STUFF

4 decades before Drake (a former railroad conductor) drilled the 1st oil well in Titusville PA (hit at 69 feet), 80 miles north Bill Hart had dug the 1st well for NG. Using only shovels, he hit NG at 27 feet. The pipeline used to ship it was made from hollowed-out logs slapped together with tar and cloth. Today we have 7.2M miles of pipelines and sit on ~2,100TCF of NG. Cool little story, A?

Google data centers use ~260MW/h.

Dominion found only cosmetic damage at nuke plant near Mineral, VA (post quake). Hopes to convince NRC that the 2 reactors are safe to restart.

DOE making 2 more loan guarantees. $150M to 1366 Tech. They have a new way to make silicon wafers for solar by working from molten silicon. Well on way to commercial application. Cuts costs in half. The other guarantee of $344M goes to Solar City to install rooftop solar on military bases. They install and own and sell the el. Plans for 160k roofs (equaling the total installed in US to date) for ~371MW. Overall plan to cost >$1B. BofA working with Solar City, I think Buffett likes clean E. Their 2nd major solar rooftop project. Project Amp a $2.6B plan to put ~733MW on 3k acres of rooftop owned by real estate giant Prologis. 1st stage of Solar City project underway at Hickam in Hawaii.

BP announced their estimated reserves in deepwater GOM Mad Dog field just doubled to 4B bls. Rivals Thunder Horse field now. A day after Chevron's announcement. And POTUS speaks tonight to joint session about what?

Tropical depression to be storm Nate may be shutting down GOM oil/gas production in the next week.

Brent oil ~ $115.

Beijing announced their GDP grew by 10.4% last year. Manufacturing/construction growth was 12.2%. Car sales to be up 5% this year v. 33% in '10.

Washakie Renewable Energy started ops at their new 10M gal/y biodiesel facility in Utah. Feedstocks of yellow grease, brown grease and tallow. Plans to expand feedstock to include camelina and safflower.

Brasil Ecodiesel acquired Vanguarda do Brasil for $1B. Ecodiesel operates 6 refineries. Vanguarda has >500k acres in soy, corn and cotton.

And those are the trails, pards. Happy goings on 'm.