STUFF

Refresher: avg bl of oil -> 42% gasoline, 20% diesel fuel, 9% jet fuel, 4.5% heating oil, 20% other. I know, it never adds up.

BP to invest $2B in "alternate" E in '11.

800 offshore drilling units operating worldwide. Up 5% on year. 1/4 global oil production comes from 20 fields, nearly all past peak. 50% more from ~110 fields. The rest ~70k fields. Discoveries peaked in '64.

Big news of day: GE to build largest solar panel factory in US. Up by '13. And completed acquisition of Prime Star Solar (the tech). $600M for 400MW capacity of CdTe thin-film solar (FSLR's tech). They say global solar demand  to grow by 75GW over next 5 yrs. Their panels 12.8% efficient. FSLR's goal is to reach 12.5% next yr. 1% efficiency increase = 10% cost redux. They also announced >100Mw of new orders for the thin-film products (including inverters). Next news will be where they will build the plant.

EIA: NG stocks dropped 45bcf last week. 49-53 expected and the price drops 2%. US used record 2.87tcf in Jan. Last week's supply 1.58tcf, above 5-yr avg. Who remembers that 2-3 years ago DOE said we had 10 yrs of NG supply left? May delivery @ $4.08/1kcf.

House R's pushing "New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions" bill. How about just "The NG Bill". Jeeze leweeze. They play like we're all idiots outside their playground. It says "120-year NG supply". At what use rate? Oops. What the hay, let's just throw out a figure. Bill expected to pass in summer. What's in it? How much money? Um, didn't say. Fine. Get it done.

Clean E now a Ryan budget plan target. He wants drastic cuts in E R&D and elimination of clean E subsidies and tax breaks. Asked about the same for oil/gas/coal industries on Fox News Sunday and answered obliquely dumb. Oops. Talking all of $7B on R&D. What the frack is their problem with clean energy?!

Trio of hydro power measures meandering through the Senate. Interior/DOE announced $26M for hydro R&D. Oak Ridge Lab: adding pwr gen to existing dams would give us 12GW new pwr. Low fruit 3Gw from 10 dams. 3% of US' 80k dams currently gen el. Dam.

CPST recently got an order  for LNG microturbines for a seagoing tanker for main power supply and some propulsion. Better than the dam coal oil ships burn.

PWER lowered their guidance. Up 1% today.

Japan utilities to increase LNG demand 10% for 3-4 yrs. TEPCO: 3.2GW thermal pwr cap of 8.5 restored as of today. 9GW spare gas-fired cap at TEPCO, Tohuku. 10 gas-fired turbines being shipped in by GE. At least the radioactive water dump into the ocean was stopped. I buy wild-caught salmon from China. But, O, no place now to store the 11k tons of radioactive water. Are we getting all the nuke experts to work on this or not?!

IEA: Clean E progress report. Fossil fuels getting $312B in subsidies v. $57B for clean E. I presume that's every year. Maybe 10 years, they didn't clarify. Coal has filled 47% of new elgen in past decade. 5 C-capture projects are operational. 100 needed by '20, 3k by '50 to keep warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. 70 in planning on $25B funding. Wind went from 17GW a decade ago to 194 now. Solar needs to grow 22%/yr, wind 17% to halve CO2 emissions by '50. Biofuels are 3% of global roadfuel use. And 66 nukes under construction, to be 60GW online by '15 (before Fuku). Finally, China bought 1B lightbulbs in '07. Rest of world 1.5.

The 1M bl tanker did leave Tobruk, Libya Wednesday. Qatar will sell the oil on behalf of the rebs. But looks like Kadaffy forces have damaged the oilfields/pipelines feeding into Tobruk. The fracking idiot/son of a bitch.

And US biodiesel producers are lashing back at EC's expansion of tariffs. More later.

Happy trails.