It’s been the Holy Grail of biofuels for decades, a will-o-the-wisp, always promising great things over the horizon. But it finally seems to have arrived. Cellulosic ethanol, capable of recycling crop wastes into fuel, may be here.
If Gov. Jerry Brown can have state employees check his family’s land for oil, so can you.
Saudi Arabia has probably spent around $100 billion of its foreign reserves by now to prosecute its war against American shale and other low-cost oil producers.
Things are not looking too good for Tesla these days. One of the most painful developments was Consumer Reports’ decision to remove its “recommended” rating and downgrade it to “worse than expected.” The magazine had once rated Tesla the best ever tested.
A former BP engineer accused of deleting text messages after the Gulf oil spill and ensuing investigation pleaded guilty Friday to lesser charges and avoided prison time.
In 1985, Ian Taylor, today the chief executive of the world’s largest oil trader Vitol, was part of a team at Royal Dutch Shell that forecast oil prices would rise five fold to $125 a barrel in 2015 as global reserves were expected to become more scarce. Now he says it is unlikely to ever reach those levels again.
For more than 15 years, Georgia offered one of the country’s most generous tax credits for people who bought electric cars. But the $5,000 subsidy went away three months ago, and a look by Watchdog.org at how the tax credit’s expiration has affected sales shows a dramatic drop in the number of all-electric cars such as Teslas and Nissan Leafs purchased in the Peach State.
In a recent piece for Forbes, petroleum economics analyst Michael Lynch claimed that America’s addiction to oil is a “myth.” He contends that “Americans consumers have ample choices” when it comes to transportation fuels, and that our relationship with oil is no different than our relationship with “food, housing, and clothing” or “cement or steel.”
“We’ve told TransCanada that the review process will continue,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington Wednesday, adding Secretary of State John Kerry wanted to finish work on the review after “all that has gone into it.”
As the Iowa caucuses shape up for February, one thing is becoming clear: Support for ethanol is no longer a sine qua non for aspiring presidential candidates.
