Crude oil futures hovered around $80 a barrel amid renewed confidence in the economic recovery. Sentiment is such that dips below $80 are seen as buying opportunities, an analyst tells Bloomberg.
The U.S. CFTC will outline today limits on positions energy traders can hold, the belated response to worries speculators were behind big price spikes in 2008, in the WSJ.
Iran will start winding down fuel subsidies, which eat up 30% of its budget, AP reports in the WSJ.
If North Sea oil and gas production was already reeling, the recession kicked the industry while it was down and lowered investment in the region, in the FT.
Want to know why President Obamas clean-energy dreams have failed to materialize? Because its the same magical thinking that has prevailed since the Carter years, argue Nordhaus and Shellenberger in Foreign Policy. Whats needed instead is hard-headed investment in energy technology, they argue.
Now that the health-care fight is over, T. Boone Pickens is back on his natural-gas powered soap box, in the NYT.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says a decision on the Cape Wind offshore wind farm is due before April, a sign the decade-long scrum between clean energy and clean vistas is drawing to a close, in the NYT.
The U.K. is going full hog on offshore wind, but that doesnt mean the strategy is without its risks, in Green Inc. Offshore wind makes more sense for the U.K. than the U.S., but America still needs to do something big when it comes to clean energy, argues Geoff Styles. Because small wind sure isnt doing the trick, in the WSJ.
U.S. utilities are struggling to plan major infrastructure investments after two years of declining demand for electricity, throwing the sector into turmoil, in the WSJ. Utilities in California wont meet their 2010 targets for renewable energy despite a heroic last-minute push, at Earth2Tech.
Germanys done too muchbut the country is close to reaching an agreement to cut generous subsidies for solar power, hoping to avoid a Spain-style implosion, in Reuters.
Finally, could China lose its appetite for coal? It could if reliance on coal starts to hurt, rather than enhance, energy security, at the FTs Energy Source.