You've heard the reasons for high oil prices: instability in the Middle East, booming demand in China and India, the sagging dollar. Now add another one to the list: Engineers.
The world doesn't have enough of them. From Alberta to Azerbaijan, the fervent hunt for new reserves of oil and natural gas is running up against a shortage of experienced oil patch professionals. "We anticipate a 10 to 15% shortfall" in the number of veteran engineers and project managers needed to lead the search for new energy supplies, says Candida Scott, director of cost research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

When discussing solutions to the problems of pollution it's easy to get caught up in all the new technology that's being devised,  researched and created.  Sometimes however,  a little common sense can be just as effective.

Cars nowadays are powerful toys,  and it's always tempting to indulge a little.  Changing your driving style a little however can lead to better fuel efficiency,  which ultimately is going to be better for the environment.

ArcelorMittal , the world’s largest steel maker , raised its stake in the China Oriental Group to more than 73 percent, becoming the first foreign company to take control of a Chinese steel maker.

Arcelor raised its interest in China Oriental from 28.03 percent, according to the stock exchange filing, but no financial terms were released.

 The world's largest steel firm, ArcelorMittal , has seen quarterly profits jump thanks to high steel prices and demand from new markets.

Although Asia is still a major region where ArcelorMittal does not have a large presence, and they need to increase their exposure in this fast-growing region

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It may look like an ordinary construction site, but engineers and crews at the Alderney Landing parking lot are really breaking ground.

On Monday, workers began chipping away at the world’s largest geothermal cold-energy storage project , which is expected to reduce the city’s annual operating costs by $250,000 a year and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 580 tonnes a year.

"It will help our children and grandchildren in terms of a healthier air quality, but also (give us) a healthier bank balance, in terms of not having to expend as many dollars over the duration," Mayor Peter Kelly said after a news conference at Alderney Landing, a five-building complex on the Dartmouth waterfront.

Airbus chief Thomas Enders warned Thursday that the European plane maker might have to take new measures to counter the euro's rise against the dollar, which he said had "exceeded tolerable limits."

The weakness of the dollar is threatening the survival of European planemaker Airbus , its chief executive Tom Enders has told employees in Germany.

Mr Enders made the claim as he gave a warning that European engineering and production plants would have to face major cost cuts to help them to counter the impact of the currency.

Some people weave baskets by hand. But Delta 7 Sports is weaving bikes that way
The Payson, Utah-based company on Monday unveiled the Arantix, a mountain bike engineered from hollow tubes spun from carbon fibers. The unusual design of the so-called IsoTruss tubes, based on technology from Brigham Young University, allows Delta 7 to cut down weight. A standard hard-tail mountain bike frame (without shock absorbers) made from the stuff weighs about 2.7 pounds, but it's as strong or stronger as a conventional carbon or aluminum frame, according to the company.

Most countries in Latin America have made serious strides toward re engineering and reforming their economies in the last 15 years, opening their markets to trade and foreign investment, reducing government budget deficits, adopting more flexible currency regimes and reducing inflation. Yet despite these reforms, the financial systems in Latin America remain small relative to the size of the economies. And this reality, we believe, weakens the region’s prospects for sustainable growth.

Britain is to build the biggest biomass plant in the world, Business Secretary John Hutton said after giving the green light to the renewable energy engineering project.

The 350-megawatt wood chip-fuelled electricity generating plant will be sited in the industrial town of Port Talbot on the south Wales coast. It will cost 400 million pounds (830 million dollars, 560 million euros) to construct.

Biomass refers to living and recently dead biological material that can be used as fuel or for industrial production. Most commonly, biomass refers to plant matter grown for use as biofuel, but it also includes plant or animal matter used for production of fibres, chemicals or heat

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As the climate changes many cities around the world are starting to experience major droughts,  with no end in sight.  According to some estimates,  Atlanta could be dry by Christmas,  which is really not that far away. 

So what then,  is the solution?  Seems that not enough thought has been put into this matter.  Engineers are going to have to put a bit of time into this,  and soon as water is an important resource for many different reasons to any city that is considerably large and Atlanta is 4.5 million.  The mining town of Orme, Tennessee can survive by trucking water in,  however it is only a population of 145,  a solution like this is not an option for a city of 4.5 million.

One solution is to use nuclear power plants to provide electricity but also double as desalination plants.  The idea of drinking water that has come from a nuclear plant seems a bit eerie to me. Anyone got any other ideas?

China has announced new plans to confront environmental and geological problems around the Three Gorges Dam , even as a landslide in the region on Tuesday killed one construction worker, injured a second and trapped two others beneath a mound of fallen earth.
Chinese officials are facing growing questions about the dam project, which has been dogged for years by controversy and discord. Engineering issues, water pollution, soil erosion and landslides are becoming recurrent problems as rising water inundates more land in the reservoir behind the mammoth dam.

The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s most notorious dam . The massive project sets records for number of people displaced (at least 1.3 million), number of cities and towns flooded (13 cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages), and length of reservoir (more than 600 kilometers). The project has been plagued by corruption, spiraling costs, technological problems, human rights violations and resettlement difficulties.

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The EU narrowed the productivity gap with the US last year for the first time in well over a decade, the European commission reported today.

Driven by significant improvements in Germany, growth in output per worker last year rose to 1.5% in the EU's 27 countries, outpacing that of the world's most competitive economy where productivity was up 0.9%.

But senior commission officials cautioned that the bulk of the productivity gain could be attributed to the cyclical upturn in the economy since 2005 and the bloc still lagged behind the US in key sectors such as wholesale and retail trade, real estate, ICT and to a lesser extent in financial services.

"We simply don't have enough evidence to confirm a general trend reversal," they said. "The evidence for a structural and, therefore, durable pick-up in productivity growth remains scant to date."

The offshore oil and gas industry will today be given a stark warning that its safety performance is not good enough.
A report is expected to reveal that engineering and maintenance is not being given enough attention and not only is there a wide variation between companies but also within companies.
After a three-year investigation of nearly 100 installations the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will tell operators that while significant improvements have been made "more must be done".
The direct "must do better" message to the industry will be made at the launch of the KP3 report - a major investigation carried out by the HSE's Aberdeen-based Offshore Division into the safety and integrity of offshore installations and the equipment on them.

Rick Cohagan, Managing Director of Chevron Upstream Europe, has been appointed new co-chair of Step Change in Safety . He will work with the Step Change leadership team and co-chair Doug Halkett on improving the oil and gas industrys safety record, with the aim of making the UK the safest place to work in the world-wide oil and gas industry.

Smaller, faster, more efficient: BASF research scientists are helping to revolutionize the future world of telecommunications – with the aid of three-dimensional photonic crystals. In a three-year project, BASF is researching into the development of these crystals together with partners such as Hanover Laser Center, Thales Aerospace Division, Photon Design Ltd., the Technical University of Denmark and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne. By the end of 2008, the partners in the "NewTon" project expect to have developed the first functional components of this new technology. The long-term goal is to use three-dimensional photonic crystals as construction elements in telecommunication. Half of the project is being funded by the European Union.

A flotilla of U.S. warships carrying as many as 8,000 American sailors heading for a four-day Thanksgiving holiday visit to China's port of Hong Kong has been refused entry, the U.S. Navy said Thursday.

It was not immediately clear why the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier and its support vessels were barred Wednesday. Port officials said they had not been notified of the previously scheduled visit. But the incident added an unusual twist to China-U.S. relations, strained in recent months by disputes over trade and Iran's nuclear program.

In the past, China has banned all U.S. ships from the former British colony during times of tense relations. But current relations are not too bad, said David Zweig, a professor of China relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said.

Royal Dutch Shell and its partners have told the Russian Government that developing vast gasfields in the Siberian Arctic would take half a century of engineering and cost “hundreds of billions” of dollars.

Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive, met President Putin this month to discuss the proposed project in the Yamal Peninsula and Kara Sea. He was accompanied by a high-level Dutch business delegation.

They estimated that the region could hold more than 30 trillion cubic metres of gas, more than the combined proved reserves of Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian gas monopoly.

THE use of old-fashioned price controls to fight inflation is causing road chaos in some parts of China as speculators hoard fuel and refineries send their product overseas.

The oil price edged above $US99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday but Chinese authorities continued to hold retail fuel prices well below the cost of production. Retail prices have risen only 10 per cent this year, but this masks rampant profiteering on the wholesale market.

In Guizhou, the largest energy exporting province in southern China, retailers had capped the price of diesel at 5.24 yuan a litre, or 79 Australian cents, a little more than half of the average Australian price.

With a sunburst of engineering and rivets crowning the gleaming aluminum façade, it always seemed to be a distinctive paean to American craftsmanship, independence, and the open road. Founder Wally Byam's iconic travel trailer is a bit like Tiffany's little blue box: You immediately recognize it, it brings a smile to your face -- and you want to know what is inside.

When Byam introduced the first Airstream in 1931, it was as an innovative way to allow the average Joe to fulfill his dreams of discovery in relative comfort. Now the Ohio-made trailers are enjoying a newfound status: They have gone from cult classic among nomadic retirees to chic design statement for the affluent.

GOETTINGEN, Germany - It may have brought the world aspirin, engineering rocket science, quantum physics and the diesel engine, but Germany's days of scientific glory are long gone and it is now hunting for a new generation of Einsteins.

Decades of underfunding and a distaste for the elitism nurtured by Nazis has meant the world's third-largest economy is trailing its global competitors, causing concern among business leaders and provoking warnings from economists.

GREENWICH, Connecticut: In terms of sheer speed, power and history-making levels of engineering excess, the Bugatti Veyron is a success. Bugatti's parent, Volkswagen, set out to build the fastest production car in the world, and it did. There is a photograph of it right there in the 2007 edition of "The Guinness Book of World Records," under the heading of Fastest Production Car.

But here is the problem with setting out to conquer a superlative: There is always someone lurking around the corner, drawing a target on your back. And once the bar is moved, you're a historical footnote. (Sure enough, on Oct. 9, Shelby SuperCars posted on its Web site that Guinness had certified its Ultimate Aero as the new titleholder.)

SEOUL (AFP) — South Korea on Tuesday announced an ambitious plan to join Asia's space race by launching a lunar orbiter by 2020 and sending a probe to the moon five years after that.

The science ministry unveiled the project one month after China launched its first lunar orbiter and two months after Japan did.

Its "road map" requires the nation to complete developing its own 300-tonne rocket at a cost of 3.6 trillion won (3.9 billion dollars) within 10 years.

South Korea is a member of the International Astronautical Federation  and is investing heavily in engineering and Space Technology 

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