Posts Tagged ‘Alternative Fuels’

Shell's Game

I am puzzled by the logic used by Shell to justify its intention to extract coal-bed methane in the Klappan area.

"This deal puts us at the front of the cellulosic biofuels game," said Sue Ellerbusch, president of BP Biofuels North America, in a statement.

Very few hydrogen centres exist in Britain – there is a station in Birmingham and one in Wales – but officials insist that oil giants such as BP and Shell have the design experience and safety expertise to install hydrogen pumps on forecourts.

Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil group, and Iogen, the Canadian biotech company, have agreed to extend their commercial alliance...

Royal Dutch Shell is stepping up investment in research into “second generation” biofuels, putting more money into its joint venture with Iogen, a Canadian biotech company, in spite of having made only slow progress so far.

Shell is stepping up its share of Iogen to 50 per cent from 26.3 per cent. The oil firm first invested in Iogen in 2002.

As prices have risen, worries about energy security and long-term climate effects have reached a fever pitch.

The confidential report, based on a detailed economic analysis of the effect of biofuels, will put pressure on the American and European governments, which have turned to biofuels in attempts to reduce the greenhouse gases associated with fossil fuels and to reduce their reliance on oil imports.

Shell and BP are also exploring the possibilities of second-generation biofuels, the latter in partnership with the chemicals company DuPont.

Thirst for energy will double in the first half of the century, but increased biofuel production and carbon storage could help the world stabilize greenhouse gas levels by the 2020s, oil giant Shell said on Wednesday.

Van der Veer, who is due to retire next year after almost four decades with the company, is in Malaysia to meet top Shell executives.

The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone. Goldman Sachs predicted last week that the price could rise to an unprecedented $200 a barrel over the next year, and the world is coming to terms with the idea that the age of cheap oil has ended, with far-reaching repercussions on their activities.

A Royal Dutch Shell executive said there's "plenty of oil in the world," but whoever restricts supply -- read Saudi Arabia, Venezuela et al -- are in fact spurring alternatives such as wind, solar and nuclear energy and Canadian tar sands.