(EnergyAsia, March 17 2010, Wednesday) ––Australia’s Macquarie Group recently started up a physical oil trading business in Singapore, with former Shell trader Steven Taylor leading a six-person team. “This new team brings a range of proven trading strategies based on low risk intermediation and client service within the global oil trading value chain. Its members...

(EnergyAsia, March 17 2010, Wednesday) — Royal Dutch Shell has awarded two contracts to an engineering consortium comprising France’s Technip and South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries to develop a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility for use off the coast of Western Australia. Work will begin in 2012 with delivery scheduled for 2016.   The...

(EnergyAsia, March 16 2010, Tuesday) — The world’s wind power capacity surged 31% in 2009 to 157.9 gigawatts on the back of strong growth, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.   China accounted for one-third of the 37.5 GW increase in global wind power capacity last year, and now looks on course to exceed...

(EnergyAsia, March 16 2010, Tuesday) — ABB, the Swiss power and automation technology group, said it has won orders worth $22 million from Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited (HVPNL), a state-owned power utility in northern India to provide four turnkey substations for the regional grid. The four substations will transmit electricity from new power generation...

(EnergyAsia, March 16 2010, Tuesday) — Singapore engineering firm PEC Ltd said Verwater-Audex BV, an equal joint venture company between its subsidiary Audex Pte Ltd and Verwater BV, has won a 118-million euro contract to build a 465,000-cubic metre tank terminal in the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Verwater-Audex will provide engineering, procurement and...

(EnergyAsia, March 16 2010, Tuesday) – Hydrochem (S) Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore-listed Hyflux Ltd, has been awarded a S$43.8 million contract to undertake the engineering, procurement and construction works for stage one of the Tembusu seawater desalination plant on Jurong Island. The contract was awarded by TP Utilities Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned...

(EnergyAsia, March 16 2010, Tuesday) — The Chinese government has raised its target for clean energy to provide 15% of the country’s total energy mix by 2020, up from 9.9% last year.   To achieve this ambitious target, the government said it plans to spend billions of dollars on nuclear power and renewable energy projects...

(EnergyAsia, March 16 2010, Tuesday) — Two Indonesian state companies said they will be launching new geothermal power plants in 2012 and 2013. State electricity firm PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) said it has awarded a US$156.7 million contract to Japan’s Sumitomo Corp to build a 110 megawatt geothermal power plant. PLN said it expects...

(EnergyAsia, March 15 2010, Monday) — This article was written by Fawzia Sheikh of Oilprice.com. The Libyan government has been sounding off lately about boosting the profile of its oil and gas market, but it’s questionable whether international companies will overlook the government’s missteps in the industry – not to mention the recent lackluster energy...

(EnergyAsia, March 15 2010, Monday) — South Korea could save 47 trillion won in crude oil imports from now through 2030 by establishing and using a nationwide smart electricity transmission grid. (US$1=1,150 won). The project will also help create 50,000 jobs and eliminate 230 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in the country, said the Ministry...

(EnergyAsia, March 15 2010, Monday) — The first biodiesel plant in Malaysia’s Sarawak state has started operating and is expected to reach full-scale production this month. Abang Khalid Marzuki, executive director of Senari Biofuels, which owns and operates the RM80 million plant in partnership with the Assar Senari Group, said the company intends to expand...

(EnergyAsia, March 15 2010, Monday) — Opportunities abound in Asia’s fast-growing clean energy sector, but where and how should the investor look for good returns while taking care to avoid the minefield of risks? Entropy Ventures (EV), a specialist fund management house focused on investing in Asian clean energy, launched its Amadeus Asian Clean Energy...

(EnergyAsia, March 15 2010, Monday) — Australia has laid claim to having been the first in the world to provide climate change training for its insurance brokers. A one-day intensive course was rolled out nationally late last year to train brokers to assist their customers to understand the scale of climate-related risks and to take...

(EnergyAsia, March 12 2010, Friday) — German specialty chemicals group Lanxess said it plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years after achieving a 50% cut between 2007 and 2009. The company said it reduced annual emissions from its plants from 3.5 million to 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents...

(EnergyAsia, March 12 2010, Friday) — While its exploding car population may have been capturing all the headlines, China has quietly rolled out as many as 120 million electric bicycles on its roads. This could well be a world record number as China and its citizens are leading the way to promote a more environmentally-friendly...

(EnergyAsia, March 12 2010, Friday) — China’s main oil and gas companies have begun work on developing electric charging networks around the country to support the government’s call to promote the use of electric cars and vehicles.   The Sinopec Group plans to turn its network of refuelling stations in Beijing into comprehensive service stations...

(EnergyAsia, March 12 2010, Friday) — The Chinese government plans to establish a national renewable energy centre to spur the development of the industry, according to Han Wenke, director general of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission.   Mr Han said the centre would take charge of policy-making, key project...

(EnergyAsia, March 12 2010, Friday) — The Taiwanese government aims to increase the use of solar-generated power to 1,000 megawatts by 2025 from 5 MW currently, according to the Bureau of Energy.   Last June, Taiwan’s parliament passed a landmark renewable energy bill targeting to add between 6,500 and 10,000 MW of installed renewable energy...

(EnergyAsia, March 12 2010, Friday) — Two senior executives of the UAE’s Masdar City development, a US$22 billion project to build the world’s first zero-carbon city, have resigned, raising doubts about its long-term viability. Ziad Tassabehji, who sits in both the executive and investment committees of the Masdar Clean Tech Fund, and Khaled Awad, director...

(EnergyAsia, March 12 2010, Friday) — Australia-listed KUTh Energy Limited said it has found a second geothermal resource base in Tasmania, making the company’s total reserves of 361,000 PJ on the island the second largest in the country.   The company said an independent assessment found that its tenement SEL 26/2005 block contains 101,000 PJ...

(EnergyAsia, March 11 2010, Thursday) — CPC Corporation of Taiwan has signed a 20-year agreement to import 1.2 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year from Papua New Guinea (PNG). The gas will be supplied from the PNG LNG project, an integrated development that includes gas production and processing facilities, onshore and offshore...

(EnergyAsia, March 11 2010, Thursday) — Finland’s Wartsila said it and Japan’s Hitachi Zosen have signed an agreement to develop and market fuel cell-based power solutions for distributed power generation applications in Japan. The combined heat and power applications, which can be run on either city gas or bio gas, will feature the use of...

(EnergyAsia, March 11 2010, Thursday) — Indian researchers have given jatropha, a popular feedstock crop for government-subsidised biofuel projects, a failing grade in providing an environmentally-friendly solution to the country’s growing energy needs. According to ATREE, an Indian environmental research group, jatropha is yielding less than what experts had predicted, and it is now cultivated...

(EnergyAsia, March 11 2010, Thursday) — The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, has dropped a major requirement that equipment in wind power projects must be made by local companies. The move is expected to affect domestic wind power equipment manufacturers and joint venture firms with foreign partners, which combined have...