Between the Broadsheets

Oil prices surged last night on news that the Opec producers' cartel will not increase output.
On Tuesday President George Bush asked for a production increase to help dampen record oil prices, which it is feared are helping to push the US economy towards recession.
Opec expressed support for Venezuela in its legal dispute with Exxon Mobil over production
But at their meeting in Vienna yesterday, ministers from the 134 Opec countries agreed to hold production levels steady, saying that the world was already well supplied with oil. Opec pointed to figures showing a slowdown in demand for oil. - The Daily Telegraph

Supermarkets, airlines, carmakers and property developers fear that they will bear the brunt of a series of green measures to be announced in Alistair Darling’s first Budget next week.
The Chancellor is believed to be drawing up a range of proposals to make good his commitment to tackle climate change. - The Times

The big six energy companies are charging the poorest customers up to £330 a year more for gas and electricity, it emerged last night.
Tariffs for prepayment meters, used typically by pensioners and the less well-off, are up to 45 per cent higher than for internet customers. The industry watchdog branded the practice a £400 million rip-off. - The Times

Ukraine and Russia have reached an agreement to restore gas supplies in full to Ukraine, averting the risk of cuts in deliveries to western Europe, Ukraine's state gas company Naftogaz said on Wednesday. - France24

Oil rallied $5 to a record near $105 a barrel on Wednesday after OPEC decided to maintain output levels and government data showed a sharp draw in U.S. crude inventories. - Reuters

Food and energy costs pushed inflation across the OECD club of rich countries to 3.5pc in January, the highest level in seven years. - The Daily Telegraph

Gordon Brown warned yesterday that energy companies could still face a windfall tax unless they offered a much bigger rebate for the poor and pensioners facing big rises in fuel bills. - The Guardian

It's not so much green energy as brown power: a dairy farm in California said yesterday that it had found a new way to generate electricity for households — using a vat of liquid cow manure, 33ft deep and big enough to cover five football fields.

“When most people see a pile of manure, they see a pile of manure. We saw it as an opportunity for farmers, for utilities, and for California,” said David Albers, a partner in the Vintage Dairy, near Fresno, which has 5,000 cows and calls its new facility the Vintage Dairy Biogas project. - The Times

The UK’s reliance on nuclear power will increase “significantly” over the next two decades, the business secretary said on Wednesday as he set out an expansive vision of the country’s atomic future. John Hutton told the Financial Times he expected the new generation of nuclear power stations the government wants to see built to supply much more of the country’s electricity than the 19 per cent the existing ones deliver. - The Financial Times

The drive to fast-track a new generation of nuclear power stations accelerates today when the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority starts the process of auctioning land near 18 existing nuclear sites to energy companies keen to be in the vanguard. - The Financial Times