Green Ink: Shallow Gas, Electric Cars, and the Future of Yucca Mountain

By Keith Johnson

Crude oil futures fell toward $81 a barrel amid forecasts of warmer weather in the U.S., Bloomberg reports.

Chevron warns on fourth-quarter earnings due to a weak refining environment that couldn’t offset higher oil prices, in the WSJ.

Natural gas finds a new, shallow-water frontier: McMoRan’s potentially huge shallow-water find in the Gulf of Mexico raises hopes of abundant, low-cost supplies, in the Houston Chronicle.

More scorecards on President Obama’s first year in office. Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress figures the president went 10-for-10 on the think thank’s clean-energy prescriptions, at Grist.

California is studying ways to return money from climate-change plans to consumers, through rebates or tax cuts elsewhere, in the WSJ. California’s approach represents another way of buying support for oft-controversial climate plans, in Greenspace.

Electric cars stole the show at the opening of the Detroit Auto Show, even if they and their hybrid cousins are still terribly niche. GM warns of teething pains, in the NYT:”’It’s going to take us three generations of range-extended electric vehicles to get any anywhere near reasonable costs,’ said Thomas Stephens, G.M.’s vice chairman for product development.”

GM’s Bob Lutz also warns that first-generation batteries will be very fickle things, especially in winter, in the WSJ. More on all the new models at Earth2Tech.

Venezuela’s teetering economy could take another hit from power shortages, brought about as low rainfall cripples key hydroelectric plants. Who’s to blame—El Nino or La Corrupcion?, in the FT.

It’s official—China scraps the restriction on foreign parts in turbines used for wind farms, potentially opening up the world’s fastest-growing market to more foreign investment, in AFP.

Finally, what ever happened to that blue-ribbon panel meant to find an answer to Yucca Mountain? It has yet to be formed, leaving the nuclear industry to struggle still with the waste question, in Greenwire.