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Strife in Libya Could Presage Long Civil War

TRIPOLI, Libya — “The fire is inside the airport!” a militiaman cried, as he fired an antiaircraft cannon on the back of a pickup truck toward the runway of Libya’s main international airport. “God is great, the flames are rising!” “Intensify the shooting,” responded his commander, Salah Badi, an ultraconservative Islamist and former lawmaker from the coastal city of Misurata. Captured on video by the proud attackers just one month ago, Mr. Badi’s assault on Libya’s main international airport has now drawn the country’s fractious militias, tribes and towns into a single national conflagration that threatens to become a prolonged civil war. Both sides see the fight as part of a larger regional struggle, fraught with the risks of a return to repressive authoritarianism or a slide toward Islamist extremism. Three years after the NATO-backed ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the violence threatens to turn Libya into a pocket […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Algeria Postpones Oil Bids to Sept. 30

LONDON—Algeria has delayed the deadline for its next oil-licence bids by about four weeks, people familiar with the matter said, as companies complain about investment conditions despite recent oil-sector reform. The date set for the submissions to the tender for oil and gas blocks has been reset to Sept. 30 from Sept. 4 previously, people familiar with the matter said. The development comes despite a new Algerian law—passed last year—that improves revenue sharing for companies that invest in difficult blocks, such as the country’s sizable natural-gas shale resources. One main concern for bidders is a clause that allows national oil company Sonatrach to make investment decisions without consulting its foreign partners, according to people at international companies involved in the licensing round. But an Algerian official said the delay was due to the need to handle "numerous applications" for the licensing round. At previous bidding rounds, Algeria has struggled […]

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Surge in Investment Recharges India’s Sputtering Power Sector

ByKenan Machado A pedestrian walked past a pole hosting mangled electricity wires at a slum in New Delhi in 2009. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images MUMBAI—Investors are ploughing money into India’s energy sector again, betting that there are brighter days ahead as the country’s new government clears the path for power producers and distributors. India’s utilities and energy companies—which have struggled for years with high government restrictions and low returns—have attracted a total of $2.61 billion in investment so far this year, according to data from Dealogic. The last time the sector attracted so much money was before the global financial crisis, when $2.67 billion was invested over the same period in 2006. “People expect the economy to grow,” said Tan Cheng Guan, an executive vice president at Singapore utilities company Sembcorp Industries Ltd. which invested $204 million this year, buying stakes in two Indian power plants . India needs its power […]

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Drivers Won’t Get China Oil Market’s Engine Racing

China’s diesel consumption shrank 1.2% year over year between January and July this year. Here, a driver fills diesel into oil containers at the back of his truck at a gas station in Suining, Sichuan province on December 21, 2011 . Reuters Oil bulls have swapped friends in China, parting with the country’s industrial complex in favor of its burgeoning class of car drivers. They are going to discover that these new pals aren’t as dependable. China’s economy may be rebalancing away from investment toward consumption, and its petroleum use is starting to reflect that. Global energy investors can’t afford to ignore these changes, given that China accounts for 40% of the world’s oil-demand growth. On the industrial side, the slowdown has begun. Because industrial inputs such as diesel, fuel oil and petrochemicals constitute 70% of this market, China’s oil demand was mostly flat between January and July compared […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Bakken Oil Peak by Jean Laherrère

This is a guest post by Jean Laherrère The problem of forecasting future Bakken production is that estimating reserves of shale oil is harder than for conventional oil and is very unreliable because many confuse reserves and resources, and shale oil reserves depend more from economy than from technology. Many estimate the amount of hydrocarbons generated by the source-rock and believe that a significant percentage could be recovered: the study of the main Petroleum Systems in the world estimate than only about 1% will recovered in conventional fields, no more could be expected in unconventional fields. US Shale gas production started in 1821 in Fredonia for lighting when whale oil price was about 2000 $2014/b, but was replaced by conventional oil in 1859 because a largely lower price. How to estimate future production? Drilling activity is a good way to model production with a shift. In my MIT Paris paper […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Spontaneous Solar Combustion

The sprawling Ivanpah solar power station in the Mojave Desert probably never would have been built without environmental activists and the subsidies and mandates they created, so there’s more than a little irony that BrightSource Energy, Google and another clean-tech utility are now getting an education in the green opposition that bedevils other American businesses. Lobbies like the Sierra Club and Audubon Society are turning on solar farms for avian mass murder. Ivahpah’s solar thermal technology uses 300,000 giant computer-controlled mirrors spread over 3,500 acres to follow the sun and concentrate energy on water towers, where boiler turbines generate electricity. The problem with this $2.2 billion feat of engineering is that birds that fly into the 800 degrees Fahrenheit rays sometimes singe or catch fire in midair. Plant workers call them "streamers" after the trail of smoke that follows the carcasses to the ground after they ignite, according to […]

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Oil Producers to Pump Up Lobbying to Remove U.S. Export Ban

WASHINGTON—The oil industry is gearing up for a postelection lobbying push to loosen the four-decade U.S. ban on exports of crude oil, saying that relaxing the prohibition would create jobs and stimulate the economy. But oil producers face several challenges in the effort, even if Republicans—frequent allies of the industry—win control of the Senate in this fall’s elections. While some GOP lawmakers favor lifting the ban, many others are signaling that they would resist the idea, particularly as voters remain concerned about its impact on gasoline prices. At least 10 companies—including Marathon Oil Corp. , ConocoPhillips , Hess Corp. , Continental Resources Inc. and Pioneer Natural Resources Co. —are starting an organized effort to lobby for lifting the ban. Companies that operate oil refineries present additional opposition. Refiners typically align with oil producers on policy matters, but on this issue have parted ways as their bottom lines benefit from […]

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Scientists develop a water splitter that runs on an ordinary AAA battery

Stanford scientists develop a water splitter that runs on an ordinary AAA battery In 2015, American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers. Although touted as zero-emissions vehicles, most of the cars will run on hydrogen made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming. Now scientists at Stanford University have developed a low-cost, emissions-free device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel and iron. "Using nickel and iron, which are cheap materials, we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1.5-volt battery," said […]

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Breaking: Nuclear Sabotage in Europe?

Here’s a curious story out of Belgium that is receiving no media attention (outside a few mentions in the specialized press) in the US: PARIS, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Belgian energy company Electrabel said its Doel 4 nuclear reactor would stay offline at least until the end of this year after major damage to its turbine, with the cause confirmed as sabotage. . . The shutdown of Doel 4′s nearly 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity generating capacity as well as closures of two other reactors (Doel 3 and Tihange 2) for months because of cracks in steel reactor casings adds up to just over 3 GW of Belgian nuclear capacity that is offline, more than half of the total. . . Energy experts have raised the spectre of possible blackouts this winter and say Belgium will have to boost interconnection capacity with neighbouring countries to prevent power shortages. A […]

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Ukraine border guards clash with rebels near Russian border: military

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian government forces engaged with a separatist armored column near the southeastern town of Novoazovsk, about 10 km (6 miles) from the Russian border, Ukraine’s military information service said on Monday. Border guards halted the advance of the column about 5 km northeast of the town, which is on the Azov Sea, it said in a Facebook post. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Christian Lowe )

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple