Conventional gas-powered cars starting to match hybrids in fuel efficiency

The new Chevrolet Cruze Eco can reach eye-popping fuel economy levels of more than 50 miles per gallon on the highway, which even in this era of hybrid-electric cars stands among the best.

But here's the real trick: The Cruze Eco is neither a hybrid nor electric. It runs on that "old" technology, the conventional gasoline engine.

Although hydrogen, electric and other alternative cars have garnered more hype and significant federal subsidies, the best immediate hope for restraining the nation's fuel consumption might be some new vehicles that, although powered by conventional engines, run efficiently because they have been stripped of unnecessary weight, streamlined to move smoothly and equipped with gas-sipping engines.

This year, General Motors, Ford and Hyundai began selling cars with conventional engines that achieve 40 mpg or more on the highway, exceeding the fuel efficiency of some hybrids, because their mechanics and shapes have been optimized.

To achieve the efficiency of the Cruze Eco, for example, engineers dropped its weight by 200 pounds, installed shutters to close off part of the grill at higher speeds to reduce wind drag, added a rear spoiler, cut the car's height by one centimeter and adopted an efficient turbocharged engine.

The result is a car that, with a manual transmission, is rated at 42 mpg on the highway by the government but can achieve more than 50 mpg under the right conditions, reviewers say. Likewise, the new Ford Focus, with its "super fuel economy" package, is rated at 40 mpg and the Hyundai Elantra gets the same fuel economy, standard in all models.

With the recent spike in gas prices reawakening consumer interest in fuel economy, the new cars are expected to be particularly appealing, in part because they are typically less expensive than their hybrid counterparts.

"The buzz has been all about electric vehicles and hybrids, but to me, the real buzz should be about the old internal-combustion engine," said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive of Edmunds.com, an automotive Web site. "It ain't dead yet."

At least since the oil shocks of the 1970s, American politicians have been infatuated with developing alternative sources to power the nation's auto fleet. The George W. Bush administration pushed a hydrogen car; now Congress and the Obama administration are laying out billions of dollars for the development of electric cars.

But the new fuel-efficient gasoline cars, critics say, raise doubts about government efforts that favor any one technology over another. If subsidies are to be made, they argue, they should go to efficient cars, no matter what their power source. Moreover, when the fuel economy of a best-selling gas car is improved even incrementally, it can have much larger effects on the nation's oil consumption than an alternative-technology model that doesn't sell well.

Experts expect alternative fuel technologies to take hold eventually, but hybrid cars still represent only about 3 percent of U.S. car and truck sales. And the latest generation of electric plug-in vehicles hit the market only recently.

"When you take some of the most popular vehicles in the U.S. - say, the Ford F-150 pickup - and improve them by just a few mpg, the effects can add up very quickly," said John DeCicco, a faculty fellow at the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan. "Much more so than with a niche car."

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Oil spill report lays much blame on BP, who knew of Halliburton weaknesses

The chief counsel of the presidential oil spill commission has issued a final report laying considerable blame on BP for last year's disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But he also points to flaws in Halliburton's work and errors by rig owner Transocean.

Fred H. Bartlit Jr., a prominent trial lawyer, said that for three years BP had been aware of problems with lab tests of Halliburton cement; that a reorganization of BP's engineering department resulted in delays; and that BP decided not to set a lockdown sleeve, an installation deep in the well, during its preparations for temporary abandonment in order to save 51/2 days and $2 million in costs.

He also said BP's well-site leader was not present, as he should have been, during a critical test known as a negative pressure test that indicated something was wrong.

Bartlit's report is the latest of a series from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which has already faulted a variety of factors, including decisions made by the well operator BP, rig owner Transocean, oil service provider Halliburton and federal regulators.

In a statement Thursday, BP did not dispute the report's specifics. The London-based oil giant said that it "has made every effort to understand the causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident to help prevent similar events from occurring in the future." BP said the presidential commission's findings - "particularly that the accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple parties - are largely consistent with those contained in the BP internal investigation report." It added that it is reorganizing its safety operations and reviewing its supervision of contractors.

Halliburton and Transocean did not issue comments.

Bartlit noted that in 2007, a consulting firm issued a quality-control report warning BP that Halliburton's lab technicians "do not have a lot of experience evaluating data" and that BP needed to improve communication with Halliburton "to avoid unnecessary delays or errors in the slurry design testing."

A cementing expert at BP described the "typical Halliburton profile" as "operationally competent and just good enough technically to get by." And BP's engineers said that the Halliburton engineer assigned to the doomed Macondo well was "not cutting it" and that he often waited too long to conduct critical tests. But, Bartlit added, the BP engineers neither reviewed his work at Macondo carefully nor checked to see that he conducted testing in a timely manner - even though they knew that their last-minute changes to the cement design test could cause problems and that using nitrogen-foamed cement could pose "significant stability challenges."

Bartlit also said the blowout preventer was not to blame for the explosion on the drilling rig, the Deepwater Horizon, that killed 11 workers April 20. The report says that by the time the rig crew tried to close the blowout preventer on the sea floor, deadly gas had already slipped into the riser pipe leading to the rig.

Although the route that gas took through the well when it blew out has been a matter of uncertainty, Bartlit's report says physical evidence taken from the well shows that oil and natural gas "almost certainly" came to the surface through a piece of equipment called the "shoe track" and up the production pipe. The report says cement in the shoe track should have blocked that flow, which it says further calls into question the quality of the cement job done by Halliburton.

Bartlit also faults Transocean, whose rig workers missed several signs of trouble in the well. Earlier alarm might have prompted them to close the blowout preventer earlier, avoiding catastrophe.

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Calif.'s Prop 23 battle pits Big Oil against environmental concerns

Mix together a couple of big oil refiners, an arch-conservative oil tycoon, "green tech" venture capitalists, a former secretary of state and California's far-reaching climate legislation, and stir.

The result is one of the most volatile and expensive political battles of the year.

The issue is Proposition 23, a California referendum that would shelve the state's four-year-old climate legislation until unemployment there falls to 5.5 percent - more than half the current level - which economists agree could take many years. The delay would upend a myriad of solar, wind and low-emission automobile projects.

The referendum has also become a test case about the power of corporate money - mostly from two Texas-based firms - and a measure of how much climate change is sucking wind as a political cause. Fresh off their defeat on a climate bill in Congress, environmentalists and their allies are fighting to prevent their biggest policy success from being rolled back in the country's most "green"-friendly state.

The California legislation would slash greenhouse emissions by 30 percent, limit tailpipe emissions and set targets for utilities' renewable energy use.

A game of big money

One indicator of the emotional charge surrounding the debate was the language Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) used to attack Prop 23 supporters.

"Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black oil hearts, are spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs?" Schwarzenegger said recently. "This is like Eva Braun writing a kosher cookbook. It's not about jobs at all, ladies and gentlemen. It's about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits."

The proposition held a slight lead at one point, according to polls, but is now narrowly trailing.

The measure was the brain child of a state legislator, a Sacramento lobbyist who has represented tobacco companies and two oil refiners.

By early October, Valero Energy, the nation's biggest refiner, had poured $4 million into an ad campaign, public records show. Tesoro, the other refiner, has matched that, a company official said. The Koch brothers, who have supported the tea party movement and other conservative causes, added more than $1 million. Other donors brought the total to $16 million.

But Big Oil isn't the only big money in California.

Lined up against the refiners are a group of wealthy fund managers, clean technology investors, environmental groups and onetime Reagan secretary of state George Shultz, who believes that "climate issues are very real" and that Proposition 23 is "a very bad thing."

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Prices of crude oil and gasoline rise as violence in Libya upsets markets

Crude oil prices in New York broke through the $100-a-barrel threshold Thursday as violence in Libya continued to shake world financial markets and threatened to sidetrack the U.S. economic recovery.

But prices fell back later in the day, after a Saudi official said the kingdom would make up for any Libyan production lost as a result of upheaval there and the International Energy Agency said it was ready to release emergency stockpiles. President Obama also said the United States would be able to "ride out" the disruption in oil supplies.

After touching $103.41 a barrel, crude oil for April delivery ended up down slightly for the day, at $97.28 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In Europe, the price of Brent grade crude oil, another important benchmark, hit $119 a barrel before dropping back to $114.

But the triple-digit petroleum price weighed heavily on stock markets for much of the day and heightened fears that high fuel costs could be a drain on consumers. Thursday's closing price was still about 50 percent higher than the price nine months ago and the higest level since September 2008.

For U.S. consumers, higher oil prices most directly affect drivers and truckers, who devour the vast majority of U.S. petroleum products. U.S. pump prices for regular gasoline jumped 4 cents a gallon overnight, to $3.23, an eight-cent increase in the past week and 55 cents more than a year ago.

"Coming just before springtime, the timing of the latest crude oil price spike is foreboding. If crude prices were to stay around $100 per barrel, we could expect to see the price for a gallon of unleaded regular rise to about $3.40 in the not-too-distant future," said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic's manager of public and government affairs. "Motorists across the country are already spending in excess of$1.2 billion a day on fuel purchases, and that's likely to increase in coming weeks."

But oil is a component in the price of a vast variety of goods, including air tickets and food. Higher prices hit big users such as Wal-Mart, petrochemical firms and the U.S. military.

At FedEx, which every month adjusts its fuel surcharge on customers, chief executive Fred Smith said that higher fuel prices would have "not an enormous effect" but that "what's of much greater concern is the effect on the economy overall." He said high fuel prices were like a "tax imposed on the American economy" that would hurt people's buying power.

Because most U.S. oil is imported, money from gasoline sales is largely flowing overseas, inflating the U.S. trade deficit.

Adam E. Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, said every $5 increase in oil prices could shave two-tenths ofa percent off global economic growth. "If growth was supposed to be 4 percent and ends up being 3 percent, that would be a nasty surprise," he said.

The price of crude oil has surged since Libyans began a revolt against leader Moammar Gaddafi last week, although it has been climbing for most of the past year.

Goldman Sachs analysts warned in a report that Libya's unrest created "significant upside risk" and reduced the ability of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to respond to further supply disruptions.

Some analysts argued, however, that the spike in oil prices was an overreaction to the political upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East. Michael Kouri, an analyst with UBS Securities Canada, said it was "a dramatic reaction since current disruption to crude supply at present is minimal."

Libya produces about 1.5 million barrels a day, or nearly2 percent of the world's supplies. Some of that oil is still moving, companies said. Repsol, a Spanish oil company, said production in the Libyan fields in which it is a partner was running at 160,000 barrels a day, down from 360,000. Eni chief executive Paolo Scaroni said in Rome that Eni's net production was 120,000, down from 280,000 barrels. Analysts also said more than 350,000 barrels a day of production comes directly from offshore platforms.

Moreover, world stockpiles of crude oil are substantial. The Goldman report noted that spare production capacity and inventories could cover more than 100 days of consumption even if Libya halted all exports.

But a trader at one major U.S. refiner said traders were worried about unrest spreading to Algeria or some other major oil-exporting country.

"What we don't want is for another oil producer to get involved in this," Sieminski said.

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BP announces changes aimed at helping cover costs from gulf oil spill

BP said Tuesday that it will restart its suspended dividend payments, put its troubled Texas City refinery up for sale and sell another $13 billion in assets, a move aimed at covering costs flowing from last year's the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The British oil giant also said that it has sent a bill for $6 billion to its partners in the ill-fated Macondo oil well, Anadarko Petroleum and Mitsui, who it believes share liability for the disaster that killed 11 people and leaked nearly 5 million barrels of oil.

BP added $1 billion to its estimate of oil spill costs, bringing pre-tax charges related to the incident to a total of $40.9 billion. That figure does not include any payments by the partners, who say BP bears sole responsibility.

The announcements, including fourth-quarter operating earnings that were about 30 percent higher than a year earlier, closed out a catastrophic year for BP. Yet they painted a picture of a business on course to emerge largely intact, albeit about 15 percent smaller than it was before the spill.

BP chief executive Robert Dudley said that the company was pruning its least essential operations but would increase capital spending to $20 billion this year to explore and develop its most promising oil and gas prospects worldwide, including new frontiers in the Russian Arctic, Australia, the South China Sea and off Brazil's coast.

"We will be a different kind of company in the upstream going forward," said Dudley, who became chief executive after Tony Hayward resigned in the wake of the oil spill disaster. "We are taking this moment to make a broad strategic change," Dudley said, adding that BP would seek "different ways of unlocking value in the portfolio."

But BP executives in a Web cast said that the company's total production of oil and gas was equal to 3.67 million barrels a day, down 9 percent from a year earlier because of divestments, lower output in Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and development delays in the Gulf of Mexico.

Moreover, Dudley said that output would slide to 3.4 million barrels a day this year after further asset sales.

The projections left investors cautious about BP stock on a day when the market rose broadly. Shares of BP closed Tuesday at $47.98, down 51 cents or 1.1 percent. BP stock closed at $60.48 a share on April 20, hours before the Macondo blowout, and fell as low at $27.02 a share in late June.

The restoration of dividend payments was widely anticipated. BP set the new dividend at 7 cents a share, half the previous level. That will cost the company about $5 billion a year, leaving a substantial amount of cash to fund an escrow account for spill damages. Dudley said that BP would be careful to avoid setting the divided so high that it would have to rely on very high commodity prices to meet its payments without borrowing.

BP executives also said that the Texas City refinery, where a 2005 explosion killed 15 people, no longer fit into the company's strategic plans. BP has poured money into upgrading the facility and settling victims' claims since the accident. But it said it now hoped to sell the refinery, the third largest in the United States, by the end of 2012.

BP said it would also sell its Carson refinery near Los Angeles, reducing BP's total U.S. refining capacity by half.

Dudley said he remained committed to deepwater projects, despite last year's spill. He said BP had 19 deepwater wells planned for the Gulf of Mexico and off Angola's shore.

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BP, Transocean, Halliburton blamed by presidential Gulf oil spill commission

The presidential oil spill commission on Wednesday blamed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year on "missteps and oversights" by oil giant BP, rig owner Transocean and contractor Halliburton, saying those errors were "rooted in systemic failures" and could happen again.

The commission said that the April 20 blowout at BP's Macondo well was not inevitable, but rather a failure of management in which officials from all three firms ignored critical warning signs and failed to take precautions that might have delayed the completion of the well but also might have averted the environmental disaster.

In a chapter released from the final report due out next week, the commission said: "The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur."

The document provided a detailed account of the missteps that led to the spill, but most of the details have been revealed in other reports or investigations so far. It recounts fateful decisions by all three major corporate actors, including the failure to use enough centralizers to keep the pipe in the middle of the well, choices about the type of steel pipe used, and failure to heed or share test results suggesting that the cement used to seal the well could fail.

In the case of the failure to use enough centralizers, the report said that "the evidence to date does not unequivocally establish whether" that was a "direct cause" of the blowout, but the commission said that it "illuminates the flaws in BP's management and design procedures, as well as poor communication between BP and Halliburton."

The commission report also cited a Dec. 23, 2009, North Sea incident on one of Transocean's rigs, which the commission said was an "eerily similar near-miss" to what happened at the Macondo well. Though Transocean told the commission the incident was irrelevant, the commission said, "The basic facts of both incidents are the same. Had the rig crew been adequately informed of the prior event and trained on its lessons, events at Macondo may have unfolded very differently."

William K. Reilly, co-chairman of the commission appointed by President Obama, said that the commission had concluded that the blowout reflected "a more pervasive problem" within the oil industry.

"Given the documented failings of both Transocean and Halliburton, both of which serve the offshore industry in virtually every ocean, I reluctantly conclude we have a system-wide problem," Reilly said.

Former senator and commission co-chair Bob Graham stressed the failure of regulators. He said, "The Macondo blowout was the product of several individual missteps and oversights by BP, Halliburton and Transocean, which government regulators lacked the authority, the necessary resources and the technical expertise to prevent."

The Interior Department issued a statement saying that it has "already identified, acknowledged, and spent months working aggressively to reform" offshore drilling. It said it would "continue to make the changes necessary to restore the American people's confidence in the safety and environmental soundness of oil and gas drilling and production on the Outer Continental Shelf."

Last May, President Obama appointed Reilly and Graham to oversee the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling and gave them a January 2011 deadline to submit a report. Unlike Congress, the Justice Department or other probes, the oil spill commission lacked subpoena power but still sought to uncover the reasons for the disaster. It also criticized federal regulators and some Obama administration members for their response to the spill.

But the most detailed descriptions in the chapter released Wednesday were of communications and decisions by BP, Transocean and Halliburton.

"The immediate cause of the Macondo blowout was a failure to contain hydrocarbon pressures in the well," the report said. "Three things could have contained those pressures: the cement at the bottom of the well, the mud in the well and in the riser, and the blowout preventer. But mistakes and failures to appreciate risk compromised each of those potential barriers, steadily depriving the rig crew of safeguards until the blowout was inevitable and, at the very end, uncontrollable."

The report highlighted a series of decisions that led to time-saving and cost-saving measures when alternatives were available. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said the report showed "that the underlying profits-over-safety pathology may be in temporary remission, but not fully cured."

The report said, "Most of the mistakes and oversights at Macondo can be traced back to a single overarching failure - a failure of management."

BP said it supports the commission's efforts and "is working with regulators and the industry to ensure that the lessons learned from Macondo lead to improvements in operations and contractor services in deepwater drilling." It said that it has already "instituted significant changes designed to further strengthen safety and risk management."

Transocean, meanwhile, sought to place blame with BP and regulators. "Consistent with industry standards, the procedures being conducted in the final hours were crafted and directed by BP engineers and approved in advance by federal regulators," the company said in a statement. "Based on the limited information made available to them, the Transocean crew took appropriate actions to gain control of the well. They were well trained and considered to be among the best in the business."

Halliburton issued a statement sharply criticizing the presidential commission and BP. It blamed BP for failing to run a cement bond log test, which it called "the only means to test the integrity of the cement bond." It said "had BP properly interpreted the negative tests, the tests would have revealed any problems with the cement job." The company also reiterated disputes about the commission's description of February and April lab tests of cement mixtures as failures, and asserted that Halliburton's engineer on the Deepwater Horizon rig had received notice of satisfactory test results. Halliburton also accused the commission of having "selectively omitted information we provided to them."

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DataExplorer 3.1.4

View and analyze data The DataExplorer is a tool to gather, view and analyze data which comes from devices with a serial data port or other like CSV-file or USB port.

The application itself runs on several operating system with 32 or 64 bit processor and is enabled for national language support. Devices might be data logger, measurement devices, charging devices or similar.

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Movie Online Free 8.05.7

Software for viewing movie online free Movie Online Free is a software platform that gives its users the ability to watch streaming renditions of the newest movies for free. More than 4500 channels provide incredible movie, television, sports, news, or music options.

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