The Arab Spring, which began early last year and swept eastwards across Africa’s Magreb, has completely upended the region’s politics. Responses range from the relatively benign outcome in Tunisia, where it all began, to Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak was forced from office and now faces trial by the military government that succeed him, to Libya, where former leader Muammar Gadhaffi was killed following his capture. The final result in Syria has yet to emerge. Seeing opportunity where others see risk, Houston-based oil and…

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Canadian pipeline company TransCanada announced it was building a stand-alone section of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline to the southern coast of Texas. This in part addresses one of the primary aims of the project, which is to add pipeline capacity to the refining market along the southern U.S. coast. The White House welcomed the measure, but President Obama’s critics continued to complain. With TransCanada acknowledging Obama isn’t opposing the overall merits of the project, however, it’s odd that White House critics aren’t taking…

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Just when it seems that China has bought every energy asset on the planet, along comes Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production Plc (PTTEP) to contest Beijing’s presence in one of Southeast Asia’s “final frontiers” – Burma, or, as its rulers prefer, Myanmar. PTTEP expects soon to sign an agreement with Burma to explore for oil and gas in its PSC-G and EP2 onshore petroleum blocks. In January PTTEP, a subsidiary of PTT Plc, Thailand’s largest energy conglomerate, was awarded licenses for the two blocs, which…

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Wikileaks is publishing internal memos of the Stratfor security analysis firm. A few tidbits have emerged in these very early days, to wit: 1. Up to 12 Pakistani active-duty and retired officers from the Inter-Services Intelligence agency knew that Osama Bin Laden was in Abbottabad and were in regular contact with him. The Pakistani chief of staff is denying the report. 2. Dow Chemicals hired Stratfor to spy on activists in Agra who continue to protest over the Bhopal environmental disaster that blinded many workers and destroyed their health.…

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There is much written to the effect that thorium might prove a more viable nuclear fuel, and an energy industry based upon it, than the current uranium-based process which serves to provide both energy and weapons – including “depleted uranium” for armaments and missiles. There are different ways in which energy might be extracted from thorium, one of which is the accelerator-driven system (ADS). Such accelerators need massive amounts of electricity to run them, as all particle accelerators do, but these are required to produce a beam of protons…

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Several nights ago I participated in a debate (arranged by Russia Today TV – 24-7 –  CrossTalk, and transmitted internationally in English) in which I pointed out – on several occasions – that the aggregate (though unweighted) Brent-WTI (West Texas Intermediate)  price of oil was about 112 dollars a barrel (= $112/b), and I claimed that if this price reaches $130, we could be facing a clear and impending economic danger. Early the next morning, when I checked this aggregate price on the important sites OilPrice.Com…

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Mongolia is an East Asian country about the size of Alaska, with vast potential for wind energy due to the large unpopulated plains that make up most of the land, and the wind corridor of the Gobi desert. The south Gobi region is predicted to contain 300 gigawatts of wind energy potential which Mongolia are now looking to take advantage of based upon the expectation that its electricity demand will double within 15 years due to the fact that it has one of the fastest growing economies of the world, fuelled by its rich natural resources such as…

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