The researchers found that the groundbreaking process—known as anaerobic hydrocarbon metabolism—can be used to stimulate methane gas production from older, more mature oil reservoirs like those in Oklahoma. The work has now led to the recognition that similar microorganisms may also be involved in problems ranging from the deterioration of fuels to the corrosion of pipelines.

The government will lead test production of the frozen methane in an ocean trench called the Nankai Trough about 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast of the country's main Honshu Island, according to a document distributed at a trade ministry panel meeting in Tokyo today. Japan will extend by 2 years a 16- year frozen methane project started in 2001 to find out if the fuel is suitable for commercial production.

“There is still a lot of oil to develop out there, which is why we don’t call this geological peak oil, especially in places like Venezuela, Russia, Iran and Iraq,” said Arjun Murti, an energy analyst at Goldman Sachs. “What we have now is geopolitical peak oil.”

“The worsening economic outlook suggests that oil prices have further to fall, but OPEC, whose members are due to meet in early September, may act to prevent them from falling too far,” the Centre for Global Energy Studies said in its latest monthly report.

Coal liquefaction is a process that has been around for a long time. Although relatively unfamiliar in the American energy vocabulary, it dates back to 1923 when German scientists developed the Fisher-Tropsch process for converting coal into the liquid fuels of gasoline and diesel. The process was used extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II. It came into its most extensive use when South Africa faced a world oil embargo during that nation's political practice of racial apartheid in the latter part of the last century.

Instead of heading toward the U.S. offshore oil patch, the storm is forecast to enter the far southeastern Gulf of Mexico before striking Florida as a hurricane on Tuesday.

4. Briefs

If sticker shock at the gas pumps hasn't convinced you, talk to Dr. Darrel Schmitz, head of the Department of Geosciences, Mississippi State University.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) line, the world's second-longest pipeline, was closed down on August 5 after an explosion in a pump at a section in eastern Turkey sparked a fire.

BBC

Shell said about 200 workers were evacuated on Sunday from the eastern Gulf, the same number the company evacuated from that region on Saturday. Marathon said the number evacuated from the central Gulf was not immediately available.

"The market is oversupplied by at least 1 million barrels a day. If OPEC would like to remove this additional oil out of the market, then OPEC has to cut some production," OPEC governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi told Dow Jones in a telephone interview.

The workers are not essential to Shell's offshore operations, the company said in a statement.

Sprott: We aren't going to run out of oil in the next 100 years, but it will keep getting harder and more expensive to obtain. Most people don't even realize that production is falling. In 1956, M. King Hubbert, an analyst at Shell Oil, said that production in the lower 48 states would go down by 1970. Sure enough, 14 years later, it started going down. And it's kept sliding since then. We've found over 50% of everything we are going to find here. Once you find 50%, you naturally go into a decline. And here we are, 38 years later, and, my God, think about the amount of money that's been spent trying to find more! We spend more every year and get no more net production. And the list of countries whose oil production has peaked keeps growing, including Russia, which for eight consecutive months has had year-over-year declines. Companies have the same problem. The latest results from Exxon showed that its production was down about 3%.