STUFF .... Well, when his name is Weiner, what do you expect? Senor Weiner .... Too much rain in US Southeast. Crops suffering. Mold, blight, fungus, disease. Much lower yields. GA 34% above normal rain. Carolinas 25%. AL 22%. Peaches look good, but lower sugar content "like a mouthfull of cotton". Hard to get into fields to harvest. Last year it was drought .... JP Morgan to pay $410M to settle power manipulation charges. (Fun while it lasted, I guess. O those wiz kids.) .... Enviros suing DOI for allowing oil shale, oil sands R&D on 800K acres of public lands in CO, WY, UT .... Report: global warming spreading toxic dust around US west .... BP backing off from selling US wind power assets. Also saying Gulf spill funds running dry .... Canada official: no "quid pro quo" for US Keystone pipe approval .... Research: quakes help release methane from seabed .... Report: energy deals have plunged globally this year .... Report: well flaring in ND now doubled in last 2 years. (Wouldn't you think they would get on this? God's sakes.) .... China switched on NG pipeline from Myanmar. (Didn't get capacity.) .... Sapphire Energy paid off $55M USDA loan guarantee from '09 after new equity round. Built algae-to-crude commercial demo plant in NM. On track to produce 100b/d in '15. Comm scale by '18. Working with Linde .... Commercial geothermal growing in Netherlands. Could replace est. 2% of nation's NG use at est. cost of 1.6B Euros, help greenhouse industry .... Geothermal heat pump market to triple to $17.2B by '20: Navigant. UK recently added subsidies for it. Mass group pushing it to get in state's RPS. Up front costs up to $25K (like solar). Taken off in Denmark where new homes can't have fossil fuel systems .... Pleasant valley Biofuels setting up in Utah to produce 1M gal/yr of biodiesel from used cooking oil. To sell to trucks, then city fleets .... Ukraine 2-yr biofuels development framework to support blends. Now 5%, 7% ethanol blends through '16 .... DOE's JBEI breakthrough on thermophilic microbes for cellulosic biofuel enzymes .... Canada financial, policy support for biofuels set to wane. Farmers didn't invest in production .... Biofuel producers finally have access to cheap American sugar .... Russian Federation making plan for biobased econ. '18 goals 50B Rubles for export, 200B for production, 300B in consumption .... Ft. McMurray cancelling oil sand leases for 22K hectares surrounding the city so it can expand ....Brit police investigating $1.3B Shell/Eni/Nigeria oil bloc corruption. (What, the govt didn't get their money up front?) .... IMF: Euro econ to remain in recession this year, expand under 1% next year. IEA expects Euro oil demand to fall 1.7% this year to 13.5Mb/d. Down 3.9% in '12. Global oil demand expected to gain by 1.2Mb/d next year ....Sasol, Ineos to build 426K metric ton/yr plant to make high density polyethylene. Probably on US Gulf Coast. Sasol recently announced plans for 2 Gulf Coast plants for low density polyeth. US has glut of ethane .... Pemex posted 2Q13 $3.8B loss. 4.7% decline in oil exports .... Oil India oil strike in Gabon .... Xcel Energy plans to boost wind power cap over 30%. Asking regulators to approve buy of 1.5Gw. 700Mw of it in OK, TX, NM. 3 more 200Mw projects in upper Midwest, 1 in CO. To save customers $800M over 20 yrs. 4.9Gw wind cap already .... New EPA chief: action on climate will spur econ .... UK Green Bank investing 20M Pounds in N Ireland wood-to-power (el and heat) project. 81M Pound plant. Online '15. Wood would otherwise go to landfill. 15.8Mw. (And they call it clean energy. It may be sustainable. But it sure ain't clean emissions. Sure, they throw in the CO2 absorbed by the trees over their lives. Not clean emssions. Sorry.) .... Jinko Solar to supply 39Mw of modules for 3 projects in Indiana. 4Q delivery. To be largest sol farms in state .... Brazil cut sugar cane interest rates to spur investment .... EON sold stake in TX wind farm to JP Morgan (JP found a game on this too?) .... N Am project debt finance rates more attractive than Europe's .... Solapack closed on $65M finance for Chile solar projects .... DOE putting $10M into 6 projects to develop user-friendly tools, resources for easy deploy for small bldgs (under 50K sq ft). $14M private match. Small bldgs 90% of comm bldgs, use 20% of US energy. Avg. small restaurant could cut energy use up to 45% .... EPA submitted final cooling water rule to WH .... Study: fed insurance spurring conversion of sensitive lands to cropland in US .... Bat-killing disease spreading west in US. Bats, of course, eat mosquitos .... BLM to auction mineral rights for fracking in OH state forest .... Mich converting public land trails back to rails .... DOI forming panel to probe Gulf gas blowout .... NC pulling funds for biofuels R&D venture .... And for those of you who need propane we have the plant explosion in FL .... Study: proximity to benzene plants could increase cancer risk. (Hell, so does proximity to interstate I bet.) ....Millions of plastic particles floating in US Great Lakes .... 2 trains collided in Switzerland. (What the hell is going on with trains lately? My bet is lack of union employ, lack of training, low wages and benefits.) .... happy motoring, pards.