The Audubon Society is upset with a US Department of Interior decision to allow wind farm operators to obtain permit extensions allowing accidental bird death or injury for up to 30 years. Interior says the permit extensions provide regulatory certainty to wind developers, but Audubon thinks the move fails to balance “the need for conservation… Keep reading →
It’s just one energy sector watcher weighing in, but Lux Research does have pretty good credentials, so we’ll run with it, leading with their headline: “Solar to Become Competitive with Natural Gas by 2025.” So says the Boston-based consultancy in an eyebrow-raising analysis that adopts the view that, for now, cheap natural gas can be a… Keep reading →
By: Holly Ellyatt The U.K’s “big six” energy companies will be grilled by U.K. lawmakers on Tuesday about the reasons behind hiking their consumer energy bills by an average of 9.1 percent just ahead of the onset of winter. The companies — EDF Energy, SSE, Scottish Power, Npower, E.ON UK and British Gas – have… Keep reading →
There may be a shale oil deposit in Russia’s Siberian region larger than the Bakken. Exxon Mobil is investigating and oil service firms are “shipping equipment, technology and drilling crews from the Bakken and the Eagle Ford in Texas to Siberia, in what is becoming a full-scale west-east technology transfer.” [Financial Times] The Sudanese government… Keep reading →
Saudi Arabia has taken another step towards building up its nuclear power generation capacity by signing a Memorandum of Understanding for in-country collaboration with Westinghouse Electricity, Exelon Nuclear Partners and Toshiba. Nuclear could be a key tool in managing a mismatch between rising in-country energy consumption and a heavy dependence on oil exports to meet… Keep reading →
Domestic Saudi Arabian oil consumption increasingly cuts into oil exports, reducing the valuable revenue those exported barrels provide, which funds the country’s current account surplus. Subsidized domestic prices incentivize direct burning crude to generate power needed to cool a growing Saudi population. As the Kingdom shifts more to natural gas for power generation – freeing… Keep reading →
Most people associate Saudi Arabia with oil, but natural gas supply is one of the most important issues in the Kingdom today. If the Saudis want to remain one of the world’s largest oil exporters, they need to simultaneously address the challenges associated with subsidized domestic energy prices, their internal energy consumption rate and domestic non-associated natural gas development.
“The Kingdom is in desperate need of rolling back the world’s second-largest portfolio of energy subsidies, which are driving domestic demand for its chief export commodity, crude oil,” Jim Krane, Gulf energy analyst at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School told Breaking Energy in an email. Keep reading →
