Clipmarks | JICWyllie's 'oil' clips

The Next Oil-Price Shock Will Be At Christmas

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:56:27 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.fleetstreetinvest.co.uk

A two-pronged attack that bombed nuclear facilities and cut off benzene supplies could easily get the US exactly what they want in Iran.

It could destroy any chance of Iran getting the bomb and force Ahmadinejad out of office. It won’t take much to convince the current US administration to come along to this particular party.

So, the world is gearing up for action in Iran. The plan has been made. The warships have practiced. The will is there.

I think Israel will bomb suspected Iranian nuclear facilities and a US-led task force will block the Straits of Hormuz.

All this is likely to happen sometime in the US interregnum period around Christmas. If it does, the oil price will go utterly ballistic.

Up to 40% of the world’s oil supplies pass through the Straits of Hormuz. It is one of the most strategically important waterways in the entire world.

The Americans want to block the Straits of Hormuz to stop Iranian imports of benzene. This will cripple the country’s economy.

Tags: energy, oil, i-prices, i-increase, i-forecast, politics, i-policy, i-war, i-consequences

E.P.A. Declines to Reduce the Quota for Ethanol in Cars

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:23:48 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Let them eat gas. At least, cake can be eaten.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Environmental Protection Agency rejected on Thursday a request to cut the federal government’s quota for the use of ethanol in cars, concluding, at least for now, that the national goal of reducing oil use trumps any effect on food prices from making fuel from corn.

The agency’s administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the mandate was “strengthening our nation’s energy security and supporting American farming communities,” and that the mandate was not causing “severe harm to the economy or the environment.”

Recently, high oil prices have led to even more ethanol production than the quota required. On the other hand, rising corn prices made some ethanol operations unprofitable, especially as oil prices started to fall.

“The food inflation that you’ve seen now, at least in the meat and poultry sector, probably is mild compared to what may be coming in the future,” said Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation.

Legislators from farm states applauded the ruling.

Tags: energy, renewables, biofuels, i-policy, i-subsidy, i-consequences

Per capita US military energy consumption

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:32:50 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: energybulletin.net

We all know that energy consumption per capita in the U.S. is amongst the highest in the world. To be precise, per capita energy consumption in the U.S. is 337 million Btu per year per resident. How much is the DoD’s? Well, 25 per cent more than the U.S. average, or 422 million Btu per person.

The DoD energy consumption and oil consumption per capita follows more or less the same path? Why? Because oil accounts for 78% of the DoD energy consumption. That simple.

I wrote it here million times and I repeat again, if the DoD wants to reduce its energy consumption it has to concentrate on oil consumption by tactical vehicles and stop wasting money for the gadget projects,

How much is then the US military oil consumption per capita compared to the US oil consumption per capita? Remember that per capita oil consumption in the US is verrryy high. In 2007, it was 25 barrels (per year) per person. How about the U.S. military? Only 59 barrels per DoD employee

Tags: energy, oil, i-demand, i-defense

Oil falls to three-month low

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:47:42 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Oil slid to $118 a barrel as investors predicted that demand from the US and Europe was waning, at a time when some oil-producing countries have increased supply.

supply from Opec, the group of major oil-producing nations, rose for a third consecutive month in July driven by increased output from the world's top exporter, Saudi Arabia. Opec's members produce two in every five barrels of oil.

Angus McPhail from investment firm Alliance Trust said prices could fall to about £100 a barrel - still high by the standards set in recent years - if economic data remains weak.

Changes in the oil prices often takes six to eight weeks to hit the petrol pump.

Tags: energy, oil, i-supply, i-increase. i-price, i-decrease

Don't make the consumer pay for these inflated fuel prices

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:01:23 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

If you want to criticise the free market, look at the design of Britain's energy markets, particularly the wholesale market for gas where the big companies buy and sell to one another. As gas prices shadow every movement in oil price, other European countries have carefully built a substantial infrastructure to hold sufficient reserve stocks of gas in their systems to smooth price changes. Not in free-market Britain.

Amazingly, as North Sea gas production declines and we become more dependent on imports, we have capacity to store only 13 days' worth of gas. Germany has 99 and France 122.

So as wholesale gas prices have risen, the British system has offered no buffer to smooth the impact.

The so-called London loophole, created by the Labour government, excuses the London oil market from independent and transparent oversight.

Speculation is part of the oil price rise, and most of it is rooted in out-of-control London.

Tags: energy, natural gas, i-supply, i-prices, i-policy, i-failure

Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:23:33 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages.

Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.

companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains

make less sense today than they did a few years ago.

Decisions like those suggest that what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive.

Tags: economy, trade, i-globalisation, i-decrease, transport, i-prices, i-increase

China's Cars, Accelerating A Global Demand for Fuel

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:19:06 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: The only hope is that the Chinese will learn faster than Americans and Europeans did, that big cars are inappropriate status symbols.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

"In China, size matters," says Zhang, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company. "People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small."

Zhang grasps the wheels of his Hummer, called "hanma" or "fierce horse" in Chinese, and hits the accelerator.

Car ownership in China is exploding, and it's not only cars but also sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and other gas-guzzling rides. Elsewhere in the world, the popularity of these vehicles has tumbled as the cost of oil has soared. But in China, the number of SUVs sold rose 43 percent in May compared with the previous year, and full-size sedans were up 15 percent. Indeed, China's demand for gas is much of the reason for the dramatic run-up in global oil prices.

China alone accounts for about 40 percent of the world's recent increase in demand for oil, burning through twice as much now as it did a decade ago.

Tags: energy, oil, i-demand, i-increase, i-accelleration, i-record

Oil falls futher ahead of inventories data

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:53:49 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.ft.com

Oil prices continued their three-week slide on Wednesday as traders waited for weekly US oil stocks data, released later in the session, to give the market firmer direction.

Analysts expect US crude stocks to fall this week, while they predict gasoline and distillate inventories to rise. Any numbers sharply below or above the consensus forecasts could prompt a sharp move in energy prices.

Oil prices have fallen more than 17 per cent since their peak above $147 a barrel on July 11. Fears that global demand is slowing have dominated since then, though analysts were divided on where oil prices would go from here.

Tags: energy, oil, i-prices, i-decrease, i-reported

OPEC 2.0

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:06:01 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

AMERICANS today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.

Like energy, bandwidth is an essential economic input.

A future possibility is to buy your own fiber, the way you might buy a solar panel for your home.

The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of the wasted spaces. Anyone, so long as he or she complies with a few basic rules to avoid interference, could try to build a better Wi-Fi and become a broadband billionaire. These wireless entrepreneurs could one day liberate us from wires, cables and rising prices.

Americans are as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the problem.

Tags: technology, internet, i-bandwidth, i-prices, i-policy, i-deregulation

How to get oil from Canada's Tar Sands

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:20:20 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

1 / 6

irst, buy several dozen 797B Caterpillar heavy hauler mining trucks. Each of these machines can carry up to 400 tonnes of sand, which can produce 200 barrels of oil

Photograph: John Vidal /Guardian

Tags: energy, oil, tar sands, i-extraction, i-process

Lehman slashes world oil demand growth forecast

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:31:56 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: uk.reuters.com

Investment bank Lehman Brothers (LEH.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said Wednesday it slashed its forecast for 2008 world oil demand growth due to a steeper-than-expected slowdown in energy consumption in the United States and other OECD countries.

Lehman added it believes the oil market is "approaching a tipping point" with prices expected to decline to an average of $90 a barrel in the first quarter of 2009.

"We now forecast annual oil demand for 2008 at 86.3 million barrels per day, a growth of 790,000 bpd from 2007. The growth has been revised down from projections of 1.5 million bpd in December," Lehman said in a research note titled 'Demand Demolition'.

Oil prices struck a record over $147 a barrel on July 11 --

But prices have dropped about $20 since then, the steepest decline in dollar terms in the market's history, amid mounting evidence of a consumption slowdown in the United States and Europe due to economic turmoil and high fuel prices.

Tags: energy, oil, i-prices, i-decrease, i-forecast, i-reported

Speech of the Week - Gore's Energy Challenge: 'The Future of Human Civilization Is at Stake'

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:36:01 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

"Al Gore took a big risk when he called on us to get 100% of our electricity from cheap, clean sources within 10 years.

It's an achievable goal, but it's already under attack from the oil and coal companies. They're calling his plan unrealistic, impossible, and crazy. We're in a crisis. If this is the fate of any new idea to get us out of this crisis alive, we're toast. Gore's challenge will live or die on the reaction of people like us.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says "it is absolutely possible" that Congress will accept Gore's challenge. But to make it happen, we'll need to show Congress just how many people want bold action.

In Gore's words: "We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.

Crisis brings opportunity.

Tags: energy, oil, renewables, i-policy, i-initiative

The Law of Diminishing Returns

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:14:11 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.theoildrum.com

Economists seem to have trouble understanding geological and technical limits to oil production, but they should understand the law of diminishing returns (Wikipedia):

Until the mid 1980s, discovery of new oil fields exceeded our consumption rate, so there was little need to increase recovery from existing fields. As the discovery rate declined, companies had greater motivation to extract more from their existing fields. While at first they found easy gains, in the last decade especially the amount of effort required has climbed and yet the returns are falling: is it any surprise that oil industry inflation is rampant?

Discovery of new fields has tapered off to low levels and the easy pickings for increased recovery have already been had. Unconventional oil sources will yield similarly small returns for extraordinary amounts of effort. The numbers simply do not stack up for oil production continuing to expand for another decade against the decline in large mature conventional oil

Tags: energy, oil, i-peak oil, i-extraction

Europe told to expect doubled gas price

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:24:45 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.ft.com

The price of natural gas in continental Europe is to double in the space of a year as a result of the rise in oil prices, according to a leading consultancy.

Such an increase would put a further squeeze on hard-pressed European consumers and businesses, and add to the upward pressure on inflation in the eurozone, which has been estimated at 4 per cent in June.

According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera), a US-based consultancy, the rise in the oil price from about $70 a barrel a year ago to about $145 today will result in the gas price rising from about $350 per thousand cubic metres at the start of the year to about $730 by April 2009.

“As the eurozone’s exports slowed, people thought it would be compensated for by a consumer spending spree. But what’s happened has been a sharp rise in inflation that has hurt consumers’ spending power, hit their confidence and limited their spending,” said Howard Archer of Global Insight, another consultancy.

Tags: energy, natural gas, i-prices, i-increase, i-record, i-forecast

Brown blunders in pledge to secure Nigeria oil

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:29:03 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Gordon Brown is being accused of preparing for a military adventure in Africa after he pledged to provide backing to the Nigerian security forces. His announcement prompted the collapse of a ceasefire in the oil-rich Niger Delta and helped to drive up crude oil prices on world markets.

The Nigerian press received the British offer as a declaration of war against rebel groups. The Daily Champion newspaper ran the headline "Battle Line! UK to Declare War on Delta Militants".

Mr Brown's initiative appeared to catch the Foreign Office unawares.

Any action in Nigeria would further stretch British forces.

Tags: energy, oil, i-policy, i-blunder, i-prices, i-increase