STUFF ... Ukraine looking at onshore/offshore (Black Sea) oil/gas auction ... NC's top utility regulator subpoenaed in Duke coal ash spill criminal investigation ... DOE: homeowners who heat with propane spending 54% more this winter over last. Heating oil users 7%. NG 10%. El 5% ... Heating oil use by US utilities 471Kb/d wk ending Jan 17 from 220K avg for Dec, early Jan ... N East US 13% colder this winter than last. Midwest, south 19% more. West 5% warmer ... US propane production up 15% yoy. Early Feb inventories near 50% below last year ... Albany County health officials ordered moratorium on expanding oil processing facilities ... Nearly all utilities in US, Canada, Mexico grid security test said their planning not good enough: N Am El Reliability Corp report. But lessons learned in cyber, physical security ... EU Parliament banned super climate warming gases ... DOE funding new push to coordinate states' support for wind energy ... IPCC chief warned fight to halt climate change getting more expensive ... SCTY teaming with Best Buy on rooftop solar ... UN carbon credit prices hit record low ... Pacific islands losing out on UN climate change funds ... USPS ripped BLM analysis of latest solar project proposed for Cal desert ... Appeals court upheld KY mountaintop coal mine permit ... Est. 80K clean energy jobs created in '13: study ... States moving to block TSLA's direct sales. NJ did ... Cal water needs face $2-3B annual funding shortfall ... States want Obama admin to back intl standards for ship emissions ... 18 OH coal facilities operating with expired permits ... Panasonic to compensate employees for China air pollution hazard ... OIl spills, water pollution, missing $20-50B stirring unrest in Nigeria. Elections next yr ... OH officials ruling out fracking causing earthquakes but stopped fracking near epicenters ... MN regulators approved solar tariff formula ... WY win v. Halliburton on fracking disclosure ... Election frontrunner in India signaling clean energy revolution. May election ... Alberta regulator halted steam bitumen mining. Concerns over fracturing cap rock ... US crude production up 105Kb/d last week to 8.18M ... Libyan "navy" surrounded that (N Korea flagged) oil tanker for awhile, but it sailed away. Libyan AF refused to bomb it. PM ousted by Parliament. Tripoli building force to take back export terminals. (Pirates could have done better.) ... JA Energy (Nevada) filed patent on modular distill, el generator unit using simple sugars to produce el ... Exporting US crude could add $70B to upstream investments by '20, lead to up to 500Kb/d more US production: API. US consumers could save up to $6.6B in energy costs by '20. (Again, API.) ... DOE announced test sale of 5M bls from Strategic Petrol Reserve. Last release June '11 over Libyan disruption. (This one over what? Ukraine?) ... Harvard: device to produce energy from Earth's infrared radiation emissions into space. Continuous 100M Gw. 2 designs ... Naftogaz (Ukraine) ran up $3.3B debt to Gazprom in '13. Partly paid back ... Disruption of Russia NG through Ukraine would affect 15% of Europe NG supply. Italy most at risk ... Only Greece, Romania have no NG storage. Greece can import LNG. ~$60B+ Gazprom sales to Europe/yr. Over $10B /y sales to Ukraine ... EU may delay decision on NG pipe from Russia through Black Sea to S East Europe. But value destructive. EU has to stick to competitive NG market vision ... US shale gas operators continue to improve drilling tech, increasing total output per-rig. Avg Bakken rig 492b/d ... India coal workers to strike 3 days over pay, benefits ... Vestas 207Mw wind deal in Turkey ... 6 Washington towns getting LED street lights. Lights 9% of street maint budget in 1 town. 183 lights $55K replacement cost. $5K/y savings ... Pending regs on carbon emissions from coal plants to destroy 600K US jobs by '24: Heritage Foundation ... Toshiba supplying lith-ion batt storage for 2 clean energy projects. 2-3Mw systems. Order from utility for 40Mw system ... UK demo heat pump project by 3 Japan comps. $39M, 600 public housing homes ... Falck Renewables (Italy) reported Eur15M '13 net profit v. Eur85M loss ... GCL-Poly '13 loss narrowed to $86M, revs up $3.3B ... Africa Renewable Energy Fund raised $100M, wants $200M by yearend ... HSOL forecasts 1.5-1.6Gw shipments this yr.