June 2, 2008
A wonderful article in the Independent of London looking at the Pennsylvania oilfields where John Rockefeller began his oil fortune and where business is — once again — booming for mom-and-pop independent drillers cashing in on $130 a barrel oil. Rupert Cornwell reports on the new “black gold rush” in...
June 2, 2008
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations recently released a report on the world’s agricultural outlook from now through 2012. The report, prepared jointly by the two groups, tries to sort out the factors driving up food prices. The...
June 1, 2008
On Thursday, May 29, Agriculture Department Secretary Ed Schafer said skyrocketing oil prices make biofuels all the more necessary and that U.S. ethanol production is “not distorting the global price of food. Schaeffer added that ethanol production specifically has come from increased yields in the corn crops and that corn exports...
May 28, 2008
First it was tortillas. Now it’s movie tickets. The price of movie tickets is expected to go up this year due to the rising cost of corn used to make popcorn, according to Ricard Gil, a University of Santa Cruz economist who studies the movie industry. The price corn, in turn, is partly being bumped up by the...
May 28, 2008
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman Jeff Bingaman (D.-N.M.) sent a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) this week asking the agency to “dig more deeply” as it investigates the role of speculation and non-commercial, institutional investors in raising the price of oil to today’s...
May 28, 2008
The news media are constantly claiming that Americans are reducing their energy consumption — and changing their behavior — in light of rising gasoline prices. With plans to revisit as new articles come out, I thought it would be interesting to keep an eye on the types of evidence being reported and the apparent resulting...
May 27, 2008
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced last week that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.6 percent in 2007. Some of this growth can be attributed to economic expansion; the U.S. Gross Domestic Product increased by 2.2 percent in 2007. Also, 2007 saw more heating- and cooling-degree days (which require more...
May 26, 2008
A joint U.S.-French satellite project announced by NASA this week will track trends in sea levels and the climate. The satellite, which will be launched on June 15, 2008, will help scientists look at the world’s ocean circulation and its links to the Earth’s climate over the next decade. The Ocean Surface Topography Mission...
May 26, 2008
There are some interesting new statistics about how much of the corn grown in the United States is directly consumed for food. These numbers, which come from a transcript of a recent conference call about the food-versus-fuel debate hosted by the Renewable Fuels Association (a pro-ethanol group), are worth a look. (The transcript is...
May 23, 2008
Legislation introduced this week by Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, would cap U.S. corn-based ethanol production at 9 billion gallons in 2009. The 2007 energy bill that was enacted raised the level to 15 billion gallons by 2015. Ten other Republican lawmakers have signed on as cosponsors, including Republican...