Despite a push from the governor and an increase in the number of so-called flexible-fuel vehicles on the road — which can run on either gasoline or a mostly ethanol blend — sales of E85 have dipped in recent months, beyond the normal decline in winter months.

If he and others like him around the country are successful, algae-based biofuel could one day power one of the world's biggest gas guzzlers: the U.S. military.

Shell confirmed the closure of its oil plants in the region following a spike in attacks on the company's facilities and employees, Nigerian media reported.

The accord was signed by Nigerian Petroleum Minister Rilwanu Lukman, Niger’s Energy Minister Mohammed Abdullahi and his Algerian counterpart Chakib Khelil in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, today. The project will cost an estimated $10 billion, he said at the signing ceremony.

Two studies project that the legislation would cut oil use in the future, but not enough to make much of a dent in dependence on oil from unstable or unfriendly foreign suppliers. Some experts say that other steps will be needed to cut U.S. oil use significantly.

Approximately 37.1 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more away from home during the holiday weekend, typically the busiest time for auto travel in the United States, the world's largest energy consumer, down from 37.8 million last year.

In a statement posted on its website, the ministry said collecting carbon duties from foreign products would enable developed countries to "protect trade in the name of protecting the environment."

Most blending is likely to use first-generation biofuels produced with food crops, said Giovanni De Santi, director of the Energy Institute at the European Union Commission's Joint Research Center.

But domestic oil producers should prepare themselves well for any uncertainties in the war-torn country, which boasts of the third-largest oil reserves in the world, they added.

OPEC has been emphasizing for a long time now, that fundamentals -- demand and supply -- no more control the oil markets. Non-fundamentals -- speculation to be specific -- are now in full control and the world needs to rein them in.

Increasingly, subdivisions, usually master-planned developments at which buyers buy home sites or raw land, have been treating farms as an amenity. “There are currently at least 200 projects that include agriculture as a key community component,” said Ed McMahon, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute.

Author Richard Heinberg writes in Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, “In short: two of the defining trends of the emerging century–the development of the Asian economies and climate change–both center on coal. But coal is finite non-renewable resource. Thus, a discussion of the future of coal must also intersect with a third great trend of the new century: resource depletion.”

"Life on Earth is under serious threat," the International U-nion for Conservation of Nature said in a 155-page report that describes the past five years of a losing battle to protect species, natural habitats and geographical regions from the devastating effects of man.

Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian said the Garona plant in northern Spain, which had been designed to function only until 2011 and whose operating permit expires on Sunday, would now be allowed to operate until July 2013.

That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney."