Peak Oil News

China will reduce its reliance on petroleum imports by basing its energy supply on coal and developing new and renewable energies, said a senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Tuesday. China successfully reduced its net imports of petroleum last year, said Zhang Guobao, vice minister of the NDRC at the 7th Sino-U.S. Petroleum & Natural Gas Forum held in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. According to Zhang, China's oil consumption was 317 million tons last year, down slightly from the previous year and its net imports of petroleum are 136 million tons, less than that of 2004. » Source: People's Daily Online The Chinese economy has maintained a growth of over 10 percent for three years running so it is normal for China to see a rise in its ...

Arctic sea ice in winter is melting far faster than before, two new NASA studies reported Wednesday, a new and alarming trend that researchers say threatens the ocean's delicate ecosystem. Scientists point to the sudden and rapid melting as a sure sign of man-made global warming. "It has never occurred before in the past," said NASA senior research scientist Josefino Comiso in a phone interview. "It is alarming... This winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect." » Source: Yahoo News Scientists have long worried about melting Arcticsea ice in the summer, but they had not seen a big winter drop in sea ice, even though they expected it. For more than 25 years Arctic sea ice has slowly diminished in winter by about 1.5 percent per decade. But in the past two years the melting has occurred at rates 10 to 15 times faster. ...

The fight for space on Spain's beaches looks set to grow fiercer over the next four decades as the sand starts to disappear under a rising sea that also threatens to flood beach-side homes, according to a Spanish environment ministry report. Spain's beaches are expected to shrink by an average of 15 metres (50ft) by 2050 as global warming causes sea levels to creep up while stronger waves and currents eat away at the coastline. In some of the worst hit resorts, unprotected beaches could vanish altogether while salt water washes into holiday homes, the authors warn. » Source: Guardian Unlimited "I wouldn't buy a house in La Manga," said the report's coordinator, Professor Raúl Medina, referring to an area in the south-eastern region of Murcia popular with British holiday-home buyers. "It is a bad investment because I doubt that my ...

Sweden is planning to be oil free by 2020, and a multi-party Senate Committee has cited it as a good example. Their report raises recommendations reducing greenhouse gas emissions and car use, and investing in public transport, gas and biofuels. But new figures show that Australians are relying on their cars more than ever. Annie Guest has this report. » Source: The World Today ANNIE GUEST: It's no secret Australians love their cars, but there's evidence that affection is stronger than ever. Maryann Wood from the Bureau of Statistics says we're clocking up record kilometres. MARYANN WOOD: In the year ending 31st of October 2005, the report actually shows that Australian vehicles travelled just over 206 billion kilometres. ANNIE GUEST: And where does that sit with previous statistics? MARYANN WOOD: This is actually a record figure. ANNIE GUEST: Whether 2006's higher petrol prices have pushed more Australians ...

Underneath the high, scrub-covered rangeland of northwest Colorado is the world's biggest oil field. Getting the oil out of the ground, however, is one of the world's biggest headaches. The area's deposits of oil shale are believed to be larger than all the oil reserves of the Middle East. But past attempts to get at this oil locked in tarry rock have cost billions of dollars and raised the prospect of strip-mining large areas of the Rocky Mountain West. Now, as the federal government makes another push to develop oil shale, Shell and other companies say they have developed techniques that may extract this treasure with much less environmental impact. » Source: San Francisco Chronicle Shell's project is stunningly complex. Instead of strip-mining the rock and then processing it, Shell plans to ...

A global energy plan to be released by the World Bank next month risks squandering scarce resources on so-called clean coal technologies and misses bigger investments in renewable energy, but does address gaps in the energy needs of the poor, according to a new analysis by an environmental group. World Bank officials will discuss the document, called the "Progress Report on the Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development", later this month before it is placed on the agenda of the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), next month in Singapore. A similar programme focusing on longer term country-level activities and global research will be completed by the Group of Eight most industrialised countries at their summit in Japan in 2008. Rich nations had asked the ...