184 replies to this topic

[stocks]

Green Energy Industry Staggers

The western hemisphere looks set to become energy independent for the foreseeable future; the US is moving steadily away from the dependence on Middle Eastern oil that makes many national security experts think green. Importing from Canada just isn’t the same kind of problem as importing from Iraq.

How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia

Harold Hamm, discoverer of the Bakken fields of the northern Great Plains, on America's oil future and why OPEC's days are numbered.

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century."

He was the original discoverer of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota that have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers.

How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. Mr. Hamm disagrees: "No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels."

If he's right, that'll double America's proven oil reserves. "Bakken is almost twice as big as the oil reserve in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska," he continues. According to Department of Energy data, North Dakota is on pace to surpass California in oil production in the next few years. Mr. Hamm explains over lunch in Washington, D.C., that the more his company drills, the more oil it finds. Continental Resources has seen its "proved reserves" of oil and natural gas (mostly in North Dakota) skyrocket to 421 million barrels this summer from 118 million barrels in 2006.

Hamm

[stocks]

Clean Energy Index Down 80% in 3 Years

The S&P Global Clean Energy Index provides liquid and tradable exposure to 30 companies from around the world that are involved in clean energy related businesses.

S&P Global Clean Energy Index YTD -44.47%

ICLN

[stocks]

"Green is Good" - Gordon Gekko

80% of ‘Green Energy’ Loans Went to Top Campaign Donors

Some of the loans dwarf in size those given to George Kaiser, owner of the now defunct Solyndra.

The list—which features the likes of Google owners Larry Page and Sergey Brinn, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Turner, John Doerr, and Al Gore—raises new questions about the procedures used to administer the now-controversial DOE loans.

Green

[stocks]

Google quits plans to make cheap renewable energy

Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.


In 2009, the company's so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, told Reuters that he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal.

"It is even odds, more or less," Weihl said at the time. "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."

A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.

Google

[diogenes227]

Funny thing, in Australia with home solar power, the need for new power stations has changed from 2013 to 2020 and with more installation will be extended to what?

Yep, this renewable energy is a crock.

A crock of gold!

The days of remote power generation is coming to an end.

Why pay for power when the technology is cheap and sustainable.

Every year the technology is more efficient and cheaper.

Soon every tile on your roof will be a solar cell or it will be here.

So my next car will be powered for free.

All my household power will be free.

At the moment it may cost some thousands to install but recooped in several years.

This will become cheaper as the technology improves.

Hardly a new innovation as when I was a kid most people had windmills in my area generating all their power needs.

And in the US while the oil men and their employees (the U.S. Congress) fiddle:

THE JOB CREATORS

[Rogerdodger]

Funny thing, in Australia with home solar power, the need for new power stations has changed from 2013 to 2020 and with more installation will be extended to what?

Yep, this renewable energy is a crock.

A crock of gold!

The days of remote power generation is coming to an end.

Why pay for power when the technology is cheap and sustainable.

Every year the technology is more efficient and cheaper.

Soon every tile on your roof will be a solar cell or it will be here.

So my next car will be powered for free.

All my household power will be free.

At the moment it may cost some thousands to install but recooped in several years.

This will become cheaper as the technology improves.

Hardly a new innovation as when I was a kid most people had windmills in my area generating all their power needs.

And in the US while the oil men and their employees (the U.S. Congress) fiddle:

THE JOB CREATORS

And you will fly to the moon on a rainbow colored unicorn.

[stocks]

America's Vast Energy Resources

Happily, the publicity that has recently been given to massive shale oil and natural gas deposits in North Dakota, Pennsylvania and elsewhere has awakened many Americans to the fact that our energy resources are truly vast–greater, in fact, than any other country’s.

Access to affordable, abundant energy is, fundamentally, a means of freedom. But for those seeking to create a crisis that provides an opportunity to direct the way we live, work and act, affordable, reliable, abundant, domestic energy is a threat. In a very real sense, the more energy we have, the less power they will have. Energy abundance ends the justification for central energy decision-making.

OIL
6 times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.

NAT GAS
More nat gas than the 5 other largest countries.

COAL
More than 3 times as much as Russia, which is second.


As it turns out, many of the problems of energy scarcity and rising costs in the United States have been caused by the government itself. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report that outlined many of the policy and regulatory constraints that impact domestic energy production. While the report focused on natural gas specifically, many of the laws and procedures also represent roadblocks to any form of safe and responsible energy production.

Energy

[stocks]

Solon SE (SOO1) slumped in Frankfurt trading after becoming the first publicly traded solar company from Germany to file for insolvency.

News that the pioneer German solar power company Solon filed for creditor protection Tuesday suggests last year’s seep of air out of the jolly green subsidy giant has become a great vacuum blowout. The various corporate-welfare seekers that have been straddling the renewable sector will not give up easily or gracefully, but the hot-air balloon that is green-energy economics is rapidly losing the ga-ga popular support it has had for the past decade.


link

[stocks]

Fastest Growing Jobs 2007-11 Are Energy-Related

Not a green job to be found

For job growth over the last four years, six of the top eight occupations and nine of the top 15 fastest-growing occupations are related to the boom in domestic oil and natural gas extraction in places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania.
Here are some details on the energy-related jobs:

1. Extraction workers for oil and natural gas: #2 overall, 46% growth, median hourly wage of $16.62.

2. Geological and petroleum technicians: #4 overall, 42% growth, median hourly wage of $18.86

3. Mining machine operator: #5 overall, 40% growth, $17.52 wage


link

[stocks]

BP Shuts Down Solar Business – “Also In Germany Solar Industry Faces Collapse”

Energy giant British Petroleum (BP) announced that it was shutting down its solar module business for good.

BP is the latest in the long string of failures that have swept over the solar industry recently.

The solar industry in Germany faces a collapse. [...] The Sarasin Bank puts companies Conergy, Q-Cells, Solar-Fabrik, and Sunways under the category of ‘endangered’.”

solar