WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia could ramp up
its oil production within one month enough to replace all of
Libya’s crude exports if growing strife in the African nation
cuts off its oil shipments, a senior U.S. government energy
official said on Tuesday.

The Saudis could step in with spare oil production capacity
to offset a loss of Libya’s 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd)
in oil exports, said Doug MacIntyre, director of petroleum and
biofuels statistics at the U.S. Energy Information
Administration.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Interior Department to decide in the next 30 days whether to approve five pending permits to drill in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The permit requests from London-based Ensco Plc have been in limbo since the BP oil spill and the department’s insistence that oil companies meet tough new safety requirements before they can get approval to explore for crude or natural gas in the Gulf.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Heating-oil costs for households in the U.S. Northeast this winter will likely be the highest on record, thanks to expensive crude oil, the government’s energy-forecasting agency said on Wednesday.

The average homeowner in the Northeast, the biggest U.S. heating-oil market, will spend a record $2,431 for the fuel, the Energy Information Administration said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Energy Secretary Steven Chu came under fire from Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday for his department’s plan to seek a sharp rise in funding for clean-energy projects while paring research on fossil fuels.

Chu told a congressional committee that a nearly 12 percent increase in the Energy Department’s new budget was necessary to make the United States competitive against other countries, create thousands of U.S. jobs and enhance national security.

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) – The White House will ask
Congress to repeal $3.6 billion in oil, natural gas and coal
industry subsidies as part of its proposed government budget
for the 2012 spending year that will be released on Monday.

Phasing out the fossil fuel subsidies, which would total
$46.2 billion over a decade, will help the U.S. “transition to
a 21st century energy economy,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu
said in a posting on his blog at the department’s website on
Friday.

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. government’s energy
forecaster on Tuesday revised up its estimate for global oil
demand this year, but also said more crude from major non-OPEC
oil producing countries will help fill the gap in the supply
shortfall.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration, in its latest
monthly forecast, said top oil exporter and de facto OPEC
leader Saudi Arabia is also pumping more crude than previously
thought, about 100,000 barrels per day extra during both
November and December.

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. government may lower
its forecast for global oil demand as higher crude prices and
weaker economic growth could cut into petroleum consumption.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration report is the
first of major global oil demand forecasts coming out this
week, with the International Energy Agency and OPEC both
releasing their outlooks this Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two U.S. senators introduced legislation on Thursday to boost pipeline safety in an effort to avoid the kind of major pipeline accidents last year that destroyed homes, killed people and polluted the environment.

The bill would increase fines for reckless pipeline operators, hire more federal safety inspectors and require automatic shut-off valves to prevent oil spills and natural gas explosions.

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) – Stronger-than-expected demand
from rebounding economies and concern over unrest in Arab
countries have pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel, the
International Energy Agency told the U.S. Congress on Thursday.

“Reasons for this growth in demand include unseasonal
weather patterns and better-than-expected global economic
growth,” IEA Deputy Executive Director Richard Jones told the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee at a hearing on
the oil market.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Monday won a key endorsement for its proposal to boost U.S. electricity generation by clean energy sources as the head of the Senate’s energy panel said he could back the idea of including nuclear power in the fuel mix.

In his State of the Union speech to Congress last week, President Barack Obama proposed the United States produce 80 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources, such as wind, solar, “clean” coal and nuclear, by 2035.