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Drill, drill, drill. Suddenly, oil and gas exploration is all the rage on Capitol Hill. With energy prices a red-hot political issue, the Democratic-controlled Congress, in the midst of its final, three-week legislative sprint before the presidential elections, can't get enough of drilling bills. Not that most Capitol Hill watchers seriously believe that - in the absence of a major supply disruption - any substantive energy legislation will actually emerge from this frenzy and become law. "You don't pass energy bills in the heat of the campaign season," noted Frank Maisano, an energy specialist with Bracewell & Giuliani. Still, there should be plenty of action.

"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already. But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

The ocean harbors abundant energy in the form of wind, waves and sun. All of these could be sampled on something called an Energy Island: a floating rig that drills for renewables instead of petroleum.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) last week announced plans to allow geothermal drilling in more than 190 million acres of federal land, spanning 12 Western states. Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the interior, said that the proposed initiative could increase geothermal power production in the U.S. tenfold. "Geothermal energy will play a key role in powering America's energy future, and 90 percent of our nation's geothermal resources are found on Federal lands," Kempthorne said. "Facilitating their leasing and development under environmentally sound regulations is crucial to supplying the secure, clean energy American homes and businesses need."

Shortly after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the U.S., Rice University civil and mechanical engineering professor Satish Nagarajaiah studied damage done to offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Electricity from geothermal sources is set to soar in Germany -- and all thanks to a law that has made drilling wells deep enough to hit the hot temperature water, which is needed to produce electricity, financially viable. Less than 0.4 percent of Germany's total primary energy supply came from geothermal sources in 2004. But after a renewable energy law that introduced a tariff scheme of EU €0.15 [US $0.23] per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for electricity produced from geothermal sources came into effect that year, a construction boom was sparked and the new power plants are now starting to come online.

The Federal Government will provide $50 million to the geothermal industry to help it begin making the technology viable for baseload energy production. Speaking to Alexandra Kirk on ABC Radio's AM program, the Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, said there was huge potential for geothermal energy in Australia.

t's becoming crystal clear that the resolution of America's energy crisis is now the centerpiece of the current election campaign; it could conceivably be the decisive issue that decides the future occupant of the White House. Advertisement This is increasingly motivated by public opinion, which heavily favors a "drill now" commitment.

The current energy crisis has made American voters look more favorably on a wide range of ideas that can be used to deal with our energy problems. But voters don't favor all of these ideas equally; they have clear views on which approaches they think will work best. Consider these data from a recent Quinnipiac University poll of voters in four key swing states: Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

I read U.S. opens way for wind power off coast and wondered "what's in it for me"? The federal government has cleared the way for developers to plant wind farms in offshore waters on the Outer Continental Shelf, a move that could have a significant impact for North Carolina. ... Eventually, the regulations could help shape energy production in North Carolina, where the Outer Banks jut sharply into the Atlantic. The area has some of the strongest and steadiest winds on the East Coast, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior. ... In a scheme similar to some offshore oil and gas drilling leases, states would get about 27 percent of the revenue sent to the federal government from offshore wind and hydrokinetics leases.

Geothermal power is getting a closer look from several directions. These new studies are based on "hot rocks" at temperatures of around 150 degrees C (about 300 degrees F) that can be reached by drilling a couple of miles into the earth's crust. This is a much more involved approach than dealing with surface or near-surface geothermal activity, as is used for much of Iceland's power generation.

Environmentalists have hailed recent announcements by the US Interior Department that purport to protect wildlife, but both of these announcements carry with them asterisks that should give greens pause. On Friday, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management announced that some 340 square miles of ecologically sensitive land in the northeast section of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve will be off limits to drilling.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the trade organization for the oil and natural gas industry, has just begun running a feel-good commercial that argues "America's future" lies in drilling out domestic reserves of oil and natural gas off our coasts, in our western lands, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Here's what the ad says:

Against a background of escalating tension between the US and Russia over events in Ukraine, oil companies from each country have been working to overcome the numerous challenges of extracting oil from the Arctic Ocean. Having completed one of the largest Arctic expeditions in history to understand the challenges, the partnership has now started to drill.

High density and metal bonded plastic functional composite materials with complex and delicate structures can also be prepared by the injection molding process. Density can be adjusted as required from 2-13 g/cm3, which can replace some traditional aluminum alloy, zinc alloy, stainless steel, and other materials with metallic texture. Its environmental advantage and shielding function of high-energy ray (X-ray, etc) make it suitable to replace the traditional lead metal alloy. It has high dimensional precision and excellent mechanical properties, which is suitable for processes such as turning, milling, drilling, and so on.