Maley's Energy Blog

Low-powered sales halt Volt production

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Steve Maley

http://theadvocate.com/home/2218671-125/low-powered-sales-halt-volt-production.html

DALLAS — General Motors Co. is suspending production of its Chevrolet Volt electric car for five weeks amid disappointing sales.

A GM spokesman said Friday that the company will shut down production of the Volt from March 19 until April 23, idling 1,300 workers at the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant.

The Volt was rolled out with great fanfare in late 2010 but has since hit bumps in the road. Sales have fallen short of expectations, and its reputation was bruised by an investigation into a possible fire risk.

It carries a high price tag — around $41,000 before a U.S. tax credit of up to $7,500. Rising gasoline prices should boost the Volt’s appeal, but there are plenty of other less-expensive cars that also get good mileage.

GM sold 7,671 Volts last year, below its original goal of 10,000 cars. The company stopped publicly announcing sales targets last year. It sold 1,023 Volts in February and 603 in January.

“The fact that GM is now facing an oversupply of Volts suggests that consumer demand is just not that strong for these vehicles,” said Lacey Plache, chief economist for auto information site Edmunds.com.

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@NYTimes: Gulf Oil Spill Plaintiffs and BP Reach a Settlement. #rsrh

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Steve Maley

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/03/02/us/AP-US-Gulf-Oil-Spill-Settlement.html?_r=1

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Circle of Life, or Something

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Steve Maley

About 100 years ago, Paula’s off-the-boat Sicilian grandparents settled in this small house near the end of Metairie Road in Jefferson Parish.

The Demmas raised an active family of seven children in this house. My late father-in-law Philip was born here in 1926.

Metairie means “little farm” or something like that in corrupted French. The community, New Orleans’ first Jefferson Parish suburb, was a cluster of small houses at the end of a shell road which ran along the high ground of Metairie Ridge.

The old timers said that the only place to live was on the high ground of the ridge, or right up by the river levees. The other ground was reclaimed swamp; the soil was “coffee grounds”, highly organic peat that would decay and compact.

As far as I know, this old house has never flooded. In the ’27 flood, though, Philip’s older sister Lucy carried him out through four feet of water, holding the infant Philip over her head.

Lucy is now near 100 years old, and is on hospice care.

Philip died in 1988. His wife Rena passed away two years ago.

But tomorrow Colleen, the only granddaughter Philip ever knew, will be getting married in New Orleans. Philip would have been so proud. Rena too.

Colleen’s sister Ellie was a “bun in the oven” when Philip passed. She will be her older sister’s maid of honor. Philip’s skills on the diamond skipped a generation, and Ellie got them all.

We hope to see Philip and Lucy’s brother Emile, a/k/a Bootsie, at the wedding.

When the sun breaks through the clouds tomorrow, we’ll think of Philip and Rena and how proud they would both be.

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Obama: ‘Drill Drill Drill won’t work. And you can thank Me that it did.’

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Steve Maley

Irony alert. (HuffPo link. Sorry.)

“Anybody who tells you that we can just drill our way out of this problem does not know what they’re talking about, or they’re not telling you the truth — one or the other,” Obama said at an event held in New Hampshire to tout his energy policies.

He noted that, in fact, oil production in the United States has hit its highest level in eight years, that more rigs are operating in the U.S. than in the rest of the world combined, that more than 400 drilling permits have been granted since the massive BP oil spill, and that for the first time in 13 years, oil imports account for less than half of all U.S. oil consumption. [Emphasis added.]

President Obama’s statement denies that drilling can increase production, while taking credit for the fact that it did.

It would seem to me that there’s a connection, a correlation, perhaps even a causal relationship, between the number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. and the increased production of domestic oil.

Perhaps if we did something to encourage more wells to be drilled, the result would be even more domestic oil. More oil in the world marketplace would put downward pressure on oil prices. And we’d be even less dependent on some foreign despot for oil.

That makes me say “Yes We Can!” drill our way out of this.

But hey, according to the President, I’m either dumb or a liar. Maybe both.

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