WASHINGTON - Pervasive organizational failures by a pipeline operator along with weak federal regulations led to a pipeline rupture and subsequent oil spill in 2010, the National Transportation Safety Board said on July 10, 2012. On Sunday, July 25, 2010, at about 5:58 p.m., a 30 inch-diameter pipeline (Line 6B) owned and operated by Enbridge Incorporated ruptured and spilled crude oil into an ecologically sensitive area near the Kalamazoo River in Marshall, Mich., for 17 hours until a local utility worker discovered the oil and contacted Enbridge to report the rupture. The NTSB found that the

This report, issued by Deloitte, notes that "the Obama Administration has set a goal of one million electric vehicles (EVs) on U.S. roads by 2015. This goal corresponds with automakers' launch of new Plug-In Electric Vehicles (PEV) across the country. In response to these developments, Deloitte conducted a study to explore whether the electric utility infrastructure in the United States is ready for the rollout of one million EVs by 2015, what utilities are doing to prepare, and what else, if anything, they could be doing to prepare.

The Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University has produced another winner. See David Davidson & Austin Rose's Border Polity Brief "U.S. Dependence Upon Canadian Fossil Fuels" (Summer 2012).  Enormously useful, great graphics. Good things do come in small packages. The focus of the brief is to clear away misinformation based on differing statistics dealing with this vital sector issued by the two countries.

Leveling the Playing Field for Natural Gas in Transportation written by Christopher R. Knittel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology for The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution Paper (June 2012)

This from AOLEnergy, May 30, 2012 Amid eye-popping estimates of the cost of needed US electric infrastructure upgrades, the evidence so far this year suggests that progress on transmission at least is slow. New data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) show only 98.6 miles of transmission projects were completed between January and April, which at an annual rate is far short of the 1,985 miles completed for the whole of 2011.

A report prepared for the Western Governors' Association (Meeting Renewable Energy Targets in the West At Least Cost: The Integration Challenge) urges the Western Electricity Coordination Council (WECC) implement an organized regional electricity market to more efficiently integrate increasing amounts of renewable energy resources and lower the costs of meeting grid-reliability mandates. WECC currently has 37 different balancing authorities that operate independently of one another, managing grid reliability by coordinating power production, wholesale energy transfers and consumption within t

The Washington State Department of Transportation announced (May 30, 2012) that "The border-to-border vision of the West Coast Electric Highway moves closer to becoming a reality today with the opening of new EV charging sites, extending the highway to the Canadian border and opening it to electric vehicle (EV) drivers from both countries.

In light of widespread challenges and the levels of uncertainty regarding the global transportation sector, the World Energy Council (WEC) decided to re-examine the future of the transport and mobility sector by building Global Transport Scenarios to 2050. From the Summary to the Report: These scenarios describe potential developments in transport fuels, technologies, and mobility systems over the course of the next forty years.

This is a report and materials from a November 2011 conference on transportation policy ("Are We There Yet? Selling America on Transportation") hosted by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. In 2009, the Miller Center hosted the inaugural David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia. Eighty leading transportation thinkers convened at the Miller Center to articulate a new agenda for federal transportation policy in the 21st century.

A Globe and Mail article on March 27 describes "the battle to build new pipes comes as energy companies seek to gain back some ground, after more than a year of ‘taking the short end of the stick ... simply because we can't move product,'" (Lowell Jackson, chief executive officer of WestFire Energy Ltd. and chairman of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers). The article continues, "Lack of pipeline space has created major problems for Canadian producers.