Energy Blast – April 7, 2010

Uganda says it won’t swap oil for six Russian Su-30 fighter jets because no Russian companies are currently prospecting for crude there.  Zelenogorsk could be rejuvenated by French multinational Areva, which has recently opened a commercial facility in the former closed Russian city for the conversion and storage of depleted uranium.  Construction of the Nord Stream pipeline is being launched by Gazprom, with the first pipe being laid under the Baltic Sea today, and an official ceremony to be held tomorrow.  America’s Peabody Energy has had another, ‘sweetened‘ bid for Australia’s Macarthur Coal rejected, on grounds that the revised offer of A$3.6bn was ‘inadequate and uncertain‘.  Crude throughput at China’s top refineries will hit a new high this month as plants reopened, according to a Reuters poll. The Economist writes on the viability of using straw as an energy-saving building material.