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oil prices

CAFE Standards, Chicken Taxes, and Tin Can Coopers

By Energy Rant One Comment
We’re headed off-road in this edition of the Rant to discuss fuel mileage standards. Last Monday, April 2, the EPA rolled back Obama era EPA fuel mileage standards, also known as corporate average fuel economy standards, or CAFE standards. There are many opinions on this, from ACEEE to The Wall Street Journal and thousands of others. I will stick with facts and reality and stay out of that muck.It would be great if the efficiency in buildings and cost of energy were as transparent as they are for vehicles. I think everyone knows how many gallons of gasoline or diesel…
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graphic of a train

What’s Newer Than the iPhone? Crude Oil by Rail

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Paid any attention to news lately?  Need any ideas for a Halloween costume?  Whoops – too late for that.  A good costume would be the Ebola virus – the current obsessive, 24/7 news feeding fixation.  Other than Ebola, it is fair to say the region between Morocco and India is as chaotic as ever.  There are civil wars, religious sects at war, heinous videos, Iran plowing ahead with nuclear weapon development, and last, but not least, Vlady Putin, the KGB thug clearly wants to reassemble the Soviet Union.  If one were to board the DeLorean time machine (incidentally fueled by…
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Dumb Bears

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Sustainability One Comment
A senior sales director for MXEnergy, “the fastest growing natural gas and electricity retail provider” states, “As we observe the unrest in Egypt and other parts of the world, we recognize the volatility of the natural gas market.”  What?  He like many others “on both sides of the aisle” use the Middle East and our real dependence on foreign to twang the audience’s emotional strings. The goings on in Egypt will have nearly zero affect on natural gas prices here in the mainland, U.S.  Why?  Because nearly all of our natural gas is produced here and we import from hostile…
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Disaster in the Gulf

By Energy Rant, Government, Sustainability No Comments
Like millions of people around the world, I have been following the slow nightmare that is unfolding in the gulf.  Many topics and thoughts come to mind. First, our company mission is “make every project a positive experience for our clients”. It’s simple but guides everything we do.  When there is a potential mistake or an angry client calling or emailing us complaining about something we are involved with, it’s a code red in our office.  Engineers and managers meet immediately to plot the course of events leading to where we are and we clearly define the problem and plot…
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