STUFF

Budget crunch forced halt to climate monitoring at 12 NOAA ground stations. I don't know how many there are total. Maybe it's just prudent. Maybe it's short-sighted. Maybe we'll find out.

World Bank: food prices hit record in July. Why is food used for fuel? Why is so much food wasted?

GE rolled out latest low-emssions locomotive. Yay. No specifics on that yet.

BP discovered NG off coast of Nile River Delta.

Hitachi Zosen leading group, including Toshiba, planning to build $1.5B of offshore wind in Japan. 7.5MW of pilot farms by '16 before building 300MW over 10 years.

US to loan 1M bls from strategic reserve to Marathon after 1 of their refineries slowed output for Isaac.

Canada regulator approved Enbridge pipe to carry oil sands crude to BC.

Statoil aims to expand N Am production from 100Kb/d to 500K by '20. N Dakota fields to play key role. Comp also aiming for world-leading 60% recovery from fields on Norway continental shelf. Would add over 3B bls to reserves. And they announced discovery of 140-270M bls more of recoverable equivalents in N Sea.

Tanzania has begun developing its LNG export facilities.

Pemex new discovery in GOM 250-400M bls.

Canada started review of CNOOC's $15B takeover bid for Nexen.

Iraq Kurdistan threatening to stop oil shipments. Says Baghdad holding payments to comps.

Fire on pipeline carrying ~1/4 of Iraq's oil exports. Pipe closure halted loading at Turkey port. Sabotage suspected.

U of GA researchers found gene responsible for directing key step in development of plant polymer xylan. Major barrier to breaking down cell wall in woody biomass that inhibits biofuel production.

Zimbabwe industry pushing for E10 this year in line with S Africa mandate. S Africa has no commercial scale eth production yet. Zimbabwe's eth facility idle since Feb because no local market.

Brazil put planning control for eth industry under control of country's energy regulator.

Obama exec order to increase cogen plants - combined heat and power - 50% by '20. Well, if he can do that, what else can he do? And why hasn't he? Has he really done enough?

Oil fields still in dispute in Sudan, S Sudan talks.

Of 596 GOM platforms evac'd for Isaac, 377 now re-manned. But production still shut down for inspections, repairs.

Citi projecting oil production costs to stabilize at $80-90/bl by '20.