That aged stallwart of popular culture, Rolling Stone magazine, dissects the last year of efforts to create a U.S. climate change bill in its recent issue, including a sort of “tick-tock” on how “Big Oil and Big Coal” conspired to derail the legislation. The issue also profiles the 17 individuals it considers most responsible for [...]  More »

It seems like most stories these days about natural gas shale exploration and environmental concerns are all about hydraulic fracturing. The process has been a particular sticking point for communities in the Northeast United States, in New York and Pennsylvania. But as I wrote on Sunday air quality issues have come front-and-center in areas of [...]  More »

Three Penny Productions After screenings in New York and Copenhagen, the Haynesville natural gas documentary is coming to Houston. The Chronicle, with help from Tudor Pickering Holt, will screen the film at Rice University Jan. 21, and you can get on the guest list. Haynesville follows the story of three people whose lives change after [...]  More »

normalityrelief/Flickr The state’s main grid operator says Texas set a new winter record for electricity use, hitting 55,856 megawatts between 7 and 8 a.m. today, beating the old record by almost 5,500 megawatts. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said the region first beat the old record last night, between 7 and 8 p.m., when [...]  More »

Dallas-based Kosmos Energy had a big success in recent years when it found the Jubilee oil field off the coast of Ghana. It’s a play that attracted the attention of Exxon Mobil, which is buying part of its stake in the field. That transaction may be in danger, however, as U.S. and Ghanaian officials appear [...]  More »

And just when it seemed like we were gaining ground on our long-running air quality issues in Houston, along comes this…. The federal government proposed a tougher limit on ozone pollution on Thursday that will force Houston to make deeper emissions cuts just as the former smog capital met the previous standard for the first [...]  More »

Shell’s Chukchi Sea drilling plan was cleared by the Department of Interior last year, and now it appears the Environmental Protection agency will give the OK too, according to the Anchorage Daily News: The federal Environmental Protection Agency proposes to approve Shell’s air-quality permit covering its plan to explore for oil and gas this summer [...]  More »

New York environmental regulators received received some 9,600 comments on a draft environmental impact statement on new rules for natural gas drilling. Some of it is the same message repeated, but much of it is in opposition to the status quo on drilling, says Sullivan County, N.Y., newspaper The River Reporter: And while it is [...]  More »

• Indian company hikes offer for LyondellBasell stake • Range estimates production up 14 percent in 2009. • Iran unlikely to blockade the Straights of Hormuz. • The return of $3 gas. • Green tech investments slip, but could be worse. • Ways to personally prepare for Peak Oil. • Global carbon market grew in [...]  More »

While Houstonian’s covered their plants and wrapped their pipes, the local natural gas distribution company, CenterPoint Energy, was making its own plans. “We plan for everything, even, I hate to say it, terrorist attacks,” Tal Centers, vice president of engineering for technical services for CenterPoint Energy’s gas operations told me earlier this week. “This is [...]  More »

Remember that effort by Chinese oil giant CNOOC nearly five years ago to acquire Unocal? It was a high-profile effort met by a bit of panic in the U.S. That heavy-handed approach is becoming a thing of the past, however, as China continues to try and get hold of natural resources around the world, notes [...]  More »

Indy Charlie/Flickr Gasoline demand has hit a 13-month low, according to data from credit card giant MasterCard (via BusinessWeek). And gasoline in storage has surged by 5.53 million gallons, according to American Petroleum Institute data. Easy enough to explain as just a cold-weather, holiday-season lull in driving, right? Maybe not, says Phil Flynn with PFGBest: [...]  More »