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Alaska first state to hit $4 a gallon gasoline: AAA

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May 15, 2008 in Gas Prices, Newz, Resources and State/Local Government. 0 Comments

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Alaska hit a milestone on Wednesday that could be a sign of things to come around the United States this summer — it became the first state where the average price for regular gasoline reached $4 per gallon.

“It wasn’t totally unexpected,” said Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for the travel and auto group AAA which issues a daily gasoline price report.

“Oil prices recently brushed against $127 per barrel so certainly, $4 gasoline could be in the cards for other states as well this summer,” said Sundstrom.

At $4 per gallon, filling up a 15-gallon tank will cost $60.

Alaskans using self-service regular gasoline paid $4.006 per gallon, said the AAA Wednesday report.The U.S. average for regular gasoline hit a record $3.758 per gallon, the same report showed.

A year ago, the U.S. average price was $3.3354 a gallon and in Alaska, the average price was $2.946 a gallon.

Gasoline price analysts will have a better handle on how many states are likely to reach $4 a gallon this summer once the Memorial Day weekend passes, said Sundstrom. That holiday weekend is May 23-26.

“Memorial Day weekend is a little to the gasoline industry what Christmas is to retailers,” said Sundstrom. “It’s one of the highest demand weekends for fuel and is a barometer for what can be expected in summer driving season demand.”

The AAA will issue its summer travel forecast on Thursday.

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Exxon’s Founding Family Calls for Change

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Gene Shinai

May 12, 2008 in Business/Finance, Energy, Human Interest/Society, Newz, Resources, The Environment and sci-tech. 0 Comments

From Celsias:

If necessity is the mother of invention, it can also be the catalyst of change. Public Radio International reports that the Rockefeller family is taking on the CEO of Exxon Mobil, the company founded as Standard Oil by their great, great grandfather John D. Rockefeller in 1870. And this rare public engagement of the family in the inner workings of Exxon is not about current profitability, for which Exxon can boast record highs, but about lack of transition to renewable sources of energy. In fact, according to the Times Online, the press release from the Rockefellers came the day before Exxon Mobil was expected to unveil a $12 billion quarterly profit, the biggest in U.S. corporate history.

The Rockefeller family is calling for a reduction in the power of the current CEO, Rex Tillerson, and the addition of an outside chairman. Their primary concern is one of economics; Exxon needs to start looking at alternative sources of energy because it is going to run out of oil. Currently Exxon is selling oil faster than they are replacing it. Volatility and nationalism in the Middle East and other oil producing countries will only increase the difficulty in doing so. The Rockefellers point to Exxon’s lack of research and development vis a vis its competitors in areas like wind and solar technology as a key source of frustration. The family, which holds a significant minority stake in the company, is not alone among shareholders in their frustration with Exxon’s position on renewables and the climate crisis in general. Robert Monks, one of Exxon’s shareholders, is quoted in the American Public Media story saying, “Exxon is enabled to go in public discourse and say the science is unsettled. Well the science is unsettled, because Exxon paid to have it unsettled.” (See here, here and here.)

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Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Report offers answers

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Gene Shinai

May 6, 2008 in Class, Health Care, Newz, Policies and Procedures and Resources. 0 Comments

From AP Via Rawstory:

CHICAGO - Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.

Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn’t be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia. The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources — including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses — are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.

Their recommendations appear in a report appearing Monday in the May edition of Chest, the medical journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.

“If a mass casualty critical care event were to occur tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health care system conditions may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions owing to deficiencies in supply or staffing,” the report states.To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the Godlike task of deciding who will and who won’t get lifesaving care, the task force wrote. Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:

- People older than 85.
- Those with severe trauma, which could include critical injuries from car crashes and shootings.
- Severely burned patients older than 60.
- Those with severe mental impairment, which could include advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
- Those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes.

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How low will lake levels go?

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Gene Shinai

April 29, 2008 in Foreign, Newz, Resources, State/Local Government and The Environment. 0 Comments

Courtesy MLive

West Michigan residents concerned about sinking Great Lakes water levels will get a chance to share their views this week when U.S. and Canadian officials studying the issue visit Muskegon.

The International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian panel that advises the two nations on Great Lakes issues, is studying water levels in lakes Michigan, Huron, Superior and Erie. A committee working on the IJC’s International Upper Great Lakes Study will host a public hearing on lake levels Sunday, from 10 a.m. to noon, at Grand Valley State University’s Annis Water Resources Institute, 740 W. Shoreline.

“We want to hear lots of people come out and squawk at this public meeting,” said John Nevin, an IJC spokesman. “We want to hear what this issue means to people when the water is really high or really low.”

IJC officials might get an earful.

Lake Michigan’s water level has dropped nearly four feet since 1997, according to federal data. The low lake level has widened beaches but created safety hazards for recreational boaters and caused freighters to run aground in Muskegon, Grand Haven and other ports around the lake.

On the flip side, record-high lake levels in 1986 caused severe beach erosion that sent several Grand Haven cottages tumbling into the lake.

The IJC study is focused on two issues: Whether dredging in the St. Clair River over the past century has caused excessive lowering of water levels in lakes Michigan and Huron; and if the volume of water flowing out of Lake Superior daily through control structures in the St. Marys River should be adjusted to account for below-average precipitation and global warming, which some studies suggest could lower lake levels by several feet over the next century.

The study could prompt changes, such as the construction of a water control structure in the St. Clair River, that would affect water levels in lakes Michigan and Huron, said Gene Stakhiv, co-chair of the International Upper Lakes Study Board.

“There are a whole range of changes in the regulation of flow and physical structures in the (Great Lakes) system that could help us control water levels,” Stakhiv said. “But we don’t know yet if there is a need for that.”

A growing chorus of critics — from scientists and shoreline property owners in Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay, to marina owners and shipping interests — want the U.S. and Canadian governments to plug what amounts to an unnaturally large drain hole in the St. Clair River.

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Peak Coal as Early as 2025

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Gene Shinai

April 26, 2008 in Energy, Newz and Resources. 0 Comments

From Clean Technica:

With dwindling fossil fuel supplies, coal has been viewed as the energy source of last resort. This outlook is changing as estimated global coal supplies seem to have been severely inflated. Is coal’s future in doubt?

Many experts are saying yes. Professor David Rutledge of CalTech believes that world coal reserves are grossly overstated and could be substantially exhausted this century. This is in stark contrast to earlier forecasts.

Coal Reserves InflatedIn the last 20 years, official coal reserves have fallen by 170 billion tons. To put this number in perspective, global coal consumption in 2007 was 6 billion tons. Reserves figures are dropping far more quickly than actual extraction.

The European Commission’s Institute for Energy in 2000 estimated global supplies of coal to last 277 years. In 2007, that number was lowered to 155 years.

This forecast may sound like plenty of time to adjust to meeting our energy needs in from other sources, but how accurate are these numbers really? The National Academy of Sciences Report on Coal, from June 2007 isn’t very encouraging.

“Present estimates of coal reserves are based upon methods that have not been reviewed or revised since their inception in 1974, and much of the input data were compiled in the early 1970’s. Recent programs to assess reserves in limited areas using updated methods indicate that only a small fraction of previously estimated reserves are actually minable reserves.”

To make matters worse, some countries, such as Vietnam and China have not changed their official reserves figures for decades. This seems suspicious because billions of tons of coal have been mined during this period.

New Coal Discoveries Unlikely

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Oil nears $120

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Gene Shinai

April 22, 2008 in Energy, Gas Prices, Newz and Resources. 0 Comments

From CNN Money:

NEW YORK (AP) — Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose to a new trading record of $119.90 before retreating to settle up $1.89 at a record $119.37 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The record run (three straight days of record settlements) was supported by a weak dollar, concerns about crude supplies from some key producers and the end of the May contract.

Gas prices also pushed further into record-high territory Tuesday, with retail gas reaching a national average of $3.51 for the first time as the dollar fell to a new low against the euro.

At the pump, the national average price of a gallon of regular gas rose 0.8 cent Tuesday to $3.511, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices for diesel - used to transport most food, industrial and commercial goods - also rose overnight to a new record of $4.204 a gallon.

Gas prices are nearly 66 cents higher than last year, when they peaked at a then-record of $3.23 in late May, and have prompted many analysts to raise their estimates of where gas is going to go.

“I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that we could get to $4,” said Antoine Halff, an analyst at Newedge USA LLC.

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Stripping Mountains to Power D.C.

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Gene Shinai

April 21, 2008 in Business/Finance, Energy, Environmental Disaster, Government, MountainTopRemoval, Newz and Resources. 0 Comments

By David A. Fahrenthold

Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 20, 2008; Page A01

MUD, W.Va. — This is a place where “moving mountains” is no longer a figure of speech. Here, among the steep green Appalachians, mining companies are moving mountains off their pedestals to get the kind of coal that Washington needs.

It happened here, on a ridgeline called Sugar Tree Mountain, where locals once hunted for squirrels and puckery-sour grapes. Then the top was scraped off to expose the black seams in its innards, leaving a rock-strewn plateau.

“It used to be West Virginia,” said Vivian Stockman, an environmental activist. “And now it’s Mars.”

Though this isolated mine is more than 400 miles from Washington, the two places share a powerful connection: coal. The D.C. region, with its need for electricity skyrocketing, has been burning steadily more coal, buying almost a third of its supply from this part of Appalachia.

And that, analysts and environmentalists said, means that Washington’s air conditioners and iPods have helped drive the region’s “mountaintop” mining.

The coal industry and the Bush administration say the benefits of these mines, measured in jobs and energy, outweigh the damage.

But in West Virginia, where mining opponents can face back-roads intimidation, some neighbors say that Washington area residents might not know the true cost of their power.

“We have to go through a lot for them to get their electric,” said Lucille Miller, who picked grapes on the vanished mountain.

The links that bind the cathedral-ceiling suburbs of Washington to the blasted-out mines of West Virginia can be traced through federal energy records. The Washington Post analyzed almost four years of data, showing where the six coal-fired power plants across the D.C. region bought their supply.

The records make one thing clear: The plants have been buying a lot more coal. Total purchases were more than 40 percent higher in 2006 than in 2004. The increase came as the Washington region’s demand for electricity grew 18 percent since 2001, driven by population growth and an increasingly wired culture. D.C. area plants do not send their electricity straight to local homes but feed it into the multi-state regional power grid.

Records also show that about 32 percent of the coal the plants bought came from one kind of mine in this corner of Appalachia — a “surface” operation, where miners do not have to tunnel.

The region, where southern West Virginia meets western Virginia and eastern Kentucky, is home to the vast majority of mountaintop mines in the United States.

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Oil prices headed toward $125/barrel: Pickens

Published by

Gene Shinai

April 18, 2008 in Energy, Gas Prices, Newz and Resources. 0 Comments

By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Crude oil prices are still headed upward and could top $125 a barrel in the near-term, legendary oil investor T. Boone Pickens said on Thursday.

“It will go up,” said Pickens, who heads the BP Capital hedge fund with over $4 billion under management. “Oil is moving to a substantially higher level — say above $125 a barrel.”

U.S. crude futures hit a record $115.54 on Thursday. Oil prices have more than quintupled since 2002, propelled higher by soaring demand from emerging economies like China alongside slow increases in global production capacity.

Despite new production from the Canadian oil sands and elsewhere, Pickens said global crude oil production is unlikely to rise above its current rate of about 85 million barrels per day, while global demand will likely hit 87 million bpd in the third quarter of 2008.

Pickens also expects U.S. natural gas prices to rise from current levels near $10 per million British thermal units to $12-$14 this upcoming winter.

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OK Pope Benedict, We’ll see how serious you really are

Published by

elophan

March 18, 2008 in Human Interest/Society, Religion, Resources and The Environment. 0 Comments

Last week, the Vatican declared that pollution is a sin. The real question is, does it also find the process of blasting away mountains, to burn tiny seams of dirty coal, equally sinful? And what about the pollution of the water in these Mountain Top Removal battle zones. Is that a sin, too? I think it’s time we either called the Pope’s bluff, or get him on our side.

As many of you know, Pope Benedict will be visiting the U.S. in the coming weeks. There is a petition online, that would make him fully aware of the destruction of Appalachia. Please, take a very quick minute out of your time, and sign it. Pass it along to your family and friends, and ask them to sign it, too.

With 3 million pounds of high explosives being used on the mountains in this region everyday, time is running out. Please help bring an end to this sinful annihilation. Thank You! -Sue

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION!

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