Energy Facts of the Day from Earth's Energy

A lot of fresh information from a couple of posts at anthropower.com - providing an excuse to plug the site.

Energy Facts of the Day (Part 1) | Earth's Energy:

This year the US is on course to enjoy its third straight year of record coal exports. Europe is the biggest target market, where demand is strong and, as a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, likely to grow further.

Japan is on a path to increase its carbon-dioxide emissions because, with its nuclear power plants still shut down, it is shifting to coal imports from more expensive liquefied natural gas to produce electricity.
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In an attempt to curb energy consumption, China will raise natural gas prices by the end of 2015 for the 20% of residential consumers who consume the most energy. The heaviest consumers will pay around 1.5 times a base rate for household use gas while a second tier will pay 1.2 times the base rate.
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BYD’s second-generation Dual-Mode, plug-in hybrid electric sedan is now China’s best-selling electric vehicle according to China’s National Passenger Car Association.

 ...from Part 2

The International Energy Agency reports nearly 1.3 billion people, or 18% of the world population, lacked access to electricity in 2011. The world’s population is currently at 7 billion....
Much of the Niger Delta, heartland of the oil industry that supplies four-fifths of Nigeria’s state revenue and is now soiled by spills, is nearly uninhabitable from sabotage to oil pipelines and the subsequent contaminated waters.
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The Association of American Railroads said 285 million barrels of crude oil were delivered on the US rail system last year, an average of ¾ of a million barrels per day, a 74% increase from 2012.
A major snarl in railroad traffic is ricocheting through the supply chains of businesses across the US, causing delays and losses for shippers of goods ranging from coal to sugar. Many of the problems stem from congestion on the BNSF Railway in a critical northern stretch of the country where it is shipping crude oil from North Dakota’s booming Bakken Shale region.