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Hey there. I am in Vancouver right now…more to come soon…Reiner

Russia’s oil economy: Dollars out, Euros in

Why is this such a big deal? Well, as of right now, the U.S. dollar is basically the exclusive currency for oil prices, which helps buoy the dollar’s value even in a sweeping recession.

Europe certainly could need such a soild anchor. But then, I thought Russia is increasingly moving towards the Northern American market (big time!). Would such a switch by Russia and possibly other oil countries such as Iran (which has been discussing this; see this interesting article) destabilize the US Dollar? Interestingly enough, Iraq also priced their oil in Euros before the war but I guess it’s US Dollars again…

Telegraph | Money | Russia to price oil in euros in snub to US: “Russia is to start pricing its huge oil and gas exports in euros instead of dollars as part of a stragetic shift to forge closer ties with the European Union.

The Russian central bank has been amassing euros since early 2002, increasing the euro share of its $65 billion (£40 billion) foreign reserves from 10pc to more than 25pc, according to the finance ministry.

The move has set off a chain reaction in the private sector, leading to a fourfold increase in euro deposits in Russian banks this year and sending Russian citizens scrambling to change their stashes of greenbacks into euro notes.

German officials said Chancellor Gerhard Schroder secured agreement for the change-over on oil pricing from Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, while on a trip to Russia this week.”

Erneuerbare Energien – Aktuelle Nachrichten: “Wolfsburg/Wolfsburg/Stuttgart – Volkswagen und DaimlerChrysler haben das Anfahren der industriellen Pilotanlage des Projektpartners Choren Industries in Freiberg/Sachsen begrüßt, in der eine patentierte Hochdruckvergasung von Biomasse erfolgt. Damit legt Choren den Grundstein zur industriellen Herstellung von flüssigem bio-synthetischen Kraftstoff, teilten Volkswagen und DaimlerChrysler mit.

Unter dem durch die Kooperationspartner gemeinsam entwickeltem Label „SunDiesel® – Made by CHOREN“ wird hier ein Treibstoff hergestellt, der absolut schwefel- und aromatenfrei und darüber hinaus auch noch CO2 neutral ist und damit alle Anforderungen an einen leistungsfähigen und umweltfreundlichen Kraftstoff erfüllt. Sobald der Herstellungsprozess etabliert und der Kraftstoff in entsprechender Menge und Qualität verfügbar ist, werden DaimlerChrysler und Volkswagen die Erstbetankung ihrer fabrikneuen Diesel-PKW in den Herstellerwerken mit SunDiesel® vornehmen.

Erste Untersuchungsergebnisse hätten bereits gezeigt, dass schon heute viele Euro-3-Diesel-Fahrzeuge, die mit SunDiesel® betrieben würden, ohne weitere technische Änderungen am Fahrzeug die Abgasnorm Euro 4 erfüllen. Das zeige das enorme Potential dieses synthetischen Kraftstoffs zur Verringerung der Kohlenwasserstoff- (HC), Stickoxid- (NOx) sowie der Partikelemissionen und den hohen Beitrag zum Umwelt- und Klimaschutz, so Volkswagen und DaimlerChrysler.

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Arni: Political intercourse with Enron?

Today’s voting day in California — go vote!

» Greg Palast/The Observer Now, thirty-four pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter’s fax machine tell all about the tryst between Maria’s husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

Here’s the story Arnold doesn’t want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California’s unique Civil Code provision 17200, the “Unfair Business Practices Act.” This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers.

..

Now follow the action. One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron’s Lay calls an emergency secret meeting in L.A. of his political buck-buddies, including Arnold. Their plan, to undercut Davis (according to Enron memos) and “solve” the energy crisis — that is, make the Bustamante legal threat go away.

The eye of the hurrican

» New Scientist: Virtual hurricanes have appeared in computer models of the Earth’s climate for the first time. The swirling storms are visible in the first results from the Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan – the world’s fastest supercomputer.

…

Whereas most climate models divide the Earth into blocks measuring hundreds of kilometres across, the powerful Earth Simulator can run models with cells as small as 10 kilometres. This means that detailed features of the weather – such as tropical storms – can be included.

In one sequence from the model, says Slingo, “you can see a typhoon going up to Japan and it even has a little eye”.

Littering a principle of human desire?

I’ve found this interesting interview with chemist and chemical engineer Prof. Professor Michael Braungart in Berlin’s ‘taz‘ about the future of recycling. Braungart’s anwers are quite progressive: he believes in different ways of recycling, a more ‘wholistic’ system, about cars which would leave wetlands in tact and how to use emissions as nutrients.

In the highlighted blurb he talks about how our car could be used like the buffalo by the native Indians (our Canadian friends call them ‘first nations’): Such a car would be completely glued to together and fall apart in a well defined time, say in five years. Then the car would be dipped into a certain liquid, the glue removed by enzymes, filtered and used again. All five sorts of plastics would be recycled and used again in parts of the same quality. Sounds interesting, eh?! I am not sure about the costs and logistics involved in such a process, though. To read the entire article in google translation gibberish, click the link below the German text.

» die tageszeitung: Wie muss ein Auto aussehen, das Feuchtgebiete hinterlässt?

Momentan sind Autos schädlich und verdrängen alle anderen Lebewesen vom Planeten. Aber ein Auto könnte sein wie der Büffel für den Indianer: Seine Stoffwechselprodukte nutzen dem anderen. Die Stickoxide, die dieses Auto produziert, werden nicht länger durch einen Katalysator zerstört, sondern als Nährstoff genutzt. Dieses Auto hätte auch eine definierte Nutzungszeit: Nach fünf Jahren geht es an den Produzenten zurück. Alle Komponenten sind geklebt. Es kommt in ein Tauchbad, die Klebstoffe werden von Enzymen aufgelöst, die Komponenten abfiltriert und erneut verwendet. Die enthaltenen fünf Plastiksorten verwendet man für neue Materialien gleicher Qualität. Sounds interesting, eh?!

Auch solche Autos würden unsere Städte verstopfen.

Nein, denn der Kunde kauft 100.000 Kilometer Autofahren. Darin sind Versicherung, Benzin und Wartung enthalten. Wenn man nur noch für den Kilometer Autofahrt bezahlt, lohnt es sich, auf Bahn oder Bus umzusteigen. So würde das Auto das Nischenprodukt für alle anderen Verkehrsmittel.

translate source above using google translation

Peak-time much sooner?

» The Independent: World oil and gas supplies are heading for a “production crunch” sometime between 2010 and 2020 when they cannot meet supply, because global reserves are 80 per cent smaller than had been thought, new forecasts suggest.

Research presented this week at the University of Uppsala in Sweden claims that oil supplies will peak soon after 2010, and gas supplies not long afterwards, making the price of petrol and other fuels rocket, with potentially disastrous economic consequences unless people have moved to alternatives to fossil fuels.

While forecasters have always known that such a date lies ahead, they have previously put it around 2050, and estimated that there would be time to shift energy use over to renewables and other non- fossil sources.

But Kjell Aleklett, one of a team of geologists that prepared the report, said earlier estimates that the world’s entire reserve amounts to 18,000 billion barrels of oil and gas – of which about 1,000 billion has been used up so far – were “completely unrealistic”. He, Anders Sivertsson and Colin Campbell told New Scientist magazine that less than 3,500 billion barrels of oil and gas remained in total.

» Robert Fisk: Oil, War and Panic: “When the US attacked Iraq in March, the country was producing 2.7 million barrels a day. It transpires that in the very first hours after they entered Baghdad on 9 April, American troops allowed looters into the oil ministry. By the time senior officers arrived to order them out, they had destroyed billions of dollars of irreplaceable seismic and drilling data.

While the major oil companies in the US stand to cream off billions of dollars if oil production resumes in earnest, many of their executives were demanding to know from the Bush administration–long before the war–how it intended to prevent sabotage. In fact, Saddam had no plans to destroy the oil fields themselves, plenty for blowing up the export pipes. The Pentagon got it the wrong way round, racing its troops to protect the fields but ignoring the vulnerable pipelines.”