oil

Gushing About L.A.'s Cleverly-Disguised Urban Oil Fields

Los Angeles is the world's most urban oil field, with 41 active--but ingeniously camouflaged--sites where black gold is siphoned from the ground.READ»

Yee-haw! Texas Dominates Best-Performing Cities Index

Perhaps that famous photo illustration should read, "Everything's bigger--and better!--in Texas." Lone Star cities, led by Austin (#1) and Ft. Hood (#2), lassoed nine of the top 16 spots on this year's Milken Institute/Greenstreet ...READ»

Plot Jewelry Is Neckwear for Data Fiends

A couple of employees of ad agency W+K have come up with one of the kookier ideas in recent memory: data-driven jewelry. After scores of meetings, planner Lisa Prince noticed that data was being packaged up in ever ...READ»

By Serving Many Ethonomics Happens Naturally

Last week I flew to Bogota, Colombia for the day. My Latin American partner, AltaGerencia, had arranged for me to speak at a conference organized by Ecopetrol, Colombia's largest integrated oil company. I’ve delivered such ...READ»

Black Gold at 150: The History of Oil in America

Before 1859, America had no oil business. August 28 marks the 150th anniversary of its first commercial well. Today, the U.S. is the world's third-biggest oil producer and largest consumer. Join us for a tour of this gas-guzzling nation.READ»

Drilling Dreams and Nightmares

It’s time to harness technology. READ»

Head in the Tar Sands? The New York Times Runs Anti-Peak Oil Op-Ed

Oil-Coated Ruddy Duck in the San Francisco Bay, by wolfpix, on Flickr Earlier this month, the world's chief energy economist told the UK Independent that global oil production was likely to peak in 10 years, with a "global energy ...READ»

Brightsource Brings Solar Power to the Oil Industry

What do you think of when you hear the phrase "solar power"? Chances are, you don't picture a Chevron oil field. Yet that's exactly where BrightSource Energy wants to put a 29-megawatt solar thermal plant by the end of 2010. As oil ...READ»

American Petroleum Institute Demonstrates How to Screw Up a Grassroots Event

It's no secret that oil and gas companies don't like the Waxman-Markey climate change bill. After all, Exxon and its ilk stand to lose a lot of cash if they have to buy emission permits for all the greenhouse gases they let loose. But ...READ»

Toyota's Big Electric Car Blunder

Bill Reinert hates the plug-in electric car. He hates ethanol too. And what Bill Reinert hates matters to every car-buying American: he's Toyota's national sales manager and in-house energy sage, and he knows his stuff. But is he too ...READ»

Naked Juice Brings PET Bottles to the Mainstream

Mainstream beverage distributors haven't managed to muster up the energy to produce 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles--until now. Naked Juice became the first nationally distributed brand to use PET (polyethylene ...READ»

Pickens Drops Wind Plan, Cites Transmission Costs

T. Boone Pickens has dropped his much-ballyhooed plan, chronicled in our pages, to build the world's largest wind farm, in favor of a handful of smaller wind farms scattered around the Midwest. He cites many of the same factors that ...READ»

Drill: The U.S. Oil Industry Turns 150

Before 1859, America had no oil business. August 28 marks the 150th anniversary of its first commercial well. Today, the U.S. is the world's third-biggest oil producer and largest consumer. Join us for a tour of this gas-guzzling nation.READ»

• Now July/August 2009
• Watch: Harry Potter 6
• Numerology: Hawaii Five-O

How Can We Feed 9 Billion People?

It's difficult enough trying to feed everyone on the planet now, but how much more difficult will it get when the world population balloons to nine billion people in 2050? That's the question Deutsche Bank tried to answer in a new ...READ»

Genomatica Figured Out How to Make Spandex From Sugar Cane

Unstable oil prices have sent companies on a treasure hunt for the next big petrochemical replacement. One such pioneer is San Diego-based start-up Genomatica, which has developed a process that converts sugar (derived from sugar ...READ»

The Next China?

The ambassador to the UN from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) told me recently that every government agency in his country has a sustainability plan out to the year 2030. The most significant part of that policy exercise is the fact they need to develop an economy beyond oil - - because they expect to run out of it by then.READ»

Forget TV Dinners: Microwaving Tires is the Next Big Thing

Disposing of the nearly 300 million car tires that are ditched every year in North America isn't easy. Burying them takes up way too much space, and recyclers are often hard to find. We've seen tires upcycled by enterprising ...READ»

I Hate to Say It, But…

Writing “Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction” in 2005, I predicted that by 2010 the Detroit automakers would be in bankruptcy and reduced to selling foreign-made cars under their once proud nameplates. As GM and Chrysler careen toward the Chapter 11 cliff (and Chrysler frantically begs Fiat for a product line), I’m compelled to point out something I hate to say - - I told them so.READ»

Shell Ditches Wind, Solar, Hydrogen Energy

The recession has finally caused oil companies has to pull back promises of renewable energy, as Royal Dutch Shell announced that it won't make any more large investments in wind, solar, or hydrogen technology. Tough times have sent ...READ»

All’s Well That Ends A Well?

The California State Lands Commission recently voted to reject new offshore oil drilling even though the proposal had wide support, both from the “drill, baby, drill” crowd and enviros. There’s a sentence full of enigmas - - the ...READ»

Houston Is Recession-Proofing Its Economy -- With Wind Power

Flush with oil-and-gas money but wary of a bust, the Texas metropolis launches a multimillion-dollar effort to recession-proof its economy.READ»

Newt Gingrich: Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less

  by Kelly Jad'on Book Review: Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less—A Handbook For Slashing Gas Prices And Solving Our Energy Crisis (Regnery Pub., 2008) by Newt Gingrich Former Speaker Newt Gingrich follows up ...READ»

Reports of the Death of Renewable Energy are Greatly Exaggerated

The reports of the death of renewable energy are greatly exaggerated. The crashing price of oil is driving some to predict the death of renewable energy, again. Oil costs less than half what it did just a few months ago, ...READ»

Green Design in the age of 'Drill, Baby, Drill'

This is a design blog, not a political blog, but it seems that politics is effecting the environment in which design is done. Companies invest in products that they think people will buy. If people don’t seem to care about ...READ»

Bail-out or Build-out?

As Washington and Wall Street dicker over a financial rescue plan, everyone is missing the real opportunity to fix the problem. Some see the variously proposed plans as bailouts of dumb borrowers and dumber lenders, while others ...READ»