserving electricity, eliminating inefficiency and reducing their energy bills. The cost of this modern grid — $400 billion over 10 years — pales in comparison with the annual loss to American business of $120 billion due to the cascading failures that are endemic to our current balkanized and antiquated electricity lines.

Third, we should help America’s automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new startup companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids that can run on the renewable electricity that will be available as the rest of this plan matures. In combination with the unified grid, a nationwide fleet of plug-in hybrids would also help to solve the problem of electricity storage. Think about it: with this sort of grid, cars could be charged during off-peak energy-use hours; during peak hours, when fewer cars are on the road, they could contribute their electricity back into the national grid.

Fourth, we should embark on a nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation and energy-efficient windows and lighting. Approximately 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States come from buildings — and stopping that pollution saves money for homeowners and businesses. This initiative should be coupled with the proposal in Congress to help Americans who are burdened by mortgages that exceed the value of their homes.

Fifth, the United States should lead the way by putting a price on carbon here at home, and by leading the world’s efforts to replace the Kyoto treaty next year in Copenhagen with a more effective treaty that caps global carbon dioxide emissions and encourages nations to invest together in efficient ways to reduce global warming pollution quickly, including by sharply reducing deforestation.Here’s what we can do — now: we can make an immediate and large strategic investment to put people to work replacing... more

bshipp
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1 response

9 days ago

Trapped in black tar: How the oil sands made Canada a suburb of Fort McMurray

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in Russia or Nigeria, I swear to god." Andrew Nikiforuk is on stage at the Capilano Performing Arts Theatre, reflecting on life in Alberta as an outspoken critic of the tar sands. Yet one of the most decorated magazine writers in the country spared little as he carved up the captains of industry and politicians behind Alberta's massive oil boom, in front of about 200 people on Oct. 26.

Drawing on his new book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent, Nikiforuk forcefully outlined a very ugly business. He described the tar sands development as the largest capital project in the world, at $200 billion since 1996 when the associated pipelines and refineries are rolled in.

Then he set out the stakes. The development of the world's dirtiest oil has made Canada the biggest supplier of the United States' massive energy needs for the last seven years. "While we were having our donuts at Tim Hortons, we were becoming what Stephen Harper calls an 'emerging energy superpower.' "

Nikiforuk also set out the consequences. Not just the environmental ones -- we'll get to those. The political ones. "We are now a petro-state," Nikiforuk declared, with a wildly fluctuating petro dollar, noting that in Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia the consequences are not too subtle. "In Alberta, it's a little more subtle."

The implications of all that oil lucre sloshing loosely about in politics and society are rather profound, Nikiforuk argued, noting that the only real democracies in the Middle East are the countries without any oil. In British Columbia, he says, our complicity is being bought with the tar sands' dirty money. Toxic sour-gas wells that feed the tar sands' own enormous energy demands are putting $2 billion a year in the B.C. government's coffers. The feds are getting $5 billion to $6 billion a year in tar sands-related corporate tax revenue, Nikiforuk estimates. "They've used it to lower your taxes."

He quoted Thomas Friedman's twist on preacher Jonathan Mayhew's famous 1750 dictum: "There is no representation without taxation." In other words, if oil companies are the ones improving governments' accounts, then governments will do the oil companies' bidding, not ours.

snip

A 2008 industry-funded study suggested that the "steam-assisted gravity drainage" projects (as opposed to the open-pit mines) could extirpate caribou, bear, moose and fish from between one and three million acres. Water in the Athabaska region is in decline by 30 percent since the 1960s, Nikiforuk said. The process of extracting oil from the sand requires vast quantities of water, and produces enormous volumes of toxic waste. Nikiforuk said a dozen tailings ponds cover 50 square kilometers, held back by sand dams that rival the Three Gorges dam in size. "They're all leaking."

Nikiforuk asserts that efforts to monitor the effect on the Athabaska watershed, part of the third-largest river system in the world, is pathetic. In 2004, Nikiforuk said, federal scientists declared that the monitoring program "was designed to find nothing."

"This is Third World," Nikiforuk observes. "It's really disturbing that this would happen in a country like Canada."

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/11/06/BlackTar/
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It boils down to this: Canada is now America's drug dealer and making a good profit from it ( the government that is) at the expense of our climate balance, human health, and biodiversity. There is no more stark an example of human greed and political audacity than this. As this speaker asks: how could this happen in a country like Canada? So the next question then is: what will the Obama policy be on tar sands? And if it is continued, how does that make any plan to bring "green jobs" here sustainable with this kind of environmental devastation continuing to be allowed by this government with them profiting from it? This must stop. This country needs an intervention!Sometimes I feel like I'm living in Russia or Nigeria, I swear to god." Andrew Nikiforuk is on stage at the Capilano... more

JanforGore
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12 responses

9 days ago

Peak oil humor

Just had to share this with you.

MeganMcKenzie
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0 responses

9 days ago

Current Presents Digg Dialogg: Al Gore

Hosted by Digg's Kevin Rose, viewers have a rare opportunity to hear from former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner... more

current
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48 responses

11 days ago

Political Cortex: Hasn't U.S. Learned Anything About the Lies that Launched the Iraq War?

The honest answer to that disturbing question is an emphatic "No!"

We were told in a State of the Union Address by presenting as a proven fact that the U.S. had accurate knowledge that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction" and was developing "nuclear power" which would soon be capable of threatening us.

This sent fear surging through that fateful congressional gathering before the State of the Union Address.

Congressional members jumped up, giving Bush a rare standing ovation. As Bush smilingly left the impressive chambers, the congressional members patted Bush on the back and hugged him, all so grateful that this farsighted president had the vision to save the U.S.A. from a catastrophic nuclear disaster.

I'm sure some of these enthusiastic listeners went home that night, and knelt in prayer, thanking God for George Bush saving us with his keen foresight. Some no doubt were thanking God that Bush was allegedly a personal believer in God's great power and even the divine destiny of the U.S.A., often referred to solemnly as the nation's "manifest destiny."

But if these cheering, misinformed, gullible congressional members could have seen the future just a few years ahead, they could have caught a frightful glimpse of exactly what their going to war against Iraq achieved.

After 8 years of hell, it is time to examine what the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan have really accomplished.

This Congress and President Bush began with a budget surplus. Following 8 years of hell, two continuing wars and loss of international respect, the U.S. is now the number one debtor nation. The national debt is at the $10 trillion mark.

The death toll, combining Iraq, Afghanistan, and including U.S. personnel death toll is staggering and continuing almost daily. The president who was cheered with a standing ovation is held in disrespect, his approval rating down to all-time lows of 28% approval and 9% believing that the U.S. is heading in the right direction.

If there is one thing to be learned from this misadventure in Iraq, which even Alan Greenspan admitted was mainly about oil, it is don't rush into a war or siding with warring nations until you know all the facts, as human life is too precious to destroy on the altar of arrogance, ignorance and, above all -- greed.
more@link The honest answer to that disturbing question is an emphatic "No!" We were told in a State of the Union Address by... more