Natural gas is a broken global market.

For oil, there’s enough import-export capacity worldwide that global prices tend to align closely. In natgas, global markets are fragmented. Leading to disparate pricing in different regions. Just look at the comparison below, from PFC Energy.

One of the implications being: if you’re going to produce natural gas (or ship it as LNG), find the regions with the top prices.

Increasingly, it’s looking like this will be Asia. And specifically, southeast Asia.

By way of example, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Hoang

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While officials in Tehran are excited at the prospect of Iran taking over the chair of the international oil producers’ grouping OPEC, analysts say the honour is less significant than it seems, and comes at a time when stagnating crude production deprives the country of leverage in the organisation.

Iranian Oil Minister, Masoud Mir-Kazemi will take over the presidency of the OPEC Conference in 2011

The post will at least offer Tehran an opportunity to deflect attention from economic difficulties and the effects of international sanctions at home.

News

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A few years ago, Silicon Valley start-ups like Solyndra, Nanosolar and MiaSolé dreamed of transforming the economics of solar power by reinventing the technology used to make solar panels and deeply cutting the cost of production.

Founded by veterans of the Valley’s chip and hard-drive industries, these companies attracted billions of dollars in venture capital investment on the hope that their advanced “thin film” technology would make them the Intels and Apples of the global solar industry.

But as the companies finally begin mass production — Solyndra just flipped the switch on a $733 million factory here last month — they are

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The de facto Obama moratorium on oil well drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has spurred new exploration and production on the US mainland. Local economies are beginning to experience boom times never experienced before. It is a phenomenon that may well spread across the US, as the oil & gas mania locates useful hydrocarbons wherever they are to be found.

WSJ

For much of this decade, energy companies pioneered new drilling technologies that allowed them to recover natural gas from a subterranean rock called shale. By drilling

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Institutional investors are risk averse, time-poor and “carbon and climate fatigued”, making it difficult to generate interest in environmentally-orientated investing, according to a leading investment consultant.

However, Will Oulton, head of responsible investment at Mercer in London, told this week’s Climate Finance 2010 conference that the current “grim picture” could be set to improve, as investors shift from “de-risking” to positioning for growth, and as they move to implement commitments to various sustainability-focused investor initiatives.

“We’ve lost of couple of years,” Oulton said. “Typical clients, since 2008, have been going through a de-risking process To talk about [environmental investments], it’s been

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What’s next?  That question has been on the mind of many stakeholders in the renewable energy industry who, as we’ve previously reported, are hungry for clarity on the future of the stimulus-funded programs that have supported their industry over the past two years.

A recently leaked White House memo clarifies the administration’s thinking on the future of the grants and reaffirms its support for their extension.  To do that the memo proposes ending the Department of Energy loan guarantee program and transfering its remaining funds to the 1603  cash grant program.  The memo was authored by Energy and Climate Change

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Better drag your leisure suits, bell bottoms, and Bee Gee’s records out the attic. The seventies are about to enjoy a rebirth.

The nuclear industry, which has been comatose since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, is gearing up for one of the greatest comebacks of all time. There is absolutely no way we can deal with our impending energy crunch without a huge expansion of our nuclear capacity, which sits at a lowly 20% of our total power generation. France has already achieved 85%, followed by Sweden at 60% and Belgium at 54%, and the last time I

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The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports for August that U.S. ethanol production rose in August to an all-time high, production averaged more than 869,000 barrels per day (b/d).  The Renewable Fuels Association who also collects data calculated ethanol demand at all-time high as well at 911,000 b/d in August, up from 734,000 b/d a year ago.

The U.S. is closing in on the million barrel per day milestone.  Cheers in some sections, groans in others, but for America, slashing off the equivalent of 750,000 b/d of imported oil is a good thing.

Most groans come from the odd couple of the

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I’ve been saying for awhile that Asian coal is the place to be.

Yet another indicator this week. Thai energy major PTT announced a deal yesterday to buy Australia’s Straits Resources for $550 million.

Straits’ assets are… Asian (or Asian-shipable) coal deposits. Indonesia, Brunei and Madagascar. (The latter which I mentioned in a previous letter will be a hotspot for coal. You’ve been warned.)

Seeing Thailand step into the fray shows just how many Asian players are desperately seeking coal supply. Add this to China, Japan and lately India (where nearly 40% of coal-fired power plants are now running on “critical” levels of

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BRUSSELS The European Union’s energy commissioner has unveiled the main outlines of a proposed joint EU energy strategy for the next 10 years.

Presenting his “Energy 2020″ strategy paper in Brussels today, Guenther Oettinger called for investment of up to a trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) to strengthen infrastructure across the bloc. He also pleaded for a common external energy policy, saying member states pursuing their own interests weaken the EU’s collective negotiating position.

Reforming the energy sector is one of the crucial challenges facing the EU as it attempts to modernize its economy and consolidate its foreign policy stance.

Oettinger said the

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