For those old folks like me who remember the classic sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies," you will also recall the lyrics from the theme song (when sitcoms used to have theme songs!).  They call oil "bubbly crude....black gold...Texas tea." If you fast forwarded to today, Jed Clampett might be a North Dakota landowner who sold his leasing and mineral rights to a developer and made enough money to buy a big hou ...

[caption id="attachment_2634" align="alignleft" width="72"] Aristotle (384-322 BC)[/caption] I'm going to end this week of bombings, explosions and other tragic news on a positive energy note: The United States has reached the carbon emission reduction goals laid out in the Kyoto Protocal...even though it never signed the treaty! Yes, you read that right.  According to the Energy Information Administration ...

[caption id="attachment_2605" align="alignleft" width="384"] ComEd engineers showcase the new digital "smart substation" on Chicago's South Side and detail what the new upgrades mean for them and their customers.[/caption] As head of the Illinois Chamber's Energy Council, I conduct or participate in many energy related tours.  Wind farms, solar farms, coal mines, nuclear plants, pipeline right of ways, refi ...

With apologies to the Catholic Church's new Pontiff, the white smoke I saw this week came from the capitol in Springfield -- and it could end up changing the economic landscape of southeastern Illinois and help bring some much needed jobs and economic development (revenue) to Illinois. Why? Because the oil and gas industry, business leaders, most environmental groups, the AG's office, the Department of Reve ...

With apologies to US gymnast McKayla Maroney, I just had to use her look of disappointment when I think about the on-going blather about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would bring additional oil from Canada and North Dakota into Oklahoma and Texas (and perhaps, beyond). Environment groups have used the proposed pipeline as a literal lightning rod for all that is wrong with oil, pipelines and oil fro ...

After months of negotiations, legislators, representatives from the Attorney General's office, environmental groups and oil and gas producers are "very close" to agreeing to regulatory language that could provide the certainty for producers to come and see if the New Albany Shale play in SE Illinois can actually produce natural gas or oil. This article from Midwest Energy News provides some reasonable conte ...

It's alive!  It's alive!!! That's the shout being heard from the US Department of Energy as they announced that the FutureGen 2.0 project in Meredosia, Illinois is moving forward to phase two. This is the link to the US DOE release. As you may remember, FutureGen has been years in the making.  It was originally set to be a new clean coal plant in Mattoon, Illinois with sequestration.  Now it's about rehabbi ...

We've heard about the possibility of off-shore wind power on the Atlantic Coast for some time, but it's usually followed by a long litany of challenges (economic, political and environmental) that make it hard to do.  So far the challenges have been too big and there has been no successful off-shore wind project off the east coast. Could that be changing? This New York Times article showcases an announcemen ...