June 26, 2009
The Daily Beast
If only we could turn bullshit into energy. Armed with that technology, the House could skip today’s much-anticipated vote on the cap-and-trade bill, a 1,201-page grab bag of ideas that has been dubbed the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.”

June 24, 2009
The documentary, Food Inc. has been out for a few weeks. But readers should know that there's a companion book to the movie. Published last month by New York's best publishing house, PublicAffairs, the book includes my essay "The Ethanol Scam: Burning Food to Make Motor Fuel."

June 24, 2009
US News & World Report
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has declared that Yucca Mountain, the site in Nevada where the federal government has been planning to store high-level radioactive waste, is “never going to open.” Reid may be right. President Obama’s 2010 budget nearly zeroes out federal funding for the waste site. And in March, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told Congress that Yucca Mountain was no longer being viewed as a viable option for storing waste and that the federal government would develop a new disposal plan.

June 22, 2009
Energy Tribune
Last week, as the unrest in Iran grew more heated, I emailed Peter Wells, a British-born geologist, to get his perspective. Wells has three decades of experience in the global oil industry and during his career, he has visited Iran numerous times. Given his long experience in Iran and his deep understanding of the country’s complex political situation, I asked him for his read on the situation.

June 22, 2009
Energy Tribune
I can’t get enough news about what’s happening in Iran. The power struggle fascinates me for a number of reasons:

-- The demonstrations in Tehran and elsewhere show the huge miscalculations made by the country’s theocratic leadership. For years, Iran’s leaders have claimed that the country’s biggest threats were those that were coming from the outside: the US invasion of Iraq; the Israelis’ willingness to launch airstrikes, etc. In reality, the bigger danger to the Iranian regime was its own corruption and ineptitude.

June 12, 2009
Energy Tribune
James T. Hackett has spent nearly his entire career in the energy industry, with a particular focus on the oil and natural gas business. His resume includes stints at Dynegy, Pan Energy, Duke Energy, Ocean Energy and Devon Energy. In 2003, he left his job as president and COO of Devon to take the top job at Anadarko, where he is chairman, president, and CEO.

June 8, 2009
Energy Tribune
There’s no secret about the future of the US natural gas business. It’s all about “demand, demand, demand.” Those were the concluding remarks of Porter Bennett, the CEO of Bentek Energy, at his company’s “Benposium” a three-day conference on the US natural gas business that wrapped up last Thursday at the Houstonian Hotel.

May 29, 2009
US News & World Report
The secretaries always have the best dirt. That fact comes to mind after reading the piece by Mark Seal and Eleanor Squillari in the new issue of Vanity Fair. Squillari was Bernie Madoff's secretary and she gleefully dishes the dirt on Bernie, his jealous free-spending wife, Ruth, and the Ponzi schemers who ran Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.

May 27, 2009
The Daily Beast
Given that I’m working on another book on energy, I’ve been reading a lot about nuclear power. The best and most concise one I’ve come across is All About Nuclear Energy: From Atom to Zirconium published last year by the French nuclear giant, Areva.

May 21, 2009
Energy Tribune
Roberto Aguilera is one of the world’s leading experts on tight gas engineering. Two decades ago, the industry’s ability to extract natural gas from low-porosity formations was nearly non-existent. Now, thanks to new technologies, tight gas has become the industry’s growth engine.

May 19, 2009
Energy Tribune
Given the level of energy ignorance in this country, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. But the inclusion of Amory Lovins in Time magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People of 2009” just sticks in my craw. Time’s blurb on Lovins declares that he “had the solution to the energy problem in 1976. It's taken the rest of us 33 years to catch up.”

What pure unadulterated bunk.

May 11, 2009
Energy Tribune
(Note: Robert Bryce shared a byline on this story with Priyanka Bhardwaj)
With the rest of the world talking about carbon dioxide emissions and another Kyoto-style emission reductions plan, India continues to utilize the energy source that it has in abundance: coal.

India gets 51.4 percent of its primary energy from coal, making it the fourth-most coal dependent country in the world. And the primacy of coal will continue for decades to come as India has enough coal reserves to last for the next 100 years.

May 3, 2009
The Daily Beast
The Texas GOP provided the gubernatorial platform, much of the money, and more than 10 percent of the electoral votes that George W. Bush needed to get to the White House and stay there for two terms. But the 43rd president's first 100 days back in Texas are proving that the onetime favorite son is about as popular as swine flu. The state’s Republican politicians and candidates, who just a few years ago eagerly latched onto his electoral coattails, are staying away in droves.

April 24, 2009
Energy Tribune
David Kirsch knows the history of electric cars as well as anyone in America. His book, The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History, published in 2000, has become one of the key reference sources on the subject.

April 20, 2009
Energy Tribune
The ethanol scammers have no shame. None. And neither does the ethanol industry’s new flack, General Wesley Clark.

Last week, the EPA announced that it was considering raising the volume of ethanol that could be blended into gasoline from the current limit of 10% to as much as 15%. The agency is reacting to a petition from the pro-ethanol trade group, Growth Energy, a recently formed group that hired Clark to be its spokes-general. More on Clark in a moment.

April 19, 2009
The Daily Beast
Okay, I get it. Carbon dioxide is bad. It’s a pollutant. Thus, based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed finding on greenhouse gases, everyone is now a polluter.

This includes me. I’ve been polluting since July 19, 1960, and damn it, I’m going to keep polluting until they pull the nostrils from my cold dead body. And don’t even think about trying to cut the pollutants emitted by our family’s hyperactive bird dog, Biscuit. She’s a big time exhaler, particularly when the weather gets hot.

April 16, 2009
Energy Tribune
I met Ake Almgren in early April after getting a tour of International Battery’s manufacturing plant in Allentown, Pennsylvania. International Battery is an oddity: the company has imported machinery and technology from China, and has begun using that machinery and technology to build batteries here in the U.S.

April 15, 2009
The Daily Beast
Back in 1951, during a speech to Congress, General Douglas MacArthur famously declared that "old soldiers never die, they just fade away." Alas, if only if only that were true for General Wesley Clark, who continues to haunt American voters and consumers. His latest job: carrying water for the corn-ethanol producers.

Clark, a retired four-star general, graduated first in his class at West Point. He served as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. In 2004, he ran for president as a Democrat but quit the race after racking up a single primary win: Oklahoma.

April 10, 2009
Energy Tribune
The recurring lesson emerging from the corn ethanol scam is this: too many mandates and subsidies are probably worse than none at all. Evidence of that can be found by looking at Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings, the Illinois-based ethanol producer. On Wednesday, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, saying it had $799.5 million in assets and nearly $491 million in debts.

April 8, 2009
The Daily Beast
Save the outrage: The news that Lawrence Summers, Barack Obama’s top economic advisor, collected a total of $7.7 million from hedge funds and Wall Street outfits in 2008 shouldn’t surprise anyone. The paved-with-gold revolving door between Wall Street and Washington has been swinging for years, and the Obama administration is no different from any of the crowds before it.

March 31, 2009
Energy Tribune
For years, ethanol boosters have promised Americans that “cellulosic” ethanol lurks just ahead, right past the nearest service station. Once it becomes viable, this magic elixir -- made from grass, wood chips, sawdust, or some other plant material -- will deliver us from the evil clutches of foreign oil and make the U.S. “energy independent” while enriching farmers and strengthening small towns across the country.

March 17, 2009
Senate Energy Committee
America depends on cheap abundant energy. But over the past few years, and particularly over the past few months, it appears that Congress is hellbent on making energy scarce and expensive. Before going further let me be clear that I am here speaking only for myself. I am neither Democrat nor Republican, I’m a member of the Disgusted Party.

I’m not a scientist or an engineer. I’m a journalist. But I know how to use a calculator. And that skill – basic mathematics – is the skill that Congress must apply when creating energy policy.

March 16, 2009
Energy Tribune
In May 2007, I did a Q&A with Roger Pielke, Sr. a professor emeritus of meteorology at Colorado State University who is now a senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Pielke has become one of the best-known critics of the approach taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

March 6, 2008
Energy Tribune
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published my piece “Let’s Get Real About Renewable Energy.” The piece used basic arithmetic to show that solar power and wind power – while growing dramatically – are not going to replace hydrocarbons any time soon.

March 4, 2009
Wall Street Journal
During his address to Congress last week, President Barack Obama declared, "We will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."

While that statement -- along with his pledge to impose a "cap on carbon pollution" -- drew applause, let's slow down for a moment and get realistic about this country's energy future. Consider two factors that are too-often overlooked: George W. Bush's record on renewables, and the problem of scale.

February 27, 2009
Energy Tribune
The last of the lectures at the Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ annual conference at the Westin Galleria in Houston ended two weeks ago. But travel and other obligations have diverted my attention. And now that I have a few minutes, herewith, a few notes from the three days I spent at CERAWeek.

February 20, 2009
Guardian.co.uk
The next time you hear someone say "we are addicted to oil" or "we are addicted to coal", try this exercise: substitute the word "prosperity" for "oil". Do the same for "coal".

February 17, 2009
Energy Tribune
For years, the US has been inundated with claims that it should follow Brazil’s lead on biofuels. These arguments have largely been made by a small, but influential group of neoconservatives who claim that the US should quit using oil altogether. They claim that using more ethanol – produced from sugar cane, or corn, or some other substance – will impoverish OPEC and America will once again be returned to prosperity.

February 13, 2009
Energy Tribune  
On Friday, during the CERAWeek conference in Houston, MIT professor Andrew Kadak provided a graphic that showed the share price performance of electric utilities that rely on nuclear power versus utilities that rely primarily on fossil fuels.

February 11, 2009
US News & World Report
Last week, as a friend of mine and I were discussing the energy business, an acquaintance of ours came into the room. When told the topic of discussion, she immediately denounced Exxon Mobil. She'd just heard on the radio that the energy giant had had a record $45.2 billion profit in 2008. She was clearly hoping that we would join in her disgust.

February 10, 2009
Energy Tribune
A couple days ago, I published a piece listing 14 studies that have exposed the high costs of the ethanol scam. I overlooked three points: A new study by Cornell University’s David Pimentel, the latest numbers showing the amount of corn ethanol distilling capacity that has been idled due to negative margins, and finally, a story by Bloomberg News which says that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is talking with the Environmental Protection Agency about raising the amount of ethanol blended into the US gasoline supply.

February 6, 2009
Texas Observer
Jim Schwertner can almost see food prices rising in real time. He only needs to look through the big smudged window behind his paperwork-covered desk. Schwertner’s second-floor office overlooks the dusty pens and loading docks at Capitol Land & Livestock, the sprawling cattle brokerage business that he owns about 45 miles north of Austin.

February 5, 2009
Counterpunch
On its website, Wisconsin-based Renew Energy says it is the “biofuels industry leader for innovation and efficiency.” It goes on, saying that its new 130 million gallon per year ethanol plant in Jefferson, Wisconsin is “the largest dry mill corn fractionation facility in the world” which uses 35 percent less energy and 33 percent less water than similar ethanol plants.

That would be impressive but for one fact: Renew Energy just filed for bankruptcy.

February 2, 2009
Energy Tribune
Bill Reinert knows cars. He helped design the Prius, perhaps the most iconic “green” vehicle on the road today. Over the past few years, Reinert, an affable, irreverent engineer not known for holding his tongue, has become one of America’s most-recognized experts on automotive and technology issues. For a few hard-core electric car advocates, Reinert is something of a villain.

February/March 2009
BookForum
Texas has long had a jujitsu hold on the American psyche. Residents of other states share a combined revulsion and admiration for the Lone Star State, the only member of the union that—stop me if you’ve heard this—was a country before it was a state. For the most part, this wariness is mutual, as one can quickly gather from the occasional pickup-truck bumper sticker bearing an image of the Texas flag with "secede" stenciled over the top—an odd posture for a resident of the state recently governed by the last occupant of the Oval Office.

January 23, 2009
Energy Tribune
If you are looking for a reason why oil demand and oil prices are so lackluster, consider this: US drivers are staying home, and they are doing so in record numbers.

January 16, 2009
Salon
Israel's current air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip has left about 1,000 Palestinians dead, including 400 women and children. Several thousand people have been wounded and dozens of buildings have been destroyed. An estimated 90,000 Gazans have abandoned their homes. Israel's campaign in Gaza, which began more than two weeks ago, has been denounced by the Red Cross, multiple Arab and European countries, and agencies from the United Nations. Demonstrations in Pakistan and elsewhere have been held to denounce America's support for Israel.

January 15, 2009
Energy Tribune
It’s easy to malign coal. And over the past few weeks, the news has been bad. A few days before Christmas, at a power plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, a huge holding pond failed. The resulting spill flooded some 300 acres with coal ash contaminated with a variety of heavy metals including arsenic, lead, barium, chromium and manganese.

December 30, 2008
Counterpunch
The disastrous presidency of George W. Bush will be remembered for decades to come. The litany of failures are many: the extra-Constitutional kidnapping and detention of suspected terrorists, the torture of prisoners, the trumped-up intelligence that led to a futile war in Iraq, the lackadaisical response to the hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, the laissez faire attitude toward financial regulation...the list goes on.

December 29, 2008
Energy Tribune
Barack Obama promised to deliver “the change we need.” Alas, the president-elect cannot seem to change his thinking about the ethanol scam. Over the past few weeks, Obama’s delusions about ethanol have become even more pronounced.