What does England have to tell the U.S. about climate change? Essentially “Get with the program,” although Lord Peter Truscott was much more polite and indirect when speaking at OTC today. Truscott acknowledged that “debate rumbles on in parts of the U.S.” over whether humans are changing the earth’s environment for the worse, but the [...]  More »

Kem-Tron Technologies, Inc., a small manufacturer of drilling fluid processing equipment, is used to being overshadowed by big firms who do the same thing. But not Monday. Amid the heavy machinery and technical displays crowding the floor at Reliant Center this week for the Offshore Technology Conference, Kem-Tron attracted a small crowd to its booth, [...]  More »

You never saw massive pumps, pipes and all else that makes up structures that extract oil and gas from beneath the seafloor look this pretty. This year’s annual Offshore Technology Conference is in full swing at Reliant Center and Reliant Stadium, and the booths in the convention center’s exhibition halls are as elaborate as ever. [...]  More »

The Chronicle’s energy business team will be blogging from the Offshore Technology Conference at the Reliant Stadium complex this week. This massive gathering of the energy industry is expected to draw close to 60,000 people over the course of four days. This is shy of the early 1980s attendance numbers, which we’ve been told topped [...]  More »

The American Petroleum Institute has posted links to the transcript and audio files of the conference call API President Red Cavaney did with bloggers (including us) last week. The PDF of the transcript is here, and the audio file is here. A number of participants have posted their take on the call. Here’s ours, a [...]  More »

The accident that killed 15 and injured as many as 180 at BP’s Texas City refinery in March 2005 has been analyzed many times over (Chronicle’s ongoing coverage is here), so there shouldn’t be a whole lot the industry doesn’t know about the incident by now. Aftermath of March 2005 explosion But it was still [...]  More »

If you’re not a geologist you might have thought the headline referred to some Lone Star State-bashing, but it’s really all about a bit of the state’s geology that researchers can now see up close and personal. The Southwest Research Institute, a San Antonio non-profit R&D organization, and four major oil companies have joined in [...]  More »

I took part in a conference call today for bloggers hosted by the American Petroleum Institute, the main trade group for oil and natural gas producers, refiners, suppliers, etc. The topic: Energy and the Environment. Given the frequency with which we maintain this energy blog it may be a stretch to really call myself a [...]  More »

A large number of Chinese energy officials and executives will be in Houston April 28-29 for what is being billed as the first-ever Sino-U.S. event on Chinese energy markets. The Sino-U.S. Energy Market Development and Risk Management Symposium at the Marriot Hotel West Loop will gather Chinese policy-makers and executives with their U.S. counterparts “to [...]  More »

According to wire reports, the Texas legislature passed a bill to cut the rates of Reliant and TXU customers who were on the highest rate, formerly known as the-price-to-beat, as of Dec. 31, 2006. The reduction would go into effect in September. The measure was aimed at giving a break to people who didn’t switch [...]  More »

A number of readers e-mailed about a piece I wrote last week on Patrick Moore’s talk to the Gulf Coast Power Association’s conference in The Woodlands. Moore was an early member of Greenpeace (and has been described as a co-founder in a number of accounts) who has since taken positions that put him on the [...]  More »

One thing that couldn’t fit in the tiny item (second one down) we ran today about a Goldman Sachs subsidiary signing on a equity investor in a Fort Bend County IGCC power plant planned by Hunton Energy is some info on new plans for carbon capture at the plant. Previously, Hunton said they thought they’d [...]  More »