On the same day the Obama Administration put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline, two engineering contracts totaling $12.2 billion were awarded to two U.S. companies for work in the Alberta oil sands. One included a $750 million contract to a Chicago-based company for work on Exxon’s huge Kearl Oil Sands project, one of [...]
Was it not just last summer that BP’s engineers were working desperately around the clock to find a way to plug a three month leak from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that spilled 205 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico? Now, engineers and plant operators are braving potentially lethal [...]
The meltdown of three reactor cores at Tokyo Electric’s Fukushima nuclear power station in the tsunami and earthquake devastated area of northeastern Japan is already reverberating around the world’s nuclear power industry. Just as many countries were looking for nuclear power to play a growing role in meeting their future energy needs, the world is [...]
My local utility just mailed me a notice informing me that they’ve installed a new smart meter at my home that will start monitoring and charging me for my electricity depending upon time of use. The first thing I noticed about smart (i.e. off-peak) prices was how expensive dumb (i.e. peak) prices were. At 9.3 [...]