Energy Roundup: Pickens' Wind Farm Falters, Oil Speculator Crackdown and More

(MoneyWatch)  Pickens scales down plans for world's largest wind farm -- The lack of a transmission line has disrupted T. Boone Pickens' plan to build a 1,000-megawatt wind farm -- the world's largest -- in Pampa, Texas. Pickens' company Mesa Power ordered 687 turbines from GE for about $2 billion and now has 18 months to find a home for them. Pickens now plans to break up the project into about six smaller wind farms. [Source: Dallas Morning News]

CFTC proposes sweeping regulations on oil trading -- The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has proposed trading limits on oil and natural gas in an effort to more tightly control the number of futures contracts held by speculative traders. The controversial new measures stem from concern that a few speculators at top Wall Street firms can easily exploit commodity prices. [Source: WaPo, OilVoice]

Duke Energy proposes carbon storage project -- Duke Energy filed plans with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission proposing a carbon dioxide storage project to study emissions from its Edwardsport coal gasification power plant under construction. The Duke Energy project would explore sequestration in deep saline aquifers and the use of oil recovery and storage in depleted oil or gas fields. [ Source: Duke Energy]

ConocoPhillips Q2 production rose, hurt by narrow refining margins -- ConocoPhillips' 6.3 percent rise in daily production did little to assuage the profit-squeezing impact of narrowing margins in the refining and marketing sectors during the second-quarter. Conoco, the third-largest oil company by market value in the U.S., is expected to issue its second-quarter earnings report July 29. [Source: WSJ]

Ghana may buy Kosmos Energy's stake in Jubilee field -- State-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corp. may buy U.S.-based Kosmos Energy's stake in the Jubilee oil field. Kosmos plans on auctioning off its 30 percent share of the oil field, which has potential resources of as much as 1.8 billion barrels. A number of other companies have shown interest in bidding for Kosmos' stake including Royal Dutch Shell. [Source: Bloomberg]

Scientists seeks bioreactor clues within ant, fungi genome -- The secret to breaking down leaf matter and turning it into biofuels may lie within the ant, fungi and bacteria genome. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin, the Joint Genome Institute and Emory University are sequencing the first-ever community genome to investigate how this 50-million-year-old bioreactor works. [Source: Discovery]

Image from Pickens Plan