Photo by AP/WideWorld POSTER CHILD President Obama praised Solyndra and its technology during a facility tour in May 2010. The bankruptcy of a Silicon Valley-based solar panel manufacturer, announced Aug. 31, followed by an FBI raid on the company a week later, sent shock waves through the solar industry and provided an easy opening for congressional Republicans to question the wisdom of the federal government's $535-million loan guarantee as well as its investment in renewable projects in general.But solar industry sources claim the bankruptcy of Solyndra LLC is an isolated case. And the Obama administration so far is showing no

Photo courtesy chevron PRISTINE? Builders of the $45-billion Gorgon LNG plant in Australia face strict bio-security rules. Uncertainty and volatility will dominate development of large-scale projects in new markets and untapped locales, say attendees of the Engineering and Construction Contracting in Phoenix on Sept. 7-10.With uncertainty and volatility stifling large-scale capital investment in new global markets and pristine locales, project challenges attracted a record number of attendees to a key energy-industrial megaprojects conference in Phoenix on Sept. 7-10.As development encroaches on increasingly remote areas, jurisdictions are becoming more protective of threatened species and environmental risks, Chevron Corp. executive Johann Van

Photo Courtesy of Penn State University / Steven Rubin Firms say the transmission build-out across the U.S. will take years to design and build. The U.S. transmission-line construction business is in the early stages of what may well turn out to be a 10- or even 20-year boom, according to transmission designers, contractors, electric utilities and independent transmission companies.“We're looking at a decade or more of double-digit annual growth in power delivery services,” which includes work not only transmission lines but also on substations and lower-voltage distribution lines, says Don Mundy, senior vice president in Overland Park, Kan.-based Black &

Photo Courtesy of Rangeland Energy Rangeland Energy is building North Dakotas first open-access, crude-oil terminal, which will accommodate 120-car unit trains and be capable of moving 80,000 barrels per day by rail. Related Links: Shale Gas Major Driver For New Projects Some say it is the biggest construction project in the U.S.—a job requiring $8 billion in rail and fuel terminals, oil pipelines, natural-gas plants, oil wells, highway upgrades, water distribution systems and more.To others, it is the Bakken shale formation, a 15,000-sq-mile oil field straddling North Dakota and Montana and producing 300,000 barrels per day of crude oil. Its

Although many large engineering, procurement and construction, or EPC, firms in the petroleum sector are still building backlog and revenues on international jobs, traditional upstream and downstream opportunities in the U.S. remain largely in a slump. Still, many U.S.-based firms are bullish on work in Canada and South America.Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp. is near the end of a strong streak of U.S. refinery work won in recent years, including a $3.8-billion job for BP America at its Whiting, Ind., refinery, $1.6 billion in work in Detroit for Marathon Oil and $1.2 billion for two projects in Texas and Louisiana for

PHOTO COURTESY OF London Array Ltd. Competition in New England and revived interest in Texas are perking up wind market. Government streamlining of leases for Rhode Island and Massachusetts and changing market conditions in Texas are breathing new life into offshore wind projects in those states.On Aug. 18, Winchester, Mass.-based Neptune Wind announced it plans to develop, construct and operate a 500-MW wind farm about 20 nautical miles south of the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border. The announcement came a day after U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Michael R. Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation

Routine work on a substation apparently led to a power outage that left more than 1.4 million customers – about 5 million people – without power for 12 hours Sept. 8 and 9 in Southern California,Arizona and Mexico.According to the Arizona Public Service, the outage began about 3:30 p.m. PDT Thursday when a major 500-kV line from Arizona to Southern California tripped off. The outage forced the automatic shut down of the San Onofre Generating Station, a nuclear powerplant. The powerplant and power imported from Arizona on the 500-kV line are the region’s primary sources of power. Without that electricity,

On Aug. 26, the U.S. State Dept. issued the final environmental impact statement on TransCanada’s 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, setting the final stage for the hotly contested battle over the line that would move Canadian tar-sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico for refining.

Utilities up and down the East Coast were rapidly making progress on restoring power to the up to 7.5 million homes and businesses that were reported without electricity after Hurricane Irene struck over the weekend.No major damage was reported at East Coast power plants, but Constellation’s Energy’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear Unit #1 remained shut down after a piece of aluminum siding struck a transformer there. All nuclear plants in the path of the storm continued operating or safely shutdown in advance of the storm, according to reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Connecticut Light & Power reported having record outages in

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s board of directors voted unanimously Thursday to complete construction of the mothballed 1,200-MW Bellefonte nuclear unit 1 over the objections of environmentalists who said that it is unsafe to complete the unit, which has been dormant since 1988.“You’re forcing questionable technology into an old, aging facility,” said John Noel, of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy at the meeting on Thursday.  But board members said their concerns had been alleviated after TVA staff and executives assured them the unit would undergo rigorous inspections and have to meet the latest standards and regulations.TVA estimates it will cost