Energy Wars

Lights have been turned back on for about 28,600 Ameren Illinois Utilities (AIU) customers in Southern Illinois, while more than 1,400 field and support personnel continue to repair the extensive damage caused by Friday's inland hurricane. Throughout the day, field crews have encountered major unexpected damage to the AIU electrical distribution system in and around Carbondale. As a result, the AIU Emergency Operations Center is sending additional field personnel and specialized equipment to help overcome the enormous damage caused by the exceptionally violent spring storm. At 5:20 p.m. today, about 40,200 AIU customers are still without electric service, down from the peak outage count of 68,800 customers. The Ameren Illinois Utilities now anticipate the majority of all customers will have their lights back on by late Tuesday night. However, the unexpected severity of the damage in Carbondale means that service in and around that city may not be fully restored until Thursday.

Tips on leasing your land for oil and gas drilling and what to be careful of.

Join the discussion about how we will power America in the coming decade.

History of the Yates Field. Much like the story of "There Will Be Blood". Iraan Texas

There will be blood. History of the Yates Field oilfield in Iraan Texas.

Current worldwide rig count and U.S. Rig count, Middle East, Canada. Number of active drilling rigs. Inflation adjusted price of crude oil

Amazing photos of the aftermath of a powerful natural gas pipeline explosion.

I spent last week immersed in the views of professionals working to advance energy efficiency resource intelligence. I shall spare you more details-I realize there's a limit to the wonkery even Grist's audience can tolerate-but I do want highlight what strikes me as a key takeaway. A few facts to set the stage: * Resource intelligence is profitable. Study after study (after study) shows that homes and businesses have available a range of investments, technologies, and practices that cut energy use and pay handsome returns. (See, for the latest, this three-year study of efficiency in buildings.) * Resource intelligence isn't happening on its own. This is something speaker after speaker at the conference returned to, with attitudes ranging from frustration to simple bemusement. Despite the aforementioned studies, people aren't taking advantage of the opportunities at anything close to the available scale. The low-hanging fruit stubbornly remains unplucked. * Resource intelligence is central to the climate/energy challenge. The International Energy Agency describes a scenario for achieving 450 ppm (the widely shared though likely inadequate target for atmospheric concentrations of CO2). Of the emission reductions they project, energy efficiency is responsible for 54%. More than half our efforts to tackle climate change will happen through more intelligent use of energy.

Federal regulators said Friday that Fort Chicago Energy Partners LP's (FCE.UN.T) proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in the Pacific Northwest could be built without significant environmental losses, paving the way for possible approval. In a final environmental impact statement, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the Jordan Cove LNG import terminal proposed near the Oregon coast, plus a 234-mile natural gas pipeline that would ship imported gas from the terminal to nearby interstate pipelines, could be built in a way that minimizes the potential threat of earthquakes, accidents and a terrorist attack, as well as potential harm to soil, wetlands and water resources.

This week global activist group Avaaz began airing a spoof ad that takes direct aim at ExxonMobil's cheery ad campaign featuring scientists talking about how they're making the clean energy of the future. A company spokesman responded to the ad: "They seem to be critical of our desire to communicate our positions on climate change, which we don't understand." Funny -- we don't understand your position on climate change either, ExxonMobil! (zing). You say you want to make the world cleaner through chemistry, but then you lobby hard to make sure that won't happen. See the videos -- and help get Avaaz's ad on CNN -- below.

Governor Sarah Palin is notorious for not accepting, and then accepting federal funding--who could forget the good ol' bridge to nowhere debacle? Well something similar is happening again: Palin has decided to accept all the stimulus funds eligible to Alaska--except the $29 million that would go to her state energy office. Why say "thanks, but no thanks" to $29 million dollars? Because she's afraid it would require her to make Alaskan buildings more energy efficient. According to the NY Times, Palin said off the decision: "Alaska's vast expanse and differing conditions are not conducive to a federally mandated, universal energy code . . . Mandating universal energy building codes throughout our state is not in Alaskans' common or individual interests."

Norma Fiorentino's drinking water well was a time bomb. For weeks, workers in her small northeastern Pennsylvania town had been plumbing natural gas deposits from a drilling rig a few hundred yards away. They cracked the earth and pumped in fluids to force the gas out. Somehow, stray gas worked into tiny crevasses in the rock, leaking upward into the aquifer and slipping quietly into Fiorentino's well. Then, according to the state's working theory, a motorized pump turned on in her well house, flicked a spark and caused a New Year's morning blast that tossed aside a concrete slab weighing several thousand pounds.

Coal River Vally, WV, has become home to a civil disobedience campaign against Massy Energy company in an attempt to halt their destructive mountaintop renewal coal mining practices. Kay Sexton, with her regular run down of environmental protests, has been examining the "imperatives and complexities" of protests that are unique to the environmentalist movement. Here's another data point to add into the discussion. I've mentioned before that I don't always think that the environmental movement benefits from protests. Channeling the Greenpeace mentality of chaining people to trees often seems to generate bad press more then it advances a cause. But, there are times when even my cynical take on the efficacy of protest has to be subverted by out-and-out necessity.

Here is how to prepare your home for the coming new great depression with some urban survival techniques. survivalist.

Why and how to make an emergency survival pack or backpack for your family in case of emergency.

How to find a Marcellus Shale oil and gas drilling related job.

The Interior Department will announce new rules today that clear the way for the first offshore wind turbines to be erected along the Atlantic Coast. The rules will set long-awaited guidelines for offshore leases, easements and royalty payments that the Bush administration worked on for years but did not complete.

This earth2tech post comments on a presentation from Rich Sedano at the Ceres conference this week in San Francisco. Rich has been working on electricity regulatory issues, demand response, and institutional design for a long time, and his insights as reported here are very important and frequently overlooked: The way Sedano sees it, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees Wall Street credit rating agencies, and state-level utility regulators have failed to communicate and, by extension, to establish consistent rules and incentives - leaving utilities "waiting for a sign that it's safe to pull the trigger on an investment and hoping they don't miss the opportunity to do the right thing."

Peak oil isn't getting much airtime in the mainstream press lately, but David Strahan has a column in The Independent - A Government still addicted to petrol. "All targets and no trousers" seemed to be the gist of the reaction from environmentalists to last week's Budget. Greens welcomed the introduction of new, legally binding, carbon-reduction goals but attacked the lack of a clear road map showing how they could be achieved. Some applauded policies such as the extra subsidy for offshore wind and investment in building efficiency, but attacked overall funding of £1.4bn as miserly in comparison to the enormity of the climate crisis and recent financial bailouts.

In remarks focused on the promise of renewable energy and demand-side management, US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff on Wednesday suggested that there may never be another new nuclear or coal power plant built in the country. Pointing to upwards of 1,000 GW of potential wind energy in the Midwest and West, new solar power production and storage technologies and emerging hydrokinetic power resources, Wellinghoff asserted that renewables are poised to play a substantial, gap-filling role in the US energy picture.