Energy policy

-The Impending Peak and Decline of Petroleum Production: an Underestimated Challenge for Conservation of Ecological Integrity
-How Much Does a Gallon of Gas Cost?
-Offshore Oil Drilling and Hurricane Risks
-BP's Tony Hayward 'set to step down'

-Andrew Nikiforuk Is Tyee's First Writer in Residence
-Unist’ot’en leadership takes to the streets to assert their rights and stop the Enbridge pipeline
-Powering up Canadian prosperity

Models of transition in eastern Kentucky must simultaneously address a host of interrelated regional challenges in order to bring sustainable success. The region's economy is under-developed, with extremely high poverty and unemployment rates; housing stock is inadequate and energy-inefficient; and rural electric cooperatives are more than 90 percent dependent on coal, increasing the vulnerability of their customers in the face of rising prices.

Canada seems to be heading into authoritarianism and corruption which is similar to conditions in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in which extractive industries are leading centres of national cash flow, which props up industry and state regimes. (Some people describe those international trends as a "resource curse.") Lobbying, revolving doors between industry and government, and oil subsidies are three of the sides of Canada's petro-regime.

-Fools' Errand: Effort to Shut Down Gulf Well is Failing
-U.S. allows Gulf well to remain closed despite seep
-BP Caps Well: What Happens to Oil Spill Ravaged Gulf Coast Now?

Lloyd's hired Chatham House to prepare a white paper on the risks of peak oil called Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business. It seems to me that this new report gets quite a few things right, but it misleads in the direction of thinking things are better than they really are, when it comes to timing and alternatives.

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Deepwater Horizon
-Demand projections
-Briefs
-Quote of the week

Two regular contributors clash: oilpatch engineer Martin B. Payne and long-time peak oil activist and writer, Jan Lundberg, publisher of Culture Change. In this article, Martin Payne steps back and gives full voice to "the enlightened fossil fuel professional." Interestingly, the dividing line between activist and oilman is not as sharp as first appears.

-Germany targets switch to 100% renewables for its electricity by 2050
-Report sees need for 500 additional biofuels plants
-No link between wind turbines and health: report
-Residents reject wind farm health findings
-Locally Owned Wind Power: Quaint it Ain’t

BP has reported that its latest attempt to cap the leak at its Macondo well has stopped the flow of oil into the ocean. The news has so far been greeted with cautious optimism while integrity testing on the cap continues. The development comes at the end of another torrid week for BP...

- FT: Wall St and peak oil
- BP and the peak: delusions of oil grandeur persist
- ASPO-USA vs Lovins: Optimism, harsh realism, and blind spots — 10 years later
- The Nation: Kicking the oil habit

On July 12th, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar issued a “Decision memorandum regarding the suspension of certain offshore permitting and drilling activities on the Outer Continental Shelf.”

A midweed roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-The Oil Market Report

At just before 10 p.m. on Tuesday, April 20, 2010, the Transocean Ltd.-owned and BP Plc.-operated floating oil rig Deepwater Horizon was boring an exploratory well in the Macondo Prospect—about 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast and nearly a mile underwater—when it exploded without warning from a well blowout. ...BP has tried repeatedly to stop the flow, to no avail. (As of this writing on Tuesday evening, July 13, it remains to be seen whether the well cap installed last night, a Band-Aid pending completion of the long-awaited relief wells next month, will actually work.) The spill's magnitude has beggared description or belief.

-Science and The Gulf Spill – Scientists Gauge The Impact of Oil
-Review of questioned IPCC report says conclusions 'well-founded'
-Prehistoric Humans Caused Climate Changes, Too?
-A Climate Change Corrective