By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
DECATUR, Ill.

BACK in 1999, when she was the head of refining at Chevron, Patricia A. Woertz told a group of energy officials that it was “time to stop mixing agricultural policy with fuels policy.”

In that same speech, at a fuels conference in Washington, Ms. Woertz also publicly expressed worry about the “unintended consequences” of a federal mandate requiring the use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline.

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- When Jiang Dama throws open her curtains each morning in the gritty northern China oil town of Daqing, she's confronted by the sight of a four-story-high ``nodding donkey'' pumping away in the garden of her walk-up apartment building.

Jiang, 72, a retired oil worker, says she finds the presence of the oil pump, known in China as a kowtow machine, reassuring.

``As long as it keeps kowtowing,'' said Jiang, ``I know this town can survive.''

Daqing, the largest oilfield in China, has been in production since 1959 and was once a metaphor for the strength and self-reliance of Mao Zedong's New China. Today, it symbolizes the country's energy crisis: soaring demand and stagnant or declining domestic production.

By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
STUDIO CITY, CALIF. – As Los Angeles motorist Jill Cantrell removes the pump nozzle from her Honda Civic gas tank, she spouts out two figures: "$56 for a gas tank for me and $78 billion in profits last year for the oil companies," she says. "I'm livid."

How many other Californians are angry about gasoline prices - and ready for their state to take action - will be clear this November, when voters decide whether to levy a new tax on oil companies that drill in California and use the money for in-state development of alternative fuels.

SEATTLE - An engineering firm raised a red flag more than four years ago about BP's monitoring of its Alaska oil pipelines, documents show.

The draft report by Seattle's Coffman Engineers, published in November 2001, is among documents being reviewed by a federal grand jury in Anchorage that is investigating a March oil spill of more than 200,000 gallons from a pipe on the western side of the Prudhoe Bay oil field.

David Robertson, UK TImes
THE oil industry is hushing up the extent to which corrosion is eating into pipelines and hitting production, the head of the Royal Society of Chemistry has told The Times.

Richard Pike, who spent 25 years working for BP before becoming a consultant to a number of global oil and gas companies, said that some of the world’s largest oilfields had cut production or been shut down recently so that corroded pipelines could be fixed before they leaked.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - BP Plc said on Wednesday that oil production at its Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska, already running at half capacity due to pipeline corrosion, has been cut by 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) for several days due to a technical fault. A company spokesman said output at the biggest oilfield in the United States had been reduced to 110,000 bpd after a natural gas compressor in Gathering Center 2 failed.

Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com
The company says its not interested in renewables. But when your business relies on a finite resource, is this really the best strategy?
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NEW YORK -- It's the most profitable corporation in the world. It's in a business that juggles geopolitics, economics and ecological health. It provides a finite resource which forms the backbone of our modern economy.

Nearly every American is a customer and anxious about our nation's oil dependence.

By Georg Mascolo

The Canadian province of Alberta contains massive amounts of oil sands. But extracting the petroleum contained in them is costly and harmful to the environment. Still, the sands are a temptation oil companies can't resist. They're investing billions in order to secure the abundant source of energy.

You would have to be a firm believer that a boom is coming to stick around for long in Fort McMurray, high up in the wilderness of northern Canada. On bad days you'll wait 45 minutes for your coffee at Starbucks, and foul-smelling smog clouds begin darkening the sky every afternoon, long before sunset. On the better days you can at least find a place to sleep. But if you want to live here, it's a different story: A couch in the basement will set you back at least 500 Canadian dollars a month.

Discussions over energy co-operation are set to dominate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's visit to China, which began on Tuesday.

Oil producing Venezuela wants to reduce its reliance on the US, to which it exports most of its oil despite the two countries' ideological differences.

China offers a lucrative alternative market, as Beijing needs oil supplies to maintain its rapid economic growth.

By Alex Lawler

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil rose to almost $72 a barrel on Monday as
Iran's supreme leader said the Islamic Republic would press on with its nuclear work, implying it will not heed a U.N. demand to stop enriching uranium.

The row over Iran's nuclear program has raised concern of disruption to oil flows from the world's fourth-largest exporter. Iran had said it would respond formally by Tuesday to Western incentives to halt enrichment.