Energy Wars

When he takes office, President-elect Obama will face a mountain of challenges - more than any incoming president in recent history: the global financial crisis, the Iraq War, the federal deficit, the energy crisis and more. The most critical thing this new president can do, though - which must be done to make any policy solution a success - is restore the citizen's seat at the government's table. One of the worst outcomes of the past eight years has been the erosion of democracy and the phasing out of the people's voice in the government. It is imperative that this be reversed.

A high-level fight has erupted within the Interior Department between the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service over plans to sell leases for oil and gas drilling near Arches, Canyonlands and Dinosaur National Monument. The Park Service wants to delay the Dec. 19 lease sales. The BLM has refused to do so. "We're not anti-oil and gas but we're very much pro-park," said Denver-based Park Service regional director Mike Snyder. "I'm not saying not to put those up for a lease sale. I'm just asking they wait until the next quarter."

If California expands its renewable power generation to be a third of electricity delivered in the state by 2020, it may cost $60 billion, the state's utility regulator said in a report issued on Thursday. It is more costly to make electricity with renewable power -- solar, wind, geothermal and other sources that emit no or low amounts of global-warming greenhouse gases -- than with natural gas, nuclear and coal power plants.

The election of Barack Obama has put the wind back into the sails of the renewable energy sector, where investor confidence had been badly punctured by the credit crisis. Clean technology and green energy stocks have soared as City analysts predict a major boost from the incoming president. Solar Integrated Technologies rose by 30% yesterday after increases of 22% by Renewable Energy Corporation and 16% by the wind turbine maker Vestas in the 24 hours before, when they were helped upwards by oil prices returning to above $70 a barrel.

A former top EPA investigator who helped lead an investigation into a giant oil spill in Alaska is blowing the whistle to KING 5 News. The investigator says it should have been a felony criminal case. So was oil giant BP let off the hook? KING 5's environmental specialist Gary Chittim talked with the investigator in an exclusive report.

The American auto industry is running on fumes. General Motors, the nation's largest automaker, warned Friday that it may run out of money by the end of the year after piling up billions in third-quarter losses and burning through cash at an alarming rate. Ford sustained heavy losses, too. The situation is so severe, GM has suspended talks to acquire Chrysler and is appealing to the government for help as the slumping economy drags cars sales to their lowest level in a quarter century.

A joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Iraq's state-owned South Gas Co. could give Shell a 25-year monopoly on production and exports of natural gas in much of southern Iraq - the biggest foreign role in Iraq's oil and gas sector in four decades. The planned venture, spelled out in a 16-page document obtained by United Press International, goes well beyond descriptions provided by Iraqi and Shell officials on Sept. 22, when they held a public signing ceremony in Baghdad.

An environmentalist group and four Nigerians filed suit against Royal Dutch Shell PLC in the Netherlands on Friday, claiming the company was negligent in cleaning up oil spills in Nigeria. The civil suit filed by the four men and Friends of the Earth is unusual in that it seeks to hold Shell's parent company liable for damages allegedly caused by its Nigerian subsidiary.

The credit crunch is not just hurting the banks and the real estate market. Even the billionaire and wind energy enthusiast, T. Boone Pickens is having trouble financing his high profile 4000 MW wind farm. The price tag on this Texas wind farm is a hefty $10 and $12 billion.

Many of the world's solar energy companies could fail or fall into the arms of stronger rivals as the financial crisis raises borrowing costs and as solar module prices fall. Any such shake-out would in turn precipitate consolidation in the industry, which has for years been attracting heavy investment and government subsidies that have driven supply ahead of demand.

It didn't start that way: His land was once a low hill in a rugged hardwood forest - cherry, oak, hickory - skipping from ridge to ridge across one of the poorest, most rural areas of the Lower 48. Then came the mining companies with their dynamite and their trucks. They clear-cut the forest, blew the tops off the ridges and scraped the rocks into the hollows, pushing hundreds of feet of mountains into the valleys below.

It's beginning to look a lot like Carmageddon. Are we there yet? Probably not, but recent events certainly seem to imply we've taken a big, random step in that direction lately. (Just to review: Carmageddon is a term I use to describe a state in the US auto industry where the offerings from car companies, particularly, but by no means exclusively, the Big Three, are ridiculously out of step with what the consumer need and want. This situation will also greatly impact those selling used vehicles, of course, with the resultant drop in resale values will leave many owners "buried alive, upside down" in their auto loans-their old, very undesirable vehicles will be worth less than they owe on them, making it ever harder for them switch to a much more fuel efficient vehicle. This situation will also mean that the relatively meager supply of highly fuel efficient cars won't be nearly enough to help consumers, so the price of those models will be bid up significantly in the form of higher resale values and dealer markups on new units.)

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:

Newsweek has an article on how "cleaner energy can create jobs and reignite global growth" - Why It's Time for a 'Green New Deal'. In rented offices on a quiet side street in Paris, not far from the Eiffel Tower, analysts for the International Energy Agency spend long days and nights crunching numbers about oil production and greenhouse-gas emissions. They're the staid, sober global accountants who watch over the power supply for the 30 rich countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and their many reports are dry and technical. But lately, the group's pronouncements have taken on more ominous overtones. With a sense of urgency bordering on desperation, the IEA has begun calling for radical changes in the way the world drives its cars, its factories and, indeed, the global economy. This month the agency will issue a collection of comprehensive reports declaring that "a global revolution is needed in ways that energy is supplied and used." That kind of rhetoric has become familiar to U.S. voters, who've spent months listening to both presidential candidates tout their energy plans. Barack Obama has promised to "strategically invest" $150 billion over 10 years to build a clean-energy economy, one that will create 5 million new green jobs.

The forthcoming IEA report continues to generate plenty of advance press. It seems some of the production decline numbers that generated so much initial chatter are actually for already declining fields - not ones growing or holding steady, so they don't really mean all that much (its the average across all fields that really counts, which may still be around the 4.5% figure CERA predicts). MSN - IEA sees oil above $100, recognizes supply limit. The world will have to live with the risk of an energy supply crunch and an oil price well above $100 a barrel in the years to come, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday. Massive investment of more than $26 trillion will be needed in the next 20 years to offset the impact of falling supply at aging oilfields and ensure the world has enough energy, the IEA said. "There remains a real risk that under-investment will cause an oil supply crunch (by 2015)," the IEA said in an executive summary of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) to be released in full next week. "The gap now evident between what is currently being built and what will be needed to keep pace with demand is set to widen sharply after 2010."

The Economist has a look at some of the factors affecting oil production, warning "Oil prices have plunged. Another spike may be on its way" - Well prepared. WITH the price of crude mired at half the peak of $147 it reached in July, this may seem like an odd time to invest in oil wells. Despite trimming its output along with other members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in an effort to prop up prices, that is just what the United Arab Emirates plans to do. Short-term price movements, its oil minister insists, should not distract from the world's enduring thirst for oil. Indeed the collapse of oil prices, one of the few reasons around for economic cheer, may be setting the stage for another spike. Just now oilmen are focused on the rapidly slowing demand for their product. Since early October, reckons the boss of BP, a big oil firm, America's consumption of crude has fallen by perhaps 2m barrels a day, or about a tenth. Sales of cars in America fell even more steeply last month-by 32%. There is also gloomy news from emerging markets, which have been the driving force in the oil markets of late. Demand for oil is growing much more slowly in China and India, for example, and car sales are down in both countries. There is even talk of global oil demand falling next year, for the first time since 1991.

Today the U.S. Department of Energy issued an Interim Final Rule that implements the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program authorized by section 136 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). The FY09 Continuing Resolution provided DOE with funding to make up to $25 billion in direct loans to eligible applicants for the costs of reequipping, expanding, and establishing manufacturing facilities in the United States to produce advanced technology vehicles, and components for such vehicles. These vehicles must provide meaningful improvements in fuel economy performance.

At the same time that ExxonMobil was racking up the largest quarterly profit of any U.S. company in history - $14.8 billion - the oil giant was fighting in court to avoid making the interest payment in the long-running case brought by victims of the 1989 Valdez supertanker spill in Alaska. In case you were wondering, the sum the plaintiffs say Exxon owes in interest, about $500 million, is about three days' worth of company profits.

Don't blink: This is the here-today, gone-tomorrow 2009 Chrysler Aspen Hybrid SUV, which is rated for 20 mpg in the city, 22 mpg on the highway (the best fuel economy for that size of SUV). Chrysler will cease production of the hybrid and conventional Aspen and Dodge Durango SUVs at the end of 2008.

Barack Obama is seriously considering the creation of an Energy Security Council within the White House, according to sources close to the transition. President-elect Obama and his staff are examining a white paper written by former President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, John Podesta, who is heading up the Obama transition, the sources said.