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 [...]

Kaiser Aluminum Corp. will add surcharges to all new orders of fabricated aluminum products starting Tuesday to offset rising costs for natural gas, electricity and diesel fuel.
The company said commodity prices for natural gas and diesel fuel was about 60 percent higher in May compared with the average 2007 price.

Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, wants to award a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. That’s about $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, “a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,” [...]

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill say investors have a role in rising oil prices, pointing out that speculation in crude futures has nearly doubled since 2000.
Pension funds, Wall Street banks and other large investors that have no intention of taking delivery of fuel have increasingly pumped money into contracts for oil and other commodities as [...]

International companies have been asked to bid for a tender to extract coal in parts of Kitui and Mwingi districts.
The Ministry of Energy asked interested firms to bid for the last phase of the exploration in the Mui basin as part of efforts to determine the commercial viability of the reserves. This comes in the [...]

Marathon Oil Corp. began work to add capacity to its Detroit refinery after receiving approval from state authorities.
The $1.9 billion project will boost the facility’s capacity to 115,000 barrels per day from 102,000 barrels per day — including 80,000 barrels per day of heavy oil, like that held in oil sands.
The project is slated for [...]

Oil futures rebounded on concerns about the Middle East and growing doubt that China’s government will be able to curb the country’s appetite for fuel by pushing prices higher.
Light, sweet crude for July delivery rose $2.69 to settle at $134.62 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, recovering some of the $4.75 that the [...]

Shares of Evergreen Solar Inc. shot up after the solar panel producer signed two long-term sales contracts.
Evergreen rose $2.06, or 20.1 percent, to close at $12.30.
Lehman Brothers analyst Vishal Shah raised his target price on the stock and predicted his Wall Street colleagues will soon raise their earnings forecasts for the company as well. That [...]

China’s National Development and Reform Commission said prices of gasoline and diesel oil will rise by 1,000 yuan ($145) per ton to 6,980 yuan ($1,015) and 6,520 yuan ($949), or 16 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
The government hiked fuel prices by about 11 percent in November but kept them frozen at that level, seeking to [...]

Oil prices dropped sharply after China said it will raise fuel prices, a move that could dampen its booming oil consumption.
Crude-oil prices also were given a downward push by the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s announcement that it is close to signing oil service deals with several major Western oil companies in an effort to boost crude [...]