Oil | Grist

The legislation

The scoop on climate and energy bills in Congress 2
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago
What are the U.S. House and Senate doing about climate change and energy? Here's a rundown on legislation proposed in Congress this year.
How Much Does a Guilty Corporation Owe?

The Unsettling Case of Shell Nigeria 0
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago
FRAC Act

Congress introduces twin bills to control drilling and protect drinking water 1
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago
In a widely expected move that is sure to draw the ire of the oil and gas industry, Democratic members of Congress on Tuesday introduced twin bills to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act and give the Environmental Protection Agency authority over the controversial drilling process called hydraulic fracturing.
Goldman Sachs: Oil’s going to $85 by year end 0
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Oil hit $67 a barrel yesterday, driven by the perception the global economy may have hit bottom, among other factors. Goldman Sachs raised its end of 2009 oil price forecast to $85 a barrel from $65.
Incurious George

Former Republican Sen. George ‘Macaca’ Allen shills for dirty energy 7
Posted 5 months, 4 weeks ago
Hey, remember George Allen, the former Republican senator from Virginia best known for using the racist slur "macaca" on camera during his failed bid for reelection in 2006? Apparently, he's making his comeback as the Republican anti-climate bill poster boy, flacking for on behalf of the coal and oil lobbies.
Who's king now?

King Corn, meet Big Oil 2
Posted 6 months ago
Back in March, Tom Philpott flagged some moves from Shell Oil and Valero Energy (the largest U.S. oil refiner) that indicated Big Oil was falling for biofuels. Now, the NYT shows Tom had it right.
CAFE serves up tasty emission cuts

Critique of auto standards misses how they save consumers money compared to gas taxes 1
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago
Robert Stavins thinks an increased gasoline tax or cap-and-trade would make Obama's tougher auto efficiency standards redundant. This offers an excellent illustration of how even economists who are not market fundamentalists can miss the way well-designed regulation improves economic efficiency.
Talkin' Bout Cogeneration

Two homeowners, one monster, and a cutting-edge power source 6
Posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago
There's a monster in the basement, but Peter and Edith are going to slay it. They're replacing their outdated furnace with a state-of-the-art micro-cogeneration system -- one of the first used in a residential setting.
Just the (industry-sponsored) facts

Chevron hires former CNN correspondent to spin report on Amazon destruction 0
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago
The New York Times has a great story about Chevron hiring a former CNN reporter to produce a "news" report to counter a 60 Minutes segment on the oil company's contamination of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.
$4 gas might be a lot more expensive than we realized

Oil prices and the recession 0
Posted 7 months ago
Joe Blow

Joe Barton tries to stump Steven Chu with question about where oil comes from 3
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), a climate skeptic with some wacky theories of his own, tried to stump Energy Secretary Steven Chu at Wednesday's climate-bill hearing by asking, "How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?"
Ad hoch

Nearly $200 million spent on energy ads since Obama’s inauguration 7
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago
Interest groups and corporations have spent $199.5 million on television ads on energy, the environment, and climate this year.
Postcard from Pipelineistan

The battle for control of Eurasia will shape the new world order 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
What happens on the immense battlefield for the control of Eurasia will provide the ultimate plot line in the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order, also known as the New Great Game.

Our good ol' friend the nonsensical "Global War on Terror," which the Pentagon has slyly rebranded "the Long War," sports a far more important, if half-hidden, twin -- a global energy war. I like to think of it as the Liquid War, because its bloodstream is the pipelines that crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet. Put another way, if its crucial embattled frontier these days is the Caspian Basin, the whole of Eurasia is its chessboard. Think of it, geographically, as Pipelineistan.
Lessons from the Exxon Valdez

Twenty years after the biggest oil spill in the U.S., we still have a lot to learn 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
Tuesday marks 20 years since the Exxon Valdez dumped nearly 11 million of gallons of crude oil into Alaskan waters, resulting in the most severe impacts on the environment of any spill anywhere. I was there and will attest to the graveness of the situation then, and now -- my memories of that day are graphic. I boarded the tanker a few hours after the spill began to enforce clean-up standards. The pungent, toxic smell of the oil is still fresh in my memory today ...
Busted energy markets

Don’t make too much of current energy prices; they are disconnected from fundamentals 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
There is a fair amount of hand-wringing over the recent collapse in energy prices, which is largely irrelevant to larger macro forces. This is critically important and horribly misunderstood throughout our current energy, environmental, and economic conversation.
That's Mucked Up

Book exposes the messy conditions of Canada’s tar sands 0
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago
Of all the absurdities at play in extracting oil from Alberta's vast northern tar sands deposits, the most staggering might be the nuclear renaissance it threatens to create in Canada.
Brace yourself 0
Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago
Graphic novel adaptation amps up energy message 0
Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago
Obama’s budget would cut subsidies to oil companies and change transport funding 0
Posted 9 months ago
Pickens embraces electric vehicles, predicts $140 oil by 2011 0
Posted 9 months ago