Category:

The Car of the Future May Run on Gas

ENLARGE Thomas Wallner, a mechanical engineer with the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, adjusts Argonne’s "omnivorous engine," an automobile engine that Wallner and his colleagues have tailored to efficiently run on blends of gasoline, ethanol and butanol. Photo: Argonne National Laboratory When most of us picture the high-tech personal mobility of the future, we tend to imagine a sleek, dead-quiet electric car, packed with voice- or motion-directed gizmos and self-driving features. We see ourselves gliding around almost effortlessly, free to talk, work or text as we see fit. What few of us conjure up is having this sort of experience in a gasoline-fueled car. But that may be changing in the face of recent design advances. The internal combustion engine—the workhorse of the industrial age—is proving to be much more than a stubborn technological incumbent. More than a century after becoming the dominant way that people […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Pennsylvania reinstates drilling moratorium

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf reinstates moratorium on oil and gas leases in state land. (Photo: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) Louis D’Amico, president and executive director of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association, said the moratorium struck a blow against an industry that’s already returned more than $700 million in revenue to the state in the last seven years. "This is a lose-lose for Pennsylvania’s taxpayers and energy consumers," he said in a statement Thursday. His comments follow a decision from state Gov. Tom Wolf to reinstate a moratorium on oil and gas leases in state parks and forests. A ban was enacted in 2010 by Gov. Ed Rendell , but modified last year by Gov. Tom Corbett to allow drillers to explore for oil or gas so long as it didn’t interfere with land integrity. Wolf said the decision was about striking a balance to economic vitality and preservation. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Massachusetts set for offshore wind energy

U.S. Interior Department holds auction for wind energy development off the coast of Massachusetts. Photo by Teun van den Dries/Shutterstock WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (UPI) — Wind energy potential in the Atlantic holds promise as a new source of renewable energy and economic stimulus, the U.S. Interior Department secretary said. With high bids totaling $448,000, the Interior Department said it doubled the total acreage available for wind energy development off the coast of Massachusetts in the fourth-ever auction of its kind. "Offshore wind along the Atlantic holds great potential to help power our nation with renewable energy while adding jobs to the economy," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a Thursday statement. The U.S. government estimates the leased area, a combined 354,409 acres, could support around 2 gigawatts of commercial wind energy, enough to meet the annual electricity needs of 700,000 homes if fully developed. Wind energy development up and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Chevron latest low oil price casualty

Chevron fourth quarter profits down in weak oil price market, but net oil production unchanged. UPI/A.J. Sisco SAN RAMON, Calif., Jan. 30 (UPI) — Chevron Corp. said Friday it became the latest casualty of a weak oil market, announcing fourth quarter profits were down 30 percent year-on-year. "Our 2014 earnings were down from the previous year, largely due to the sharp decline in crude oil prices," Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Watson said in an announcement of fourth quarter earnings. Fourth quarter earnings of $3.5 billion represented a 30 percent decline year-on-year. Full year 2014 earnings were $19.2 billion, compared with $21.4 billion the previous year. Oil prices are off more than 15 percent since the start of the year and down more than half from June 2014 peaks. The price slump has forced many international energy companies, and those in secondary industries like steel, to cut their […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Putin Fingerprints Seen All Over Surprise Interest-Rate Reversal

(Bloomberg) — The message some Russia watchers are getting from Friday’s surprise interest-rate cut is this: Start listening more to what President Vladimir Putin’s aides say about monetary policy and less to central bankers. Here’s the key evidence. In comments made just nine days ago, the country’s central bank chief indicated she saw no chance of a rate cut any time soon after inflation soared to a five-year high. A week earlier, though, one of Putin’s most vocal economic aides urged the exact opposite, saying a reduction was needed to bolster the ailing economy. So when the Bank of Russia shocked traders and analysts alike by announcing it was lowering the benchmark rate from an 11-year high, the words spoken by that aide, Andrey Belousov, left many to speculate that the Kremlin is exerting more pressure on central bank policy makers. The rate cut — to 15 percent from […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

12 Killed In Ukraine As Peace Talks Awaited

People take cover from shelling in a residential area in Donetsk’s Kyibishevsky district on Friday…. ENLARGE Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images KIEV, Ukraine—At least 12 people were killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine as the Ukrainian government and rebels squabble over who should be allowed to attend internationally-mediated talks if they are restarted in Belarus. In the last 24 hours, five members of the Ukrainian military were killed, a spokesman said, and the city council of rebel-held Donetsk reported seven civilian deaths. Dozens were wounded on both sides. The death toll has risen sharply this month, as government forces and pro-Russian rebels resumed full-scale fighting . After the collapse of a tentative truce agreed last month, both sides accused each other of violating a broader peace agreement reached in Minsk in September, and rebels announced an offensive to retake territory lost to the government last year. Russia and the West […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Crude-Oil Futures Volatile

An oil refinery in Singapore on Jan. 13. ENLARGE Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images LONDON—Oil futures were volatile on Thursday with U.S. oil prices hovering near six-year lows as the global oil glut that has pummeled prices since midsummer showed no signs of abating. The U.S. reported record high oil supplies and the dollar continued to strengthen after the Federal Reserve’s meeting on Wednesday, further weighing on dollar-denominated commodities such as oil. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, March-dated WTI, the U.S. price benchmark, traded down 0.1% at $44.40 a barrel after settling at its lowest level since March 2009 on Wednesday. On London’s ICE Futures Exchange, Brent, the global marker, rose 0.3% to $48.65 a barrel Data from the U.S. Energy Department showed the country’s oil stockpiles rose by a more-than-expected 8.9 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 23. The stockpiles are now near 407 million barrels, an […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Natural Gas Prices Sink on Smaller-Than-Expected Stockpile Drain

By Timothy Puko Natural gas prices dropped to a new two-year low on Thursday after federal data showed U.S. storage levels fell less than expected last week. Storage levels shrank by 94 billion cubic feet in the week ended Jan. 23, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The drain was 17 bcf less than the 111-bcf average of 20 forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. The smaller-than-expected drain caused prices to drop sharply. The front-month March contract recently traded down 14.7 cents, or 5.2%, at $2.695 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract had been trading around unchanged before the data. This is the lowest front-month price since Sept. 10, 2012, when gas fell to $2.682/mmBtu. The drain was 44% lower than the five-year average for that week of that year. That is another reminder of how severely oversupplied the market is, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Falling oil prices prompt central bankers to reconsider

World Bank expects global inflation to fall 0.4-0.9 percentage points this year The Federal Reserve O nly a few months ago, the 2015 outlook for monetary policy could be summarised in two words: “great divergence”. This was the year in which the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England would finally raise rates after years of ultra-low borrowing costs, while the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank would continue to loosen monetary policy. More On this topic Global Insight Fast forward to the start of this year and the picture is completely different: from India and Turkey to Canada , monetary policy makers are all busy slashing borrowing costs. Brazil, where the central bank raised rates last week, is the one big exception to the rule. But its move pales against the ECB’s decision last Thursday to launch a massive €1.1tn programme of quantitative easing. And […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple