Shell is to sell off 15% of its refinery capacity in Europe and the Americas after reporting a 75% collapse in final-quarter profits and a slump in annual results.

Peter Voser, the chief executive, said four previous years of increased profits had allowed the company to "to eat too much and get fat"...

BP blamed a $2.6 billion (£1.6 billion) loss in its United States refining division yesterday as it revealed its weakest annual profits in six years.

Tony Hayward, the chief executive, also issued a gloomy assessment of the prospects for recovery, warning that it would take “three to four years” for activity to return to the levels seen three years ago...

Opec has told the BBC World Service that compliance with production targets fell to 50-56% last month compared to 80% a year ago.

Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri told the BBC's Business Daily programme it is "worrying" and could lead to oversupply and price falls...

Nigeria plans to sell oilfield assets this year containing as much as 2 billion barrels of reserves either relinquished by Western firms or unsold in three previous bidding rounds, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.

A bidding round for the assets, which could also include oil blocks not previously offered, may attract Asian groups and local companies, the newspaper said quoting Emmanuel Egbogah, special adviser to the president on petroleum matters...

Nearly every U.S. president, Republican or Democrat, since Richard Nixon has called on the United States to kick its addiction to foreign oil.

“In the last third of this century,” Nixon said in 1973, “our independence will depend on maintaining and achieving self-sufficiency in energy.”..

President Obama moved on Wednesday to bolster the nation’s production of corn-based ethanol and other alternative liquid fuels and ordered the rapid development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal.

The president is trying to expand the portfolio of American energy sources to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, a factor in global warming, and spur advances in alternative technologies. Last week he expressed support in his State of the Union address for increased generation of nuclear power and offshore drilling for oil and gas...

The nation won't meet its biofuels goals unless the government accelerates the development of biofuel crops and products, the White House says.

In a report being released today, an administration task force said the government needs, among other things, to set targets for commercializing new types of fuel crops, such as switchgrass.

The government also needs to work regionally to develop fuels and feedstocks that make sense in each part of the nation, the report said...

The Obama administration on Monday asked Congress for a second time to end some $36.5 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies, saying it would help fight global warming.

In its proposed budget for the government's 2011 spending year that starts October 1, the administration said eliminating the subsidies would "foster the clean energy economy of the future and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change."...

President Ahmadinejad demonstrated yesterday that he has become a master of playing cat and mouse with the West — and this time the mouse was real.

Once again, the Iranian leader offered a last-minute concession to head off the West’s drive for new sanctions against the Islamic republic. At the same time, Iran thumbed its nose at UN restrictions on its ballistic missiles programme by sending a rocket into space carrying a mouse, two turtles and some worms...

It’s an odd place for a group of Frenchmen to pitch a tent city. Bakouma is one of the deepest, darkest corners of African jungle. From Bangui, the capital of the land-locked Central African Republic, it takes days to navigate the 800km of dirt track to this patch of virgin forest in the middle of the continent. Usually they go by light aircraft to a nearby landing strip.

Most of the 160 or so jungle dwellers are scientists but they are not there to count butterflies. They are drawing up plans for a uranium mine. Areva, France’s state-owned nuclear giant, is behind the project. It hopes to begin clearing forest next year after the government approves its plan...

EU member states this week (2 February) agreed how to allocate billions worth of EU money from the bloc's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) to support renewable energies and emerging technology to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground.

After a year of negotiations to fine-tune the details, national experts approved a proposal on how to use 300 million emission allowances from the scheme's 'new entrants reserve' to finance projects in renewables and CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage; see EurActiv LinksDossier)...

China overtook the USA for volumes of new installations and manufacturing of wind turbines for the first time in 2009, according to a report by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).

The world’s wind power capacity grew by 37.5GW to 157.9GW during the year, with a third (13GW) of these additions made in China, which doubled its capacity in the period...

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants...

The EU's current indecision on environmental criteria for biomass could discredit the whole industry, which lives off its climate-friendly image, Eric Johnson, managing director of Atlantic Consulting, told EurActiv in an interview.

"The problem with not having criteria is very large. It's very easy for people to source non-sustainable biomass, which basically damages the environment and potentially damages human health," said Johnson, who is also editor of the scholarly journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review...

Royal Dutch Shell has moved to take shared control of the world's largest sugar processor in the hope of promoting ethanol as a green fuel for US and European markets.

Cosan will provide $5bn of its assets, including all its production facilities and an ethanol-trading unit, while Shell will contribute $2bn in cash, 2,740 service stations, and stakes in two green technology businesses. The 50-50 joint venture will assume Cosan's $2.5bn of debt...

ALGAE have been touted as a solution to environmental worries over biofuels, but they may be a long way from providing a truly green option.

Unlike maize, soya beans and oilseed rape (canola), algal farms don't take up valuable farmland, so algae-based biofuels don't threaten food supplies. However, Andres Clarens at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has modelled the environmental impacts of algal farms and concludes that they require six times as much energy as growing land plants - and emit significantly more greenhouse gases (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es902838n)....

Radical reforms of Britain's energy market are likely after the election, the government and opposition both signalled yesterday, as regulator Ofgem gave warning of threats to electricity and gas supplies before the end of the decade.

An Ofgem report said there was a "window of opportunity" until about 2012-13 to put a new market framework in place to deliver up to £200bn of investment needed to secure energy supplies and cut carbon emissions...

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Yesterday's Ofgem report was a wake-up call. The Government must act now to improve Britain's rapidly deteriorating energy security, warns David Strahan.

Bad news for energy consumers continues to come thick and fast. Bills have more than doubled in the past six years, and could rise a further 25 per cent in the next decade according to a wide-ranging report published yesterday by Ofgem. But even more worrying was the watchdog's analysis of Britain's energy security – or lack of it. Without decisive action, warns Ofgem, there could soon be times when energy is not just expensive but unavailable at any price...

Britain's offshore wind revolution, launched with great fanfare by Gordon Brown last month, may struggle to get halfway to its ambitious goals and should be scaled down in favour of a new dash for gas to keep the lights on over the next 10 years, BP warned last night.

Tony Hayward, chief executive of the UK's largest oil company, said that British government ministers risked being seduced by "headline-grabbing options" such as offshore wind and clean coal in a bid to bolster energy security and meet climate-change goals. BP makes billions of pounds a year from oil and gas, but is also investing in onshore wind farms in America...

Under the deal, which will start from April this year, households will be paid for electricity fed into the grid from renewable technologies such as solar, wind or energy from waste.

The most attractive rate of return will be on solar panels, which for an average sized three bedroom home could earn households £25,000 over 25 years...

Three Scottish companies have won a multi-million pound funding boost to help prove the commercial viability of their marine power devices.

The money from the Department of Energy and Climate change, DECC, is awarded by The Carbon Trust...

Governments around the world have reaffirmed their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions in support of last month's Copenhagen climate summit.

Nations signing up to the summit accord were urged to outline pledges by Sunday. States producing at least two-thirds of emissions have done so...

Lord Smith of Finsbury, the Chairman of the Environment Agency, said the climate is changing and the UK is in danger of suffering more extreme weather events like the recent floods in Cumbria.

But he said "sloppy and irresponsible" emails sent by scientists from the University of East Anglia in a scandal known as "climategate" was being used by sceptics to cast doubt on the whole argument.

He also said a mistaken claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the Himalayas will melt by 2035, known as "glaciergate", was being used by critics to suggest that the UN body is not to be trusted...