Alaska

Later this week, Shell Oil will present its ambitious oil-drilling proposal to the U.S. government, seeking permission to drill ten exploratory oil wells in Alaskan waters. The ice-clogged Arctic region is thought to have vast oil reserves.

Whether its being used in jets or up in Alaska, biodiesel's challenges as a cold-weather fuel are being tested. For Earth Day today, the Alaska Public Radio Network is featuring a five-minute piece on people using biodiesel and vegoil in The Last Frontier. Readers up in the Anchorage area can listen to KSKA 91.1FM at 11 am (local time) today and anyone can hear the piece on the Sebastian Blanco

In many places around the world, roads are financed at least in part by a tax added to the price of fuel. When we head to the pumps, we pay for a little bit of the road we drive out onto as we leave the station. But people who make their own biofuels don't pay these taxes and yet they drive on roads other people pay for. To make sure the load is balanced out a bit, many governments tax biofuels whether they are home-brewed or purchased. To get an idea of how this plays out in Alaska, check out <

One thing most people know about biodiesel is that the fuel is not ideally suited for colder temperatures. This little hiccup does not (as I've mentioned before) slow down Alaska biodiesel fans. In fact, some homebrewers and VegOil advocates from the largest state in the union have just started an Alaska biodiesel blog, Sebastian Blanco

The Chena Hot Springs Resort near Fairbanks Alaska is a prime example of how energy supplies in the future will be vastly more decentralized than they are in the current petroleum monoculture. The resort will be taking advantage of the geothermal energy that they have available from the power plants that they installed last year to power an electrolizer they got from the University of Alaska.

The largest oil field in the U.S. in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska hasn't shipped a drop of oil since earlier this month when BP discovered severe corrosion inside some pipelines servicing the facility. Overnight eight percent of the country's daily supply of oil disappeared, about 400,000 barrels per day.

Well, the Panamericana 2006 team has made it to the very southern tip of South America. And it took them just 15 days, 11 hours and 25 minutes to get there from the edge of the Artic Sea in Alaska. Not bad, not bad at all. I'm still not certain which records were broken on this trip, but the team's daily diary entries refer to some. You can read all the daily reports here if you haven't been keeping up. If you have, the last report from snow-covered Tierra del Fuego is an emotional wrap-up to a

Apparently, the biodiesel-powered trip from Alaska to the southern tip of South America did start on time last week (see previous posts here and here). The first few daily diary posts are up on the Panamericana 2006 Sebastian Blanco