Michael Giberson TAKORADI, Ghana — The impoverished West African nation of Ghana become the world’s newest oil producer Wednesday, pumping crude for the first time from an offshore field worth billions of dollars in the Gulf of Guinea. President John Atta Mills turned the oil valves Wednesday during in an inaugural ceremony broadcast live from a storage vessel …
Oil Flows in Ghana, is the Resource Curse Soon to Follow? Read More »
Michael Giberson American University’s Investigative Journalism Workshop has published reports detailing the extensive political connections in the United States developed by Chinese wind power company A-Power Energy in its effort to build a 600-MW wind farm in West Texas. A-Power and their partners were seeking $450 million in section 1603 grants and U.S. Department of …
Chinese Wind Power Company Seems to Understand American Political Capitalism Read More »
Michael Giberson My title is taken from the subtitle of a story in the Arizona Republic, the headline is: “Solar supporters link future to subsidies.” The “solar supporters” and “industry advocates” referred to are the Solar Energy Industries Association and the American Wind Energy Association, both actively lobbying Congress for extension of the so-called 1603 …
Industry Advocates: Jobs Will Be Lost if Congress Doesn’t Act Read More »
Michael Giberson U.S. House Republicans sent a short note over to the U.S. Department of the Interior, inquiring as to Interior’s plans for regulatory or policy changes with respect to hydraulic fracturing on public lands. My favorites from among the questions asked: What scientific information or data does DOI intend to rely upon to form …
Michael Giberson The is significant industry optimism concerning the potential for shale gas development in Poland (more here), with estimates sufficiently high to suggest that Poland could shift its supply base away from heavy dependence on Gazprom and Russia’s good will to domestically produced gas from shale. Granted exploration for shale gas in Poland is …
Polish Gas Choices: Lng Imports, Shale Gas Resource Development, And/or Trusting Gazprom Read More »
Michael Giberson I suppose Al Gore is enjoying life and never expects to run for public office. Clear evidence of this fact? His recent comments on ethanol: “It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored …
Ethanol Comments Supply Evidence That Al Gore Will Never Again Run for Office Read More »
Michael Giberson Have you noticed images of wind turbines appearing in ads for everything from cars to banks to university programs? For many people, wind turbines have a kind of stately grace, a beauty, a high-tech glamour. In the Wall Street Journal, Virginia Postrel claimed that wind power (and high-speed rail) gets a public-policy boost from the …
Glamour and Policy – Virginia Postrel in the Wsj Read More »
Michael Giberson Democratic candidates and party organizations sent out many mailers before the last election promoting Libertarian candidates for office. Scott Gustafson, blogging at Arizona Economics, posts the flyer promoting Libertarian candidate Michael Shoen in a race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, paid for by the Arizona Democratic Party. (Another example, …
Democratic Party Promoted Libertarian Candidates Read More »
Michael Giberson Al Roth quotes from an article in the Atlantic discussing the powerful incentives to publish badly done, probably false medical research dressed up as success. In a sense the problem is the same as with other academic “publish or perish” reward systems except the incentives in medical research can be much, much higher. …
Incentives and Fake Success in Medical Research and Public Policy Read More »
Michael Giberson From news reports: The federal loan guarantee program for renewable energy projects should either be fixed or scrapped, senior White House advisors wrote in a memo to President Barack Obama last week. Obama’s top environmental advisor Carol Browner, top economic advisor Lawrence Summers and Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain …
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