Everyday of my life is exactly like this. I know you’re jealous.

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Definitely the greatest corporate anthem I have ever heard. Go Gazprom!

Don’t bother trying, you’ll never ever find
A surer friend than Gazprom
We’re giving people warmth and light
For office and for home
We should always keep in mind
From dawn till sun down,
That our work is always needed
Working day or holiday

Let’s drink to you, let’s drink to us
Let’s drink to all the Russian gas
For those extracting the new sun
From down beneath the ground

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See, we’re not all that evil:

Eco-sailors rescued by oil tanker

An expedition team which set sail from Plymouth on a 5,000-mile carbon emission-free trip to Greenland have been rescued by an oil tanker.

[...]

The team, which left Mount Batten Marina in Plymouth on 19 April in a boat named the Fleur, aimed to rely on sail, solar and man power on a 580-mile (933km/h) journey to and from the highest point of the Greenland ice cap.

The expedition was followed by up to 40 schools across the UK to promote climate change awareness.

But atrocious weather dogged their journey after 27 April, culminating with the rescue on 1 May after the boat was temporarily capsized three times by the wind.

In one incident Mr Stoddart hit his head and the wind generator and solar panels were ripped from the yacht.

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Hilarious. Thanks to Ryan for sending me this button. Aspiring Daniel Plainviews can order them from democraticstuff.com.

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I really wish Gazprom would post videos of their press conferences, because it would be rather hilarious to see Sergey Kupriyanov and Alexey Miller shouting their statements to reporters:

As of January 7, when Gazprom was forced to cease gas supplies, the transit pipelines in Ukraine were filled with Russian gas. Therefore, the pipeline pressure is supposed to be sufficient for ensuring synchronous gas flow at the entry and exit points of the Ukrainian gas transmission system. Once we feed gas to the entry point, it is to appear at the exit point!

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Especially when they use exclamation marks!

Providing gas for technological needs is the sole responsibility of transiting party!

Indeed!

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Heeey, I coulda sworn the Bush administration said the reconstruction would pay for itself:

Plummeting oil prices may force Iraq’s government to slow ambitious reconstruction plans, and the country could face a budget shortfall by next summer, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

“We’re in a situation where Iraq is … potentially going to be in a deficit mode next year,” said Paul Brinkley, who leads Pentagon efforts to aid Iraq’s economy.

The trend worries U.S. officials who say a strong economy is needed to lock in the security gains made over the past year. “The long-term stability of the country heavily depends on a vibrant economy,” Brinkley said.

[...]

“For next year, with the oil prices going down, we’re going to have a problem,” said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States.

If prices decline after that, “it’s not even going to be enough to pay salaries, never mind reconstruction of the infrastructure,” he said in a speech Tuesday.

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I never thought this day would come. The CPC Consortium has finally agreed to expand the pipeline’s capacity, which will carry some 1.4 million bpd of Kazakh crude by 2013.

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No promises from Russia on production cuts, but I thought this was interesting:

In a speech to the assembled OPEC ministers, Mr. Sechin said that Russia’s beleaguered oil producers had already pruned production in November, and could cut still more if market conditions warranted. But he gave no promises.

Instead, he put forward a list of changes that Moscow would like to see made to the international pricing and trading of crude.

First, he said, the world needed to establish some other recognized benchmarks than those now used in New York and London for trade in West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude oils. Those benchmarks, he said, were “inappropriate and unfair.”

It was also “worth discussing” scraping the U.S. dollar as the primary oil currency and replacing it with a basket of currencies—a pitch made from time to time by Iran and Venezuela.

The world, Mr. Sechin said, also needed “new trading floors” in other parts of the world to counterbalance the power of the New York Mercantile Exchange and to better reflect the “actual turnover volumes” of crude itself, as opposed to the mere “financial instruments” traded on the Nymex. The Kazakh capitol of Astana, he said, would be one good location.

Mr. Sechin then pitched Russia being granted permanent observer status within OPEC. That way, he added, Russia could host an OPEC meeting sometime next year.

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Now, I’m not going to get too down on the coal industry, because my family in Illinois has worked in it for several generations (both mining and power plants) and it’s still a vital source of energy in the United States, but the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Clean Coal Carolers” are ridiculously lame. It’s basically a flash video where you dress up lumps of coal, pick a background, and listen to the pieces of coal sing songs like “Frosty the Coalman”. I mean, seriously, WTF? Who thought this would be a good idea?!

My clean coal carolers are at the beach, and dressed in winter clothing. Another WTF?

Even worse, they set up a Facebook page to promote the Clean Coal Carolers, and the enviros are absolutely dominating it. I bet some old dude at ACCCE was like “Hey, I hear the kids hang out on Facebook these days! Let’s make a fan page for the Clean Coal Carolers!” And then they are promptly mobbed by enviros basically calling them killers and what not. Yeah, that Facebook page was a great idea.
Basically, this was a total waste of money. Instead, they should have developed a game where you have to capture CO2 and store it or something. Duh.

Oh, and natural gas is way better.

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