Energy Reads: Urine power, EPA won’t kill thermal coal, more - Beckley, Bluefield & Lewisburg News, Weather, Sports

Energy headlines for this morning.

Don't Expect The EPA To Finish Off Thermal Coal "There's one final point that people forget when they forecast doom for the coal industry over the next four years: President Obama cannot spend an entire term ruling by decree."

Duke study says drilling wastewater may pollute Pa. streams "... the contamination documented by the Duke researchers is not from wastewater generated by hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale. Instead, the contaminants are probably linked to wastewater generated from conventionally drilled gas and oil wells. ‘I think the distinction between shale gas and the conventional oil and gas and their impact on the environment should not be made; I think it's all the same package deal and the effect is very similar,' (the researcher) said."

Winter natural gas price roller coaster in the US Northeast starts early "New England, in particular, is a crazy ride; on November 1, the price for the Algonquin Gas Transmission city-gates, a major Boston-area price point, was $4.36/MMBtu on InterContinentalExchange, and it had almost doubled to $8.49/MMBtu by yesterday, November 7, as the winter storm moved into the region. Tennessee Gas Pipeline zone 6-200 leg, another New England point, went from $4.47/MMBtu on ICE on November 1 to $8.68/MMBtu yesterday, and other prices also shot up as well, often more than $1 a day."

Should The US Allow Crude Oil Exports? Obviously, Clearly, Yes "There is some mixture of light and heavy, sweet and sour, crudes which is optimal to provide the refined products the US desires to use. There is absolutely no reason at all why that mixture should bear any relationship at all to the mix of crudes that the US itself produces. The solution to this is free trade in crude oil: some portion of US production should be shipped abroad and replaced with crude of a different grade to make up that optimal mixture."

Obama second term will be onerous, oil consultant says "Kneiss' forecast wasn't all bad news for the oil and natural gas industry. He predicted that the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline will end with a win for the business."

Four teenage girls in Africa have invented a generator powered by pee "According to The Next Web's Emil Protalinski, the urine-powered generator — which can turn one liter of urine into six hours of electricity — works like this."

Warmer still: Extreme climate predictions appear most accurate, report says "That means the world could be in for a devastating increase of about eight degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, resulting in drastically higher seas, disappearing coastlines and more severe droughts, floods and other destructive weather. Such an increase would substantially overshoot what the world's leaders have identified as the threshold for triggering catastrophic consequences. In 2009, heads of state agreed to try to limit warming to 3.6 degrees, and many countries want a tighter limit."