الخميس، 3 نوفمبر 2011

Lincoln Tribune

Lincoln Tribune

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Experts See Big Changes in World Energy Market

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 11:24 PM PDT

As world population grows so does the demand for energy, driving fierce competition for diminishing resources. Many energy experts believe world oil production will soon peak and no alternative energy has been developed that can fill the demand. But at a forum held this week in Houston, energy experts examined trends that could radically transform the energy sector in the decades ahead.

In the past few years the world's energy scene began to shift. Brazil has discovered huge oil reserves in deepwater offshore projects and the United States unlocked natural gas and some oil in shale rock through horizontal drilling and a process known as "fracking."

At the same time, Canada has ramped up production of petroleum from its oil sands deposits in the western province of Alberta.

Speaking at an energy conference this week in Houston, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, says technology has unlocked an energy bonanza in North America. "Between shale and Canada's oil sands, North America is now the fastest-growing oil-producing region outside of OPEC, with output projected to increase by more than 10 percent over the next five years," he said.

Oliver says the rise in North American production and deepwater and shale production elsewhere will reduce the power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. "There will not be the same influence going forward, it seems to me, that the OPEC countries have had in respect to oil and other natural resources," he said.

This dramatic shift is the focus of Daniel Yergin's new book "The Quest: Energy Security and the Remaking of the Modern World."  "The map is changing of oil supply and also expectations are going to change as well and that means markets will change as well and that will have an impact on geopolitics," he said.

Yergin, who is chairman of the Massachusetts-baed energy consulting firm IHS-CERA, notes that almost all the technological innovation that is transforming the global energy market has come in the traditional oil and gas sector. But he says development of renewable energy sources like wind, solar and biofuels will proceed and become more important a few decades from now. "We have to worry about the here and now and what things will look like in the next decade or two as well as think about the future, so in a way what it requires is that we work on all fronts at once," he said.

One nation taking that approach is Turkey, a country that is developing its wind energy with an aim to meet 30 percent of its domestic electricity demand in the next 20 years.

But the commissioner of Turkey's EMRA energy agency, Alparslan Bayrakrtar says his country is also seeking to develop its geographic position bridging Europe and Asia to become a regional energy hub. "We are at the center of supply and demand. The European side has a great demand and also our domestic demand is huge and also we have supply countries neighboring Turkey," he said.

This is the kind of planning that is helping transform the world, according to Secretary-General Christoph Frei, of the London-based World Energy Council. "We have established corridors for oil and gas, why not use some of those corridors to bring some of that wind energy, first to Turkey, but why not further, to Europe, et cetera," he said.

Frei says there are many environmental and geopolitical challenges facing the energy sector, but it is an exciting time for those involved in energy development. "Huge uncertainty on one side, lots of innovation on the other ... we are on the verge of a great, ongoing revolution," he said.

The world economy, food production and distribution, and the environment all depend on how this revolution turns out.

Survey Finds Shortage of High Skilled Workers Around the Globe

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:59 PM PDT

More than half of U.S. employers report having a hard time finding people to fill some of their most critical positions. Quite a few countries around the world are experiencing the same problem, according to a global survey by international employment agency, ManpowerGroup.   

Getting on the Internet and looking for work has become DeBorah Pryor's daily routine.   She hasn't had a stable, full time job since 2008. "It's extremely frustrating it has brought me to tears sometimes," she said.

In the last three years, Pryor had gone back to the university and finished her degree. She's even started her own communications company to make ends meet.  But she's looking for something more permanent.  After spending countless hours on on-line job applications there has been no reward. "You get an automated response that says that the employer has received your package and then you hear nothing so as if your resume has gone into this vortex, this abyss," she said.

Jeff Joerres, Chairman and Chief Executive of the employment agency, ManpowerGroup says employers are now looking for very specific and often  highly technical skill sets.  "A large number of people that have been out of work for two years and in some cases more than two years during that time, the businesses has gone through a lot of changes," he said.

Some of the changes include upgrades in technology, changes in job requirements and added skills for a position.  That's why even with a high unemployment rate in many countries, companies still have trouble finding workers.  

Employment agency, Manpower's Regional Director in Los Angeles, Janelle Etchepare says training for new skills will help make an applicant more attractive to an employer. "The ones that have kept up with their education so to speak and have kept up with technology are the ones that are very easy to continue to place," she said.

But not enough job applicants are keeping up with the changes in technology and job requirements. According to this year's ManpowerGroup  survey of 39 countries, 34 percent of employers worldwide say they have trouble finding qualified workers.  While 52% percent of U.S. employers have the same problem filling critical positions, Japan, India and Brazil have the most difficult time.

ManpowerGroup's Jeff Joerres said, "We always think of India as having a plethra of people when in fact so many companies have moved there. Their own economy is moving along nicely that they've now picked up to where it's very difficult to find the qualified people that that they need."

The hardest jobs to fill are technicians, skilled trades, sales representatives that require highly technical knowledge.  

Jatan Shah, Chief Technology Office of QSC Audio says his company has been expanding and hiring.  But he says finding the right worker for positions from engineers to plant workers has been a challenge. "It takes anywhere from three months to a year to fill certain positions.  Yeah at times it's frustrating you would think that when you have positions open, you have people applying from everywhere which is true you get a lot of resumes but you're trying to find the right person for the right job," he said.

Manpower's Jeff Joerres says, when companies can't find the right fit, the positions often remain unfilled, which could effect the employer's revenue.  In the U.S. he says some companies are doing something out of the ordinary: "We're finding that companies are actually willing to move their location to where the talent is which is highly unusual," he said.

He says some employers are hiring people who can learn quickly and training them for the job.

Ghana refuses to grant gay rights despite UK aid threat

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:48 PM PDT

ACCRA (BNO NEWS) -- Ghanaian President John Atta Mills on Wednesday rejected the United Kingdom's threat to cut aid if the country refuses to legalize homosexuality, media reports said.

Atta Mills said the British government cannot impose its values on Ghana. "I, as president, will never initiate or support any attempt to legalize homosexuality in Ghana," he said, as quoted by the BBC.

The announcement comes after British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to cut aid to countries which fail to respect gay rights. Cameron said he had raised the issue of gay rights at last week's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Australia.

Atta Mills said Cameron is entitled to his views, but he did not have the right to "direct to other sovereign nations as to what they should do." He emphasized that Ghana's "societal norms" are different from those in the United Kingdom.

Cameron's threat applies only to one type of bilateral aid known as general budget support, and would not reduce the overall amount of aid to any country. Ghana received bilateral aid from the UK of about £90 million ($144 million) during the last financial year, of which about £36 million ($57 million) was general budget support.

Uganda also rejected the threat, with an official accusing the British government of showing a "bullying mentality." Many African governments argue that homosexuality violates religious and cultural beliefs and have therefore made it illegal.

In October 7, a Ghanaian church official warned locals about homosexuality and said it is largely 'caused' by poverty and unemployment. "He said the actors (homosexuals) give their victims fat envelopes of money and assorted gifts to entice them into the act and advised the youth to beware," state-run media reported, referring to Reverend Dr. Bugri Nagbo who is the Northern Regional Chairman of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.

The law in Ghana makes consenting homosexual acts a misdemeanor. But lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgenders (LGBTs) face widespread discrimination as well as police harassment and extortion attempts. Gay men in prison are often subjected to sexual and other physical abuse.

In late July, Western Region Minister Paul Evans Aidoo ordered the arrest of all homosexuals in the region and tasked security agencies to 'smoke out' all citizens suspected to be engaging in homosexual acts. "All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in the society," he was cited as saying by local radio station Joy FM.

In June 2010, more than 1,000 people protested in the city of Takoradi against reports of gay and lesbian activities in their city. There are no registered LGBT organizations in the African country.

Some 41 nations within the 54-member Commonwealth have laws banning homosexual acts. Many of these laws are a legacy of British colonial rule.

(Copyright 2011 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.)


At least 12 killed, 60-plus injured after motorcycle blasts in southeastern Iraq

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:35 PM PDT

BASRA, IRAQ (BNO NEWS) -- At least twelve people were killed on Wednesday when three explosions rocked a city in southeastern Iraq, health officials said. More than 60 others were injured.

Three motorcycle bombs detonated on Jamhuriya Street near different cafes in the central area of Basra, the capital of Iraq's Basra Governorate, according to the Commander of Basra Operations, General Mohammed Huwaidi.

Sources from the Basra Health Department told the National Iraqi News Agency (NINA) that the evening blasts, which detonated consecutively, killed at least 12 people and wounded 62 others. Among those killed was at least one police officer while his colleagues were injured.

In addition to the victims, several vehicles and nearby shops were seriously damaged. Fires could be seen burning in the street following the explosions as emergency teams rushed to the scene, NINA reported.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Last week, two bomb blasts hit a gathering at the Sabah al-Khayat Square in eastern Baghdad, killing at least 36 people, including two police officers and two soldiers. Seventy-eight others were injured.

Iraq has witnessed a resurgence in militant attacks in recent months, and last week's attack was the deadliest in Iraq since U.S. President Barack Obama announced the full withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of the year.

But despite the upsurge, violence in Iraq has dropped significantly since its peak in 2006 and 2007 when the country was embroiled in sectarian bloodshed. However, deadly shootings and bombings still occur on an almost daily basis.

(Copyright 2011 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.)


NASA study suggests watery underground on Mars

Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:27 PM PDT

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) -- Life on the planet Mars, if it ever existed, would most likely have taken place below the planet's surface, according to a new study released by NASA on Wednesday.

After analyzing years of mineral-mapping data of the so-called 'Red Planet', a new interpretation suggests that Martian environments with abundant liquid water on the surface existed only during short episodes.

From more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, scientists believe these short episodes occurred toward the end of hundreds of millions of years during which warm water interacted with subsurface rocks. This has implications about whether life existed on Mars and how its atmosphere has changed.

This new study supports an alternative hypothesis that persistent warm water was confined to the subsurface and many erosional features were carved during brief periods when liquid water was stable at the surface.

"If surface habitats were short-term, that doesn't mean we should be glum about prospects for life on Mars, but it says something about what type of environment we might want to look in," said the report's lead author, Bethany Ehlmann, assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology and scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "The most stable Mars habitats over long durations appear to have been in the subsurface. On Earth, underground geothermal environments have active ecosystems."

John Mustard, professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a co-author of the study, stated that the types of clay minerals which formed in the shallow subsurface are all over Mars. The types that formed on the surface, however, are found at very limited locations and are rare.

The clay minerals on Mars were discovered in 2005, indicating that the planet once hosted warm and wet conditions. If those conditions existed on the surface for a long era, the planet would have needed a much thicker atmosphere than it has now to keep the water from evaporating or freezing. Researchers have been searching for evidence of processes that could cause a thick atmosphere to be lost over time.

The discovery of clay minerals by the OMEGA spectrometer on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter added to earlier evidence of liquid Martian water. Clay forms from the interaction of water with rock and different types of clay minerals result from different types of wet conditions.

One clue helping scientists develop the new hypothesis was the detection of a mineral called prehnite. It forms at temperatures above about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 200 degrees Celsius), temperatures which are typical of underground hydrothermal environments rather than surface waters.

"Our interpretation is a shift from thinking that the warm, wet environment was mostly at the surface to thinking it was mostly in the subsurface, with limited exceptions," said Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

One of those exceptions may be Gale Crater, the site targeted by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. Launching this year, the Curiosity rover will land and investigate layers that contain clay and sulfate minerals.

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, or MAVEN, in development for a 2013 launch, may provide evidence for or against this new interpretation of the Red Planet's environmental history. The report predicts MAVEN findings consistent with the atmosphere not having been thick enough to provide warm, wet surface conditions for a prolonged period.

(Copyright 2011 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.)


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