This diary is a response to the call issued by RenaRF for different individuals to offer a detailed information guide on Election 2006 for each of the fifty states.  Iowa is one of the most closely divided states in the nation, with the two parties having nearly equal support.  In 2006, Iowa has two races that will attract national attention: the open seats for Governor and the first Congressional District (IA-01).  In addition, control of both houses of the state legislature is up for grabs, and the second and third CDs promise to have lively races.  

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My name is David Loebsack and I am running as the Democratic candidate for
congress in Iowa's second district.

I am a progressive Democrat who has been an activist for the better part of
the past twenty years or so.  I have worked on numerous campaigns, local and
national.  In 2000, I was a national delegate for Bill Bradley after having
served as a county and district coordinator on a volunteer basis.  In 2004, I
was a key Howard Dean supporter in this part of Iowa.  Finally, for the past
three years I served as the chair of the Linn Phoenix Club, our county PAC
whose sole purpose is to elect Democrats to legislative and countywide office.

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Hard as it is to believe, the details are even worse, see below ...

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Iowa's two investor-owned utilites, Mid-American Energy and Alliant Energy put a serious roadblock in the path of a group of cities that want to establish new, municipally-owned electric utilities. They used their friends in the legislature to put pressure on the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities. to stop helping the rebels.

When Kossacks talk about military space programs, they are usually referring to missile defense, otherwise known as "Star Wars". But there is a whole world of on-orbit military assets that are being developed and deployed today. Some of them seem innocuous at first, like the tiny XSS-11:

Orbital's Minotaur Launches XSS-11 Research Satellite (Space Daily)

Obviously, this kind of inspection capability would have been very useful for the Space Shuttle Columbia, but what else is it good for?

More analysis below ...

CNOOC invests $122 mln in Canadian oil sands firm (Reuters)

Chinese oil companies continue to invest in projects worldwide, even in the western hemisphere. Here, one of them closed a deal on a development stage tar sands project in Alberta.

As if this wasn't enough, the article also mentioned that Enbridge is planning a pipeline from the tar sands region to Canada's west coast.

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According to the Financial Times:

The camp is a sizeable operation, which is currently staffed by 2000 National Guardsmen, and the contract to run it might have been worth as much as $100 million over three years.  The Pentagon denies that it has ever asked any private firms to manage Camp Delta.

For the first time in 30 years, the median income fell for members of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).  Analyst Richard Ellis says

A new study compares US energy use now to what it was during the last oil crisis.  At first glance, the US appears to be much less vulnerable to high energy prices because it only takes half as much energy to produce a dollar of GDP than it did during the 1970s.  However, this increased overall efficiency hides some important vulnerabilities.  For example, even though US homes and appliances are far more efficient than they used to be, American houses are so much larger that the average family uses 10% more energy than they did 25 years ago.  Likewise in transportation: the average American car drives 25% more miles that it did 20 years ago, which more than offsets any increase in gasoline mileage.  Finally, industrial energy usage has decreased dramatically, largely as a result of heavy industry moving offshore.

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For Indonesia, like the USA before it, peak oil is no longer a theory.  While domestic demand has been increasing at 7%/year, supply has been slowly decreasing as depletion takes its toll.

ChevronTexaco Warns of Global Bidding War  (ABC News)

China and India, the world's second and fourth largest energy consumers, are competing for every big new energy project, everywhere in the world.  This has led them to very unsavory places, like Sudan, where shareholder pressure has driven western companies out.  The rest of this article from the New York Times covers recent energy projects for both countries, their rising competition, and insatiable demand.

NEWS FROM IRAQ:

Iraq ready to award oil work  (Houston Chronicle)
Development of two fields may cost $450 million

This is really the first round of upstream contracts, designed to increase production, not just repair existing facilities.  Personally, I expect them to be awarded to unknown, independent oil companies in order to avoid the adverse publicity that come from an award to one of the big Internation Oil Companies (IOCs).  Later, the actual work can be quietly farmed out to one of the big boys.  This article is silent on the legal structure to be used for the contract, but other industry publications have suggested that the new Iraqi government may use Production Sharing Agreements.  This type of contract is highly favorable to IOCs, since it usually means that they get paid in barrels of oil, and they usually avoid local taxes and regulations on repatriation of profits.