Chief Scientist & Professor of Exploration Geoscience, Heriot-Watt University
Assistant Professor, Durham University
Chair of Urban & Regional Planning and Director of Canberra Urban & Regional Futures, University of Canberra, Visiting Professor, University of Warwick
Associate Professor in Biophysics, University of Pretoria
Production
Dancing with the Devil: Rosneft and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan Gas
Over the past year, the gas-exporting ambitions of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) appeared, finally, to brighten. Last May, Rosneft and local authorities signed a business development agreement to forge “an integral plan to progress the gas business” in the semi-autonomous region. A critical component came even earlier, in September 2017, in the form […]
Transmission
Nord Steam 2 blames Denmark for possible six-month delay
Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany may be delayed by at least six months if Denmark forces it to take an alternative route. The pipeline consortium said it faced a Danish request to consider a new route, pushing back a potential completion date to the second half of 2020. Nord Stream 2’s report was […]
Storage
Atlantic island pays car owners who supply grid
The tiny Portuguese Atlantic island of Porto Santo (pictured) is looking to the sun and wind for its power needs with a pilot scheme to supply the island’s electricity from vehicle batteries. Renault, which is researching the feasibility of large-scale vehicle-to-grid charging, has imported electric Zoes and Kangoo ZEs to integrate them into an intelligent […]
Consumption
Russia set to reveal cost of oil pipeline blunder
A joint commission of Russian and Belarusian representatives will start to reveal the losses from the contaminated Druzhba oil pipeline tomorrow (Monday), Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told the state media. The working group examining the issue included representatives of Belarusian oil and chemical firm Belneftekhim and Russia’s Ministry of Energy, Kozak said, according […]
Policy
Macron condemns Turkey over Cyprus
French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Turkey to halt its “illegal” gas drilling in the Cypriot exclusive economic zone. A meeting in Malta of seven southern EU leaders reiterated its “full support and solidarity with the Republic of Cyprus in exercising its sovereign rights to explore, exploit and develop its natural resources within its […]
Environment
Shell boss calls for environmental awareness
The boss of one of the world’s biggest polluters has urged consumers to eat more seasonal food and work harder on their recycling. Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, said consumer choices were key to global energy demand and called for the public to “address consumption patterns” to cut greenhouse emissions. Shell, Europe’s […]
Industry
Extreme weather boosting energy use: BP
Global carbon emissions jumped the most in seven years during 2018 as energy demand increased, according to BP’s annual world energy study. The closely watched survey by the energy giant found that primary demand rose at the fastest pace this decade in 2018, despite slowing economic growth. Carbon emissions climbed by 2 per cent last […]
Opinion
Dancing with the Devil: Rosneft and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan Gas
Over the past year, the gas-exporting ambitions of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) appeared, finally, to brighten. Last May, Rosneft and local authorities signed a business development agreement to forge “an integral plan to progress the gas business” in the semi-autonomous region. A critical component came even earlier, in September 2017, in the form […]
Book Review: America’s Christianity-and-Crude Cocktail Explained in ‘Anointed with Oil’
“In his keynote address [to the American Petroleum Institute in 1941], [Henry Luce, founder of Life Magazine and the term the “American Century”] heralded oilmen as the vanguards of pure American values, praising their ‘dynamic spirit of freedom and enterprise’ and ‘sense of illimitable roundness of the world’. When harnessed by God-fearing patriots, he intimated, […]