Energy Newsstand: Mega-Refinery

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman gave a warm welcome to what will be America’s biggest refinery when expansion is complete in 2010, the Houston Chronicle reports. Motiva Enterprise’s Port Arthur refinery will be able to refine 600,000 barrels of oil a day, and will be able to handle heavier crude and tar sands that are more plentiful than light, sweet crude. Now, the only question for the $7 billion project: What happens to planned tougher fuel-ecnonomy standards?

OPEC’s oil output rose in November despite the recent quota-freeze by the oil cartel, thanks to higher output from Saudi Arabia — now over the 9 million barrel a day mark — and Iraq, at its highest level in months though still off its pre-war average, notes Platt’s via CNN. The core OPEC members are now officially 280,000 barrels a day shy of their output quota — if that will be respected anyway.

And despite two days of falling prices, OPEC chiefs have found a new place to pour those petro-dollars, notes Bloomberg in Bali: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have agreed to invest $750 million to help fight climate change. Let’s see: At current production and prices, that adds up to more than 14 hours’ oil income.

Also in Bali, Bloomberg reports on a pair of new funds overseen by the World Bank to help poor countries fight deforestation, one of the leading causes of greenhouse-gas emissions and a big sticking-point at the climate conference. The first fund will help figure out how to value forests, and a second will reward countries that don’t slash and burn. “The U.S. hasn’t determined whether it supports the bank’s initiative,” Bloomberg notes.

What it has determined, the LA Times says, is that it doesn’t want firm targets for reducing GHG emissions in the next Kyoto-style treaty. “We don’t want to start out with numbers,” chief U.S. negotiator Harlan L. Watson said. Meanwhile, the WaPo chronicles John Kerry’s “20 minutes” in Bali where he preached the opposite message.

And a day after the Britain announced plans to rule the waves with massive offshore windfarms, Cleantech blog takes a gander at why offshore wind is still fraught with challenges. Two guesses: It’s wind power, and it’s miles offshore.