And the pendulum swings

One of the clear lessons from the BP/Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil disaster is that too much deregulation (or more accurately too little oversight) can have monumentally bad consequences.  Stephen Power in today's WSJ (htt...

Posted Thursday, September 9th, 2010 at 2:25 pm | Filed in: Energy Security, Energy Supply, National Security, Oil Dependence

Learning From Light Bulbs

Later this month, according to the Washington Post, General Electric will close the last light bulb factory currently operating in the United States. According to GE, the shutdown is a result of the transition from incandescent li...

Posted Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 8:49 pm | Filed in: Electricity

Updating the economic costs of U.S. oil dependence

The year 2009 was generally one of reduced economic activity—and therefore reduced demand for oil—in the United States.  Total oil consumption averaged just 18.7 million barrels per day (mbd) according to the BP Statistical R...

Posted Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 1:40 pm | Filed in: Economic Security, Oil Dependence

Weekly Political Roundup

This week, a new 12-18 month waiting period was announced, and both Democrats and Republicans in Washington let out a collective groan of frustration.  The news, however, was not of another delay in the seemingly interminable wai...

Posted Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 6:02 am | Filed in: Electrification, Energy Supply, Legislation

Greenpeace versus Greenland

Readers of this space read last week about the protests over Cairn Energy's production activities in the Arctic.  Today's WSJ has a nice piece by James Herron (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870420680457546739021846...

Posted Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 7:52 am | Filed in: Energy Demand, Energy Security, Energy Supply