oil

Nearly $200 million spent on energy ads since Obama’s inauguration

Cross-posted from Wonk Room. Politico reports that interest groups and corporations have spent nearly $200 million on TV ads since President Obama’s inauguration to manipulate American energy policy reform. According to an analysis by the Campaign Media Analysis Group, $199.5 million was directed from January 20th to March 31st to television issue ads on energy, […]

The battle for control of Eurasia will shape the new world order

This is a guest post by Pepe Escobar, the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for the Real News. This article draws from his new book, Obama does Globalistan. He may be reached at pepeasia AT yahoo.com. This post was originally published at TomDispatch, and it is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. […]

Twenty years after the biggest oil spill in the U.S., we still have a lot to learn

The Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, March 1989. Tuesday marks 20 years since the Exxon Valdez dumped nearly 11 million of gallons of crude oil into Alaskan waters, resulting in the most severe impacts on the environment of any spill anywhere. I was there and will attest to the graveness of the situation […]

Don’t make too much of current energy prices; they are disconnected from fundamentals

There is a fair amount of hand-wringing over the recent collapse in energy prices which — while academically interesting — is largely irrelevant to larger macro forces. Here then a quick observation that is critically important and horribly misunderstood throughout our current energy, environmental, and economic conversation: current energy prices have very little to do […]

Book exposes the messy conditions of Canada’s tar sands

Of all the absurdities at play in extracting oil from Alberta’s vast northern tar sands deposits, the most staggering might be the nuclear renaissance it threatens to create in Canada. Andrew NikiforukWhether nuclear energy presents a legitimate alternative to greenhouse-gas-emitting energy sources is one question. Environmentalists have long debated that. But Canada is considering something […]

Brace yourself

"The turnaround will probably come faster than people expect, and the supply won't be there."

-- Deloitte energy adviser Joseph Stanislaw, on what industry analysts expect to be a sharp rise in oil and gas prices

Graphic novel adaptation amps up energy message

I hardly dare to write this post, to even edge my pinky toe toward the waters of Watchmen analysis, but I will say this: as a newcomer to the story, I was intrigued by the emphasis on energy. At one point, a major character blasts a bunch of smarmy oil execs, telling them humanity "deserves better than what you've given them." (I committed the entire line to memory at the time, but the movie was so damn long good that I forgot it.)

I brought this up in our news meeting today, only to be met with the response of two staffers far more Watchmen-ucated than I, who pointed out that the energy chatter in the movie does not stem from the original book. That makes sense, considering the, er, altered denouement. Which is interesting itself, since the film was otherwise slavishly loyal to the book.

Alternative energy in The Watchmen: a nod to the current national dialogue, or a convenient replacement for a giant squid? I shall leave it to others to discuss the finer points.

Obama’s budget would cut subsidies to oil companies and change transport funding

With all the buzz last week about the climate plan and green spending incorporated into President Obama’s proposed budget, we almost missed a few other environmental aspects. The budget also kills funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, as David noted, and it cuts subsidies for Big Oil and changes how transportation funds are […]

Pickens embraces electric vehicles, predicts $140 oil by 2011

Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens, who once pushed natural gas as the only way to get off of oil imports, said at today's National Clean Energy Project (see live-blogging here):

Diesels should be replaced by natural gas. Light-duty vehicles go to the battery.

Yes, the 80-year-old Pickens has been edging slowly in that direction, since running cars and light trucks on natural gas never made much sense (see here and here). But this was the bluntest I had heard him.

The problem for his messaging, of course, is that even if you replace half of highway diesel use with natural gas over the next decade -- a huge accomplishment -- that would be under 10 percent of all U.S. petroleum use and barely make a dent in oil imports and the trade deficit 10 years in 2020.

Pickens also said made his prediction that we will be back at $140 a barrel oil in 2 years, which I tend to agree with unless this global recession turns into a global depression, which remains possible.

He also cannot bring himself to acknowledge that it is his fellow conservatives who are the stumbling block to the high-renewable future he advocates. After all the strong, positive comments from so many speakers about the need and the practicality of a clean energy future, he warned: