Energy Industry Archive

Are rising energy prices an upbeat sign that demand for oil and natural gas services, from construction of rigging to actual drilling, will pick up in coming months? Unfortunately, the latest earnings report from BJ Services, a leading provider of pressure pumping and other oilfield services to the petroleum industry worldwide, suggests more doom and gloom lies ahead for the oilfield services...

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Google scoops up carbon credits in effort to offset emissions — Google’s effort “to do no evil” took a little longer than expected in the carbon credits arena. The search engine giant bought enough carbon credits to offset all of its emissions from 2007 and some from 2008. The company’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl describes why it had trouble finding carbon...

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Now that the dust kicked up over the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules for the biofuels industry has settled just a little bit, it’s worth taking a look at Virent Energy Systems and Royal Dutch Shell, companies well-positioned in the advanced biofuels race. The EPA released this week its draft regulations requiring biofuels to curb greenhouse gases emissions...

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Politicians, ethanol producers and environmentalists have worked themselves into a frenzy since the Environmental Protection Agency, acting under 2007 legislation, proposed new standards for the biofuels industry aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the verbal sparring centers on how emissions of biofuels will be measured and whether the proposed rule unfairly targets...

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The furor over financial executives’ pay has spilled across into other industries, as the executives of Royal Dutch Shell and Chesapeake Energy are finding to their own discomfiture. Shell is suffering from an attempt to push through bonuses despite not reaching its own growth targets. Investors have reacted sharply, with members of a large group publicly criticizing the company. And over...

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Struggling coal slips one through — Several days after LS Power finally gave up on plans for a 750 megawatt coal plant in Michigan, to the general glee of environmentalists, Sunflower Electric is benefiting from the departure of Kansas governor Katherine Sebelius, now the U.S. secretary of health and human services. New governor Mark Parkinson has approved two coal plants to be built in...

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A year or two ago, prospects for Konarka looked grim, at least to outside observers. The Massachusetts manufacturer of organic thin film, a cheap type of solar panel with rock-bottom efficiency rates, seemed to be floundering for a strategy. Attempts by researchers to layer together pieces that captured light from different parts of the spectrum in double- or triple-junctioned designs, meant to...

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Consumer preference often works in unpredictable ways. America’s big vehicle manufacturers switched their efforts to making SUVs when the lumbering, high-priced vehicles became favored by soccer moms and hip-hop culture. Now SUVs are fading out, and hybrid and electric cars are being pushed by the Fed, which is in turn the guiding force behind Chrysler and General Motors. It has always...

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