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Volvo Trucks unveiled last week its plans to launch a 13-liter heavy-duty natural gas engine featuring Westport high pressure direct injection (HPDI) technology. The engine, marketed under the “Blue Power” designation, is scheduled to launch for the North American market in 2014. The engine’s advanced high pressure diesel ignition technology will provide significant fuel efficiency gains compared with current natural gas products. Combined with the company’s previously announced offering of compressed natural gas (CNG)-powered Volvo VNM and VNL model daycabs, the new engine will provide customers with a complete range of natural gas-powered transportation solutions. Volvo is also testing another...

My 02 GMC has 200k+ on her now, she is showing signs of old age. I want to upgrade to a diesel. Just wondering what the FReeper World thinks is the best diesel 3/4 ton or 1 ton truck. I am not picky about brand names. I could go with a Ford for political reasons...... Much as garcias....

University of Queensland researchers have planted five hectares of Pongamia trees at Hope Vale, north Queensland in a bid to create a commercially viable plantation for sustainable regional development and biofuel production in northern Australia. In conjunction with Cape York's traditional land owners and partners, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Integrative Legume Research (CILR) is aiming to plant a further 3000 hectares within the first three years of the partnership, which will ultimately yield an estimated 10 to 15 million litres of biofuel. The seeds from the oil-rich Pongamia pinnata (also called Millettia) tree provide a sustainable solution to...

Adding Barges to EIA Study Still Leaves Concerns The U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) recent report exploring the potential impacts of reductions in refinery activity in the Northeast on petroleum product markets in that region pointed out that, if Sunoco's Philadelphia refinery shuts down, waterborne movements from the Gulf Coast could be an important route for alternative supplies to help replace lost volumes in the short term, particularly for ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD). Because this route would involve vessel movements between U.S. ports, Jones Act vessels must be used. The Jones Act requires goods or passengers moved in U.S. coastal...

The Anatomy of U.S. Refined Product Exports to Mexico Last week's edition of This Week In Petroleum focused on domestic drivers of increased U.S. petroleum product exports, including weak U.S. demand and increased production due to higher refinery runs. To better understand international trade flows, factors affecting imports at the recipient's end of the trade must also be taken into account. This week, we look at U.S. product exports from the point of view of the single largest recipient of those exports, Mexico. The trend in Mexican imports for total petroleum products is a mirror image of that in the...

Gasoline prices have climbed above $4 per gallon for regular at too many places across the nation. We know this because President Barack Obama has embarked on a four-day blitz to demonstrate his concern for high gasoline prices. According to the U.S Energy Information Administration, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the country is $3.87 which is up about 30 cents from a year ago. The highest prices are on the West Coast at $4.23. The lowest, next door in the Rocky Mountain region at $3.62. Unemployment numbers are largely theoretical. At 8.3 percent (or 14.9...

A class of chemical compounds best known today for fragrance and flavor may one day provide the clean, green and renewable fuel with which truck and auto drivers fill their tanks. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to generate significant quantities of methyl ketone compounds from glucose. In subsequent tests, these methyl ketones yielded high cetane numbers – a diesel fuel rating comparable to the octane number for gasoline – making them strong candidates for the production of advanced biofuels. “Our findings add to the list of naturally...

WASHINGTON _ The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday's vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably.

The government of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is emerging as a rare supplier of diesel to Syria, potentially undermining Western sanctions and helping the Syrian government fuel its military in the middle of a bloody crackdown on civilian protests. A cargo of diesel, which can be used to fuel army tanks or as heating fuel, was expected to arrive at Syria's Mediterranean port of Banias this week, according to two traders and shipping data. The cargo could be worth up to $50 million. Chavez is a vociferous advocate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who face pressure...

Midstream Makeover Recent shifts in U.S. oil supply and demand patterns are testing the limits of the Nation's oil storage and transportation network. Upstream, a revolution in tight oil1 production, fostered by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques, has raised logistical challenges commensurate with the new sources of oil supply it has unlocked. Downstream, shifts in demand patterns and refining economics are opening a new chapter in supply logistics. Refinery closures in the Delaware Valley and the Caribbean mean that East Coast markets -- no longer as large as they once were, but still the Nation's largest - may become...

Underscoring its desire to keep U.S. aircraft carriers from the Persian Gulf, a senior Iranian military commander today announced his possible plan to ambush the American fleet. Chalk this one up to more bluster, or part of a mounting back and forth rhetoric headed nowhere good, either way - Tehran plans to rely on its subs. Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army's Self-Sufficiency Jihad, Rear Admiral Farhad Amiri told Fars that Iran has the finest electic diesel submarines in the world, and that while the U.S. has focused on Tehran's "astonishing surface capabilities," it has forgotten about the underwater threat....

In October 2011, the refinery yield of distillate fuels (a category that includes diesel fuel and heating oil) reached 29.7%, matching the previous record set in December 2008. For all major products, only the distillate yield is higher now than it was in October 2001. Since 2001, distillate yields have followed an upward trend, peaking in December 2008 before falling back to an average of 27.5% in 2010. During 2011, the distillate yield grew, reaching 29.7% in October (latest EIA data available). The recent uptick in distillate yield can partly be explained by the significantly higher price margins over the...

For the first time in six decades, the U.S. is exporting more gasoline and diesel fuel than it imports. That, if you believe the critics, shows that the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship crude oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refiners, is an export scam. In other words, the oil that Keystone would bring in will simply be refined and shipped out again, so the whole project is nothing more than a ploy in which U.S. refiners boost profits by tapping lucrative foreign markets. Gasoline exports, though, have little to do with the Keystone pipeline and America’s long-term energy...

As a Russian fuel tanker plows through the frozen Bering Sea on its way to Nome, it has been getting help from an unlikely source: a drone that flies overhead and sends images of ice back to researchers onshore. The camera-equipped drone looks like a smoke detector with wings and legs. It glides on 20-minute missions ranging from 10 feet to 320 feet above the ice, and its images can be instantly viewed on a tablet-type computer screen. The tanker is bound for Nome, a town of 3,500 residents that missed its final pre-winter delivery of fuel by barge when...

Northeastern states are slated to lose half of their regional capacity for fuel production by midyear as financial woes push refineries there to idle, a trend likely to increase the region’s dependency on Gulf Coast supply. A Houston-to-New York pipeline is making major expansions to accommodate growing demand to transport gasoline and other fuels up north from the Gulf Coast to fill the potential supply void. The Gulf already supplies about half of the Northeast’s demand for petroleum products, said Mindi Farber-Deanda, head of the liquid fuels market team for the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But the shutdown of production...

A Russian tanker is inching through thick ice in the Bering Sea en route to delivering fuel to Nome. The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy is cutting a path for the 370-foot Renda, which is carrying more than 1.3 million gallons of fuel. Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class David Mosley said the vessels were 170 miles south of Nome as of late Sunday morning. Mosley said the ships are able to travel only five miles an hour through ice up to two feet thick. The Coast Guard initially estimated arrival time early Monday, but Mosley says it's difficult to...

Larger shipments of gasoline and diesel from the Gulf Coast are needed to offset planned closures of three major refineries in the Northeast, according to a new federal report. Northeastern states could experience “spot shortages with price hikes” for gasoline and other fuels as the region faces the idling of three critical refineries in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Energy Information Administration concluded in a recent report. “The Gulf Coast is likely to be a significant alternate supplier,” the report notes, specifying the Colonial Pipeline as a main transport route. “Even so, pipeline capacity will still be insufficient to make up the...

Here’s the first known victim of the latest CAFE (government fuel efficiency) increase to 35.5 MPG: The compact pick-up truck. And the American truck buyer. Ok, that’s two victims. I’ve just discovered that Ford has dropped the Ranger – America’s last compact-sized truck - for 2012. But not from its lineup. Just from its U.S. model lineup. Not only will the Ranger continue to be sold in export markets, the 2012 model will be a heavily updated model which, among other things, will offer a new diesel engine...

In the week ended September 16th, the US exported more refined products than it imported. Year-over-year, the US is now exporting 714,000 barrels/day more refined products than it is importing. The largest portion of these exports is diesel fuel. Combined with the wide price spread between US WTI crude and North Sea Brent, the demand for diesel fuel is propping up pump prices for gasoline in the US even as crude prices continue to fall. The situation we’re seeing in the energy markets now is similar to the situation almost exactly three years ago. According to the US Energy Information...

When it comes to making biodiesel cheaply and efficiently enough to be commercially feasible, E. coli may prove to be "the little bacterial engine that could," say Stanford researchers. Biodiesel can be made from plant oil or animal fat – usually the former. Used cooking oil from restaurants is common, but for biodiesel to contribute significantly to reducing fossil fuel use, there needs to be a way to mass produce it from plant-derived raw materials. The problem is that synthesizing biodiesel is complicated. That is where E. coli comes in. The bacteria, often discussed in terms of the human digestive...

Iowa State University's Robert C. Brown keeps a small vial of brown, sweet-smelling liquid on his office table. "It looks like something you could pour on your pancakes," he said. "In many respects, it is similar to molasses." Brown, in fact, calls it "pyrolytic molasses." That's because it was produced by the fast pyrolysis of biomass such as corn stalks or wood chips. Fast pyrolysis involves quickly heating the biomass without oxygen to produce liquid or gas products. "We think this is a new way to make inexpensive sugars from biomass," said Brown, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering,...

Researchers with the DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have identified a potential new advanced biofuel that could replace today's standard fuel for diesel engines but would be clean, green, renewable and produced in the United States. Using the tools of synthetic biology, a JBEI research team engineered strains of two microbes, a bacteria and a yeast, to produce a precursor to bisabolane, a member of the terpene class of chemical compounds that are found in plants and used in fragrances and flavorings. Preliminary tests by the team showed that bisabolane's properties make it a promising biosynthetic alternative to Number 2...

The all-new Honda Civic debuts at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show next month – here are the first details of the diesel version. With an evolution of the award-winning 2.2-litre i-DTEC turbodiesel engine and a 12.6 per cent improvement in aerodynamics, the 2012 Honda Civic is promising to be both more powerful and more efficient. That’s a familiar tune these days, but in this particular case the new Civic appears to be offering quite the combo. A 10hp boost might not sound like much to shout about, but the resulting 150hp total output is combined with CO2 emissions of just...

President Obama will unveil the first-ever federal fuel efficiency standards Tuesday for a range of heavy-duty trucks, a move the White House is casting as a key part of its plan to cut foreign oil imports and slash harmful air pollution. The planned announcement comes amid growing economic uncertainty and increasing jitters on Wall Street. Obama is expected to argue that the standards will result in major benefits to the ailing economy.

DETROIT (AP) -- The Chevrolet Cruze, the most popular car in the U.S. last month, will come in a diesel version that could boost gas mileage to around 50 mpg, two people briefed on General Motors Co. product plans said Monday.

Middletown — They come in tanker trucks, mostly at night, to steal the liquid still smelling of fried chicken, tacos and egg rolls. Used cooking oil is as good as gold these days, a consequence of rising crude oil prices and demand for biodiesel. That's put companies that collect the used material from restaurants on guard, industry officials said. "Sometimes, they're very brazen; they'll come in the early morning or the afternoon and stick a hose in the container and siphon it out," said Jack LaBerta, account manager for Darling International, a national renderer with a plant in Newark, N.J....

German automakers lead in diesel car sales, but Mazda is joining the pack Team Audi's victory at 24 Hours of LeMans Sunday with a car powered by a TDI diesel engine again shines a light on diesel engines as an alternative to regular gas or hybrid gas/electric vehicles. Though cars and trucks running on diesel fuel remain a relatively small percentage of new cars and trucks sold in the U.S., increasing sales of such vehicles by German car companies in the U.S. points to a potentially rosier future. And the continued success of diesels at LeMans keeps bringing attention back...

Diesel engines, long confined to trucks and ships, are garnering more interest for their fuel efficiency and reduced carbon dioxide emissions, relative to gasoline engines. Argonne mechanical engineer Steve Ciatti takes a crack at some of the more persistent myths surrounding the technology. Myth #1: Diesel is dirty. "We all have this image of trucks belching out dirty black smoke," Ciatti said. This smoke is particulate matter from diesel exhaust: soot and small amounts of other chemicals produced by the engine. But EPA emissions requirements have significantly tightened, and diesel engines now have to meet the same criteria as gasoline...

A Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University research team has developed a process that removes a key obstacle to producing low-cost, renewable biofuels from bacteria. The team has reprogrammed photosynthetic microbes to secrete high-energy fats, making byproduct recovery and conversion to biofuels easier and potentially more commercially viable. "The real costs involved in any biofuel production are harvesting the goodies and turning them into fuel," said Roy Curtiss, of the Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology and professor in the School of Life Sciences. "This whole system that we have developed is a means to a green recovery of...

Bloomberg so link only. I will summarize below.

China is suspending exports of diesel fuel to help counter shortages likely to worsen during the peak summer months. The National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s planning agency, on Friday urged oil companies to help “maintain social stability and promote economic development” by increasing refinery output and stepping up new projects to ensure stable supplies. said roadways, cities, farmers and public utilities should receive priority. The temporary suspension of diesel shipments, “in principle,” does not apply, however, to the territories of Hong Kong and Macau. Past shortages have often reflected refineries’ reluctance to increase output at times when rises...

While technological advancements have cleaned up diesel engines, modern clean diesel vehicles may not be as "green" as previously thought. The reason, according to some analysts, is that soot emissions from these new powerplants are underestimated. In Britain, for example, vehicles are exempt from road tax if their carbon dioxide emissions are below 100 grams per kilometer. However, this exemption scheme does not account for soot, which some analysts think contribute to global warming through a substance called black carbon. Stanford University's Mark Jacobson says that: Each effect will vary from vehicle to vehicle but the point is they are...

Shippers Feel Pain Of Rising Diesel Fuel PricesBy Dennis Phillips - The Post-Journal April 23, 2011 Diesel fuel prices have increased 19 out of the last 20 weeks, with costs projected to increase this summer. The U.S Energy Information Association said earlier this week that diesel prices climbed 2.7 cents to a national retail average of $4.105 per gallon. Since Nov. 29, 2010, the average retail price of diesel has risen 29.8 percent, increasing from $3.162. Analysts expect prices will continue to climb. ''Diesel fuel prices, which averaged $2.98 per gallon last summer, are projected to average $4.09 per gallon...

We’ve seen plenty of concepts designed to lessen the physical burden of being a member of the military — Marines using portable renewable power stations, clothing that charges radios and GPS devices. But there’s not much being done to address drinking water, one of the heaviest yet most critical battlefield necessities. Now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory might have a solution that can help lessen the weight of water. A new condensation process captures water from burning diesel fuel, and is so efficient that it could theoretically produce a gallon of water from a gallon of diesel, using lightweight materials....

Researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a way to produce normal butanol -- often proposed as a "greener" fuel alternative to diesel and gasoline -- from bacteria at rates significantly higher than those achieved using current production methods. The findings, reported online in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, mark an important advance in the production of normal butanol, or n-butanol, a four-carbon chain alcohol that has been shown to work well with existing energy infrastructure, including in vehicles designed for gasoline, without modifications that would be required with other biofuels. The UCLA...

Waste is a terrible thing to waste. That's the mantra guiding an Ohio State University researcher and a bioenergy entrepreneur in the development of a brand-new, renewable source of polyurethane foam that's expected to create up to 30 jobs in Mansfield, in the next two years. The product (known as a bio-polyol) is made from crude glycerin, a byproduct of biodiesel production that has so little commercial value it's practically considered waste. Mixed with other biomass -- through a patent-pending process developed by Yebo Li, a biosystems engineer with the university's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster --...

Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels. Joule's process directly yields hydrocarbons that are fungible with existing diesel infrastructure, unlike the biodiesel product that is produced from algal oil. Highlights include: Based on empirical measurements, Joule can directly produce 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre annually,...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow. Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels. What can it mean? No less than "energy independence," Joule's web site tells...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow. Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels. What can it mean? No less than "energy independence," Joule's web site...

Troy Kelley - with a landscaping business and a fleet of trucks and a payroll full of real men feeding families - owes the guy who sells him diesel fuel a 12-pack of cold beer, because of a phone call two weeks ago. "He told me to fill my big tank out here, because the price was going up," said Kelley. "I have 17 vehicles that have to use diesel to get where they are going. "I have 30-plus pieces of equipment that use gasoline. The gas guy told me to buy before it went up, too." As the price...

The new Mini Cooper Countryman can get 63 MPGs on the highway – just not on our highways. Like so many other high-mileage, diesel-powered vehicles, it’s not available in the United States. Instead we get gas-electric turkeys like the Toyota Prius hybrid – which maxes out at 48 MPGs on the highway. If you drive it at around 47 MPH in the left lane with your turn signal blinking… .

Renewable fuels developer Joule Unlimited Inc. said John Podesta, a veteran of two White House administrations, has joined its board of directors. Podesta was previously White House chief of staff under President Clinton, and more recently served as co-chair of President Obama’s transition. He is currently president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a think tank he founded in 2003. “I have seen and heard many proposals by renewable energy companies, and can unequivocally say that Joule has a technology and a system unlike any other, with industrial viability and a clear path to market within the next...

Some new developments indicate that the once "future" fuel cell technology for commercial vehicles may be "now." Green Car Congress recently reported that, under the terms of an agreement drawn up earlier this year, Vision Motor Corp., designers and manufacturers of hydrogen fuel cell Class 8 heavy-duty commercial trucks, would deliver two of its H2-fueled big rigs and a single terminal tractor to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in early 2011. According to the announcement, all of the heavy-duty trucks are driven by electric motors, with battery packs that are recharged by the vehicles’ on-board hydrogen fuel...

After almost two decades of effort to reduce vehicle emissions, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority will retire its last diesel bus Wednesday and become the only major transit agency in the nation with a fleet that is totally equipped with alternative-fuel technologies. In an urban area where diesel buses began operating in 1940, the MTA now has 2,221 buses powered by compressed natural gas, as well as one electric bus and six gasoline-electric hybrids. Transit officials estimate that the elimination of diesel engines has reduced the release of cancer-causing particulates from the bus fleet by 80% and greenhouse...

December 8, 2010 (Next Release on December 15, 2010) Weak U.S. Oil Demand? In analyzing the outlook for oil prices, soft U.S. oil market conditions are sometimes cited as capping price pressures. Unlike regions outside the United States, including other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) areas, U.S. inventories are still high, despite recent declines, and oil demand is characterized, by some, as remaining weak. Recent data can shed some light on the state of U.S. demand. With sharp inventory declines over the last several months, both gasoline and distillate stocks are now below year-ago levels. The degree to...

David Chidester last year leased $5.5 million worth of new diesel trucks to meet new air standards by Jan. 1 this year. He was trying to play by the rules. But that decision may kill his business. His Fresno-based freight-hauling company is caught between the recession and 2008 diesel rules requiring billions of dollars worth of new California trucks over the next several years. Chidester invested in new trucks to be ready for the Jan. 1 standards for particle pollution and also to get ahead of a 2014 deadline for cleaning up nitrogen oxides. A state trucking association says many...

The Obama administration is preparing to propose fuel efficiency standards that for the first time will apply to medium- and heavy-duty trucks, including tractor-trailers, school buses, delivery vans, garbage trucks and heavy pickup trucks. The announcement, expected today, would affect vehicles sold in the 2014 model year and into the 2018 model year. The proposal is expected to seek reductions of 10 percent to 20 percent in fuel consumption and emissions based on the vehicle's size. Large tractor-trailers tend to be driven up to 150,000 miles a year, making them ripe for improved miles per gallon. Vans, pickup trucks and...

Volkswagen sold its first diesel in America in 1977. A lot has changed in the last thirty-three years, but one thing remains: If you want a cheeky, refined fuel miser, you call on the people who gave us the Beetle. Whereas most inexpensive diesels feel like the rolling equivalent of sensible shoes, the 140-hp Volkswagen Golf TDI makes no bones about its sporting bent. A whopping 236 pound-feet of torque at 1,750 rpm means you'll rarely want for tire-chirping thrust, and a small, nimble frame lets you chase down sports cars in the curves. At 42 mpg, the V-dub makes...

Canada has more energy in its "proven, recoverable" reserves of coal than it has in all of its oil, natural gas and oil sands combined: 10 billion tonnes. The world has 100 times more: one trillion tonnes. These reserves hold the energy equivalent of more than four trillion barrels of oil. They are scattered in 70 countries, mostly in relatively easy-to-mine locations and mostly in democratic countries. The United States alone has 30 per cent of the world's reserves, and scientists in Texas say they have found a way to convert coal into gasoline at a cost of less than...

California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state's clean air standards and scientists have spent the past several months revising data and planning a significant weakening of the landmark regulation, The Chronicle has found. The pollution estimate in question was too high - by 340 percent, according to the California Air Resources Board, the state agency charged with researching and adopting air quality standards. The estimate was a key part in the creation of a regulation adopted by the Air Resources Board in 2007, a rule that forces businesses to cut diesel emissions by...