Last week, Mitt Romney released a comprehensive energy plan. While taking a backseat to the economy and job creation, energy issues have been discussed regularly by presidential candidates Romney and Barack Obama, and their viewpoints diverge widely. In its online magazine, conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute broke out the core issues that separate the candidates:
It has always been the habit of the party that doesn't occupy the White House to blame various ills on the party that does. Especially in the past few years when it has come to gas prices, the party-in-waiting has blamed the POTUS for "pain at the pump." We're not taking sides here – Republicans are doing it to Obama now, just like Democrats did it to Bush. Unfortunately for their arguments, the President has about as much control over the price of oil as he does over the price of bread; i
Even though we're in the early phase of modern electric cars and sales haven't been as high as some expected, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu continues to promote electric vehicles as a way for the American economy to cut its dependence on increasingly expensive foreign oil, MarketWatch reports. Chu made the remarks at the New York Times Energy for Tomorrow Conference last week.
With the price of a barrel of oil beyond $100 per drum, global oil powerhouse Royal Dutch Shell is raking in some serious coin. But while Shell is bringing in the big bucks, it still cannot pay one very important client.
What's next, Tom and Jerry vs. PETA?
If you think ending the ethanol subsidy puts all fuel sources on an equal footing, think again. While there has been a great deal of vitriol directed toward subsidies for alternative energy and plug-in vehicles, very little has been heard about the ways in which fossil fuels are given a huge advantage – and there are many. In fact, compared to the help fossil fuels are given, tax breaks
Although the Arctic has incredible potential energy resources – the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 1,668 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas – extracting that fuel will be costly.
Back in March of 2011, a Valero representative posted this response to a question on a Yahoo! Finance message board:
Quick, name the country certified by OPEC as number one in national oil reserves. Saudi Arabia? No. Canada? Nope. Venezuela? Bing!
The American Petroleum Institute (API) reports total petroleum deliveries (a measure of demand) fell by 0.5 percent in July, compared to the same month in 2010. Though miniscule, July marks the first time in 2011 that deliveries actually dropped when compared to the previous month. Perhaps more importantly, gasoline demand hit a ten-year low for the month of July. Eric Loveday
What global recession? After falling 1.5 percent from 2008 to 2009, global oil consumption soared to an all-time high of 87.4 million barrels per day in 2010, according to the online Vital Signs report published by Worldwatch Institute. The 3.1 percent increase in consumption in 2010 easily makes up for the decline between 2008 and 2009 caused by the global economic crisis.
U.S. oil production peaked in 1970; U.S. oil consumption did not. As a logical result, the importation of oil from other countries has increased over the decades until it accounted for two thirds of the petroleum used in the United States in 2008. However, that rise has not been steady. Several times over the years there have been periods when imports held steady – or even declined – and, according to an article in the Kansas City Star, one of those times is now. In 2010, U.S. oil im
BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year has moved off the front pages in most of the nation, though the damage done to the environment and economy of the Gulf region is far from repaired. However, at least that spill once had some attention from the nation and the world.
Houston-based Greenstar Recycling has teamed up with Cleveland-based Vadxx Energy to convert recovered (a.k.a. recycled) plastic into synthetic crude oil. Under terms of this joint venture, Greenstar and Vadxx will work hand-in-hand to provide a domestically manufactured fuel made entirely from discarded plastics. Using a proprietary process, Vadxx manufactures synthetic crude oil and natural gas by using a feedstock that consists of petroleum-based plastics in a process called thermal depolymer
In early May of 2011, the national average price of gasoline in the United States hit exactly $4 a gallon before falling to the current level of $3.56. However, if predictions from Barron's hold
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (aka OPEC) is looking forward to a record-setting 2011. Due to oil prices that have hovered around the $110-per-barrel mark, OPEC is projected to rake in some $1 trillion in revenues this year.
