CNN on The Long Recession

One of the themes I have been hitting during my recent presentations concerns the oil price risk hanging over our heads. My hypothesis goes something like this. The days of huge supply excesses in the […]

Rate Crimes: Impeding the Solar Tipping Point

The following guest essay was written by Paul Symanski. Paul is an electrical engineer with expertise in solar energy, and shares his views on why solar power often faces unnecessary headwinds. —————- To anyone who […]

The Long Recession

Sometimes people ask me what I think will happen as a result of peak oil. Well, it depends. We could see alternatives – natural gas, ethanol, GTL, CTL, etc. – fill the gap of falling […]

Let’s Talk About Personal Finance

This is a digression from my normal posts on energy and the environment. As I have said before, this is not a blog on investing or personal finance. Despite that, finance and energy often intersect, […]

Updated Corn Ethanol Economics

Executive Summary: The current cost to produce a gallon of ethanol is approximately $3/gal. The current price of ethanol is $2.86/gal, which explains why ethanol producers are shutting down. If corn and natural gas prices […]

Neste Moves Forward with Green Diesel

I have written periodically on ‘green diesel’, which should not be confused with biodiesel. Neste, Petrobras, and ConocoPhillips (in a venture with Tyson foods), have all entered the green diesel arena. (See a bit on […]

The Ripple Effect

This is why I think we have some tough economic sledding ahead as the full impact of the current oil price starts to ripple out: Beyond gasoline: Prices surge for oil-based goods New York – […]

Corn Ethanol Economics

Someone e-mailed a few days ago and asked some questions about the present economics of corn ethanol. I did a few calculations, which I think are interesting enough to share. (Note that because this is […]

Refining 101: The Assay Essay

When a refinery purchases crude oil, the key piece of information they need to know about that crude, besides price, is what the crude oil assay looks like. There has been a lot of discussion […]