As America’s top financial officials updated Congress on their proposed $700 billion plan to rescue the stressed financial markets, oil prices stabilized, for now, towards the $100 a barrel mark today after rising rapidly on Monday. Emerging market experts, tracking the fluctuating prices, were generally optimistic on the long-term stability of energy-heavy economies such as [...]
CONSOL Energy Inc., the nation’s largest producer of bituminous coal, and Synthesis Energy Systems Inc., a global industrial gasification company, intend to develop through a joint venture their first U.S. coal gasification and liquefaction plant to be located in West Virginia. CONSOL (through its subsidiary Terra Firma Company) and SES have formed Northern Appalachia Fuel [...]
Utah’s Republican senators say Congress is set to extend a moratorium on commercial oil-shale development on federal land for another year.
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett want to let the moratorium expire at the end of September and let companies develop shale as an alternative fuel.
Hatch and Bennett said deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming [...]
The U.S. Interior Department’s Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sales on Wednesday reaped a record $3.7 billion - the highest amount ever in a U.S. government lease sale - as oil prices hovered above $100 a barrel, the Minerals Management Service said.
Flush with cash from record crude prices, short on reserves replacement ratios [...]
Peabody Energy Corp. has pledged nearly one million tons of coal a year and up to $10 million in development funds to an Illinois plant planners say would become the nation’s first to commercially turn coal into liquid fuels for tomorrow’s big-rig trucks, buses, barges or jets.
St. Louis-based Peabody, as part of the deal announced [...]
Net oil imports to the Philippines fell 2.6 percent in volume terms last year partly due to conservation measures implemented as prices soared, the government said on Sunday.
Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said the country’s net oil imports fell to 100.8 million barrels last year compared with 103.46 million in 2005.
However, the Southeast Asian country’s net [...]
Lawmakers who are looking at revamping the way the state regulates the booming oil and gas business are listening to the industry’s concerns, but that won’t stop the proposal from moving ahead, Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald said Wednesday.
Industry representatives want some clarification about what the changes will mean for them, she said.
“It’s energy independence, we [...]
U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has praised a report that has focused on the need to develop technologies to reduce carbon emissions from coal.
“Make no mistake about it, we must recognize that the use of American coal in electricity generation is essential to our nation’s energy independence and security,” said Domenici, ranking member of the [...]
The battle lines have been clearly drawn between the Democrats in Congress, a handful of major names in the international mining industry and the National Mining Association and its coal company members.
The Democrats’ victory in last year’s elections means Congress’s stance on environmental issues has changed dramatically. Gone is the champion of mining and big [...]
After a hearing lasting 15 months and involving dozens of witnesses, the fate of a proposed wind farm that a Vermont-based wind energy company wants to build in northern Lycoming County is in the hands of a county judge.
On Monday, Dec. 18, Judge Nancy Butts heard arguments from attorneys representing the company and the county [...]
