French Energy Giant Drops Iran Gas Project

'Fracking' can be an energy revolution: David Brooks

(NEWSER) - David Brooks jumps on the the "fracking" bandwagon in a big way today, writing in the New York Times that "it would be a crime if we squandered this blessing." Fracking is the controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale. As Brooks sees it, the US is sitting on what may be a 100-year supply of clean energy that can not only reduce our dependence on coal and oil but help us transition to the day when solar and wind power can play more of a role. Plus, it could create "hundreds of thousands of new jobs" in hard-hit areas such as western Pennsylvania and Ohio. More»

Enough to heat half a million homes is burned off every day

(NEWSER) - Gaze into North Dakota’s sky some night, and you might see flickering as flames light up the sky. That’s the sight of oil companies wasting staggering amounts of natural gas, the New York Times reports. The gas bubbles up alongside oil in the state’s Bakken shale field, and because oil is more lucrative, companies simply burn off the gas—wasting more than 100 million cubic feet of it a day, enough to heat 500,000 homes. More»

What UN sanctions?

(NEWSER) - Trivialities like UN sanctions aside, Iran began loading fuel into its first nuclear reactor today—with Russian engineers assisting to ensure the plant produces only energy and not, say, warheads. The plant at Bushehr itself apparently doesn't concern the outside world so much as Iran's other uranium enrichment activities, but the US had sought to block the energy production to further prod Iran into abandoning them. More»

Tehran thumbs nose at UN demands to cease program

(AP) - The Iranian government approved a plan today to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion of the program in defiance of UN demands it halt enrichment. The decision comes only days after the UN nuclear watchdog agency censured Iran over its program and demanded it halt the construction of a newly revealed enrichment facility. More»

(NEWSER) - Yesterday's surprise announcement at the G20 summit of the existence of a hidden Iranian nuclear enrichment facility wasn't the way President Obama planned to handle the information, Politico reports. His hand was forced by a reporter who learned of a letter in which Iran notified the UN's nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna of the previously undisclosed site under construction since 2005 in a mountain near Qom. More»