North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, following a summit meeting with Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk, has expressed support for a proposed Russian project to send Siberian natural gas to South Korea through North Korean territory. (more…)

Brazil is often associated with ethanol when it comes to alternative energy, but 78 new wind power projects expected to generate around 2,000 MW are starting to make the country’s renewable energy mix a little more varied.

On Monday, Mauricio Tolmasquim, president and (more…)

There is a good deal of worry about the robustness of our nation’s economy. And rightly so. Especially since we have about 5 million fewer jobs today than in 2007, even as we have about 10 million more people to support with those available jobs.

In an effort to understand why economic (more…)

A U.S. Energy Department advisory panel has issued a qualified endorsement of the controversial shale gas exploitation technique of hydraulic fracturing, but a group of scientists charges that the panel’s recommendations are tainted because six of its seven members have current financial ties to the (more…)

Natural gas has been getting a lot of bad press recently because of the fracking (‘hydraulic fracturing’) debacle. The problem is that this method of gas drilling is riddled with controversy and real environmental risks. Gasland, an Oscar-nominated documentary about fracking, brought to the world’s attention how people (more…)

The American Wind Energy Association issued a press statement earlier this week to refute claims by Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which AWEA says is funded by Exxon-Mobil (a quick look at their website reveals it is pro-fracking). (more…)

Waste Management Inc., the largest hauler of waste in the U.S., next week a will add its 1,000th truck fueled by natural gas, a landmark that reflects a trend toward new trucking fleets powered by alternative energy sources.

About half of those trucks, including the newest, run (more…)

One of Washington’s key policy tenets since the 1991 collapse of Communism has been to pry out from under Moscow’s control as much of the energy assets of the post-Soviet space as possible.

Nowhere has this policy been more evident than in the Caspian basin and the energy riches of the new (more…)

Natural gas has been widely promoted across the political spectrum as a key to solving U.S. energy problems. “The potential for natural gas is enormous,” President Obama said recently, referencing an estimate that the United States has enough gas to supply the country for more than a century. (more…)

Many western analysts have described the post-Soviet tussle for Caspian and Central Asian energy reserves as the new “Great Game, except this time around, Russia is facing the U.S. rather than the British empire.

To a dispassionate outside observer however, what (more…)