Recently, I had the unique opportunity to tour two different oil sands operations near Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta. I saw a massive open-pit oil sands mine, and the associated reclamation effort, operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd. I also visited an in situ oil sands recovery project called Surmont, operated by ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP).

After earning hefty profits on its commodities trading for nearly 18 years, heavyweight trader Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) now finds itself on the hot seat, defending this crucial source of revenue. And while that may not be good for Goldman, it’s also bad for investors.  Let me explain…

The price of water is starting to rise in a big way, at least in China. I’ve expected this for a few years.

Renewable energy — certainly electricity from windmills — has to compete against energy from other sources. The typical base line price competition for electricity is the price for a kilowatt generated in a coal-fired plant. Lately, with the price of natural gas down so low, even gas-fired electricity is competitive with coal. So where does that leave windmills?

Natural gas prices are dropping like a rock today, but the bearishness is not preventing a few bulls from taking million-dollar stands. As winter approaches, things are going to get very interesting.

Stocks push the currencies higher…Norway pulls out of recession…Jackson Hole boondoggle…Oil helps rally commodity currencies…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

The global markets are getting volatile. While Asian markets are dropping, a handful of American small caps are surging ahead. These three are leading the charge.

Shares of Rentech (AMEX:RTK) are soaring today as word spreads about the company’s latest deal. Shares have more than doubled in less than two weeks.

I’ve been surprised over the past few weeks by the pace of biofuel development. These aren’t breakthroughs that are likely to produce obvious winners in the next few months, but the time line keeps pulling in. There’s a lot of skepticism about this technology, but there was also skepticism for every major tech development of the last three or four decades.

Brazilians used to joke that their country was the country of the future – and always would be because a new crisis seemed to crop up every time the economy came close to fulfilling its potential.