Russia’s energy exports are expanding far beyond oil and gas to include coal, nuclear and refined petroleum products, a trend with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.
Dormant: oil rigs in North Dakota stand idle due to a crash in global oil prices.
Andrew Cullen/Reuters
Cheap gas is traditionally a boost for the U.S. economy but this time the economy could be badly hurt because of the domestic drilling boom and financial bets made by the oil & gas industry.
The U.S. oil industry is in the doldrums, but there’s not much the next (or current) president can do about it.
www.shutterstock.com
The next president will have little power to slow the growth of renewable energy, sliding oil prices or coal’s decline.
Looking for relief: Southern California Gas Company and outside experts work on a relief well at the Aliso Canyon designed to stop the ongoing natural gas leak.
Dean Musgrove/Reuters
The Aliso Canyon methane leak in California is bad, but it’s only a small portion of the methane leaked from the natural gas industry’s sprawling pipeline and storage infrastructure.
It has been argued that connecting the pipeline to the Moomba gas hub (pictured) would have been more beneficial for the sector.
Santos Ltd/AAP
Fracking fluids in Marcellus shale have contaminated groundwater but new study finds that the source is likely from surface spills, not leaks from underground wells.
US Studies Centre research associate Tom Switzer said on Q&A that US carbon emissions had levelled off because of coal seam gas, but activist Naomi Klein said it was due to the economic downturn. What does the research say?
Water from coal seam gas mining would be treated at a reverse osmosis plant before being re-injected into the ground.
CSIRO
The Queensland government wants companies to use waste water from coal seam gas extraction for useful purposes such as recharging aquifers. New CSIRO research shows that, with careful monitoring, it can be done.
BP’s energy outlook would make it difficult to keep warming below 2C.
EPA/BERND THISSEN
Gary Ellem, University of Newcastle; Damien Giurco, University of Technology Sydney; James Ward, University of South Australia e Steve Mohr, University of Technology Sydney
Australia likely has decades of fossil fuels left to extract, export and burn. That could prove to be a problem if the world comes to an agreement on climate change. Here’s four ways to help the economy, and the climate.
What happens to coal in China will play a big role in deciding which climate road we’re all on.
Han Jun Zeng/Flickr
Drilling in the Marcellus Shale, and in other unconventional oil and gas formations across the US, has led to a boom in domestic natural gas and oil production -– largely due to advances in high volume…
Shipping gas overseas can be good for Australia - but bad for Australian gas bills.
Ken Hodge
Queensland’s liquid natural gas boom, built on the back of vast reserves of coal seam gas, will bring huge gains to Australia. Exports of gas are set to quadruple by 2018, creating investment, jobs and…
Mexico must manage its reserves well to transition to a sustainable energy future.
EPA/Pemex
Following President Lázaro Cárdenas’ expropriation of foreign oil company assets in 1938, the oil industry has been a symbol of Mexican sovereignty. This made the state oil firm Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex…
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and CNPC Chairman Zhou Jiping sign documents as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping look on.
Alexey Druginyn/Ria Novosti/AAP
The US$400 billion gas deal signed between Russia’s giant state-owned corporation Gazprom and China last week is 16 times larger than its predessor in the supply of gas to China - a US$25 billion LNG project…
Plenty of gas in Siberia just found a market.
Dariusz Delmanowicz/EPA
After ten years of negotiations, Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) have announced they have signed a 30-year gas contract. Russia will from the end of this decade supply…
Methane hydrates - fire ice from deep under the sea.
Wusel007
Last year Japanese scientists announced they had for the first time extracted gas from offshore deposits of methane hydrate, an ice-like substance made of natural gas (methane) trapped inside water crystals…