Lionel Badal was working on his undergraduate dissertation when he suddenly found himself privy to information that he knew must be made public

When will we reach the peak of global oil production? It’s a question of crucial importance as governments around the world prepare for a world of declining oil resources, in which we will be much more reliant on alternative sources of energy.

The body on which the UK and others rely heavily to make that assessment is the International Energy Agency (IEA) based in Paris and set up in the aftermath of the oil crisis between 1973 and 1974.

In a finding that may speed efforts to conserve oil and intensify the search for alternative fuel sources, scientists in Kuwait predict that world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014 — almost a decade earlier than some other predictions. Their study is in ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal.

The fuel injection system was developed by a startup company Transonic Combustion and their goal is to increase fuel efficiency of existing gasoline engines. The cost for this ultra-efficient system would be as much as high-end fuel injection systems currently on the market today.

By heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion chamber places it into a supercritical state that allows for very fast and clean combustion. This in turn decreases the amount of fuel needed to run the vehicle. The gasoline is also treated with a catalyst to further enhance combustion.

...It's Ghawar that is of utmost interest to the industry. The biggest oilfield ever found, it has been producing for five decades, often putting out more than 5 million bpd, a level that Aramco has been able to maintain by injecting millions of barrels a day of water into the field to push up the oil. Cynics in the Peak Oil crowd say that an ulterior motive of Aramco adding so much unneeded capacity is to prepare for the pending collapse of Ghawar.

Google has added biking directions, bike lanes and bike trail data for 150 U.S. cities to Google Maps, the online search giant announced Wednesday.

The new feature helps bikers determine the best, most efficient bike routes and allows riders to customize their trip, according to a posting on Google's Web site. The feature makes use of bike lanes and dedicated bike trails where they are available and calculates "rider-friendly" routes that avoid big hills.

It’s Wednesday, and the week’s U.S. oil inventories numbers will soon be out. I have no clue what they will say, nor much interest, either. But others do.

Exactly why oil traders and speculators think the data has anything to do with the state of world oil demand is beyond me. I suppose, like Pavlov’s dog, they’re only doing what they’re trained to do. But their training comes from a world that no longer exists.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Oil major Royal Dutch Shell has stopped gasoline sales to Iran, oil traders said on Wednesday, the latest addition to a growing list of firms that have halted supplies under threat of future U.S. sanctions.

The Anglo-Dutch oil firm will join the likes of BP, Reliance Industries, and independent Swiss trader Glencore, among suppliers that have either stopped fuel sales to Iran or have made a decision not to enter into new trading agreements with the world's fifth largest oil exporter.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It looks like ice -- but this ice could one day be used to heat your home.

It's actually not ice at all, but crystallized natural gas, and if scientists can figure out how to harvest it cheaply enough, it could become a vast new source of energy available in just about every country in the world.

According to local lore, Portuguese travelers as far back as the late 19th century suspected oil might lie beneath parts of East Africa after noticing a thick, greasy sediment wash up on the shores of Mozambique. More interested in finding cheap labor, though, the explorers had little use for oil.

A century on, it turns out the Portuguese were right. Seismic tests over the past 50 years have shown countries up the coast of East Africa have natural gas in abundance

China and India formally agreed Tuesday to join the international climate change agreement reached in December in Copenhagen, the last two major economies to sign up.

The two countries, among the largest and fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, submitted letters to the United Nations agreeing to be included on a list of countries covered by the Copenhagen Accord, a three-page nonbinding statement reached at the end of the contentious and chaotic 10-day conference.

While touting the development of alternative energy technologies such as solar power, the CEO of Saudi Arabia's national oil company stressed Tuesday that traditional fossil fuels -- oil, natural gas, coal -- will be kings of the energy world for a long time.

As he surveyed a standing-room-only audience at the CERA Week 2010 energy conference in Houston, Saudi Aramco chief Khalid Al-Falih, a Texas A&M University graduate, made no bones about his faith in oil and natural gas.

"We should undertake urgent focused research and development programs in next generation nuclear power," said atmospheric physicist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York.

While renewable energies such as solar and wind were gaining in economic competition with coal-fired plants, Professor Hansen said they wouldn't be able to provide baseload power for years to come.

Germany's largest fishing vessel will leave the Netherlands this week, towed by a giant kite harnessing trade winds for South America that will help cut its fuel consumption by up to a third.

The 15,000 tonne 'Maartje Theadora' is the first fishing vessel to use the system, in which a 160 square meter blue and white kite similar to a paraglider pulls the ship on a 300 meter rope, assisting its main engine.

In case you didn't catch it, the World Bank's top official for Africa just thumbed her nose at the dozens of renewable energy companies lining up to build clean energy in Africa's dirtiest economy.

Obiageli Ezekwesili, the Bank's Vice President for Africa, defended a controversial $3.75-billion loan to build a massive coal plant in South Africa with this head-in-the-sand statement: "There is no viable alternative to safeguard South Africa's energy security at this particular time."

Europe should promote spending on infrastructure to deliver natural gas to consumers from new sources of the fuel from Africa, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Eni SpA Chief Executive Officer Paolo Scaroni said.

The natural gas pipeline projects in southern Europe, South Stream and Nabucco, should combine to cut costs, Scaroni said. Eni is an equal partner in South Stream with OAO Gazprom, the world’s largest producer of gas. Nabucco shareholders include Austria’s OMV AG and Germany’s RWE AG.

Scientists at the University of East Anglia, led by Dr. Thomas Nann, report a breakthrough in the production of hydrogen from water using the energy of sunlight. Amidst all the hype about a potential hydrogen economy, which would rely upon the highly energetic and clean burning hydrogen atom, one of the big questions has been whether sufficient hydrogen can be produced without using yet more energy to create the hydrogen. Typical production methods include stripping hydrogen from other fuels like methane or using electrolysis to split the hydrogen out of water. But with efficiencies between 20 and 40% for producing energy from traditional photovoltaic processes, the hydrogen economy cannot be solar powered. Or can it?

‘The world’s factory” - this is the nickname China has acquired over decades of building its exports. But a factory needs raw materials to run, and as the country’s industry has grown so has its thirst for fuel. Today China is the top national consumer of natural resources, devouring 9.5 percent of the world’s annual supply of crude oil, 42.6 percent of its coal and 57.7 percent of its iron ore.

To ensure the factory stays fed, China has embarked on an international shopping spree in recent years, snapping up oil fields and iron ore mines all over the world. All the country’s burgeoning might has been thrown behind securing a steady supply of natural resources.

China supplies most of the rare earth minerals found in technologies such as hybrid cars, wind turbines, computer hard drives and cell phones, but the U.S. has its own largely untapped reserves that could safeguard future tech innovation.

Those reserves include deposits of both "light" and "heavy" rare earths - families of minerals that help make everything from TV displays to magnets in hybrid electric motors. A company called U.S. Rare Earths holds the only known U.S. deposit of heavy rare earths with a concentration worth mining, according to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

POOR countries should be helped to build their own nuclear power stations to help fight climate change, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday.

His vision won over international energy officials from India to Brussels, and French executives eager to market their expertise abroad, at a Paris conference. But some experts said Mr Sarkozy’s push was opening the door to risks of deadly technology getting into the wrong hands, and warned consumers to pay attention to the staggering price tag of potential nuclear energy growth – up to £2.6 trillion worldwide by 2050.

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf signalled their intention to kick-start a renewable energy revolution in the region on Monday.

A panel of experts at the ongoing Gulf Environment Forum in Jeddah, chaired by Assistant Minister for Petroleum Affairs Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, said measures were in place to improve the energy mix and finally reduce Middle East dependence on oil.