Energy

BNK Petroleum announced today that the Lebork S-1 well, on the Slupsk concession in Poland has been drilled, cased and cemented to its total depth of 3,590 meters. The well was originally drilled to 3,517 meters and 223 meters of whole core were recovered. At that time a full suite of logs were run. After evaluation of the logs it was decided to deepen the well to its final depth of 3,590 meters, after which another full suite of logs were run and 113 sidewall cores were taken over the additional interval drilled.  The whole core and sidewall cores were taken to fully evaluate the…

If you're not one of the 172,000 Japanese people living within a dozen miles of the Fukushima Daiichi plant who have been advised (read: forced) to leave, you are breathing a sigh of relief while you hope things turn out okay. But a new analysis carried out by Nature and the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center at Columbia University says two-thirds of the world’s 211 nuclear power plants have more people in the same radius than the ones who have had to flee their homes in Japan.  They're not all on known earthquake faults, obviously, but disaster concerns are an important…

LONDON, April 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The tax increase imposed by the UK government has invoked wide spread condemnation from the oil and gas industry with the threat of major North Sea projects being halted. SMi Group's Taxation in Oil and Gas conference will investigate the effect that this increase could have on North Sea oil and gas ventures as the tax implications are factored into exploration and production companies' financial forecasts and the economics of these projects are reassessed. Leading authorities on tax will provide expert insight and a forum for thorough debate to…

Several times this question has been raised : How can we produce bio-diesel ? Which plants can provide bio-diesel ? What is bio-diesel ? Some of the quick answers are : 1. What is biomass which you want to use to produce bio-diesel: Generally there are three categories of biomass which could be used to produce bio-diesel: a. Biofuel plants, plant pellets, bio-waste etc can be converted in to bio-fuel which can be eventually converted into bio-diesel by using simple process of vaccum pyrolysis. b. Non edible seed oil plants : Jatropha, Pongamia or any other non edible oil producing plant which…

Green energy technologies like wind, solar and biomass presently constitute only 3.6% of fuel used to generate electricity in the U.S.   Energy expert Vaclav Smil calculates that achieving Al Gore's renewable energy goal in a decade would incur building costs and write-downs on the order of $4 trillion, note Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren at Forbes.  Is that a lot?  Not spread over 10 years.  That is only 25% of what the U.S. economy lost in 2008-2009 so anyone claiming this investment would be devastating has to note America did not collapse when 4X that much value…

The world's largest plant to turn natural gas into cleaner-burning fuels and lubricants took a major step closer to production today when gas began flowing from a giant offshore field.  Pearl GTL will process around 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent over its lifetime from the world's largest single gas field, the North Field in the Arabian Gulf. The field stretches from Qatar's coast and contains more than 900 trillion cubic feet of gas, equivalent to 150 billion barrels of oil, or over 10% of worldwide gas resources.  The gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant, a joint development by Qatar…

For decades we have been told that with the lessons learned from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, nuclear energy is safe. As the still unfolding mayhem at the Dai-Ichi plant in Fukushima, Japan, proves, nothing could be further from the truth. The fuel rods in at least three reactors are partly molten. All six reactors are in trouble, although most were not on-line during the earthquake! In spite of all downplaying by officials, the nuclear industry, and science apologists, a complete meltdown of some reactors and a nuclear chain reaction of molten fuel are still possible. A few science bloggers…

LONDON, March 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Prices on Europe's largest power market spiked violently on Tuesday morning in response to 25% of Germany's nuclear capacity coming off line. The decision stems from safety concerns following the series of explosions at Japan's nuclear reactors. By 12:30 London time, the price of contracts for power delivered in Germany during April, May and June 2011 each posted record gains on Tuesday over Monday's closing price. April '11 Baseload rose EUR10.05 per megawatthour (MWh) from Monday's close to trade as high as EUR64.25/MWh, May '11 Baseload gained…

Have you ever wondered when the magnetic poles are going to reverse or ‘flip’ next, what might cause this and what will happen to life on Earth when and if they do? No, then maybe you are not a worrier like me and so I apologize in advance if this article gives you any cause for concern, I also apologize for the article's ludicrous length which I have tried unsuccessfully to curtail. Unfortunately, it seems to me, as only an interested laywoman and a Science2.0 blogger who is definitely not an expert on this subject, that there are few scientific experts in this field who appear to be able…

You've heard of Granola, we all have.   But is it a green technology?   Yes and no.   It turns out the name is no longer trademarked so when Virginia Tech computer science faculty member Kirk Cameron and co-founder Joseph Turner decided to create intelligent software power management green software for use in servers, personal computers, and laptops, they named it Granola. Though with academics it's hard to know whether they knew about trademark status or not.   Once every six months we someone in academia get funding for a "Science 2.0" tool despite it being a…