Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
While Delta, like other airlines, cut about $600 million in costs between 2001 and 2003, its fuel costs at the same time went up by about $120 million. Given that oil prices have increased by roughly three-quarters in a year, the fuel expense for 2004 will be much worse.
ATA Airlines Inc., the nation’s 10th-largest airline, filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday and sold off airport slots and other assets to AirTran Airways Inc. for $87.6 million, to become the latest U.S. airline tripped up by rising fuel costs and fare wars.
Pressed for time, Ahmad Hussein refuses to spend hours queuing for petrol at one of Baghdad’s teeming gas stations so he takes his car to a street vendor where it costs six times as much to fill up.
Delta Air Lines Inc. reported a much wider third-quarter loss despite a rise in revenue and warned that its financial situation has worsened to the point where it needs to significantly reduce its costs quickly to turn things around.
“With the price of oil above $50 a barrel, with political
instability in the Middle East on the rise, and with little
slack in the world oil economy, we need a new energy strategy,”
says Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a
Washington, DC-based research institute. “Fortunately, the
outline of a new strategy is emerging with two new technologies.”
A plant which can convert vegetable oil into biodiesel fuel is opening in west Wales.
UK scientists think they have taken a major step forward in making hydrogen a practical replacement for petrol.
Investors know jet-fuel prices are killing airlines’ profits, but they will soon get an up-close view of the damage when major carriers begin reporting third-quarter earnings.
Book review of THE HYPE ABOUT HYDROGEN: Fact and Fiction in the Race To Save the Climate, by Joseph J. Romm. (Strong focus in the review on policy.)
Converting every vehicle in the United States to hydrogen power would demand so much electricity that the country would need enough wind turbines to cover half of California or 1,000 extra nuclear power stations.
Hydrogen isn’t an energy source – it’s an energy carrier, like a battery. You have to make it and put energy into it, both of which take energy.
TEN years ago China was a net oil exporter. Today it is the world’s third largest oil importer, behind the USA and Japan, and the second largest oil consumer. Ten years ago China produced around 250,000 cars per year. Last year the country churned out more than three million. Committed factory expansions and developments will take capacity to five million cars next year.
