Oil and Gas

Most of the attention in the oil and gas industry has been focused on the U.S. in the past few years, for understandable reasons. Some impressive engineering innovations promise to make the country the largest oil producer by the end of the decade, and it remains the largest consumer of the energy commodity in the world by a wide margin.

As money pours into the renewable energy industry, engineering research and development has managed to dramatically increase the efficiency of technologies like solar photovoltaics. MIT's Technology Review, however, reports that one group of researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory expressed worry that these technologies are not sufficiently advanced to help reduce carbon emissions in the short term.

A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggests that the U.S. is likely to see natural gas power plants gain on coal-fired generation over the coming decades.

Even as the U.S. and countries around the world are looking into ever deeper and more difficult oil reserves, engineering research is trying to find ways to replace oil entirely. A group of scientists at the University of Exeter in England believe they might have taken a critical step along the road.

The oil and gas industry has been a focal point for engineering innovation in recent years, as companies strive to tap into deeper and more challenging reservoirs. But the wealth of new engineering tools that have come from this investment will not do anything to bring prices any lower.

Oil and gas production in the U.S. has surged in recent years, leading to a new sense of optimism within the energy industry. Many imagine this recent boom will mean the end of the drive for engineering research in renewables, or at least a major blow, and a stop to the once rampant talk of "peak oil."

As much as each side has hyped up the antagonism between renewable energy and the oil and gas industry, a new analysis from Citigroup suggests that the two could end up helping each other in the coming years.

The U.S. oil and gas industry has been facing some public pressure over the past few years over its use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, with many Americans worried about the potential for water contamination. MIT's Technology Review points out, though, that some parts of the world could soon start to see more fracking without any water at all.

A new study suggests that the impact of hydraulic fracturing operations in Pennsylvania might not have had as negative an impact on the region's water as many have assumed.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was one of the most devastating environmental accidents in recent history, and scientists are still determining exactly what happened to some of the energy commodity that flowed unabated for roughly three months in 2010.