Recent Gas News/GasBuddy Blog

Bloomberg -- Toyota Motor Corp. led the biggest jump in Japan auto sales in 38 years and China’s purchases surged, signaling Asian consumers are emerging from the global recession in better shape than those in Europe and the U.S.

Japan’s sales of cars, trucks and buses rose 47 percent to 290,789 in August from a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said. Retail deliveries of passenger cars, multipurpose and sport-utility vehicles in China jumped 59 percent to 977,300, the China Automotive Technology & Research Center said.

Japanese consumers rushed to take advantage of government subsidies expiring this month, while dealer discounts in China lured buyers in the world’s largest auto market. South Korean auto sales rose 21 percent, and Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., the biggest carma  (go to article)

The Detroit Free Press -- Lawmakers: Pressure on residents a big concern

BY TODD SPANGLER FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF

The nation's top law enforcement official is being asked to look into whether Enbridge Energy Partners pressured Michigan residents to give up legal rights to sue in exchange for hotel rooms, air purifiers and other expenses in the wake of July's oil spill along a tributary of the Kalamazoo River.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the chairman of a key House committee also said it appears Enbridge urged residents seeking information about health effects to sign a form giving the company access to a person's complete medical record.

The company did not respond to the claims raised by U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee,  (go to article)

Houston Chronicle -- The offshore oil and gas industry is better equipped to deal with deep-water accidents because of lessons that BP learned battling its massive oil spill, the British oil giant says in a report due on federal regulators' desks today.

The company was expected Tuesday night to submit to the Interior Department a self-evaluation of BP's response to the disastrous Macondo oil spill, and to make recommendations for handling future spills in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico.

Though not made public Tuesday, the report hews closely to a presentation made in early August by BP executives at a federal forum on offshore drilling, a person familiar with the report said.

In that presentation, BP highlighted a number of "lessons learned" in battling the worst oil spill in U.S. history but  (go to article)

AP -- ROACH DRY LAKE, Nev. – Not a light bulb's worth of solar electricity has been produced on the millions of acres of public desert set aside for it. Not one project to build glimmering solar farms has even broken ground.

Instead, five years after federal land managers opened up stretches of the Southwest to developers, vast tracts still sit idle.

An Associated Press examination of U.S. Bureau of Land Management records and interviews with agency officials shows that the BLM operated a first-come, first-served leasing system that quickly overwhelmed its small staff and enabled companies, regardless of solar industry experience, to squat on land without any real plans to develop it.

At a time when the nation drills ever deeper for oil off its shores even as it tries to diversify its e  (go to article)

Palm Beach Post -- Gas prices are continuing to drop slightly, despite the upcoming Labor Day weekend, a holiday that's traditionally synonymous with an upward blip.

This year is different. So far, there is no Labor Day uptick. Give consumers much of the credit. People are cutting back their spending, as part of the new frugality, by choice or by necessity.

"When we had that $4-a-gallon fiasco, people changed their driving habits, and they have still maintained those changed driving habits," said Jim Smith, president and CEO of the Florida Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association in Tallahassee.

"It's just simple supply and demand. The consumer gets credit for it," Smith said.

Tuesday, Florida's average for regular gasoline stood at $2.62, six cents lower than a month ago,  (go to article)

USA Today -- Safety advocates are urging Congress and regulators to force carmakers to install warning systems that would prevent distracted parents from leaving children in cars, preventing heatstroke deaths.

At least 41 children have died already this year in hot cars, more than any previous year at this point. August was the deadliest month on record, according to the advocacy group Kids and Cars.

Although much of the U.S. had record temperatures from May to July, meteorologist Jan Null says the temperature in a closed car can rise 19 degrees in 10 minutes and 43 degrees in an hour, so even cooler days present risks.  (go to article)

The Boston Globe -- A new window sticker proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency that would assign new cars a letter grade based on their emissions has the support of some local car buyers, but some auto dealers are worried the labels might hurt sales.

The fuel economy stickers, which have been required to be displayed on all new cars since 1977 and were only redesigned once, in 2007, would show a large letter grade from A+ to D based on the car’s carbon dioxide emissions and combined fuel economy. It’s similar to the rating system in the United Kingdom, where cars are taxed on their carbon dioxide emissions.  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- For the first time since December, ethanol prices are higher than gasoline as corn surges and refiners profit from tax breaks.

The alternative fuel jumped 21 percent since the U.S. driving season began in May, rising above gas, which has fallen 6.5 percent in the same period. Ethanol as a gasoline component rose 7.6 percent since early June to a record 810,000 barrels a day in the week ended Aug. 20, Energy Department data show.

“No one really felt the need to buy a lot and all of a sudden prices took off,” said Jim Damask, a manager at Biofuelsconnect, a Heathrow, Florida-based alternative energy broker. “People need to buy on the way up now.”  (go to article)

AP -- BEIJING – Auto sales in China, the world's biggest car market, rebounded in August as subsidies for energy-efficient vehicles and a stronger currency spurred demand.

Sales rose 55.7 percent over a year earlier to 1.21 million vehicles, up from 1 million vehicles the month before, the Cabinet's China Automotive Technology and Research Center said Wednesday.

The increase compared with 17 percent year-on-year growth in July and 19.4 percent in June.

Sales of energy saving vehicles rose 32 percent to 129,600, the center said in a report posted on its website.

Demand was also relatively strong for imported vehicles, as Japanese and European automakers increasingly focus on serving the market for smaller, affordable cars, said the center's chairman, Zhao Hang, without giving specific  (go to article)

Associated Press -- Oil prices rose above $72 a barrel Wednesday after a steep drop the previous day amid evidence that U.S. crude supplies remain high and demand weak.

By midday in Europe, benchmark crude for October delivery was up 66 cents to $72.58 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract lost $2.78 to settle at $71.92 on Tuesday.

Crude inventories jumped 4.7 million barrels last week, the American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday. Analysts surveyed by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos., had forecast an increase of 1.9 million barrels. Inventories of gasoline and distillates fell, the API said.

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"The fundamentals are dreadful to the point of being historically among the worst supply and demand factors ever seen," Cameron Hanover said.  (go to article)

Forbes.com -- The carmaker is determined to find an aroma to implant in all its cars and trucks. Why?

Like every marketer Ford Motor spends a lot of time making sure its lineup of cars and trucks evokes the brand--in design, handling and advertising. Now the company is on a mission to identify that certain scent that will become part of Ford's brand around the world. The company wants every car it makes to look, feel and even smell like a Ford.

This is not a job for just anyone. Ford employs five engineers with exceptionally sensitive noses.  (go to article)

The Wall Street Journal -- NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Crude-oil futures tumbled Tuesday, settling below $72 a barrel as investors turned their attention toward increasingly high U.S. oil supplies and the slowing economy.

Light, sweet crude oil for October delivery settled $2.78, or 3.7%, lower, at $71.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange traded down $1.99, or 2.6%, at $74.61 a barrel.

Traders are beginning to doubt that oil demand will stage a substantial recovery during the second half of the year, after first-half consumption came in lower than expected. The value of oil to be delivered during the remainder of 2010 is starting to fall faster than oil available farther in the future, indicating a growing belief that short-term demand will remain weak. November crude  (go to article)

The Register -- Swiss boffins have mounted an investigation into the largely unknown environmental burdens of electric cars using lithium-ion batteries, and say that the manufacturing and disposal of batteries presents no insurmountable barriers to electric motoring. However, their analysis reveals that modern diesel cars are actually better for the environment than battery ones.  (go to article)

NY Times -- The United Services Automobile Association, the financial services company that caters to the military, is arming customers with a new secret weapon when they shop for their next car.

That weapon is a car-buying service for USAA members that offers detailed price information and even shops around for the car. USAA says customers will average about a $4,500 in savings from the sticker price on new vehicles. The service, which is also available as an iPhone app, guarantees that the price will be the lowest and offers to pay the difference if a buyer finds the car at a lower price within three days of purchase.  (go to article)

Market Watch -- Natural-gas futures, wrapping up their worst month in more than two years, are entering the historically weak month of September dogged by confusion over production.

Prices for the most active contract have lost nearly 23% in August, as investors sold off the futures on estimates of abundant gas output.

Natural gas for October delivery was up less than a penny to settle at $3.82 per million British thermal units after flirting with losses in morning trading.  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Julie Hyman reports on an anonymous classic car collector's purchase of a 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic for $30 million. Collectors are pumping money into the classic-car market like never before, driving up prices for the world’s most famous models of Bugattis, Ferraris, Mercedes-Benzes and Rolls-Royces. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Dallas Morning News -- A Dallas man pleaded guilty in connection with one of North Texas' largest oil and gas investment schemes and also admitted guilt in an oil and gas scam in Michigan.

He faces 20 years in prison on each of the counts;

In July 2009, the Securities & Exchange Commission filed suit against Provident Royalties, alleging that the company had bankrolled $485 million from investors purportedly to invest in oil and gas partnerships.

7,700 investors were invested in the partnerships, while the company's leaders diverted funds to pay back earlier investors in a Ponzi scheme.

Blimline admitted that in 2006 he and others at Provident failed to tell investors about the nature of the Ponzi scheme, Blimline's previous troubles with securities regulators & other material issues.  (go to article)

THE NEW YORK TIMES --
The biggest change in three decades for the window stickers on new vehicles. The Obama administration proposed on Monday two alternatives to the window stickers in new vehicles, including one that would assign letter grades for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions.
The letter grades — from A+ to D — were immediately denounced by some industry groups, which said the government should not be making value judgments for consumers about vehicles.

[Click here to check auto rates in your area.]

If the grading system were applied now, many 2010 vehicles could get fairly low grades because the ratings favor fuel-  (go to article)

Sacramento Bee -- Throughout its 156-year history, the Van Vleck Ranch in east Sacramento County has been used for gold mining, cattle ranching and even paintball battling. Now owner Stan Van Vleck hopes to tap into a new profit center: solar power.

 (go to article)

MarketWatch -- Oil for October delivery ended down 3.7% at $71.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Tuesday, with declines accelerating toward the close of the session.

Oil also finished the month of August with a loss, down 8.9%, its first monthly decline since May.  (go to article)

Sympatico -- Porsche is going electric. Yes, yes, for purists it was startling enough to see Porsche sell an SUV like the Cayenne. But now Porsche is on a path to electrify its sports and race cars, as well.
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On the production side, Porsche says it will go ahead with the 918 Spyder supercar – a mid-engine, gas-electric, plug-in hybrid with a combined output of around 718 horsepower (500 hp gas and 218 hp electric). Performance: 0-100 km/hour in around three seconds and fuel economy in the 3.0 litres/100 km range (78 miles per gallon). The power pack on board is a liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery. But there’s more. The energy-storage device on board is not a battery but a compact flywheel accumulator spinning at a maximum 40,000 rpm.
 (go to article)

Boston Globe -- WESTON — The two former granite quarries filled with water could have posed a major obstacle for the real estate company seeking a tenant for the 74-acre commercial property near Interstate 95 and Route 20. At about 400 feet deep, each quarry pond is large enough to hold 500 million gallons — not exactly what businesses desire in a site for a new headquarters.  (go to article)

Boston Herald -- A real estate investor is trying to jump-start the electric-car industry by opening Boston’s first public “charging station.”  (go to article)

AP -- ATLANTA – Power utilities are trying to buy the next wave of nuclear reactors much like a consumer buys a light bulb: right off the shelf.

Of the nation's 104 commercial reactors, no two are exactly the same, a fact that experts blame for causing construction and regulatory delays and leading to bigger bills for power customers. The longer it took to approve and build a reactor a generation ago, the more electric customers ended up paying in the end.

"That system just wasn't workable," said Richard Lester, head of the nuclear science and engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As the nation moves closer to breaking ground on its first nuclear plant in decades, industry executives want to avoid the problems of the past by getting the government to desig  (go to article)

CLICKONDETROIT -- WASHINGTON -- The government has opened an investigation into possible steering problems in the 2011 Hyundai Sonata.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday it had received field reports alleging the separation of a joint that led to a complete loss of steering in the sedan or a loosening of a joint connection in the steering.

The government said the vehicles cited in the reports were manufactured during the same month and had fewer than 600 miles on them at the time.

The investigation involves an estimated 16,300 Sonatas.

Hyundai spokesman Jim Trainor says the company received two reports citing steering problems and the two vehicles were repaired.

He said there have been no injuries or crashes reported and Hyundai is cooperating with the investigati  (go to article)

Daily and Sunday Express, UK News -- THE world’s leading climate change body has been accused of losing credibility after a damning report into its research practices.

A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.
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Associated Press - State Journal Register, IL -- MOLINE — Deere & Co. will sell its wind energy business to a subsidiary of Exelon for $900 million, the company said Tuesday, potentially signaling an active merger and acquisition period ahead for the power industry.  (go to article)

GasBuddy Blog -- With massive Hurricane Earl heading towards the Carolinas, motorists should be aware that while any increase in prices shouldn't be shocking, prices may increase.

I'll be keeping a close eye on how close Earl gets to massive refinery operations in East PA, New York, and New Jersey. Currently, Earl is a strong hurricane packing peak winds of 135mph, enough to disrupt power at refineries and other oil factilies responsible for getting products to pumps in those areas.

The further east Earl moves, the better. Currently it appears that the storm will only brush the concerned areas, but of course weather forecasts are subject to change.

Keep a close eye on the storm and prepare to fill your vehicles before the storm...  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- By Keith Naughton and Tim Higgins - Aug 31, 2010

U.S. auto sales in August probably were the slowest for the month in 28 years as model-year closeout deals failed to entice consumers concerned the economy is worsening and they may lose their jobs.

Industrywide deliveries, to be released tomorrow, may have reached an annualized rate of 11.6 million vehicles this month, the average of eight analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That would be the slowest August since 1982, according to researcher Ward’s AutoInfoBank. The rate would be 18 percent below last year’s 14.2 million pace, when the U.S. government’s “cash for clunkers” incentive program boosted sales.

“Home sales are way down, the stock market is way down, the unemployment report is very disappointing and consumer co  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- “These inventory numbers are getting too big to ignore, particularly because this is the case across the board,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy. “At the very least they will present the market with a strong headwind.”

Prices may drop as stockpiles approach the 2010 high of 365 million reached on May 21. Demand is set to decline during the next two months as refineries idle units to perform seasonal maintenance. Operating rates touched their annual low in September for three of the past six years
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My Fox Phoenix -- Heavy rain caused at least three collisions on Interstate 10 westbound that resulted in a 69-car pileup in the vicinity of 7th Street near downtown Phoenix.

I-10 westbound was closed Saturday night at 16th Street to the Deck Park Tunnel as well as the ramps from SR 202 and SR 51 to I-10.
Westbound I-10 has also been closed at Washington Street.  (go to article)

Boston Globe -- There is good news at the gas pumps as Americans get ready to fill the tanks of their cars, RVs, and boats for the Labor Day weekend.

The national average price for gasoline has been falling steadily this month, reaching about $2.68 for a gallon of unleaded yesterday, according to AAA and others. That’s about 6 cents a gallon less than a month ago and 7 cents less than it was on the Friday before the July Fourth weekend.

In its weekly report, the US Energy Information Administration said the national average for a gallon of unleaded was $2.68, down about 2 cents from a week ago.

Prices in major cities ranged from $2.62 a gallon in Denver to $3.08 in Los Angeles and $3.12 in San Francisco.

Most analysts believe retail prices will continue to retreat in September.  (go to article)

Bankrate.com -- Driving a car that has been in a car recall without getting the problem fixed can result in serious safety issues as well as lead to unnecessary costs. There were 1.4 million cars for sale with unfixed problems from car recalls last year, according to a new study by CarFax, the vehicle history information provider.

The vast majority of car recalls are considered safety issues and while they range from minor to very serious, all can result in unnecessary out-of-pocket expenses.  (go to article)

USA Today -- When August auto sales come out Wednesday, it isn't going to be pretty.

The year-over-year sales decline for the month will look terrible — down an estimated 30% — because the comparison will be with the buying frenzy fueled last August by the government's cash-for-clunkers program.

The program gave as much as $4,500 to buyers who traded an older car or truck for a new car with higher fuel economy. Its aim was a shot in the arm for auto sales at a time when consumers were not buying because of growing job losses, bank failures, automaker bankruptcies and tight credit. Without that government boost, supporters say, the auto industry — and the U.S. jobs dependent on both domestic and foreign makers — would have imploded and dug the economy into an even deeper hole.

Did it work?  (go to article)

U.S. News Rankings & Reviews -- One of the big selling points of electric vehicles is that, while they cost more upfront, over time you can save money, since you’re not buying gas. New analysis is questioning that math.

The BBC writes that “over three years, electric cars could be more expensive to run than their petrol equivalents.” What’s surprising is where the figures come from: Mitsubishi, which is getting ready to launch its own electric car, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. According to the BBC, “The high purchase price, and the rapid depreciation, are what may make electric cars uncompetitive financially."  (go to article)

Reuters -- Gasoline demand in California, the nation's largest gasoline market, fell 0.1 percent in May compared with the same month in the previous year, according to the California State Board of Equalization.

May diesel demand fell 2.1 percent in May 2010 compared with May 2009, the board said in a statement.  (go to article)

London Free Press -- Dealer incentives are enticing Canadians to buy bigger, more costly vehicles and recent new-vehicle sales are the highest in three years.
Hit hard by the economic meltdown two years ago, the North American auto industry quickly became a poster child for the recession.

But in Canada, at least, which unlike the U.S. is avoiding slippery slope of another recession, new vehicle sales in the last two months have been the highest in three years, clipping along now at a projected annual rate of 1.62 million.

At that rate, projected car sales this year would match pre-recession levels.  (go to article)

CNN -- (CNN) -- Thad Allen, the government's point man on the BP oil disaster, and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser will meet Tuesday before briefing the public on the cleanup effort.

The effort to permanently kill the ruptured oil well deep in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled because of turbulent seas.

Officials had planned to detach a device called a blowout preventer from the well and replace it with a new one, a procedure aimed at paving the way for a permanent fix for the well.

BP annouced the postponement of the procedure on its Twitter page Monday.

"Operations will commence as soon as sea states reach acceptable levels," the company said.
 (go to article)

inhabitat.com -- By Timon Singh

Clean energy company Acta has unveiled plans to install a network of solar-powered hydrogen fueling stations throughout Italy. The new fuel pumps will harness solar energy to produce hydrogen fuel from water through electrolysis.

"...they offer an alternative to the standard gas-guzzling automobile."

Hydrogen technology has certain advantages over batteries — it doesn’t necessitate emission-creating production lines and it doesn’t require long recharge times. The tech has proved that it can work in conjunction with batteries and that it can also become a fully-fledged alternative fuel.

"...completed more than 170 installations during 2009,...paving the way for a more sustainable fueling network."

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Bloomberg -- The Prius hybrid has spearheaded sales growth for Toyota Motor Corp. in Japan for more than a year, helped by government subsidies. The model will likely bear the brunt of plunging demand as the support ends.

“A collapse in sales is unavoidable,” said Hiromi Inoue, the new-car sales chief for Tokyo Toyopet Motor Sales Co. “The daily pace of orders for the Prius is already dropping. We are bracing ourselves for the coming crisis.”

The number of customers signing up to buy a Prius at Tokyo Toyopet’s 66 showrooms has dropped to about eight a day from 20 in June, Inoue said. Industrywide, car sales in Japan are expected to plunge 23 percent in the six months beginning in October from a year earlier, according to the Japan Automobile Dealers Association.  (go to article)

CNET -- he Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation on Monday proposed a fuel economy label overhaul to reflect how electric and alternative fuel vehicles stack up against gasoline passenger vehicles.

The federal agencies released two new labels that officials expect to be finalized early next year and used in 2012 model year cars. The published labels will be available for public comment for 60 days.

The changed label, mandated by the 2007 energy law, includes the same information on city and highway miles per gallon and estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year now available.

But the new labels add more comparative information, rating cars on mileage, greenhouse gas contribution, and other air pollutants from tailpipe emissions.  (go to article)

plugincars.com -- We are quickly approaching the launch dates of the Nissan LEAF and Chevrolet Volt—the first two globally-distributed and mass-market plug-in cars the world has ever seen. As the public's attention shifts to the battery-powered drive-train and its perceived shortcomings, the question of how long it will take to charge the battery has rightly taken center stage.

To this point, much of the conversation regarding plug-in car charging times has revolved around what kind of charging station you use. In the US, as many of us know, there are essentially three types of charging:

1. A standard 3-prong household outlet, also known as "Level 1 charging"
2. A specialized home charging station, also known as "Level 2 charging"
3. A commercial quick charging station, known alternately as both  (go to article)

Gas 2.0 -- In general, once you’ve bought something new, its value tends to sink the moment you take it out of the box. For a new car, the value plummets as soon as you drive it off the dealership lot. It’s called depreciation, and with cars it is especially brutal. That shiny new car you just bought for $30,000 might be worth less than $25,000 after just a week of ownership. With very few exceptions (like vintage muscle cars), most cars suffer a steep drop in value almost immediately.

This may go doubly true for electric cars it seems—at least in Europe. Mitsubishi has put out a chart to the BBC which suggests that the higher up-front costs of an electric car, plus the increased depreciation, mean in the long haul it could cost a lot more than a petrol powered car. Now why would they do that?  (go to article)

Flixxy.com -- In an efficient and safe effort to save us from the ill-effects of plastic waste, Akinori Ito has developed a machine which converts plastic back into oil..
watch the video.....  (go to article)

Telegraph.co.uk -- If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- The U.S. East Coast has three days to get ready for a possible strike by Hurricane Earl, which has delayed flights in the Caribbean and halted ship loading at a refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Earl strengthened today to a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale with winds of 125 miles (200 kilometers) per hour about 120 miles east-northeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, at 3 p.m. New York time, according to a National Hurricane Center advisory. Earl is the season’s second major hurricane.

Earl’s projected track runs parallel to the East Coast. The storm may strike land anywhere from North Carolina northward, said Rick Knabb, hurricane expert for the Weather Channel in Atlanta.  (go to article)

The New York Times -- TEXAS CITY, Tex. — While the world was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery here released huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the air that went unnoticed by residents until many saw their children come down with respiratory problems.

For 40 days after a piece of equipment critical to the refinery’s operation broke down, a total of 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, poured out of the refinery.

Rather than taking the costly step of shutting down the refinery to make repairs, the engineers at the plant diverted gases to a smokestack and tried to burn them off, but hundreds of thousands of pounds still escaped into the air, according to state environmental officials.  (go to article)

CNBC -- The price of a barrel of oil would be closer to $10 if the commodity wasn't traded as an investment instrument, given the record-high levels of U.S. oil inventories, Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover, told CNBC Monday.
"I honestly think that if there were no investors using oil as an asset that the price of oil right now would be $10 or $15 or $18, but it wouldn't be anywhere near where it is," Beutel said.

"We have so much oil right now, more than we've had in 27 years. Why is it 27 years? Because that's how far our records go back. It's probably the most in 50 or 100 years," he added.

Part of the reason the price of oil is currently above $74 (BIS: US@CL.1) a barrel is because of a belief in the economic recovery, Beutel said.

Comments by Federal Reserve Chai  (go to article)

Science Daily -- Now, for the first time, a team of Empa scientists have made a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) or ecobalance of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, in particular the chemically improved (i.e. more environmentally friendly) version of the ones most frequently used in electric vehicles.

The study shows that the electric car's Li-ion battery drive is in fact only a moderate environmental burden. At most only 15 per cent of the total burden can be ascribed to the battery. The production of the lithium, is responsible for only 2.3 per cent of the total. Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are not as bad as previously assumed. How the battery is recharged has a greater impact on the environment than the production of the battery.  (go to article)

Reuters -- WASHINGTON | Mon Aug 30, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will propose on Monday new labels for passenger vehicles detailing for the first time their greenhouse gas emissions, while also changing measurements of fuel economy.

The labeling proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation would allow consumers to compare cars in terms of emissions blamed for warming the planet and to see how far they could drive on new technologies and traditional gasoline engines.

"New fuel economy labels will keep pace with the new generation of fuel efficient cars and trucks rolling off the line, and provide simple, straightforward updates to inform consumers about their choices in a rapidly changing market," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said  (go to article)

Market Watch -- SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has lowered its price target for crude-oil futures, saying the recent bounce is likely temporary and forecasting prices around $65 a barrel by October.

The firm has tweaked its third-quarter price forecast to $75 a barrel, from $77 a barrel.

Investors should view the recovery in prices in the coming week as "a selling opportunity," analysts at Morgan wrote in a note to clients.

Prices are likely to "move into the mid $60s before (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) meets in October," they said.  (go to article)

Associated Press -- There is good news at the gas pump, as Americans get ready to fill their cars, RVs and boats for the Labor Day weekend.

The national average price for gasoline has been falling steadily this month, reaching $2.678 for a gallon of unleaded on Monday, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. That's about 6 cents a gallon less than a month ago and 7 cents less than it was on the Friday before the July Fourth weekend.

West Coast drivers pay the most for gas -- between $2.792 a gallon and $3.539 a gallon. The cheapest gas is in Texas, the Gulf Coast states and parts of the Midwest, where prices range from $2.431 to $2.523 a gallon.

A plunge in wholesale gasoline prices earlier this month is pushing down prices at the pump, PFGBest analyst Phil Flynn said.

 (go to article)