Monthly Archives: May 2010

You can see the growing list of maintenance projects that PDVSA is seeking to contract out by going to the company’s daily list of domestic RFPs. The number of pages in this document has multiplied 10-fold in the past year, … Continue reading →

It’s a testiment to humanity’s terrestrial bias that the BP-produced daily “Oil Impact Assessment Map” shows only the impact on beaches, rather than the vast impact on the sea. Even the U.S. government data is just based on testing of … Continue reading →

I think I preferred the chocolate milk. Update May 30: In response to the question in comments, here’s the general website for the cleanup and here’s the page with maps. Looking at these maps gives us something to do while … Continue reading →

I’m still traveling, and will be for another 10 days, so continued light posting expected. And that’s my excuse for the delay on this one, too. It’s a long-running, unfunny joke in Venezuela that nobody knows whether the government runs … Continue reading →

Venezuela used less electricity in April than in any April since 2006, the Centro Nacional de Gestión said this week in a monthly report. The country used 9,078 megawatt-hours of electricity, down 9.3 percent from a year earlier. As has … Continue reading →

Yes, Peru. I break my vow to do original reporting rather than news aggregating, mostly because the Inter-Press Service news wire never gets wide enough play for its often very interesting stories. They say Ecopetrol and Korea National Oil Co.’s … Continue reading →

Fun fact for electricity geeks. I’ve wondered for a while how home generators compare to big central power plants when it comes to producing electricity. After all, I’ve been living in a country (Venezuela) where more and more of the … Continue reading →

The oil industry pollutes. The dirtiness of the industry is too easy to forget amid conversations about the effect of oil money on a nation’s politics, the effect of OPEC on the world economy, or corruption in contracting. They’re all … Continue reading →

The Germans wrote a nice book in English telling city leaders around the world how to get more people onto bikes. I haven’t read it all but it looks pretty comprehensive and attractive. Gives lots of due credit to places … Continue reading →