There are also social limits to the extraction of energy resources. While industry has gone to great lengths to mine the most inaccessible of these fuels, the Alberta tar sands, it comes at great ecological, human and financial cost. It is overly optimistic to assume society will continue to turn a blind eye to the destruction left behind. As we have seen from the uranium mining controversy here, the social and environmental acceptability of exploiting that fuel is becoming increasingly marginal. Besides the sacrifice of ecosystems and human health, and contribution to global climatic stability, the long term exploitation of both tar sands and uranium will require serious infringement of the democratic rights of affected citizens.

In a meeting with Putin, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller proposed halting deliveries of gas to the Russian-Ukraine border because Kiev was siphoning off the fuel, Interfax news agency reported.

Ghawar is by far the world's largest oilfield and for this reason the government-owned Saudi Aramco terms it the Gulf Kingdom's 'Crown Jewel'.

"The path will be a bit chaotic. I don't see a taking off in biofuels in 2009, 2010 but probably later because we know that oil prices will (eventually) increase again," Jean Luc Demarty, the European Commission's Director-General, Agricultural and Rural Development Department, told reporters.

The oil industry is scaling back on exploration and production because some projects don't make economic sense when energy prices are low. And crude is already harder to find because more nations that own oil companies are blocking outside access to their oil fields.

Speaking in the Fetzer Center's Kirsch Auditorium, Deffeyes will be the first to speak as part of WMU's new Gwen Frostic Environmental Studies Seminar Series. The event is open to the public without charge.

Russia accused its former Soviet neighbor of stealing about 15 percent the gas it ships across Ukraine to European states.

That means the group has met virtually all of its pledge to lower supply to 27.3 million bpd from November 1.

Oil prices in the $40 a barrel range are "not going to be around much longer," Pickens told a gathering at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

"The minute you get recovery, you'll get a sharp rise in oil, which will stall the recovery," says Tom Burke, an environmental scientist and former British government adviser. "So you have to use the stimulus to get yourself off oil dependency and that will reduce the climate curve and you'll start to drive carbon the way you want to go.

Canada, in large part because of the production capacity of its oil sands, is now the largest oil supplier to the United States. But environmental groups in both countries are pushing for a slowdown or even a halt to further oil sands development, which is concentrated in northern Alberta.

Between 1985 and 2000, US energy consumption (all fuels combined) grew by an average of 1.7% per year; between 2000 and 2007, US energy consumption grew by an average of 0.4% per year. On a per capita basis, energy consumption was actually declining between 2000 and 2007. Energy consumption through September 2008 is down about 2% from 2007 (about 3% on a per capita basis).

Since mid-2007, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence has sponsored three unclassified international conferences to consider the requirements for meeting the challenges involved in anticipating and understanding the security-related consequences of energy and environmental dynamics. This report synthesizes the presentations and conversations that took place at the 12 March 2008 conference, the third of these meetings. It highlights the insights and the strategic imperatives that emerged from the conference.

Exelon terminated its contract with security service provider Wackenhut Corp. in 2007 and shifted to an in-house team, not long after Wackenhut security officers at Exelon's Peach Bottom plant were videotaped dozing while on duty.

Plans for new trunk lines that would divert Russian gas north and south of Ukraine's troubled transit network have faltered as European leaders bickered over which routes to back and worried about giving the Kremlin too much control.