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The Business Insider reports that OPEC is expecting oil at us$75 a barrel by the end of the year - Even If Oil Hits $90, OPEC Won't Increase Production. Oil prices could reach $80-$90 a barrel by early next year, but OPEC will not increase its output until a huge amount of over-supply has been absorbed, the group's Secretary General said on Tuesday. OPEC officials have been nudging up their price aspirations since Saudi Arabia's oil minister said last week an oil price of around $75 could be achieved later this year and would not undermine a tentative global economic recovery. "The price will go to $80-$90 maybe at the beginning of 2010," OPEC's Abdullah al-Badri told the Reuters Global Energy Summit. "I don't think the price will go down... By the end of the year we'll see $75. $80-$85 is possible -- not with the demand we see at this time, but if demand picks up month after month, then maybe we'll see this price."

"Obama tried cutting oil subsidies in his very first federal budget proposal, and it didn't fly. He and the Democratic members of Congress tried again earlier this year, hoping that the Tea Party's incessant yelling for spending cuts would translate into Congressional support for one of the most obvious spending cuts in the history of spending cuts. But no such luck. And get this: The true amount we pay in oil subsidies is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than $4 billion a year. In fact, the far-right libertarian think tank the Cato Institute once calculated the true cost of subsidizing oil to be in the range of $78-150 billion -- yep, billion -- per year. A lot of these expenditures come from the massive amount of security needed to protect oil, both at its source in volatile regions and along international shipping routes 'round the world. The us gov expends much effort and capital to help safeguard the oil companies' product and operations -- it's in the national interest, after all, that everyone be able to continue purchasing Exxon gasoline. So you'd think that paring a comparatively meager $4 billio"

"Energy-never has a political topic had so many bold words expended on it with so little to show. As Jon Stewart pointed out in his usual skewering fashion last week, the last eight American presidents promised to move America off oil and onto renewable energy, and all we have to show for it is increasing dependence on foreign petroleum, rising carbon emissions and an out of control gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Energy is one of those bipartisan issues that any politician can dust off-usually whenever gasoline prices have gotten a little high-promise to change and then promptly drop until the next crisis. Most of our politicians seem to lack what you'd need to really change how America uses energy: the will to take on the strong fossil fuel lobby and the persistence to see changes through over the long-term. But we all bear responsibility for that failure, because we fail to see-and take-the hard choices that would be necessary. We'd rather live in energy fairyland, as a new New York Times/CBS News poll demonstrates. The poll surveyed the attitudes of Americans-with specific attention on Gulf coast residents-toward the oil spill, energy policy, the economy, President Barack Obama and BP. The news is not good for Obama-the economy and employment remain the top concerns of Americans, bigger than the oil spill, but 54% of the public says he does not have a clear plan for creating jobs, and 48% of the public disapproves of his handling of the economy. 60% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track."

How the world is fed and fueled will in large part define development in the 21st century as one that is increasingly sustainable or a dead end for billions of people. A new and hard-hitting report concludes that dramatically reforming, re-thinking and redesigning two sectors -- energy and agriculture -- could generate significant environmental, social and economic returns. Current patterns of production and consumption of both fossil fuels and food are draining freshwater supplies; triggering losses of economically-important ecosystems such as forests; intensifying disease and death rates and raising levels of pollution to unsustainable levels."

President-elect, Barack Obama, has had a very favorable view of renewable energy, and has presented some specific plans about how to increase the renewable portfolio in the United States. Below is a lis of items in his proposed Comprehensive Energy Plan, with attention to both short term and long term objectives. Comprehensive Energy Plan * Provide short-term relief to American families facing pain at the pump. * Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. * Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future. * Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined. * Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America. * Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.

Barack Obama has created a top-notch team to guide his transition into the White House (see "Obama fills key posts on environment, energy teams"). Next, he should create a team to guide America's transition to a new energy economy. I'm not talking about the prestigious group of economic advisors Obama already has assembled to help him identify solutions to the economic meltdown. I'm talking about a team that includes experts in sustainable energy technologies, climate mitigation and adaptation, capital investment, state and local government, business, industry and labor.

One estimate has oil shale extraction needing 10 barrels of water per barrel of oil produced. And, with Colorado's proposed oil shale operations at full capacity, by mid-century, the industry could require as much as 14 times more power than currently generated by the state's largest power plant. These estimates are very imprecise, because the technology is unproven. You might wonder, "Why so much water and energy? And what do do about it?" See the illustration and answer below. A recent Los Angeles Times article, "Energy dispute over Rockies riches," reported: Shell has the most mature technology, which it has been experimenting with at its Mahogany test site, near Rifle, Colo. Tucked into a rolling landscape of empty range land, the company has sunk heaters half a mile into oil shale seams and subjected the rock to 700-degree temperatures. Over weeks or even months, a liquid known as kerogen is produced, which can be refined into diesel and jet fuel.

Nikkei Business Publications recently announced the results of a survey conducted with engineers in Japan's manufacturing industry on the current global recession. They were asked hard questions about the impact of the recession and measures to cope with it. I am a little surprised that they turn out to be such tree-huggers: an overwhelming number thinks solar cells, electric, fuel-cell and hybrid vehicles - and even wind power - could provide the breakthroughs we need to get out of the current recession.

Highlights of a $787 billion compromise version of President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. Additional debt costs would add about $330 billion over 10 years. Many provisions expire in two years.

USDA Undersecretary Mark Rey has signed a Record of Decision (ROD) amending 38 National Forest Land Management Plans to identify locations of corridors suitable for future energy transmission infrastructure across Forest Service land. The corridors protect or minimize resource impacts to lands and surface resources by identifying preferred locations for corridors that also cross Federal lands managed by other agencies. These corridors offer the American public a way to meet the increasing energy demands while mitigating potential harmful effects to the environment.

The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States - most of them unregulated and unmonitored - that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal.

Pilot Program is First In NYS to Provide Funds to Help New York's Neediest Heat With Oil More Efficiently as Winter Sets In Measures Can Save Low-Income Households Up to $1,000 Annually on Heating Bills Funding Provided by Cuomo's Record Settlement with American Electric Power Last Year NEW YORK, N.Y. (November 10, 2008) - Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced a new program created by his office that will deliver $1.9 million to New York's neediest families to help them cope with the high cost of home heating oil. The Oil Efficiency Pilot Program is a first-ever initiative in New York to help low-income households heating with oil to pay for heating upgrades and weatherization. These measures can cut average household heating costs by as much as $1,000 annually, while reducing smog, acid rain and global warming pollution.

As workers scramble to build an $800 million coal-fired power plant on a patch of farmland here, a crisis that began on faraway Wall Street threatens to stretch America's power supplies to the brink - driving up prices and laying the stage for future shortages. The power industry is under extraordinary financial pressure just five years after North America suffered its worst blackout ever, when rolling outages turned out the lights on 50 million people. Even before the extent of the global credit crisis was fully known, the nation's largest power providers warned of even bigger blackouts to come with the power grid under ever growing strain.

Here's a general list of Obama's energy platform, courtesy of Robert Rapier a good source for expertise these issues. The initiatives on "clean" coal and ethanol will raise hackles. Canadians should take note of the "low-carbon fuel standard". If such a standard is implemented, it would affect importation of oil from extracted carbon-intensive oil sands. And that's one reason the Canadian Government has been quick to call for cooperation on a joint North American climate change strategy. The list is after the bump:

Craters so huge they can be seen from space. Thousands of miles of rivers and streams polluted by acidic runoff. Miners can pay the government no more than $5 an acre for the chance to make a fortune or go bust -- and stick taxpayers with millions of dollars in cleanup costs. It is the legacy of an 1872 federal law that still allows miners to take precious metals from public land for next to nothing.

Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn't interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly - one routine morning, while she was scrolling through e-mail at her desk - conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun's life, and it changed history. Despite the nationality of this young Englishwoman, her story is profoundly American - all the more so because it has remained largely hidden from the public in the United States. When Katharine Gun chose, at great personal risk, to reveal an illicit spying operation at the United Nations in which the U.S. government was the senior partner, she brought out of the transatlantic shadows a special relationship that could not stand the light of day.

The federal government is in bed with the coal industry. A prime example is the $2 million spent in advertising at both the Democratic and Republican conventions by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). Founded this year, the ACCCE combined the Center for Energy and Economic Development and Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. Already the ACCCE has spent $4.7 million on lobbying, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.

Auto industry allies hope to secure up to $50 billion in government loans this month that would pay to modernize plants and help struggling car makers build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

A scandal involving sex, drugs and - uh, offshore oil drilling. It's a strange mix, and it couldn't have come at a worse time for those in Congress pressing to expand oil and gas development off America's beaches while trying to stave off an election-year rush by Democrats to impose new taxes and royalties on the oil industry.

An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday. Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the deals had been canceled.