Crude Rallies.....

MarketWatch reports:
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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures rallied more than $2 on Tuesday to above $101 a barrel as cold weather in the U.S. continued. Heating oil surged to a new record high.
Crude for April delivery gained $2.34, or 2.4%, to a new high of $101.15 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in mid-afternoon trading. The intraday high surpasses crude's last record of $100.65 hit last week.
Other energy futures also surged. Heating-oil futures for March delivery surged to $2.8174 a gallon, the highest a front-month contract has ever seen, and natural-gas futures for March delivery gained 21.1 cents to $10.212 per million British thermal units, the highest since January 2006.

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Also helping Tuesday's rally in oil prices was the weaker dollar. The index, which tracks the value of the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, fell 0.6% to 75.08. See Currencies.
A weaker greenback makes dollar-denominated commodities, such as oil, less expensive for buyers holding other currencies. Those buyers are likely to bid up prices.

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Since energy prices are again making news, the following is passed along for additional energy saving information.

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The Middleborough Gas & Electric Department offers Saving Energy on their web site. The G&E newsletter, the Messenger, includes links to: Insulation Smart, and BUILDER Online.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratories offers Building Technologies, including a great deal of information, beginning with the following comments:

ORNL research in building technologies supports the DOE goals of achieving zero energy homes by 2020 and zero energy buildings of all kinds by 2025.

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Buildings account for 43% of the nation's carbon emissions and the consumption of 39% of our total primary energy, 71% of our electricity, and 55% of our natural gas.

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Rather than feeling stressed, oppressed and enslaved by energy costs, household energy consumption CAN be reduced to reasonable levels.

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UCS offers the following explanation on the pending Massachusetts legislation:

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Support Clean Energy in Massachusetts
As the conference committee irons out differences between the Massachusetts Senate (S. 2468) and House of Representatives (H.4373) (pdf) versions of the energy bill, the Union of Concerned Scientists is urging them to resolve several critical issues.....LINK

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NRDC provides information about pending federal legislation:

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Tell your representative to vote Yes for clean, renewable energy
The House of Representatives will vote soon on a bill to extend federal tax incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies that have expired or will expire by the end of this year. Urge your representative to vote Yes on these important clean energy incentives right away.

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H.R. 5351 would pay for the clean energy technology incentives, which cost about $1.7 billion per year, by rolling back subsidies to the oil industry. The profits of the big five oil companies were about $123 billion in 2007, and the price of oil is also hovering around $100 per barrel. LINK