Drumbeat: April 13, 2023

2010 IEA Response System for Oil Supply Emergencies

Although the oil delivery system has changed dramatically since the oil shocks of the 1970s, there is still a high risk of a supply disruption which could have great economic consequences for IEA member countries.

Capacity constraints, both in production and refining, have increased the potential of supply falling short of demand. Given this delicate balance of supply and demand, even a disruption of relatively small volume can have a significant impact on the market. Global demand growth exacerbates market tightness, further re-enforcing the need for investment in capacity expansion

Uncertain investment climates in some producer countries, often described as an aspect of “resource nationalism”, may also hamper the development of future supply streams.

Oil Falls Most in Six Weeks on Concern Market Is Oversupplied

Bloomberg) — Crude oil declined the most in six weeks as the International Energy Agency boosted its forecast for non-OPEC supplies and U.S. inventories were estimated to climb, raising concern that the markets are oversupplied.

Oil fell as much as 1.6 percent on the IEA forecast that production would expand in countries such as Canada, the U.K. and Russia as it kept the global demand outlook little changed. U.S. crude stockpiles may advance for an 11th week, the longest stretch of consecutive increases since December 2004, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts.

“We’re seeing a lot of growth out of the U.S., Russia and Canada, responding to high prices,” said Brad Samples, a commodity analyst for Summit Energy Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky. “Investments that were made leading up to 2008 are coming to fruition.”

Higher consumer goods demand lifts trade gap

U.S. imports of crude oil in February were the lowest since February 1999. The average price for imported oil fell nearly a dollar to $72.92 per barrel from January, but was up 85.9 percent from February last year.

Meanwhile, a Labor Department showed strong petroleum prices in March boosted overall import prices rose 0.7 percent after falling a revised 0.2 percent in February.

Energy ties grow as China resists Iran sanctions - sources

DUBAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese state oil firms have maintained the pace of project development in Iran while Beijing resists any new sanctions on the energy sector designed to press Tehran to curb its nuclear programme, industry sources said on Tuesday.

China, which has close economic ties with Iran, has much to lose from any sanctions that limit new investment to develop the world’s second-largest oil and gas reserves.

Chinese firms have stepped into the vacuum left by western companies who have yielded to years of political pressure to steer clear as the U.S. and its allies look to isolate Iran over its nuclear programme.

Ugandan court orders Shell to pay debts in the country

KAMPALA (Reuters) - A Ugandan court has blocked the local subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC from selling its assets in the country until it pays about $16 million to settle debts with Mercator Enterprises Limited, legal papers showed.

Earlier this month, Royal Dutch Shell said it was considering selling most of its service stations and other downstream assets in 21 African countries as part of a wider effort to reduce its global refining and marketing exposure.

New generation of Somali pirates emerging

LONDON - A new generation of well-organised Somali pirates is targeting ships and aims to use ransoms from hijackings for further criminal activities, a senior Royal Dutch Shell official said on Tuesday.

U.S., Mexico, Canada in pact on uranium - W.House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, Canada and Mexico agreed to work together with the International Atomic Energy Agency to convert Mexico’s research reactor from the use of highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium fuel, the White House said on Tuesday.

GM viruses offer hope of future where energy is unlimited

Scientists have made a fundamental breakthrough in their attempts to replicate photosynthesis – the ability of plants to harvest the power of sunlight – in the hope of making unlimited amounts of “green” energy from water and sunlight alone.

Change needed for Gulf to win its power struggle

Over the next seven years, GCC electricity generation must expand by more than 50 per cent to satisfy consumers. Power cuts struck Sharjah and Kuwait last summer. Electricity demand is in danger of running ahead of supply.

So far, the solutions have concentrated on the supply side. With the exception of Qatar, all countries in the region are increasingly short of natural gas, once the default fuel for power generation. So we have plans for oil-fired power in Saudi Arabia, nuclear and solar here and coal in Oman.

But simply adding more supply is not the answer. GCC electricity needs to be radically rethought. State-owned utilities, often slow-moving and conservative, will struggle to meet this explosive growth in demand.

Arctic oil drilling threatens Norway government

OSLO (Reuters) - A classic battle pitting the oil industry against environmentalists and fishermen in Norway’s Arctic seas is set to intensify on Thursday when the most thorough environmental study of the project to date is released.

Extracting oil from the chilly waters off the Lofoten and Vesteraalen islands is so divisive it could wreck the ruling Labour Party’s coalition in this Nordic state that is the world’s fifth largest oil and third largest gas exporter but also sees itself as a leader in environmental policies.

“If I were to point to one conflict that could spell the end of the present government, it would be this issue,” said Frank Aarebrot, professor of comparative politics at the University of Bergen.

The West Australia gas supply war

Tony Petersen, chairman of the DomGas Alliance, wants the WA government to “give teeth” to a policy to reserve offshore gas for domestic use, claiming a 300 per cent increase in North-West Shelf Joint Venture prices to distributor Alinta. Petersen argues that WA customers are being forced to pay premiums to producers in excess of any obtainable by the gas suppliers from overseas customers.

Not dealing with the issue, he says, will lead to thousands of job losses among industrial users of gas because, at existing prices, major resource processing and gas-fired generation will not be sustainable.

Robinson retorts that, if the Alliance gets its way, every WA householder and small business will bear the consequences, forecasting that gas production investment will falter, supply will shrink and prices will rise still further.

Energy prices to triple, says Origin chief

ELECTRICITY prices across Australia were likely to triple over the next 10 years, Origin Energy chief executive Grant King warned yesterday.

Mr King told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia in Sydney that a combination of the federal government’s mandatory renewable-energy targets, energy policy uncertainty, higher electricity transmission and distribution costs, and higher fuel costs would drive the increase.

He said the boom in sales of energy-inefficient flat-screen televisions was also pushing up household energy use, despite the development of more energy-efficient household appliances such as fridges and dishwashers.

“The price of electricity is going to go up substantially,” Mr King said.

Summer 2010: Big Hurricanes, High Oil Prices

In 2009, there were just three Atlantic storms that earned the hurricane monikers — Bill, Fred, and Ida. None of these storms made landfall in the US as hurricanes. The predictions from Colorado State University researchers are not so sanguine for 2010.

Firms poised for Saudi refinery deals await Conoco

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - South Korean, Spanish and Indian contracting firms are on the verge of winning contracts from Saudi Aramco and ConocoPhillips to build a new Saudi oil refinery, industry sources said on Monday.

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia has switched its development focus to refining, petrochemicals and gas after completing a programme to boost oil production capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day (bpd) last year.

Aramco ‘primed to launch gas double’

Saudi Aramco is believed to be gauging contractors’ interest in building new facilities at the Wasit and Shaybah gas plants, according to reports.

Wasit would be the biggest gas plant in top oil exporter Saudi Arabia with a processing capacity of 2.5 billion cubic feet per day from two non-associated offshore gas fields, Hasbah and Arabiyah, sources told Reuters.

Black gold, yellow gold

Julian Phillips at Goldforecaster.com writes that Saudi Arabia, the major oil exporter, “exported more oil to China than to the United States last year”, which is kind of surprising but not too alarming if you have been taking your medications as prescribed, or if the rise in Chinese consumption was not too severe, but instead imports were rising gently in a non-threatening way, so that consumption was not soaring and everything was kind of just, you know, perking along real peachy.

China’s race for oil

While Western scholars, consultants and oil companies have been raising the heat and noise in their debate over whether world oil production has, or is, about to reach a permanent peak, they could do worse than focus on what China is saying, or more importantly, what it is doing.

China has taken a ‘no talk, all action’ approach by acquiring as much as possible the oil and gas assets that are available to them around the world. The Chinese government, its state oil companies and think tanks have so far avoided public debate and not made known their thinking on the controversial issue of global oil depletion.

‘Angolans live in poverty’

Global watchdog group Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on Angola’s government to do more to fight corruption, saying Angolans did not benefit from the state’s immense oil riches.

Uganda: Petrol scarcity pushes food prices up

Following a recent rise in fuel prices, traders have responded by increasing the prices of foodstuffs.

A mini survey done by Business Power last week showed that fresh fruits, Matooke, Irish potatoes, tomatoes, onions are the most affected, while commodities like carrots, dry maize, Posho (maize flour) have so far not shown an increase in price.

‘End loadshedding or quit’

LAHORE – Fed up with long spells of power outages, thousands of people took to streets across the country on 4th consecutive day on Monday to vent their anger against the policymakers, demanding the coalition government to step down if they are unable to tackle energy crisis, worsening day by day.

The Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) has resorted to 16 to 20-hour load shedding in the country as according to the officials, the electricity shortfall reached above 5000 MW on Monday.

Rivers a source of rising tension between Pakistan and India

ISLAMABAD (AlertNet) - A 1960 trans-boundary water sharing agreement between India and Pakistan has stood the test of two wars and various periods of unease. Climate change, however, may prove the toughest test of the Indus River deal, observers say.

Kunstler: My Hometown and Its Fate

The city exploded vertically in a very few decades when Thomas
Edison’s combined engineering-and-business genius made it possible to
deliver electricity to every block. We’d spent the period just after
the Civil War putting up limestone palaces and brick heaps as grand as
the ones in Paris and London (and about the same size), and then from
about 1890-on we tore them all down when the elevator made it possible
to rent hundreds of apartments or office suites on the same
real-estate “footprint” where there used to be only dozens of rentable
units.

You could read the history of our energy resources in the
buildings, too. Until about the 1920s, the buildings were heated with
coal. The bulk and inconvenience of coal was mitigated by hordes of
low-paid immigrants who could wrangle the stuff into basements and
shovel it into furnaces in rotating work-shifts. This made it possible
in, say 1908, to run a building with over a hundred apartments in it.
My mother and father grew up in 20-story buildings like this.

Note to Environmentalists: Economists are on your side

Economists of all stripes have argued for decades for the proper pricing of pollution, for severely reducing or eliminating natural resources subsidies for agriculture, forestry, energy, water, and fisheries, and for making property rights simpler and more transparent.

Canadians unprepared for the Takeaway Decade

It’s early yet, but a good name for the next 10 years might be The Takeaway Decade.

Prepare to pay more and get less in the years ahead. Signs of this new reality are all around us, most recently in the latest round of government budgets.

CAT envisages fossil-free Britain in 20 years

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) is drawing up plans which could help Britain to banish fossil fuel use in just twenty years.

The report which details measure designed to slash carbon emissions and eliminate oil use in Britain is set to be published in June, the BBC reports.

Entitled ‘Zero Carbon Britain’ the report’s authors say that through proper use of renewable energy sources, using more energy efficient buildings and by making a switch to electric cars Britain can cut energy demands in half.

A Borrower and a Lender Be: Could the threat of a peaking oil supply lead to a hyperlocal revolution? A group of Portlanders thinks so.

Normally, when you need compost for your garden, you drive to the nearest Home Depot and pick up a couple of bags. It seems straightforward enough, but for some back-to-basics Portlanders, that would be a foolish way to accomplish such an errand. Instead, they log onto an online social network called Bright Neighbor to locate someone in their neighborhood who might have some compost on offer. If everything works out, they will walk their wheelbarrow down the street and return with it piled high with fertilizer. At what cost? It could be free. Or it might cost a few tomatoes from their garden. Or a complimentary kayaking lesson.

National park’s challenge to green energy plant is hard to digest

Thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money will be used to meet the legal fees of both sides as the Brecon Beacons National Park lines up against the Welsh Assembly Government.

The national park will be arguing against a project, backed by Environment Agency Wales and the Countryside Council for Wales, that will cut carbon emissions, benefit the environment and secure the future of a family farm.

Canada sending nuclear materials back to U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Canada will return spent nuclear fuel to its supplier, the United States, as part of a global drive to secure fissile materials, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.

A “significant quantity” of used highly enriched uranium stored at Canada’s Chalk River National Laboratories will be repatriated by 2018, Harper said while attending U.S. President Barack Obama’s nuclear security summit in Washington.

Biomass boom threatens UK wood chip shortage

The rising demand for fuel from large-scale biomass energy plants could leave the UK reliant on imports of wood chips and pellets for the first time, according to a new report from the Confederation of Forest Industries (Confor) released late last week.

Industry on the road to greener asphalt

(UK) — Low-temperature asphalt could slash a third off the carbon emissions of the much-used material over the next ten years.

Pioneering projects involving market leaders like Tarmac, United Asphalt and Aggregate Industries could see the asphalt industry’s annual carbon footprint fall by 39% by 2020.

Wal-Mart vows to go green

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (CNNMoney.com) — Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s largest retailer with thousands of big box stores around the world, is looking to make those stores more environmentally friendly.

Pollution Price Needed For Move To Clean Economy: ACF

SYDNEY (Bernama) — The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) on Tuesday called on government to end the political stalemate over climate change by immediately putting a price on carbon pollution.

“A price on pollution is essential to move to a clean energy economy and start creating hundreds of thousands of jobs,” China’s Xinhua news agency cited ACF Campaigns Director Denise Boyd, as saying.

World’s largest laser blasted over fusion plan

The world’s largest laser is meant to spark off a fusion reaction this year – but don’t bank on it. So says the US government’s watchdog in a critical report about the huge laser array at the National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Despite crucial success in evenly compressing fusion fuel pelletsMovie Camera earlier this year, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s $3.5 billion array in Livermore, California, faces problems in repeating that success at the higher power needed for fusion, says a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

A Grid of Wind Turbines to Pick Up the Slack

One proposed solution to the intermittency problem is to tie many wind farms together with a transmission line — making an electric grid, as it were, consisting of wind turbines. Now, Willett Kempton of the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration at the University of Delaware and colleagues have shown how this “all-for-one” approach might work with offshore wind farms along the Eastern Seaboard.

World oil demand to hit record high this year: IEA

LONDON (Reuters) – Global oil demand will hit a record high this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday, revising up consumption estimates as the world economy recovers from recession.

The Paris-based adviser to industrialized economies raised its forecast for world oil demand growth this year to 1.67 million barrels per day (bpd), up 100,000 bpd.

The agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report that world oil demand would reach an average of 86.60 million bpd this year, up from 84.93 million in 2009.

The previous record high for world oil demand was 86.5 million bpd in 2007 before the onset of the global financial crisis and economic slowdown.

“There are signs of oil demand picking up in North America and the Pacific, Asia and the Middle East although consumption in Europe still looks weak,” David Fyfe, head of the IEA’s Oil Industry and Markets Division, told Reuters.

But the extra demand will largely be met by production from outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

IEA Increases 2010 Non-OPEC Supply Outlook on Russia, Canada

(Bloomberg) — The International Energy Agency bolstered its 2010 supply outlook for countries outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as production rose in Canada, the U.K. and Russia.

Non-OPEC producers, accounting for about 60 percent of the world’s supplies, will raise output by 600,000 barrels per day this year to average 52 million barrels a day, the IEA said in its monthly market report today. That’s 220,000 barrels a day more than estimated last month. The agency left its forecast for global oil demand in 2010 little changed, 30,000 barrels a day higher than in last month’s report.

Oil price surge threatens economic recovery: IEA

PARIS — Rising oil prices threaten to crimp recovery in the world’s leading economies, the International Energy Agency warned on Tuesday saying that unexpectedly strong activity could overheat the market.

Higher prices and tighter lending conditions “could stall OECD economic recovery” the IEA said, referring to the 30 advanced economies of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

But the IEA also said that the outlook for supplies of oil was improving.

…The IEA said there were “questions over the sustainability of prices markedly higher” than the 70-80 dollars a barrel level.

“Ultimately, things might turn messy for producers if 80-100 dollars a barrel is merely seen as the new 60-80 dollar a barrel,” it added.

Oil falls below $84; fifth fall in a row

Oil prices fell for a fifth day to below $84 a barrel Tuesday as traders mulled whether a slowly improving U.S. economy justified the recent two-month, 25 percent crude rally and experts warned that high oil prices could threaten the budding economic recovery.

Oil to Set New 2010 Record, Barclays Says: Technical Analysis

(Bloomberg) — Crude oil will probably exceed this year’s peak of $87 a barrel and may rise as high as $94 in New York, according to technical analysis by Barclays Capital.

Crude futures have retreated 2.2 percent on the New York Mercantile Exchange since climbing to an 18-month high of $87.09 a barrel on April 6. Prices are set to rise again, Barclays forecasts, as the commodity is drawn toward the halfway point in its slump from an all-time high in summer 2008 to a four-year low in December of that year.

Crude Oil Set to Challenge $88.25 Barrier: Technical Analysis

(Bloomberg) — Crude oil in New York may challenge resistance starting at $88.25 a barrel in the “medium term,” according to technical analysis by Newedge Group.

Oil is set to test the 18-month high reached last week and then resistance above $88, said Veronique Lashinski, a senior research analyst for Newedge USA LLC in Chicago.

Peak Oil and Higher Prices Have Disconnected in Public Awareness - For Now

Despite gas prices having climbed a good chunk of the way back up to 2008 levels, the level of worry about higher prices hasn’t seemed as high this time around. To test that, I pulled data from Google Trends on searches for “peak oil” and compared that to WTI crude prices over the same period. As this graph shows, while the two moved up together in 2007/2008, this time around “peak oil” and higher prices have disconnected in the public awareness - at least for now.

Fuel Sales to U.S. at Issue in Kyrgyzstan

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Back in 2005, the last time angry crowds toppled the government of Kyrgyzstan, the United States found itself in an awkward position: among the rallying cries was an allegation that the ruling family had benefited handsomely from Pentagon contracts. Now, substantially the same thing appears to be happening again.

U.S. Interior studying foreign energy royalty rates

(Reuters) - U.S. officials will study oil and natural gas royalty collection systems used in other countries to determine whether the government can boost revenue from energy leases, the Interior Department said on Monday.

The study follows a 2008 Government Accountability Office report that found other nations get higher returns on oil and natural gas leases than the United States, the department said.

Va. paper wins Pulitzer for gas-royalties coverage

NEW YORK – The Herald Courier of Bristol, Va., won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for its reporting on the mishandling of natural gas royalties owed to thousands of landowners in Virginia.

Shell Talks on Gas Face ‘No Difficulty’, Iraq Says

(Bloomberg) — Iraq and Royal Dutch Shell Plc can reach an agreement on a gas project by extending negotiations for another six months in order to settle storage issues, Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said.

Jihad said there were “no difficulties” in the talks, except that “storage places are currently not ready.”

Conoco Said to Bet on U.A.E. Alliance in Caspian Oil Race

(Bloomberg) — ConocoPhillips plans to team with Abu Dhabi-backed Mubadala Development Co. to bid for oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea off Turkmenistan after an attempt with Russia’s OAO Lukoil foundered, a person familiar with the strategy said.

ConocoPhillips, the third-biggest U.S. oil producer, has worked with Mubadala in the Turkmen part of the sea for the past six months after Lukoil’s attempt to gain Block 21 failed in September, said the person, who declined to be identified during the bidding process.

Newcastle Weekly Exports Drop 6%; Ship Queue Grows

(Bloomberg) — Coal shipments from Australia’s Newcastle port, the world’s biggest export harbor for the fuel used in power stations, fell 6 percent last week while the number of vessels waiting to load increased.

The volume exported in the week ended 7 a.m. local time yesterday dropped to 1.9 million metric tons from 2.1 million tons in the preceding period, Newcastle Port Corp. said on its Web site. Rio Tinto Group, Xstrata Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. are among mining companies that ship the fuel from the harbor.

Sinopec Pays More for Oil to Get Energy Security

(Bloomberg) — China Petrochemical Corp.’s purchase of a stake in a Canada oil venture brings the nation’s spending on resources to $64 billion since 2005 and underlines its willingness to pay a premium for energy security.

The company known as Sinopec Group agreed to pay at least $650 million more for ConocoPhillips’s 9 percent stake in Syncrude Canada Ltd. compared with an estimate by Macquarie Securities. The premium could have been narrowed by a stronger yuan, currently constrained by a peg to the dollar.

Energy conservation in south could save billions, create jobs

Energy-efficiency measures in the southern U.S. could save consumers $41 billion on their energy bills, open 380,000 new jobs, and save 8.6 billion gallons of water by 2020, according to a new study from the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The study concludes that investing $200 billion in energy efficiency programs by 2030 could return $448 billion in savings.

Global Scramble Looms for Vital ‘Clean Energy’ Minerals

During the Cold War, the U.S. government kept a close watch on supplies of rare earth minerals deemed critical for maintaining military readiness.

Then the Soviet Union crumbled, and so did U.S. interest in rare earths.

“Slowly but surely, we’ve lost our mineral base in the United States,” said Daniel Kish, senior vice president for policy at the nonprofit Institute for Energy Research.

But those minerals are now seen as critical to creating a new “clean energy” economy. Rare earths are vital for making rechargeable batteries for hybrid cars, high-performance magnets for wind turbines and fluorescent light bulbs.

So the United States is scrambling to mine, acquire and manage rare-earth minerals.

But getting them won’t be easy. Only a fraction of the world’s rare earths are produced in the United States. And the world’s largest rare-earth producer, China — home to half of the globe’s minable rare-earth deposits — is about to lock up its supplies to meet surging domestic demand.

Chinese Turbines Spun by Texas Winds Spur ‘Buy American’ Push

(Bloomberg) — Chinese turbines powered by west Texas winds are sparking a debate over whether “Buy American” rules should be imposed on renewable-energy investments backed by the U.S. government.

US Navy base receives automated biodiesel plant

A new biodiesel production system has been delivered to a US Navy base in Southern California, so it can produce its own renewable fuel.

Locally-based Biodiesel Industries, Inc., has been working with the Navy and aerospace technology firm Aerojet to set up a highly-automated production facility at the Naval Base Ventura County.

Nuclear-Fuel Recycling Dispute Arises on Margin of Obama Summit

(Bloomberg) — A dispute over the recycling of nuclear fuel by reactor suppliers such as France’s Areva SA surfaced in Washington yesterday, as U.S. officials sought to skirt the issue at a summit elsewhere in town.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and former U.S. ambassador-at-large Robert Gallucci called for an end to the fuel-recycling practice at a conference of experts being held in parallel with President Barack Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit.

Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags

HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock.

Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.

Coastal Cleanup collects, analyzes marine debris

That plastic water bottle you absent-mindedly toss out the car window could end up traveling through a storm drain or waterway to an ocean, where it can float around for decades or longer.

In just one day last September, thousands of volunteers collected 7.4 million pounds of litter such as cigarettes, plastic bags and food wrappers from coastlines and inland waterways in 108 countries and locations worldwide, a report from the Ocean Conservancy says today.

Doomsday shelter currently selling bunker space (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) — California-based company Vivos is providing you and about 4,000 other people the chance to survive the end of the world. The company plans to build a network of 20 shelters near most major cities of the US. Each 20,000-square-foot shelter, which can hold up to 200 people, would be located about five stories underground with walls two to three feet thick. The shelters would be stocked with a year’s supply of “gourmet foods,” as well as medical and dental centers and - as seen in the video below - flat-screen TVs.

Each shelter costs about $10 million to build, and Vivos is selling space in the price range of about $50,000 per person. So far, about 1,000 applications have been received for space in the shelters.

In India, Wal-Mart Goes to the Farm

HAIDER NAGAR, India — At first glance, the vegetable patches in this north Indian village look no different from the many small, spare farms that dot the country.

But up close, visitors can see some curious experiments: insect traps made with reusable plastic bags; bamboo poles helping bitter gourd grow bigger and straighter; and seedlings germinating from plastic trays under a fine net.

These are low-tech innovations, to be sure. But they are crucial to the goals of the benefactor — Wal-Mart — that supplied them.

Helpful Oysters Protect New York From Floods

(Bloomberg) — Landscape architect Kate Orff is unapologetic about her obsession with oysters.

She envisions the bivalve delicacies as busy builders, ready to erect New York’s defense against flooding induced by global warming.

Global warming — fact or myth?

Fact or myth? “Snowmageddon” and all those other weird U.S. snowstorms this winter prove that global warming isn’t real.

Myth

The reaction to “Snowmageddon” is an example of a common misunderstanding about climate change.

Decades of research show massive Arctic ice cap is shrinking

Close to 50 years of data show the Devon Island ice cap, one of the largest ice masses in the Canadian High Arctic, is thinning and shrinking.

A paper published in the March edition of Arctic, the journal of the University of Calgary’s Arctic Institute of North America, reports that between 1961 and 1985, the ice cap grew in some years and shrank in others, resulting in an overall loss of mass. But that changed 1985 when scientists began to see a steady decline in ice volume and area each year.

“We’ve been seeing more mass loss since 1985,” says Sarah Boon, lead author on the paper and a Geography Professor at the University of Lethbridge. The reason for the change? Warmer summers.

Drumbeat: April 13, 2023

2010 IEA Response System for Oil Supply Emergencies

Although the oil delivery system has changed dramatically since the oil shocks of the 1970s, there is still a high risk of a supply disruption which could have great economic consequences for IEA member countries.

Capacity constraints, both in production and refining, have increased the potential of supply falling short of demand. Given this delicate balance of supply and demand, even a disruption of relatively small volume can have a significant impact on the market. Global demand growth exacerbates market tightness, further re-enforcing the need for investment in capacity expansion

Uncertain investment climates in some producer countries, often described as an aspect of “resource nationalism”, may also hamper the development of future supply streams.

Oil Falls Most in Six Weeks on Concern Market Is Oversupplied

Bloomberg) — Crude oil declined the most in six weeks as the International Energy Agency boosted its forecast for non-OPEC supplies and U.S. inventories were estimated to climb, raising concern that the markets are oversupplied.

Oil fell as much as 1.6 percent on the IEA forecast that production would expand in countries such as Canada, the U.K. and Russia as it kept the global demand outlook little changed. U.S. crude stockpiles may advance for an 11th week, the longest stretch of consecutive increases since December 2004, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts.

“We’re seeing a lot of growth out of the U.S., Russia and Canada, responding to high prices,” said Brad Samples, a commodity analyst for Summit Energy Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky. “Investments that were made leading up to 2008 are coming to fruition.”

Higher consumer goods demand lifts trade gap

U.S. imports of crude oil in February were the lowest since February 1999. The average price for imported oil fell nearly a dollar to $72.92 per barrel from January, but was up 85.9 percent from February last year.

Meanwhile, a Labor Department showed strong petroleum prices in March boosted overall import prices rose 0.7 percent after falling a revised 0.2 percent in February.

Energy ties grow as China resists Iran sanctions - sources

DUBAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese state oil firms have maintained the pace of project development in Iran while Beijing resists any new sanctions on the energy sector designed to press Tehran to curb its nuclear programme, industry sources said on Tuesday.

China, which has close economic ties with Iran, has much to lose from any sanctions that limit new investment to develop the world’s second-largest oil and gas reserves.

Chinese firms have stepped into the vacuum left by western companies who have yielded to years of political pressure to steer clear as the U.S. and its allies look to isolate Iran over its nuclear programme.

Ugandan court orders Shell to pay debts in the country

KAMPALA (Reuters) - A Ugandan court has blocked the local subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC from selling its assets in the country until it pays about $16 million to settle debts with Mercator Enterprises Limited, legal papers showed.

Earlier this month, Royal Dutch Shell said it was considering selling most of its service stations and other downstream assets in 21 African countries as part of a wider effort to reduce its global refining and marketing exposure.

New generation of Somali pirates emerging

LONDON - A new generation of well-organised Somali pirates is targeting ships and aims to use ransoms from hijackings for further criminal activities, a senior Royal Dutch Shell official said on Tuesday.

U.S., Mexico, Canada in pact on uranium - W.House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, Canada and Mexico agreed to work together with the International Atomic Energy Agency to convert Mexico’s research reactor from the use of highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium fuel, the White House said on Tuesday.

GM viruses offer hope of future where energy is unlimited

Scientists have made a fundamental breakthrough in their attempts to replicate photosynthesis – the ability of plants to harvest the power of sunlight – in the hope of making unlimited amounts of “green” energy from water and sunlight alone.

Change needed for Gulf to win its power struggle

Over the next seven years, GCC electricity generation must expand by more than 50 per cent to satisfy consumers. Power cuts struck Sharjah and Kuwait last summer. Electricity demand is in danger of running ahead of supply.

So far, the solutions have concentrated on the supply side. With the exception of Qatar, all countries in the region are increasingly short of natural gas, once the default fuel for power generation. So we have plans for oil-fired power in Saudi Arabia, nuclear and solar here and coal in Oman.

But simply adding more supply is not the answer. GCC electricity needs to be radically rethought. State-owned utilities, often slow-moving and conservative, will struggle to meet this explosive growth in demand.

Arctic oil drilling threatens Norway government

OSLO (Reuters) - A classic battle pitting the oil industry against environmentalists and fishermen in Norway’s Arctic seas is set to intensify on Thursday when the most thorough environmental study of the project to date is released.

Extracting oil from the chilly waters off the Lofoten and Vesteraalen islands is so divisive it could wreck the ruling Labour Party’s coalition in this Nordic state that is the world’s fifth largest oil and third largest gas exporter but also sees itself as a leader in environmental policies.

“If I were to point to one conflict that could spell the end of the present government, it would be this issue,” said Frank Aarebrot, professor of comparative politics at the University of Bergen.

The West Australia gas supply war

Tony Petersen, chairman of the DomGas Alliance, wants the WA government to “give teeth” to a policy to reserve offshore gas for domestic use, claiming a 300 per cent increase in North-West Shelf Joint Venture prices to distributor Alinta. Petersen argues that WA customers are being forced to pay premiums to producers in excess of any obtainable by the gas suppliers from overseas customers.

Not dealing with the issue, he says, will lead to thousands of job losses among industrial users of gas because, at existing prices, major resource processing and gas-fired generation will not be sustainable.

Robinson retorts that, if the Alliance gets its way, every WA householder and small business will bear the consequences, forecasting that gas production investment will falter, supply will shrink and prices will rise still further.

Energy prices to triple, says Origin chief

ELECTRICITY prices across Australia were likely to triple over the next 10 years, Origin Energy chief executive Grant King warned yesterday.

Mr King told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia in Sydney that a combination of the federal government’s mandatory renewable-energy targets, energy policy uncertainty, higher electricity transmission and distribution costs, and higher fuel costs would drive the increase.

He said the boom in sales of energy-inefficient flat-screen televisions was also pushing up household energy use, despite the development of more energy-efficient household appliances such as fridges and dishwashers.

“The price of electricity is going to go up substantially,” Mr King said.

Summer 2010: Big Hurricanes, High Oil Prices

In 2009, there were just three Atlantic storms that earned the hurricane monikers — Bill, Fred, and Ida. None of these storms made landfall in the US as hurricanes. The predictions from Colorado State University researchers are not so sanguine for 2010.

Firms poised for Saudi refinery deals await Conoco

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - South Korean, Spanish and Indian contracting firms are on the verge of winning contracts from Saudi Aramco and ConocoPhillips to build a new Saudi oil refinery, industry sources said on Monday.

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia has switched its development focus to refining, petrochemicals and gas after completing a programme to boost oil production capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day (bpd) last year.

Aramco ‘primed to launch gas double’

Saudi Aramco is believed to be gauging contractors’ interest in building new facilities at the Wasit and Shaybah gas plants, according to reports.

Wasit would be the biggest gas plant in top oil exporter Saudi Arabia with a processing capacity of 2.5 billion cubic feet per day from two non-associated offshore gas fields, Hasbah and Arabiyah, sources told Reuters.

Black gold, yellow gold

Julian Phillips at Goldforecaster.com writes that Saudi Arabia, the major oil exporter, “exported more oil to China than to the United States last year”, which is kind of surprising but not too alarming if you have been taking your medications as prescribed, or if the rise in Chinese consumption was not too severe, but instead imports were rising gently in a non-threatening way, so that consumption was not soaring and everything was kind of just, you know, perking along real peachy.

China’s race for oil

While Western scholars, consultants and oil companies have been raising the heat and noise in their debate over whether world oil production has, or is, about to reach a permanent peak, they could do worse than focus on what China is saying, or more importantly, what it is doing.

China has taken a ‘no talk, all action’ approach by acquiring as much as possible the oil and gas assets that are available to them around the world. The Chinese government, its state oil companies and think tanks have so far avoided public debate and not made known their thinking on the controversial issue of global oil depletion.

‘Angolans live in poverty’

Global watchdog group Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on Angola’s government to do more to fight corruption, saying Angolans did not benefit from the state’s immense oil riches.

Uganda: Petrol scarcity pushes food prices up

Following a recent rise in fuel prices, traders have responded by increasing the prices of foodstuffs.

A mini survey done by Business Power last week showed that fresh fruits, Matooke, Irish potatoes, tomatoes, onions are the most affected, while commodities like carrots, dry maize, Posho (maize flour) have so far not shown an increase in price.

‘End loadshedding or quit’

LAHORE – Fed up with long spells of power outages, thousands of people took to streets across the country on 4th consecutive day on Monday to vent their anger against the policymakers, demanding the coalition government to step down if they are unable to tackle energy crisis, worsening day by day.

The Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) has resorted to 16 to 20-hour load shedding in the country as according to the officials, the electricity shortfall reached above 5000 MW on Monday.

Rivers a source of rising tension between Pakistan and India

ISLAMABAD (AlertNet) - A 1960 trans-boundary water sharing agreement between India and Pakistan has stood the test of two wars and various periods of unease. Climate change, however, may prove the toughest test of the Indus River deal, observers say.

Kunstler: My Hometown and Its Fate

The city exploded vertically in a very few decades when Thomas
Edison’s combined engineering-and-business genius made it possible to
deliver electricity to every block. We’d spent the period just after
the Civil War putting up limestone palaces and brick heaps as grand as
the ones in Paris and London (and about the same size), and then from
about 1890-on we tore them all down when the elevator made it possible
to rent hundreds of apartments or office suites on the same
real-estate “footprint” where there used to be only dozens of rentable
units.

You could read the history of our energy resources in the
buildings, too. Until about the 1920s, the buildings were heated with
coal. The bulk and inconvenience of coal was mitigated by hordes of
low-paid immigrants who could wrangle the stuff into basements and
shovel it into furnaces in rotating work-shifts. This made it possible
in, say 1908, to run a building with over a hundred apartments in it.
My mother and father grew up in 20-story buildings like this.

Note to Environmentalists: Economists are on your side

Economists of all stripes have argued for decades for the proper pricing of pollution, for severely reducing or eliminating natural resources subsidies for agriculture, forestry, energy, water, and fisheries, and for making property rights simpler and more transparent.

Canadians unprepared for the Takeaway Decade

It’s early yet, but a good name for the next 10 years might be The Takeaway Decade.

Prepare to pay more and get less in the years ahead. Signs of this new reality are all around us, most recently in the latest round of government budgets.

CAT envisages fossil-free Britain in 20 years

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) is drawing up plans which could help Britain to banish fossil fuel use in just twenty years.

The report which details measure designed to slash carbon emissions and eliminate oil use in Britain is set to be published in June, the BBC reports.

Entitled ‘Zero Carbon Britain’ the report’s authors say that through proper use of renewable energy sources, using more energy efficient buildings and by making a switch to electric cars Britain can cut energy demands in half.

A Borrower and a Lender Be: Could the threat of a peaking oil supply lead to a hyperlocal revolution? A group of Portlanders thinks so.

Normally, when you need compost for your garden, you drive to the nearest Home Depot and pick up a couple of bags. It seems straightforward enough, but for some back-to-basics Portlanders, that would be a foolish way to accomplish such an errand. Instead, they log onto an online social network called Bright Neighbor to locate someone in their neighborhood who might have some compost on offer. If everything works out, they will walk their wheelbarrow down the street and return with it piled high with fertilizer. At what cost? It could be free. Or it might cost a few tomatoes from their garden. Or a complimentary kayaking lesson.

National park’s challenge to green energy plant is hard to digest

Thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money will be used to meet the legal fees of both sides as the Brecon Beacons National Park lines up against the Welsh Assembly Government.

The national park will be arguing against a project, backed by Environment Agency Wales and the Countryside Council for Wales, that will cut carbon emissions, benefit the environment and secure the future of a family farm.

Canada sending nuclear materials back to U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Canada will return spent nuclear fuel to its supplier, the United States, as part of a global drive to secure fissile materials, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.

A “significant quantity” of used highly enriched uranium stored at Canada’s Chalk River National Laboratories will be repatriated by 2018, Harper said while attending U.S. President Barack Obama’s nuclear security summit in Washington.

Biomass boom threatens UK wood chip shortage

The rising demand for fuel from large-scale biomass energy plants could leave the UK reliant on imports of wood chips and pellets for the first time, according to a new report from the Confederation of Forest Industries (Confor) released late last week.

Industry on the road to greener asphalt

(UK) — Low-temperature asphalt could slash a third off the carbon emissions of the much-used material over the next ten years.

Pioneering projects involving market leaders like Tarmac, United Asphalt and Aggregate Industries could see the asphalt industry’s annual carbon footprint fall by 39% by 2020.

Wal-Mart vows to go green

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (CNNMoney.com) — Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s largest retailer with thousands of big box stores around the world, is looking to make those stores more environmentally friendly.

Pollution Price Needed For Move To Clean Economy: ACF

SYDNEY (Bernama) — The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) on Tuesday called on government to end the political stalemate over climate change by immediately putting a price on carbon pollution.

“A price on pollution is essential to move to a clean energy economy and start creating hundreds of thousands of jobs,” China’s Xinhua news agency cited ACF Campaigns Director Denise Boyd, as saying.

World’s largest laser blasted over fusion plan

The world’s largest laser is meant to spark off a fusion reaction this year – but don’t bank on it. So says the US government’s watchdog in a critical report about the huge laser array at the National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Despite crucial success in evenly compressing fusion fuel pelletsMovie Camera earlier this year, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s $3.5 billion array in Livermore, California, faces problems in repeating that success at the higher power needed for fusion, says a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

A Grid of Wind Turbines to Pick Up the Slack

One proposed solution to the intermittency problem is to tie many wind farms together with a transmission line — making an electric grid, as it were, consisting of wind turbines. Now, Willett Kempton of the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration at the University of Delaware and colleagues have shown how this “all-for-one” approach might work with offshore wind farms along the Eastern Seaboard.

World oil demand to hit record high this year: IEA

LONDON (Reuters) – Global oil demand will hit a record high this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday, revising up consumption estimates as the world economy recovers from recession.

The Paris-based adviser to industrialized economies raised its forecast for world oil demand growth this year to 1.67 million barrels per day (bpd), up 100,000 bpd.

The agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report that world oil demand would reach an average of 86.60 million bpd this year, up from 84.93 million in 2009.

The previous record high for world oil demand was 86.5 million bpd in 2007 before the onset of the global financial crisis and economic slowdown.

“There are signs of oil demand picking up in North America and the Pacific, Asia and the Middle East although consumption in Europe still looks weak,” David Fyfe, head of the IEA’s Oil Industry and Markets Division, told Reuters.

But the extra demand will largely be met by production from outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

IEA Increases 2010 Non-OPEC Supply Outlook on Russia, Canada

(Bloomberg) — The International Energy Agency bolstered its 2010 supply outlook for countries outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as production rose in Canada, the U.K. and Russia.

Non-OPEC producers, accounting for about 60 percent of the world’s supplies, will raise output by 600,000 barrels per day this year to average 52 million barrels a day, the IEA said in its monthly market report today. That’s 220,000 barrels a day more than estimated last month. The agency left its forecast for global oil demand in 2010 little changed, 30,000 barrels a day higher than in last month’s report.

Oil price surge threatens economic recovery: IEA

PARIS — Rising oil prices threaten to crimp recovery in the world’s leading economies, the International Energy Agency warned on Tuesday saying that unexpectedly strong activity could overheat the market.

Higher prices and tighter lending conditions “could stall OECD economic recovery” the IEA said, referring to the 30 advanced economies of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

But the IEA also said that the outlook for supplies of oil was improving.

…The IEA said there were “questions over the sustainability of prices markedly higher” than the 70-80 dollars a barrel level.

“Ultimately, things might turn messy for producers if 80-100 dollars a barrel is merely seen as the new 60-80 dollar a barrel,” it added.

Oil falls below $84; fifth fall in a row

Oil prices fell for a fifth day to below $84 a barrel Tuesday as traders mulled whether a slowly improving U.S. economy justified the recent two-month, 25 percent crude rally and experts warned that high oil prices could threaten the budding economic recovery.

Oil to Set New 2010 Record, Barclays Says: Technical Analysis

(Bloomberg) — Crude oil will probably exceed this year’s peak of $87 a barrel and may rise as high as $94 in New York, according to technical analysis by Barclays Capital.

Crude futures have retreated 2.2 percent on the New York Mercantile Exchange since climbing to an 18-month high of $87.09 a barrel on April 6. Prices are set to rise again, Barclays forecasts, as the commodity is drawn toward the halfway point in its slump from an all-time high in summer 2008 to a four-year low in December of that year.

Crude Oil Set to Challenge $88.25 Barrier: Technical Analysis

(Bloomberg) — Crude oil in New York may challenge resistance starting at $88.25 a barrel in the “medium term,” according to technical analysis by Newedge Group.

Oil is set to test the 18-month high reached last week and then resistance above $88, said Veronique Lashinski, a senior research analyst for Newedge USA LLC in Chicago.

Peak Oil and Higher Prices Have Disconnected in Public Awareness - For Now

Despite gas prices having climbed a good chunk of the way back up to 2008 levels, the level of worry about higher prices hasn’t seemed as high this time around. To test that, I pulled data from Google Trends on searches for “peak oil” and compared that to WTI crude prices over the same period. As this graph shows, while the two moved up together in 2007/2008, this time around “peak oil” and higher prices have disconnected in the public awareness - at least for now.

Fuel Sales to U.S. at Issue in Kyrgyzstan

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Back in 2005, the last time angry crowds toppled the government of Kyrgyzstan, the United States found itself in an awkward position: among the rallying cries was an allegation that the ruling family had benefited handsomely from Pentagon contracts. Now, substantially the same thing appears to be happening again.

U.S. Interior studying foreign energy royalty rates

(Reuters) - U.S. officials will study oil and natural gas royalty collection systems used in other countries to determine whether the government can boost revenue from energy leases, the Interior Department said on Monday.

The study follows a 2008 Government Accountability Office report that found other nations get higher returns on oil and natural gas leases than the United States, the department said.

Va. paper wins Pulitzer for gas-royalties coverage

NEW YORK – The Herald Courier of Bristol, Va., won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for its reporting on the mishandling of natural gas royalties owed to thousands of landowners in Virginia.

Shell Talks on Gas Face ‘No Difficulty’, Iraq Says

(Bloomberg) — Iraq and Royal Dutch Shell Plc can reach an agreement on a gas project by extending negotiations for another six months in order to settle storage issues, Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said.

Jihad said there were “no difficulties” in the talks, except that “storage places are currently not ready.”

Conoco Said to Bet on U.A.E. Alliance in Caspian Oil Race

(Bloomberg) — ConocoPhillips plans to team with Abu Dhabi-backed Mubadala Development Co. to bid for oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea off Turkmenistan after an attempt with Russia’s OAO Lukoil foundered, a person familiar with the strategy said.

ConocoPhillips, the third-biggest U.S. oil producer, has worked with Mubadala in the Turkmen part of the sea for the past six months after Lukoil’s attempt to gain Block 21 failed in September, said the person, who declined to be identified during the bidding process.

Newcastle Weekly Exports Drop 6%; Ship Queue Grows

(Bloomberg) — Coal shipments from Australia’s Newcastle port, the world’s biggest export harbor for the fuel used in power stations, fell 6 percent last week while the number of vessels waiting to load increased.

The volume exported in the week ended 7 a.m. local time yesterday dropped to 1.9 million metric tons from 2.1 million tons in the preceding period, Newcastle Port Corp. said on its Web site. Rio Tinto Group, Xstrata Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. are among mining companies that ship the fuel from the harbor.

Sinopec Pays More for Oil to Get Energy Security

(Bloomberg) — China Petrochemical Corp.’s purchase of a stake in a Canada oil venture brings the nation’s spending on resources to $64 billion since 2005 and underlines its willingness to pay a premium for energy security.

The company known as Sinopec Group agreed to pay at least $650 million more for ConocoPhillips’s 9 percent stake in Syncrude Canada Ltd. compared with an estimate by Macquarie Securities. The premium could have been narrowed by a stronger yuan, currently constrained by a peg to the dollar.

Energy conservation in south could save billions, create jobs

Energy-efficiency measures in the southern U.S. could save consumers $41 billion on their energy bills, open 380,000 new jobs, and save 8.6 billion gallons of water by 2020, according to a new study from the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The study concludes that investing $200 billion in energy efficiency programs by 2030 could return $448 billion in savings.

Global Scramble Looms for Vital ‘Clean Energy’ Minerals

During the Cold War, the U.S. government kept a close watch on supplies of rare earth minerals deemed critical for maintaining military readiness.

Then the Soviet Union crumbled, and so did U.S. interest in rare earths.

“Slowly but surely, we’ve lost our mineral base in the United States,” said Daniel Kish, senior vice president for policy at the nonprofit Institute for Energy Research.

But those minerals are now seen as critical to creating a new “clean energy” economy. Rare earths are vital for making rechargeable batteries for hybrid cars, high-performance magnets for wind turbines and fluorescent light bulbs.

So the United States is scrambling to mine, acquire and manage rare-earth minerals.

But getting them won’t be easy. Only a fraction of the world’s rare earths are produced in the United States. And the world’s largest rare-earth producer, China — home to half of the globe’s minable rare-earth deposits — is about to lock up its supplies to meet surging domestic demand.

Chinese Turbines Spun by Texas Winds Spur ‘Buy American’ Push

(Bloomberg) — Chinese turbines powered by west Texas winds are sparking a debate over whether “Buy American” rules should be imposed on renewable-energy investments backed by the U.S. government.

US Navy base receives automated biodiesel plant

A new biodiesel production system has been delivered to a US Navy base in Southern California, so it can produce its own renewable fuel.

Locally-based Biodiesel Industries, Inc., has been working with the Navy and aerospace technology firm Aerojet to set up a highly-automated production facility at the Naval Base Ventura County.

Nuclear-Fuel Recycling Dispute Arises on Margin of Obama Summit

(Bloomberg) — A dispute over the recycling of nuclear fuel by reactor suppliers such as France’s Areva SA surfaced in Washington yesterday, as U.S. officials sought to skirt the issue at a summit elsewhere in town.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and former U.S. ambassador-at-large Robert Gallucci called for an end to the fuel-recycling practice at a conference of experts being held in parallel with President Barack Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit.

Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags

HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock.

Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.

Coastal Cleanup collects, analyzes marine debris

That plastic water bottle you absent-mindedly toss out the car window could end up traveling through a storm drain or waterway to an ocean, where it can float around for decades or longer.

In just one day last September, thousands of volunteers collected 7.4 million pounds of litter such as cigarettes, plastic bags and food wrappers from coastlines and inland waterways in 108 countries and locations worldwide, a report from the Ocean Conservancy says today.

Doomsday shelter currently selling bunker space (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) — California-based company Vivos is providing you and about 4,000 other people the chance to survive the end of the world. The company plans to build a network of 20 shelters near most major cities of the US. Each 20,000-square-foot shelter, which can hold up to 200 people, would be located about five stories underground with walls two to three feet thick. The shelters would be stocked with a year’s supply of “gourmet foods,” as well as medical and dental centers and - as seen in the video below - flat-screen TVs.

Each shelter costs about $10 million to build, and Vivos is selling space in the price range of about $50,000 per person. So far, about 1,000 applications have been received for space in the shelters.

In India, Wal-Mart Goes to the Farm

HAIDER NAGAR, India — At first glance, the vegetable patches in this north Indian village look no different from the many small, spare farms that dot the country.

But up close, visitors can see some curious experiments: insect traps made with reusable plastic bags; bamboo poles helping bitter gourd grow bigger and straighter; and seedlings germinating from plastic trays under a fine net.

These are low-tech innovations, to be sure. But they are crucial to the goals of the benefactor — Wal-Mart — that supplied them.

Helpful Oysters Protect New York From Floods

(Bloomberg) — Landscape architect Kate Orff is unapologetic about her obsession with oysters.

She envisions the bivalve delicacies as busy builders, ready to erect New York’s defense against flooding induced by global warming.

Global warming — fact or myth?

Fact or myth? “Snowmageddon” and all those other weird U.S. snowstorms this winter prove that global warming isn’t real.

Myth

The reaction to “Snowmageddon” is an example of a common misunderstanding about climate change.

Decades of research show massive Arctic ice cap is shrinking

Close to 50 years of data show the Devon Island ice cap, one of the largest ice masses in the Canadian High Arctic, is thinning and shrinking.

A paper published in the March edition of Arctic, the journal of the University of Calgary’s Arctic Institute of North America, reports that between 1961 and 1985, the ice cap grew in some years and shrank in others, resulting in an overall loss of mass. But that changed 1985 when scientists began to see a steady decline in ice volume and area each year.

“We’ve been seeing more mass loss since 1985,” says Sarah Boon, lead author on the paper and a Geography Professor at the University of Lethbridge. The reason for the change? Warmer summers.