Top Energy Stories of 2013 – Honorable Mention

My Top 10 energy related stories of 2013 ended up being a 3,500 word story, so I decided to break it up into three parts. Today I will list some of the stories that could have arguably been placed in a list of Top 10 energy stories for the year. Later this week I will list stories 6-10 of my Top 10, and then early next week I will list my Top 5.

Note that this list of Honorable Mentions simply entails the headline without any detail, and are in no particular order. The Top 10 goes into detail on each story, which is why the story ended up being so long.

Honorable Mentions

  • Tokyo Electric Power Company acknowledged that its crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
  • Two years ago lawyer Steven Donziger won a huge judgment against Chevron in Ecuador. This year Chevron took him to court for fraud.
  • After years of delays, Kashagan — the world’s second-largest oil field — started to produce crude in Kazakhstan.
  • Following failed attempts by three oil majors, Poland became the first country in Europe to produce shale gas from hydraulic fracturing.
  • Venezuela suffered a massive power outage that left 70% of the country without power.
  • The Oil Drum — where I cut my teeth writing about energy — was archived after more than 8 years of operation. You can see my farewell post on The Oil Drum here.
  • Germany recorded a record 23.9 GW of electricity generated from solar power.
  • BP began to aggressively challenge financial claims from the Gulf Oil Spill that it deems to be inflated or fraudulent.
  • Electric car venture Better Place — valued at $2.25 billion two years ago — filed for bankruptcy after sluggish sales ended their dreams.
  • An explosion caused by a gas leak at the headquarters of PEMEX killed 37 people.
  • Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation. He was replaced by MIT physicist Ernest Moniz.
  • The EPA announced plans to cut the allowable limit of sulfur in gasoline by two-thirds.
  • Daily measurements of carbon dioxide at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Hawaii topped 400 parts per million for the first time.
  • Alaska is attempting to stem its steep decline in oil production by repealing taxes that the Governor Sarah Palin had put in place, which had given Alaska one of the highest oil tax rates in the country
  • The Brent-WTI price spread that proved so profitable to refiners in 2012 collapsed in 2013 (which I predicted would happen).

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