Oil

Oil : the headlong rush

In French, we have an expression, ” la fuite en avant “ which can be explained this way : “A fuite en avant is something one does when one is in a losing situation, and one hopes to salvage it by doing more of the same or worse.” Not that I want to delve into […]

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One year after the BP oil spill

You would have thought that the United States have learned from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which took place a year ago. To the Huffington Post, this is absolutely not the case. “In the year since the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history, Congress hasn’t adopted any major laws on

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Oil prices reach $120

Only two months after reaching $100, oil prices reached $120. As the AFP notes: ” Oil prices surged to new heights Monday, with Brent crude topping $120 a barrel for the first time since August 22, 2008″ It took very little time back to 2008 for oil prices to reach $140 once they had reached

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President Obama gets more serious on efficiency

CleanTechies often republishes blog posts from the Official White House blog. This enabled me to learn about a significant series of measures designed to help America cut its oil dependence and energy consumption. Indeed, new standards will enable future cars to cut their oil consumption (not by much though…). US households will also be able

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A look at deaths per TWh by energy source

With all the agitation around the Fukushima catastrophe, I thought it would be interesting to put some facts and figures on the dangerosity of  energy sources, including oil, coal, natural gas, some renewable energy sources and nuclear… The global death rate for coal is 161 per TWh (15 in the United States), 36 for oil,

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Worth an article – my February 2011 tweets

I have been committed since January 2007 to bring you each month a selection of the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change and the world energy sector. However, I don’t blog as much as I would like to and generally write around 25 posts per month. But many more news are worth

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Oil prices could reach $220 this year

If you think gasoline is too expensive, you haven’t seen anything yet… To the Wall Street Journal : ” Nomura Securities says that if Algeria joins Libya in the land of chaos, oil prices could shoot to $220 a barrel. That’s in a worst-case scenario.” “To back up that headline grabber, Nomura compares the current

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Can the US stop subsidizing coal and oil ?

Coal and oil are the two most polluting fossil fuels and energy sources to date. Despite this, both are receiving huge subsidies from the United States federal and local governments. To Climate Progress, the coal industry received around $3 billion (2.2 billion euros) per year between 2002 and 2008 and to the New York Times,

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Saudi Arabia overstated its oil reserves by 40%

To the Guardian : ” The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in show. The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the

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High food prices contribute to MidEast unrest

We saw that oil prices are now back above $100 a barrel. Most unfortunately, food prices are also increasing, and this is a problem for the poorest populations of the globe, and this includes Egypt, the world biggest wheat importer. As the leading blog Climate Progress noted recently : ” Leading experts, reported in the

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