Recent Posts
What’s up with U.S. gasoline prices?
Rising gasoline prices have been in the news recently, and there’s a lot of talk about why this is the case. Rising demand due to a global economic recovery, a lower value for the dollar, supply fundamentals – these are just a few of the potential factors that can drive up the price of crude oil, which in turn impacts the price of gasoline. Crude oil is one of a number of globally traded commodities like gold, corn, coffee and many others.
A specific – not systemic – failure
The release yesterday of findings by the presidential commission on the BP-Deepwater Horizon accident has helped give us a fuller picture of what happened in the tragic Gulf of Mexico blowout, explosion and oil spill. The report concluded that the disaster was avoidable and resulted from a specific series of management failures on the part of the companies involved.
U.S. EIA forecasts growing domestic natural gas supplies – and Americans will benefit
When the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its Annual Energy Outlook 2011 last week, growing U.S. shale gas production was the major headline. The upswing of natural gas in general is good news for several reasons: it’s a cleaner-burning fuel for power generation, resulting in up to 60 percent less carbon dioxide emissions than coal; the abundance of domestic gas supplies helps strengthen U.S. energy security; and growing gas production means more jobs and economic activity in states across the U.S. But if you go back only five or 10 years, few would have been talking about these benefits of domestic supplies of natural gas.
Gaining ground on malaria
I am excited to report that today, we have more proof that the global effort to eradicate malaria is working. The World Malaria Report 2010, released today by the World Health Organization (WHO), shows a 10-percent drop in global malaria deaths between 2008 and 2009; in more than 11 African countries, confirmed malaria cases and deaths have declined by almost 50 percent in recent years.
