Most people don’t realize that the insane gas prices last year had nothing to do with increased demand and had everything to do with market speculation and hoarding encouraged by the top investment banks. Now True/Slant’s own Matt Taibbi uncovers the truth behind the scam. Read the rest at True/Slant.

Congressional Republicans have been telling voters that the cap and trade energy policy that’s set for a vote on Friday will cost each household about $3,100. CBO puts the lie to those numbers and shows that they’re nearly 20 times the actual costs…in 2020. From Reuters: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Climate change legislation pending in Congress [...]

Solar Energy: “We’re trying to lay a foundation for a new economy…We are investing not in digging more oil wells but in building more wind farms, investing in solar energy….We are going to have an economy that [is] not based on a bubble.” (Media Teleconference, 6/8/09) This Tuesday, Joe Biden will be traveling to a [...]

Found this on Political Wire and it’s typical of the nonsense we heard from her during the campaign… Palin: We are the only state with a negative tax rate where we don’t have any income, sales or property tax statewide, and yes we have a share of our oil resource revenue that goes back to [...]

Although the tech isn’t exactly new, the following video shows a father/son team in France who seem to have put together one of the most commercially viable options I’ve seen to date. Following up on my ethanol post and considering how destructive fuel is in general, shouldn’t the US be investing heavily in fueless tech [...]

I’ve said it before on this blog, but it bears repeating…the ethanol industry is not good for this country. But instead of paying attention to the facts, there’s a new lobbying push headed by General Wesley Clark to up the mandated 10% in our fuel supply to 15%. Why? Because the industry is going bankrupt [...]

This is an extreme example, but I can’t help but think car companies can easily hit the 35 MPG mileage standards Obama is about to lay out if the following is possible for a street ready car. From Green Car: Volkswagen’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn recently confirmed the company is working on a car that will [...]

This is a pretty big stake in the ground, because they’ll be using California’s standards…the toughest in the nation. No doubt you’ll be hearing that this is bad for business, but that’s what they said about seat belts, airbags and every other time CAFE standards were raised. And I think we’re all fairly aware that [...]

While attending the Offshore Technology Conference earlier this week (on sponsorship by the American Petroleum Institute), one truth became very apparent: opening up the outer continental shelf to oil and gas exploration would create a lot of jobs. Right now, our government is spending hundreds of billions in an effort to revitalize the economy, but [...]

On my final day at the Offshore Technology Conference, I attended a panel on climate change. Now, you might expect an oil and gas industry convention would prefer not to discuss the effects of CO2 emissions. But the panel included three scientists who all gave mini-lectures intended to convince the audience that global warming is [...]

Today at the Offshore Technology Conference (which I am at on sponsorship by the American Petroleum Institute), I attended a panel discussion titled: The Case for Access to Oil and Gas Resources on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. As the title and graphic to my post probably reveal, the panel was less reasonable than the [...]

From today through mid-week, I’m in Houston attending the Offshore Technology Conference. I’m here on the sponsorship of the American Petroleum Institute which has brought in a cadre of bloggers, presumably to help generate coverage and discussion of petroleum issues. Since I believe energy and climate change policy will be some of the most important [...]

Oh, and hybrids too. From NY Times: The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit’s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today. [...] To some extent, China is making a virtue [...]

“We don’t believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem). We don’t think that’s good economic policy and we think changing those incentives is good for the country.” – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner [...]

The moment I heard this idea it sounded like box office poison, and it looks like the administration did too. Because not only does it mean you’d have to have some sort of Orwellian GPS system attached to every car, but it completely negates the benefits of higher mileage hybrids that are in the pipeline. [...]

This should be welcome news for all of you Federalists. From NY Times: WASHINGTON — President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday. The directive makes good on an [...]

Following up on my earlier post about oil speculation, there’s news that 50 million barrels of oil are being hoarded on supertankers. The market calls it “contango.” I call it irresponsible. From Marketplace… “Contango” refers to a market condition in which the future price of a commodity is higher than the cost of buying it [...]

And they find that the folks who were trying to make a quick buck were affecting oil prices far more than the normal market forces of supply and demand. Gee, that sounds oddly familiar… Last year I argued time and time again that the energy speculators were the cause and that supply and demand couldn’t [...]