Despite their utility, candles were expensive, inefficient and often smelled, so few were sorry to abandon them in favor of oil lamps and electrical lights.

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In May, Dow Chemical said it would tap a strain of Solazyme algal oil for use in electrical transformer insulating fluids.

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Kim insists there will be plenty of electrical power available from nearby dams and an oil-fueled power plant.

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The latter's batteries can be charged off the electrical grid (which is almost entirely powered by non-oil fuels) and operate for upwards of twenty miles without using a drop of gasoline, and for a fraction of the cost of oil-based fuels.

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The group gets paid to do things like restore electrical infrastructure in Kosovo and set up remote monitoring links between an oil refinery in Houston and Cutler-Hammer's offices in Warrendale, Pa.

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Since oil is easily substituted for natural gas in many industrial and electrical turbines, prices of the two commodities tend to be correlated (coal less so).

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Much of that growth will take place in booming China, where robust demand is expected to keep up prices of oil and other commodities like copper which is a major component of, for example, electrical wire.

ECONOMIST: The bugs are back | The