View Poll Results: Opinion on "Peak Oil" Theories...
I don't know, need to do more research
8
9.09%
High energy prices will self correct and we'll see fresh lows
16
18.18%
The era of cheap fossil fuels is over and we're staring at the abyss
57
64.77%
I don't give a fuzz, my next car will be a gas guzzling SUV
7
7.95%
Voters: 88. You may not vote on this poll
Your opinion on "Peak Oil" Theory
01-10-2006, 06:56 PM
#1
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Your opinion on "Peak Oil" Theory
There are conflicting reports about when we'll reach global peak production(domestic production peaked in the mid seventies) but no doubt that we WILL peak within the next 20 years. Have you adjusted your mindset and expectations to the world we'll live in quite soon?
The Rainwater Prophecy
Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to PROFIT FROM A CRISIS. Now he foresees the biggest one yet.
By OLIVER RYAN
December 26, 2005
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Richard Rainwater doesn't want to sound like a kook. But he's about as worried as a happily married guy with more than $2 billion and a home in Pebble Beach can get. Americans are "in the kind of trouble people shouldn't find themselves in," he says. He's just wary about being the one to sound the alarm.
Rainwater is something of a behind-the-scenes type--at least as far as alpha-male billionaires go. He counts President Bush as a personal friend but dislikes politics, and frankly, when he gets worked up, he says some pretty far-out things that could easily be taken out of context. Such as: An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil. Or a coalition of communist and Islamic states may decide to stop selling their precious crude to Americans any day now. Or food shortages may soon hit the U.S. Or he read on a blog last night that there's this one gargantuan chunk of ice sitting on a precipice in Antarctica that, if it falls off, will raise sea levels worldwide by two feet--and it's getting closer to the edge.... And then he'll interrupt himself: "Look, I'm not predicting anything," he'll say. "That's when you get a little kooky-sounding."
Rainwater is no crackpot. But you don't get to be a multibillionaire investor--one who's more than doubled his net worth in a decade--through incremental gains on little stock trades. You have to push way past conventional thinking, test the boundaries of chaos, see events in a bigger context. You have to look at all the scenarios, from "A to friggin' Z," as he says, and not be afraid to focus on Z. Only when you've vacuumed up as much information as possible and you know the world is at a major inflection point do you put a hell of a lot of money behind your conviction...
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...4646/index.htm
Interesting read:
http://www.pppl.gov/publications/pic...aking_1205.pdf
The Rainwater Prophecy
Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to PROFIT FROM A CRISIS. Now he foresees the biggest one yet.
By OLIVER RYAN
December 26, 2005
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Richard Rainwater doesn't want to sound like a kook. But he's about as worried as a happily married guy with more than $2 billion and a home in Pebble Beach can get. Americans are "in the kind of trouble people shouldn't find themselves in," he says. He's just wary about being the one to sound the alarm.
Rainwater is something of a behind-the-scenes type--at least as far as alpha-male billionaires go. He counts President Bush as a personal friend but dislikes politics, and frankly, when he gets worked up, he says some pretty far-out things that could easily be taken out of context. Such as: An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil. Or a coalition of communist and Islamic states may decide to stop selling their precious crude to Americans any day now. Or food shortages may soon hit the U.S. Or he read on a blog last night that there's this one gargantuan chunk of ice sitting on a precipice in Antarctica that, if it falls off, will raise sea levels worldwide by two feet--and it's getting closer to the edge.... And then he'll interrupt himself: "Look, I'm not predicting anything," he'll say. "That's when you get a little kooky-sounding."
Rainwater is no crackpot. But you don't get to be a multibillionaire investor--one who's more than doubled his net worth in a decade--through incremental gains on little stock trades. You have to push way past conventional thinking, test the boundaries of chaos, see events in a bigger context. You have to look at all the scenarios, from "A to friggin' Z," as he says, and not be afraid to focus on Z. Only when you've vacuumed up as much information as possible and you know the world is at a major inflection point do you put a hell of a lot of money behind your conviction...
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...4646/index.htm
Interesting read:
http://www.pppl.gov/publications/pic...aking_1205.pdf
01-10-2006, 09:25 PM
#2
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Cliff's Notes:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html
If you've been wondering why the Bush administration has been spending money, cutting social programs, and starting wars like there's no tomorrow, now you have your answer: as far as they are concerned, there is no tomorrow.
From a purely Machiavellian standpoint, they are probably correct in their thinking.
From a purely Machiavellian standpoint, they are probably correct in their thinking.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html
01-11-2006, 08:57 PM
#3
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Cliff's Notes:
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer is on the verge of chaos.
How does that affect you? Pretty simple, in all ways imaginable in and many ways you don't.
http://www.hudson.org/files/publicat...0Declining.pdf
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer is on the verge of chaos.
How does that affect you? Pretty simple, in all ways imaginable in and many ways you don't.
http://www.hudson.org/files/publicat...0Declining.pdf
01-27-2006, 06:16 PM
#4
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Ready for $262/barrel oil?
Two of the world's most successful investors say oil will be in short supply in the coming months.
By Nelson Schwartz, FORTUNE senior writer
January 27, 2006: 4:40 PM EST
DAVOS, Switzerland (FORTUNE) - Be afraid. Be very afraid.
That's the message from two of the world's most successful investors on the topic of high oil prices. One of them, Hermitage Capital's Bill Browder, has outlined six scenarios that could take oil up to a downright terrifying $262 a barrel.
The other, billionaire investor George Soros, wouldn't make any specific predictions about prices. But as a legendary commodities player, it's worth paying heed to the words of the man who once took on the Bank of England -- and won. "I'm very worried about the supply-demand balance, which is very tight," Soros says.
"U.S. power and influence has declined precipitously because of Iraq and the war on terror and that creates an incentive for anyone who wants to make trouble to go ahead and make it." As an example, Soros pointed to the regime in Iran, which is heading towards a confrontation with the West over its nuclear power program and doesn't show any signs of compromising. "Iran is on a collision course and I have a difficulty seeing how such a collision can be avoided," he says.
Another emboldened troublemaker is Russian president Vladimir Putin, Soros said, citing Putin's recent decision to briefly shut the supply of natural gas to Ukraine. The only bit of optimism Soros could offer was that the next 12 months would be most dangerous in terms of any price shocks, because beginning in 2007 he predicts new oil supplies will come online.
Hermitage's Bill Browder doesn't yet have the stature of George Soros. But his $4 billion Moscow-based Hermitage fund rose 81.5 percent last year and is up a whopping 1780 percent since its inception a decade ago. A veteran of Salomon Bros. and Boston Consulting Group, the 41-year old Browder has been especially successful because of his contrarian take; for example, he continued to invest in Russia when others fled following the Kremlin's assault on Yukos.
Doomsdays 1 through 6
To come up with some likely scenarios in the event of an international crisis, his team performed what's known as a regression analysis, extrapolating the numbers from past oil shocks and then using them to calculate what might happen when the supply from an oil-producing country was cut off in six different situations. The fall of the House of Saud seems the most far-fetched of the six possibilities, and it's the one that generates that $262 a barrel.
More realistic -- and therefore more chilling -- would be the scenario where Iran declares an oil embargo a la OPEC in 1973, which Browder thinks could cause oil to double to $131 a barrel. Other outcomes include an embargo by Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez ($111 a barrel), civil war in Nigeria ($98 a barrel), unrest and violence in Algeria ($79 a barrel) and major attacks on infrastructure by the insurgency in Iraq ($88 a barrel).
Regressions analysis may be mathematical but it's an art, not a science. And some of these scenarios are quite dubious, like Venezuela shutting the spigot. (For more on Chavez and Venezuela, click here.)
Energy chiefs at the World Economic Forum in Davos downplayed the likelihood of a serious oil shortage. In a statement Friday, Shell's CEO Jeroen Van der Veer declared, "There is no reason for pessimism." OPEC Acting Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said "OPEC will step in at any time there is a shortage in the market." But then no one in the industry, including Van der Veer, foresaw an extended run of $65 oil -- or even $55 oil -- like we've been having.
It's clear that there is very, very little wiggle room, and that most consumers, including those in the United States, have acceded so far to the new reality of $60 or even $70 oil. And as Soros points out, the White House has its hands full in Iraq and elsewhere.
Although there are long-term answers like ethanol, what's needed is a crash conservation effort in the United States. This doesn't have to be command-and-control style. Moral suasion counts for a lot, and if the president suggested staying home with family every other Sunday or otherwise cutting back on unnecessary drives, he could please the family values crowd while also changing the psychology of the oil market by showing that the U.S. government is serious about easing any potential bottlenecks.
Similarly, he could finally get the government to tighten fuel-efficiency standards and encourage both Detroit and drivers to end decades of steadily increasing gas consumption. These kinds of steps would create a little headroom until new supplies do become available or threats like Iran's current leadership or the Iraqi insurgency fade.
It's been done it before. For all the cracks about Jimmy Carter in a cardigan and his malaise speech, America did reduce its use of oil following the price shocks of the 1970s, and laid the groundwork for low energy prices in the 1980s and 1990s. But it would require spending political capital, and offending traditional White House allies, and that's something this president doesn't seem to want to do.
Click here to see Davos Dispatches from Nelson Schwartz and other FORTUNE writers and editors.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/27/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes
Two of the world's most successful investors say oil will be in short supply in the coming months.
By Nelson Schwartz, FORTUNE senior writer
January 27, 2006: 4:40 PM EST
DAVOS, Switzerland (FORTUNE) - Be afraid. Be very afraid.
That's the message from two of the world's most successful investors on the topic of high oil prices. One of them, Hermitage Capital's Bill Browder, has outlined six scenarios that could take oil up to a downright terrifying $262 a barrel.
The other, billionaire investor George Soros, wouldn't make any specific predictions about prices. But as a legendary commodities player, it's worth paying heed to the words of the man who once took on the Bank of England -- and won. "I'm very worried about the supply-demand balance, which is very tight," Soros says.
"U.S. power and influence has declined precipitously because of Iraq and the war on terror and that creates an incentive for anyone who wants to make trouble to go ahead and make it." As an example, Soros pointed to the regime in Iran, which is heading towards a confrontation with the West over its nuclear power program and doesn't show any signs of compromising. "Iran is on a collision course and I have a difficulty seeing how such a collision can be avoided," he says.
Another emboldened troublemaker is Russian president Vladimir Putin, Soros said, citing Putin's recent decision to briefly shut the supply of natural gas to Ukraine. The only bit of optimism Soros could offer was that the next 12 months would be most dangerous in terms of any price shocks, because beginning in 2007 he predicts new oil supplies will come online.
Hermitage's Bill Browder doesn't yet have the stature of George Soros. But his $4 billion Moscow-based Hermitage fund rose 81.5 percent last year and is up a whopping 1780 percent since its inception a decade ago. A veteran of Salomon Bros. and Boston Consulting Group, the 41-year old Browder has been especially successful because of his contrarian take; for example, he continued to invest in Russia when others fled following the Kremlin's assault on Yukos.
Doomsdays 1 through 6
To come up with some likely scenarios in the event of an international crisis, his team performed what's known as a regression analysis, extrapolating the numbers from past oil shocks and then using them to calculate what might happen when the supply from an oil-producing country was cut off in six different situations. The fall of the House of Saud seems the most far-fetched of the six possibilities, and it's the one that generates that $262 a barrel.
More realistic -- and therefore more chilling -- would be the scenario where Iran declares an oil embargo a la OPEC in 1973, which Browder thinks could cause oil to double to $131 a barrel. Other outcomes include an embargo by Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez ($111 a barrel), civil war in Nigeria ($98 a barrel), unrest and violence in Algeria ($79 a barrel) and major attacks on infrastructure by the insurgency in Iraq ($88 a barrel).
Regressions analysis may be mathematical but it's an art, not a science. And some of these scenarios are quite dubious, like Venezuela shutting the spigot. (For more on Chavez and Venezuela, click here.)
Energy chiefs at the World Economic Forum in Davos downplayed the likelihood of a serious oil shortage. In a statement Friday, Shell's CEO Jeroen Van der Veer declared, "There is no reason for pessimism." OPEC Acting Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said "OPEC will step in at any time there is a shortage in the market." But then no one in the industry, including Van der Veer, foresaw an extended run of $65 oil -- or even $55 oil -- like we've been having.
It's clear that there is very, very little wiggle room, and that most consumers, including those in the United States, have acceded so far to the new reality of $60 or even $70 oil. And as Soros points out, the White House has its hands full in Iraq and elsewhere.
Although there are long-term answers like ethanol, what's needed is a crash conservation effort in the United States. This doesn't have to be command-and-control style. Moral suasion counts for a lot, and if the president suggested staying home with family every other Sunday or otherwise cutting back on unnecessary drives, he could please the family values crowd while also changing the psychology of the oil market by showing that the U.S. government is serious about easing any potential bottlenecks.
Similarly, he could finally get the government to tighten fuel-efficiency standards and encourage both Detroit and drivers to end decades of steadily increasing gas consumption. These kinds of steps would create a little headroom until new supplies do become available or threats like Iran's current leadership or the Iraqi insurgency fade.
It's been done it before. For all the cracks about Jimmy Carter in a cardigan and his malaise speech, America did reduce its use of oil following the price shocks of the 1970s, and laid the groundwork for low energy prices in the 1980s and 1990s. But it would require spending political capital, and offending traditional White House allies, and that's something this president doesn't seem to want to do.
Click here to see Davos Dispatches from Nelson Schwartz and other FORTUNE writers and editors.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/27/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes
02-01-2006, 04:47 PM
#5
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Fossil-Fueled Worries
Global business leaders are looking outside the box for new energy sources. Don’t expect oil prices to go down anytime soon.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Rana Foroohar
Newsweek
Updated: 8:01 a.m. ET Feb. 1, 2006
Feb. 1, 2006 - Remember that ’70s oil crisis? Those long gas lines and the run on sweaters? It’s more complicated this time around. Oil prices—currently hovering close to $70 a barrel—may be lower now than then, but oil consumption is growing at unprecedented rates. Global demand has grown 1.5 percent a year for the last 25 years and will likely grow 2-3 percent a year for each of the next 15 years, due in large part to the voracious needs of developing countries like China and India, predict experts like Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neil.
O’Neil was speaking at a briefing during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos last week. Not surprisingly, the energy issue was one of the most pressing topic on the agenda of the global leaders assembled in the Swiss ski resort. Bankers and academics argued about just how much damage high oil prices have already done to the global economy, while CEOs and government officials from Washington to Brussels to Beijing fretted about the political and economic factors driving the global supply squeeze. The upshot of five days of intense meetings: World leaders need to prepare short-term energy crunch strategies, and come up with new ways to augment supplies in the long term. Jeroen van der Veer CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, speaking to NEWSWEEK, summed up the prevailing mood: "The era of easy oil is most likely over."
As demand rises, traditional wells in many countries are running low, forcing companies to start looking at "unconventional" oil supplies in deep water and rock shale. But those reserves are both expensive to tap and environmentally unfriendly, since it takes so much more energy to extract them. These supply concerns are being exacerbated by recent political developments. In mid-January, several Shell oil workers were taken hostage in Nigeria (they were finally freed on Monday after negotiations); two weeks earlier, Russia used its gas supplies as a weapon to strong-arm neighboring Ukraine; this week, the impasse in negotiations over Iran's decision to resume its nuclear research program may send the case to the United Nations Security Council and the ongoing turmoil in Iraq continues to cripple the country’s oil production.
The situation has experts searching outside the box for new energy sources. At a Davos panel on alternative energy sources, the Republican senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, pushed the bio-fuel ethanol, noting that a new farm bill set to come into effect next year will give American farmers more incentive to produce ethanol from corn. He also pointed to Brazil as a model. There, 25 percent of all gasoline is blended with ethanol. But Brazil makes its ethanol from locally grown sugar cane; America would have to use corn, which takes more energy to grow and to convert to ethanol and less cost effective.
In fact, most of the experts assembled, whether they were from the energy industry, environmental or governmental camps agreed that bio-fuels, wind, and solar power aren't viable solutions to fill the world's energy needs in the near term future, either in terms of supply or cost. That's why oil company executives are planning to use some of their recent windfall (Exxon this week announced a U.S. profit record of $36.13 billion) to explore alternative fossil fuel supplies like liquid natural gas, and oil found in shale rock in places like Canada and Colorado. Shell is already experimenting in Colorado, trying to unlock the oil from shale by using electric heaters to heat up the rock formations, releasing light oil and gas.
These moves don't thrill environmentalists, because as Shell's Van der Veer admits, "one of the big problems with this type of extraction is that it produces more carbon dioxide than more traditional methods." Van der Veer and others believe that cutting edge technologies can help them clean up the extraction and are putting research dollars behind the efforts. But there's no doubt that conservation is going to become more important than ever in the years ahead. Thierry Desmarest, the CEO of French oil company Total, predicted that at current levels of consumption, the production peak of oil will be reached as soon as 15 years from now. If fossil fuel consumption growth can be cut to one percent per year, he said, that peak could be pushed back to 40 years from now.
That's where nuclear power comes in. Even environmental activists are beginning to change their tune about this energy source, as the problems of fossil fuel become more pressing. The potential of nuclear power, as well as the issues around proliferation, were high on the agenda at Davos, where actor Michael Douglas was one of around 200 VIPs attending a session on the topic. Anne Lauvergeon, the head of French company Areva, the world's largest nuclear power company, told the audience, "We are facing a bigger nuclear future—let's make it a safer one." But how? One idea discussed was increasing the budget of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to allow for more independent satellite monitoring of nuclear activities around the world.
Still, that won't resolve the increasingly tense situation in Iran, one of the world's largest oil exporters. This week, Javad Vaeedi, the deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, is in Brussels to speak with diplomats from France, Germany and Britain about Iran's resumption of its nuclear research program. Iran has refused to sign up fully to a proposal by Moscow, supported by the United States and the European Union, that would allow enrichment of uranium for the program to be carried out in Russia.
In this anxious environment, CEOs and some government representatives at Davos carried out a four-hour energy crisis simulation. The scenario assumed that multiple terrorist attacks on key oil supply choke points during a cold winter have taken 5 percent of the world's daily oil production off the market. The good news is that the panel, which included Saudi Aramco president Abdallah S. Jumah, and U.S. deputy national security advisor Faryar Shirzad, predicted that there would be sufficient strategic reserves to cope with the situation for several months. The bad news: oil prices would skyrocket to $120 per barrel. And according to the panel, that could bring on mandatory conservation steps, including car-pooling, speed restrictions, and a shifted working week with fewer days but longer hours. The conclusion, said International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol, is that "the world's oil infrastructure is robust enough to deal with a 5 percent cut in supply." But the very possibility of such a scenario will likely keep markets unsettled—and prices high—for the foreseeable future.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11119213/site/newsweek/
Global business leaders are looking outside the box for new energy sources. Don’t expect oil prices to go down anytime soon.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Rana Foroohar
Newsweek
Updated: 8:01 a.m. ET Feb. 1, 2006
Feb. 1, 2006 - Remember that ’70s oil crisis? Those long gas lines and the run on sweaters? It’s more complicated this time around. Oil prices—currently hovering close to $70 a barrel—may be lower now than then, but oil consumption is growing at unprecedented rates. Global demand has grown 1.5 percent a year for the last 25 years and will likely grow 2-3 percent a year for each of the next 15 years, due in large part to the voracious needs of developing countries like China and India, predict experts like Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neil.
O’Neil was speaking at a briefing during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos last week. Not surprisingly, the energy issue was one of the most pressing topic on the agenda of the global leaders assembled in the Swiss ski resort. Bankers and academics argued about just how much damage high oil prices have already done to the global economy, while CEOs and government officials from Washington to Brussels to Beijing fretted about the political and economic factors driving the global supply squeeze. The upshot of five days of intense meetings: World leaders need to prepare short-term energy crunch strategies, and come up with new ways to augment supplies in the long term. Jeroen van der Veer CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, speaking to NEWSWEEK, summed up the prevailing mood: "The era of easy oil is most likely over."
As demand rises, traditional wells in many countries are running low, forcing companies to start looking at "unconventional" oil supplies in deep water and rock shale. But those reserves are both expensive to tap and environmentally unfriendly, since it takes so much more energy to extract them. These supply concerns are being exacerbated by recent political developments. In mid-January, several Shell oil workers were taken hostage in Nigeria (they were finally freed on Monday after negotiations); two weeks earlier, Russia used its gas supplies as a weapon to strong-arm neighboring Ukraine; this week, the impasse in negotiations over Iran's decision to resume its nuclear research program may send the case to the United Nations Security Council and the ongoing turmoil in Iraq continues to cripple the country’s oil production.
The situation has experts searching outside the box for new energy sources. At a Davos panel on alternative energy sources, the Republican senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, pushed the bio-fuel ethanol, noting that a new farm bill set to come into effect next year will give American farmers more incentive to produce ethanol from corn. He also pointed to Brazil as a model. There, 25 percent of all gasoline is blended with ethanol. But Brazil makes its ethanol from locally grown sugar cane; America would have to use corn, which takes more energy to grow and to convert to ethanol and less cost effective.
In fact, most of the experts assembled, whether they were from the energy industry, environmental or governmental camps agreed that bio-fuels, wind, and solar power aren't viable solutions to fill the world's energy needs in the near term future, either in terms of supply or cost. That's why oil company executives are planning to use some of their recent windfall (Exxon this week announced a U.S. profit record of $36.13 billion) to explore alternative fossil fuel supplies like liquid natural gas, and oil found in shale rock in places like Canada and Colorado. Shell is already experimenting in Colorado, trying to unlock the oil from shale by using electric heaters to heat up the rock formations, releasing light oil and gas.
These moves don't thrill environmentalists, because as Shell's Van der Veer admits, "one of the big problems with this type of extraction is that it produces more carbon dioxide than more traditional methods." Van der Veer and others believe that cutting edge technologies can help them clean up the extraction and are putting research dollars behind the efforts. But there's no doubt that conservation is going to become more important than ever in the years ahead. Thierry Desmarest, the CEO of French oil company Total, predicted that at current levels of consumption, the production peak of oil will be reached as soon as 15 years from now. If fossil fuel consumption growth can be cut to one percent per year, he said, that peak could be pushed back to 40 years from now.
That's where nuclear power comes in. Even environmental activists are beginning to change their tune about this energy source, as the problems of fossil fuel become more pressing. The potential of nuclear power, as well as the issues around proliferation, were high on the agenda at Davos, where actor Michael Douglas was one of around 200 VIPs attending a session on the topic. Anne Lauvergeon, the head of French company Areva, the world's largest nuclear power company, told the audience, "We are facing a bigger nuclear future—let's make it a safer one." But how? One idea discussed was increasing the budget of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to allow for more independent satellite monitoring of nuclear activities around the world.
Still, that won't resolve the increasingly tense situation in Iran, one of the world's largest oil exporters. This week, Javad Vaeedi, the deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, is in Brussels to speak with diplomats from France, Germany and Britain about Iran's resumption of its nuclear research program. Iran has refused to sign up fully to a proposal by Moscow, supported by the United States and the European Union, that would allow enrichment of uranium for the program to be carried out in Russia.
In this anxious environment, CEOs and some government representatives at Davos carried out a four-hour energy crisis simulation. The scenario assumed that multiple terrorist attacks on key oil supply choke points during a cold winter have taken 5 percent of the world's daily oil production off the market. The good news is that the panel, which included Saudi Aramco president Abdallah S. Jumah, and U.S. deputy national security advisor Faryar Shirzad, predicted that there would be sufficient strategic reserves to cope with the situation for several months. The bad news: oil prices would skyrocket to $120 per barrel. And according to the panel, that could bring on mandatory conservation steps, including car-pooling, speed restrictions, and a shifted working week with fewer days but longer hours. The conclusion, said International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol, is that "the world's oil infrastructure is robust enough to deal with a 5 percent cut in supply." But the very possibility of such a scenario will likely keep markets unsettled—and prices high—for the foreseeable future.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11119213/site/newsweek/
Trending Topics
04-10-2006, 08:36 AM
#8
Suzuka Master
Join Date: Dec 2005
Age: 41
Posts: 5,115
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Living in a spread out city like Jacksonville will make it painful for some that live 15+ miles from work.
If I get the job Im looking at it will be less than 5 miles to work.
Right now its 11.
If I get the job Im looking at it will be less than 5 miles to work.
Right now its 11.
04-19-2006, 01:55 PM
#9
The sizzle in the Steak
15 miles to work is close! So Cal commutes average 20-30 miles each way.I wish I could commute only 15 miles to work.
04-19-2006, 02:51 PM
#10
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2005
Age: 57
Posts: 2,994
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Originally Posted by Moog-Type-S
15 miles to work is close! So Cal commutes average 20-30 miles each way.I wish I could commute only 15 miles to work.
so true, so true. When I worked in Orange, CA the majority of my coworkers commuted from Riverside and Corona. Talk about driving lots of miles.... 
04-19-2006, 06:58 PM
#11
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Oil Rises to a Record $72.40 a Barrel After U.S. Supplies Drop
By Mark Shenk
April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose to a record $72.40 a
barrel in New York after the Energy Department reported that oil
and gasoline inventories declined.
Crude Oil supplies slipped 806,000 barrels to 345.2 million
in the week ended April 14, the department reported today.
Gasoline stockpiles plunged 5.4 million barrels as refiners
finished maintenance of units before the peak-demand summer
months. The weekly supply report was released at 10:30 a.m.
Washington time.
``It's taken a while but the market is now moving on the
statistics,'' said Justin Fohsz, a broker at Starsupply
Petroleum, a division of GFI Group Inc., in Englewood, New
Jersey. ``We tried to take it up when they first came out but
failed, which made folks a little gun shy. Concern about gasoline
supply and prices are driving things.''
Crude oil for May delivery rose 55 cents, or 0.8 percent, to
$71.90 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the
New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil touched $72.40, the highest
since trading began in 1983. Prices are 38 percent higher than a
year ago.
Oil surged to a record yesterday after U.S. President George
W. Bush said ``all options are on the table'' to keep Iran, the
fourth-biggest oil producer, from developing nuclear weapons. The
previous record of $70.85 a barrel was reached on Aug. 30, the
day after Hurricane Katrina struck production platforms and
refineries along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast.
Deficit Widening
``We still haven't recovered from the hurricanes,'' Fohsz
said. ``The deficit just keeps on widening.''
Refineries operated at 86.2 percent of capacity, up 0.7
percentage point from the week before, the report showed. Plants
operated at 91.8 percent of capacity during the same week last
year. Refiners often shut units for maintenance, also known as
``turnarounds,'' in February and March as heating-oil demand
falls and gasoline use has yet to rise.
``Refiners are increasing runs, so we will soon be seeing
increased gasoline stocks,'' said Aaron Kildow, a broker at
Prudential Financial Derivatives LLC in New York. ``With these
cracks they will be producing all they can.''
The profit margin for turning three barrels of crude oil
into two barrels of gasoline and one of heating oil was $19.674,
based on futures prices in New York, the highest since Oct. 4.
Gasoline for May delivery rose 1.36 cent, or 0.6 percent, to
$2.2375 a gallon in New York. Futures touched $2.25, the highest
since Sept. 30. Gasoline is up 43 percent in a year.
Inflation Increase
Inflation in the U.S. accelerated in March as gasoline
prices jumped, posing a dilemma for Federal Reserve policy makers
who signaled yesterday they may soon stop raising interest rates.
The 0.4 percent rise in the consumer price index followed a 0.1
percent increase in February and was led by higher costs for
gasoline and rents, the Labor Department said today.
The price of regular gasoline at the pump, averaged
nationwide, jumped 12 percent in the last month, according to
AAA, the nation's largest motorist organization. The price is up
26 percent from a year ago. Gasoline rose 1.1 cent to $2.801 a
gallon yesterday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against sending a
``message of weakness'' to Iran and backed Bush's vow to keep
military options open to prevent the country from acquiring
nuclear weapons. Blair spoke in Parliament today after a lawmaker
asked him for an ``absolute assurance'' that the U.K. wouldn't
support military action against Iran.
`Message of Weakness'
``At a point in time when the president of Iran is talking
about wiping Israel off the face of the earth and when there are
young people signing up to be suicide bombers, I do not think
that this is the time to send a message of weakness,'' Blair
said.
The United Nations Security Council demanded the suspension
of Iran's program by the end of this month as the UN's nuclear
agency checks Iranian claims that it produced a supply of
enriched uranium sufficient to fuel a reactor. The U.S. considers
the program a front for the development of nuclear weapons. Iran
maintains that the program is for electricity generation.
``We continue to press higher for the same reasons for the
last few weeks,'' said Tom Bentz, an oil broker with BNP Paribas
Commodity Futures Inc. in New York. ``Iran is probably the
biggest factor, with the war of words heating up.''
Unrest in Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, has
slashed output this year. OPEC President Edmund Daukoru said
yesterday about 500,000 barrels a day of output, or a fifth of
Nigeria's production, remains halted. Daukoru is also Nigeria's
oil minister.
Nigerian militants rejected a plan for development in the
country's oil-producing region and issued fresh threats against
oil companies today. President Olusegun Obasanjo announced a plan
yesterday to create jobs and finish a highway to aid development
in the Niger delta.
`No Compassion'
``At a time of our choosing, we will resume our attacks with
greater devastation and no compassion on those who choose to
disregard our warnings,'' Jomo Gbomo, a spokesman for the
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said
in an e-mail statement.
Brent crude oil for June settlement rose $1.16, or 1.6
percent, to $73.67 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures
exchange. Futures touched $74 a barrel, the highest since the
contract began trading in 1988.
source: bloomberg
April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose to a record $72.40 a
barrel in New York after the Energy Department reported that oil
and gasoline inventories declined.
Crude Oil supplies slipped 806,000 barrels to 345.2 million
in the week ended April 14, the department reported today.
Gasoline stockpiles plunged 5.4 million barrels as refiners
finished maintenance of units before the peak-demand summer
months. The weekly supply report was released at 10:30 a.m.
Washington time.
``It's taken a while but the market is now moving on the
statistics,'' said Justin Fohsz, a broker at Starsupply
Petroleum, a division of GFI Group Inc., in Englewood, New
Jersey. ``We tried to take it up when they first came out but
failed, which made folks a little gun shy. Concern about gasoline
supply and prices are driving things.''
Crude oil for May delivery rose 55 cents, or 0.8 percent, to
$71.90 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the
New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil touched $72.40, the highest
since trading began in 1983. Prices are 38 percent higher than a
year ago.
Oil surged to a record yesterday after U.S. President George
W. Bush said ``all options are on the table'' to keep Iran, the
fourth-biggest oil producer, from developing nuclear weapons. The
previous record of $70.85 a barrel was reached on Aug. 30, the
day after Hurricane Katrina struck production platforms and
refineries along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast.
Deficit Widening
``We still haven't recovered from the hurricanes,'' Fohsz
said. ``The deficit just keeps on widening.''
Refineries operated at 86.2 percent of capacity, up 0.7
percentage point from the week before, the report showed. Plants
operated at 91.8 percent of capacity during the same week last
year. Refiners often shut units for maintenance, also known as
``turnarounds,'' in February and March as heating-oil demand
falls and gasoline use has yet to rise.
``Refiners are increasing runs, so we will soon be seeing
increased gasoline stocks,'' said Aaron Kildow, a broker at
Prudential Financial Derivatives LLC in New York. ``With these
cracks they will be producing all they can.''
The profit margin for turning three barrels of crude oil
into two barrels of gasoline and one of heating oil was $19.674,
based on futures prices in New York, the highest since Oct. 4.
Gasoline for May delivery rose 1.36 cent, or 0.6 percent, to
$2.2375 a gallon in New York. Futures touched $2.25, the highest
since Sept. 30. Gasoline is up 43 percent in a year.
Inflation Increase
Inflation in the U.S. accelerated in March as gasoline
prices jumped, posing a dilemma for Federal Reserve policy makers
who signaled yesterday they may soon stop raising interest rates.
The 0.4 percent rise in the consumer price index followed a 0.1
percent increase in February and was led by higher costs for
gasoline and rents, the Labor Department said today.
The price of regular gasoline at the pump, averaged
nationwide, jumped 12 percent in the last month, according to
AAA, the nation's largest motorist organization. The price is up
26 percent from a year ago. Gasoline rose 1.1 cent to $2.801 a
gallon yesterday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against sending a
``message of weakness'' to Iran and backed Bush's vow to keep
military options open to prevent the country from acquiring
nuclear weapons. Blair spoke in Parliament today after a lawmaker
asked him for an ``absolute assurance'' that the U.K. wouldn't
support military action against Iran.
`Message of Weakness'
``At a point in time when the president of Iran is talking
about wiping Israel off the face of the earth and when there are
young people signing up to be suicide bombers, I do not think
that this is the time to send a message of weakness,'' Blair
said.
The United Nations Security Council demanded the suspension
of Iran's program by the end of this month as the UN's nuclear
agency checks Iranian claims that it produced a supply of
enriched uranium sufficient to fuel a reactor. The U.S. considers
the program a front for the development of nuclear weapons. Iran
maintains that the program is for electricity generation.
``We continue to press higher for the same reasons for the
last few weeks,'' said Tom Bentz, an oil broker with BNP Paribas
Commodity Futures Inc. in New York. ``Iran is probably the
biggest factor, with the war of words heating up.''
Unrest in Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, has
slashed output this year. OPEC President Edmund Daukoru said
yesterday about 500,000 barrels a day of output, or a fifth of
Nigeria's production, remains halted. Daukoru is also Nigeria's
oil minister.
Nigerian militants rejected a plan for development in the
country's oil-producing region and issued fresh threats against
oil companies today. President Olusegun Obasanjo announced a plan
yesterday to create jobs and finish a highway to aid development
in the Niger delta.
`No Compassion'
``At a time of our choosing, we will resume our attacks with
greater devastation and no compassion on those who choose to
disregard our warnings,'' Jomo Gbomo, a spokesman for the
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said
in an e-mail statement.
Brent crude oil for June settlement rose $1.16, or 1.6
percent, to $73.67 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures
exchange. Futures touched $74 a barrel, the highest since the
contract began trading in 1988.
source: bloomberg
04-20-2006, 06:55 PM
#14
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by yunginTL
pistonfan, do you keep ur money in cold hard cash at home?
04-20-2006, 07:58 PM
#15
Senior Moderator
Originally Posted by PistonFan
No, I invest my cash in a AAA rated money market fund currently yielding 4.73%
04-20-2006, 08:01 PM
#16
Senior Moderator
Originally Posted by PistonFan
This summer's gonna be fun at teh pumps.
Hope you've done your homework.
Hope you've done your homework.
But maybe this will help ethanol production to increase... If gas is $3.50 a gallon and someone can make ethanol for $2.50 a gallon, the oil companies might just get what they deserve for making record profits
04-24-2006, 04:47 PM
#17
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
The Lessons of Pinot Noir for the Energy Market
Originally Posted by GreenMonster
We really need to get out of the "income" type investments and into some growth types
(Commentary. Kevin Hassett is director of economic policy
studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chief
economic adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona
during the 2000 primaries. The opinions expressed are his own.)
By Kevin Hassett
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- For most of my adult life, I have
been a big fan of wines made from the pinot noir grape. This was
great, because the reds of choice for most Americans were
cabernets and merlots, and the wine racks at my local supplier
were filled with terrific and cheap pinots. For 10 bucks, you
could get something positively delicious.
The movie ``Sideways'' ruined all that. Its protagonist
rhapsodized about pinots, detailing the care the grape required
and extolling the ``haunting and brilliant'' flavors it produced.
Now my favorite pinot noirs have all increased sharply in
price. Bottles that once cost $8 sell for more than twice that.
While I'm unhappy that my preferred wine has become so
expensive, I wouldn't think of demanding that the government do
something about it. We don't need new subsidies for pinot noir
growers, or tax-free savings accounts from which one can fund
pinot noir purchases. We shouldn't subsidize scientific research
into alternative grape varietals and we surely don't need to
study how to make a pinot noir substitute from corn.
Similar Story
Yet that's pretty much the story behind the surging oil and
gasoline prices we're experiencing. It wasn't a movie that did
it, but skyrocketing global growth, which has caused energy
demand to soar. But like fine pinot grapes, oil supplies are
limited, and it takes time to expand capacity. So prices have
taken off. On Friday, oil reached a record $75.35 a barrel in New
York, partly because of concern that shipments from Iran and
Nigeria will be disrupted.
According to the Department of Energy, as of April 17 the
average retail price for U.S. gasoline hit $2.783 cents a gallon,
54.6 cents higher than at the same time last year. It was the
third week in a row that prices rose. The government report noted
that ``some stations have already posted prices for regular
gasoline that exceed $3 per gallon and it is certainly possible
that average retail prices across the country could reach that
level sometime this year.''
According to the New York Times, Democrats see this as a big
political opportunity. The Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee sent a memo, the Times reports, that guides House
candidates on the best way to take advantage of the situation.
The memo recommends that candidates highlight how energy
companies receive billions of dollars in tax subsidies at the
same time that they generate record profits at their customers'
expense. Bad (read Republican) energy policy has made the mess
worse.
Dead Wrong
The memo has its economics dead wrong. Current policy
subsidizes, perhaps excessively, alternative fuels and energy
exploration, but hasn't done so in a manner that could possibly
have had much impact on oil prices. Their effects are just too
small relative to the rest of the market.
That doesn't mean we should have done more. It's natural to
be upset about high prices, but making energy prices a political
football can't possibly lead to good policy.
The best possible policy response to high prices is for the
government to sit back and let market forces work their magic.
Higher gasoline prices will increase demand for hybrid vehicles,
encourage private firms to work hard to develop economical
alternative fuels, and induce homeowners to adjust their
thermostats. All of that is happening already. No government
action is needed.
One Sure Way
I doubt the political opportunists will mention it, but if
we really want to accelerate the transformation of the energy
sector, there is one reliable way to do it: pass a massive
increase in energy taxes. If we do, gasoline and other fuel will
become very expensive, and everyone will accelerate the search
for alternatives.
Other approaches, including research subsidies, have been
tried for years, and have still left us with an energy sector
heavily reliant on fossil fuels. That's because even the recent
high prices haven't made fossil fuel consumption uneconomical. It
probably would take large tax boosts to do that.
Big subsidies for alternatives, like ethanol, are less
attractive because they require the government to pick a winner.
The best approach would be to encourage firms and citizens to
find alternatives of their own, without constraints. A high
energy tax does that.
Real Pain
Those high taxes would cause real pain today, which makes
them extremely unlikely. In addition, they would merely speed up
the process of finding other sources. Switching from fossil fuels
now as opposed to a few years from now would have to yield very
large gains for the high taxes today to be sensible policy.
So we should let the market tell us when to stop using oil.
The sharp increases in energy prices, like the pinot noir
prices before them, have had a significant negative impact on me.
But, interestingly, the merlot bashing in ``Sideways'' has
crushed demand, and some wonderful bargains can now be had in the
merlot aisle. Who knows what might happen to gasoline prices if
demand climbs for an alternative?
In the meantime, I'll just ride my bike to the liquor store
and pick myself up a bottle of merlot.
source: bloomberg
studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chief
economic adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona
during the 2000 primaries. The opinions expressed are his own.)
By Kevin Hassett
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- For most of my adult life, I have
been a big fan of wines made from the pinot noir grape. This was
great, because the reds of choice for most Americans were
cabernets and merlots, and the wine racks at my local supplier
were filled with terrific and cheap pinots. For 10 bucks, you
could get something positively delicious.
The movie ``Sideways'' ruined all that. Its protagonist
rhapsodized about pinots, detailing the care the grape required
and extolling the ``haunting and brilliant'' flavors it produced.
Now my favorite pinot noirs have all increased sharply in
price. Bottles that once cost $8 sell for more than twice that.
While I'm unhappy that my preferred wine has become so
expensive, I wouldn't think of demanding that the government do
something about it. We don't need new subsidies for pinot noir
growers, or tax-free savings accounts from which one can fund
pinot noir purchases. We shouldn't subsidize scientific research
into alternative grape varietals and we surely don't need to
study how to make a pinot noir substitute from corn.
Similar Story
Yet that's pretty much the story behind the surging oil and
gasoline prices we're experiencing. It wasn't a movie that did
it, but skyrocketing global growth, which has caused energy
demand to soar. But like fine pinot grapes, oil supplies are
limited, and it takes time to expand capacity. So prices have
taken off. On Friday, oil reached a record $75.35 a barrel in New
York, partly because of concern that shipments from Iran and
Nigeria will be disrupted.
According to the Department of Energy, as of April 17 the
average retail price for U.S. gasoline hit $2.783 cents a gallon,
54.6 cents higher than at the same time last year. It was the
third week in a row that prices rose. The government report noted
that ``some stations have already posted prices for regular
gasoline that exceed $3 per gallon and it is certainly possible
that average retail prices across the country could reach that
level sometime this year.''
According to the New York Times, Democrats see this as a big
political opportunity. The Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee sent a memo, the Times reports, that guides House
candidates on the best way to take advantage of the situation.
The memo recommends that candidates highlight how energy
companies receive billions of dollars in tax subsidies at the
same time that they generate record profits at their customers'
expense. Bad (read Republican) energy policy has made the mess
worse.
Dead Wrong
The memo has its economics dead wrong. Current policy
subsidizes, perhaps excessively, alternative fuels and energy
exploration, but hasn't done so in a manner that could possibly
have had much impact on oil prices. Their effects are just too
small relative to the rest of the market.
That doesn't mean we should have done more. It's natural to
be upset about high prices, but making energy prices a political
football can't possibly lead to good policy.
The best possible policy response to high prices is for the
government to sit back and let market forces work their magic.
Higher gasoline prices will increase demand for hybrid vehicles,
encourage private firms to work hard to develop economical
alternative fuels, and induce homeowners to adjust their
thermostats. All of that is happening already. No government
action is needed.
One Sure Way
I doubt the political opportunists will mention it, but if
we really want to accelerate the transformation of the energy
sector, there is one reliable way to do it: pass a massive
increase in energy taxes. If we do, gasoline and other fuel will
become very expensive, and everyone will accelerate the search
for alternatives.
Other approaches, including research subsidies, have been
tried for years, and have still left us with an energy sector
heavily reliant on fossil fuels. That's because even the recent
high prices haven't made fossil fuel consumption uneconomical. It
probably would take large tax boosts to do that.
Big subsidies for alternatives, like ethanol, are less
attractive because they require the government to pick a winner.
The best approach would be to encourage firms and citizens to
find alternatives of their own, without constraints. A high
energy tax does that.
Real Pain
Those high taxes would cause real pain today, which makes
them extremely unlikely. In addition, they would merely speed up
the process of finding other sources. Switching from fossil fuels
now as opposed to a few years from now would have to yield very
large gains for the high taxes today to be sensible policy.
So we should let the market tell us when to stop using oil.
The sharp increases in energy prices, like the pinot noir
prices before them, have had a significant negative impact on me.
But, interestingly, the merlot bashing in ``Sideways'' has
crushed demand, and some wonderful bargains can now be had in the
merlot aisle. Who knows what might happen to gasoline prices if
demand climbs for an alternative?
In the meantime, I'll just ride my bike to the liquor store
and pick myself up a bottle of merlot.
source: bloomberg
04-24-2006, 07:31 PM
#18
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by Mike97 3.0P
:ibweinvadenigeria:
With global demand for oil rising much faster than supply, competition for this precious resource will continue to put enormous pressure on prices. The rapid industrial growth of China and India alone is already responsible for much of the price increase that's shocking motorists at the gas pumps today. And the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that the world's total energy requirements will rise by half in the next 25 years - an increase that will be unsustainable at the rate oil is being produced today.
No, the world is nowhere near running out of oil soon. But there is a general agreement that it's close to reaching peak oil production - a plateau after which production will begin to decline. It's a geological reality that won't change. As supplies of oil easily pumped from existing wells dry up, costly and complicated processes will be needed to extract oil trapped in shale and oil sands, or to liquefy coal into synthetic fuels. The result will be ever-higher prices for a shrinking commodity.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/...ials-headlines
No, the world is nowhere near running out of oil soon. But there is a general agreement that it's close to reaching peak oil production - a plateau after which production will begin to decline. It's a geological reality that won't change. As supplies of oil easily pumped from existing wells dry up, costly and complicated processes will be needed to extract oil trapped in shale and oil sands, or to liquefy coal into synthetic fuels. The result will be ever-higher prices for a shrinking commodity.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/...ials-headlines
04-28-2006, 11:06 PM
#19
trill recognize trill
Originally Posted by PistonFan
Blame it on 'Chindia' and your soccer mom nieghbor's H2
Cliff's Notes: For those of you who don't understand 'peak oil' theory, it doesn't mean we are running out of oil tomorrow. We still have plenty of oil, except that it is becoming harder and much more expensive to find as global demand is outstripping the ability of the markets to supply it.
Cliff's Notes: For those of you who don't understand 'peak oil' theory, it doesn't mean we are running out of oil tomorrow. We still have plenty of oil, except that it is becoming harder and much more expensive to find as global demand is outstripping the ability of the markets to supply it.
04-30-2006, 06:20 PM
#20
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by yunginTL
true, what u think is a long term solution for this problem?
j/k
Personally, I do the following:
1. Drive fuel efficient vehicles.
2. Find ways to conserve and use less energy (my furnace is 90% rated).
On a macro level:
We need to invest in companies which will create, adopt more alternative energy sources.
05-08-2006, 07:10 PM
#22
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Why You Should Worry About Big Oil
C'mon Silver, is that the best you can come up with to counter articles from Fortune, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg and Businessweek? 
Beyond the fat profits, the giants are surprisingly vulnerable worldwide. That's bad news for business -- and consumers
...The world consumes oil at more than two times the rate of discovery of new supply. Efficiency hasn't offset rising demand.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0/b3984001.htm
...The world consumes oil at more than two times the rate of discovery of new supply. Efficiency hasn't offset rising demand.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0/b3984001.htm
05-08-2006, 07:36 PM
#23
Moderator Alumnus
Originally Posted by PistonFan
C'mon Silver, is that the best you can come up with to counter articles from Fortune, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg and Businessweek? Those magazines also said Iraq had WMD
05-08-2006, 07:58 PM
#25
Suzuka Master
Originally Posted by PistonFan
C'mon Silver, is that the best you can come up with to counter articles from Fortune, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg and Businessweek?
John Browne, CEO of London giant BP PLC, (BP ) says instead that the atmosphere was strangely glum. "There wasn't anyone smiling," he says. "They were worrying that the price was too high."
Well, you don't have to love the big oil companies to worry about their ability to provide us with the energy we need. That job is getting difficult, thanks to huge technical challenges, competition from national oil companies, and demanding, even hostile foreign governments.
But even if oil prices were to slump -- and pros like BP's Browne believe that prices could still "turn on a dime" -- the predicament of Big Oil and its customers would persist, since so much of the global oil patch is now off-limits. In theory that shouldn't matter, as long as someone is getting the oil to market. In practice, though, the private oil companies are better than national companies at the technology and innovation that get the best results.
It won't get any easier. In the 1960s, 85% of known reserves worldwide were fully open to the international oil companies. That number is now 16%. The rest of the world's oil and gas is either restricted or entirely cordoned off.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0/b3984001.htm
Well, you don't have to love the big oil companies to worry about their ability to provide us with the energy we need. That job is getting difficult, thanks to huge technical challenges, competition from national oil companies, and demanding, even hostile foreign governments.
But even if oil prices were to slump -- and pros like BP's Browne believe that prices could still "turn on a dime" -- the predicament of Big Oil and its customers would persist, since so much of the global oil patch is now off-limits. In theory that shouldn't matter, as long as someone is getting the oil to market. In practice, though, the private oil companies are better than national companies at the technology and innovation that get the best results.
It won't get any easier. In the 1960s, 85% of known reserves worldwide were fully open to the international oil companies. That number is now 16%. The rest of the world's oil and gas is either restricted or entirely cordoned off.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0/b3984001.htm
If true, this isn't good news for shareholders, but it hardly means the "peak" is near.
05-09-2006, 05:45 PM
#26
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Will We Hit $100?
Originally Posted by SpeedyV6
The upshot of all this is that prices may drop sharply and we may have to buy more oil from nationalized oil companies.
Such forecasts, once the province of the enviro-fringe, now come from the likes of Goldman Sachs. Here's why.
May 15-22, 2006 issue - The first oil shock of the 21st century is now upon us, even if it has not (yet) hit the global economy. This time, the early fallout is measured in largely political terms—in the growing cockiness of oil states like Venezuela, the defiance of Iran, the expansion of state oil companies from producing nations like Russia, the backlash against hugely profitable oil giants and the near desperation of incumbent politicians in consuming nations like the United States and Germany. In recent weeks, as the price of oil passed $70 a barrel, the price of gas topped $3 a gallon in the United States and ex-oilman George W. Bush unleashed an investigation into possible price manipulation by Big Oil, the old power relations of our oil-based world were clearly being turned upside down.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12667616/site/newsweek/
May 15-22, 2006 issue - The first oil shock of the 21st century is now upon us, even if it has not (yet) hit the global economy. This time, the early fallout is measured in largely political terms—in the growing cockiness of oil states like Venezuela, the defiance of Iran, the expansion of state oil companies from producing nations like Russia, the backlash against hugely profitable oil giants and the near desperation of incumbent politicians in consuming nations like the United States and Germany. In recent weeks, as the price of oil passed $70 a barrel, the price of gas topped $3 a gallon in the United States and ex-oilman George W. Bush unleashed an investigation into possible price manipulation by Big Oil, the old power relations of our oil-based world were clearly being turned upside down.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12667616/site/newsweek/
07-18-2006, 05:56 PM
#27
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Is Oil at the Tipping Point?
First, adjusted for inflation, oil and gasoline prices have remained below previous peaks. This may no longer be true: the earlier highs occurred in 1980 and 1981, when gasoline averaged almost $3 a gallon (in 2005 "constant" dollars); that's roughly where prices are today. Second, gasoline spending has represented a smaller share of household budgets because over the years Americans have gotten richer. Although that's still true, the gap is shrinking. In 1980 and 1981, gasoline spending equaled 4.3 percent of disposable personal income. In 2002, that was about 2.1 percent; now it's 3.7 percent. Finally, most businesses—oil companies obviously excepted—haven't passed their higher energy costs along in prices. Some economists worry this may soon happen.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13880167/site/newsweek/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13880167/site/newsweek/
07-18-2006, 08:38 PM
#28
Senior Moderator
Consumption went up 1.1 percent over last year in the US... Even at $3 a gallon people are using more and more...I just spent $2900 bucks replacing my 40 something y/o oil burner w/ a energystar compliant one... Should save about 25% in oil costs, and at $2.50 a gallon, it'll pay itself off in no time (plus the added benefit on resale value if I sell the house). I'm not the only one doing it either. My boiler guy has put in 4 already this summer w/ 2 more scheduled...
08-03-2006, 07:37 PM
#29
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by GreenMonster
Consumption went up 1.1 percent over last year in the US... Even at $3 a gallon people are using more and more....Greenie, the US consumer has shown an amazing resilience and propensity to keep consuming (negative savings rate) even in light of significantly higher energy costs. There is a tremendous amount of debate in the financial community of when we'll hit the wall. $70 pb seems to be the new floor, it'll be very very interesting to see where we go from here.
My gut tells me we're getting closer to a big shock of some kind or another.
08-31-2006, 04:37 PM
#30
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Peak Oil Forecasters Win Converts on Wall Street to $200 Crude
Don't be an :ostrich: C'mon folks, Fibo is urging you to stay ahead of the curve.
As energy prices soar and violence convulses the Middle East, the peak-oil movement -- an unlikely alliance of geologists, physicists, oil industry consultants and environmental activists -- is winning converts. Peak-oil ideas are bubbling up from scientific journals and offbeat Web sites, much the way warnings of global warming did a decade ago. For the first time, the peaksters have begun to grab the attention of Washington and Wall Street.
Congressional Caucus
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, former boss of Boston- based Cabot Corp., an oil and chemicals company, has asked the National Petroleum Council, which advises him, to investigate whether oil supplies can keep pace with demand. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog, is due to release a study on peak oil this November. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, has formed the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus to sound the alarm.
``The world has never faced a problem like this,'' Bartlett says.
Everyone agrees we'll run out of crude eventually. Oil, after all, is a finite resource: The Earth holds only so much of it. The controversial issue is when a global peak will occur -- and what will happen then.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...HMs&refer=news
Congressional Caucus
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, former boss of Boston- based Cabot Corp., an oil and chemicals company, has asked the National Petroleum Council, which advises him, to investigate whether oil supplies can keep pace with demand. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog, is due to release a study on peak oil this November. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, has formed the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus to sound the alarm.
``The world has never faced a problem like this,'' Bartlett says.
Everyone agrees we'll run out of crude eventually. Oil, after all, is a finite resource: The Earth holds only so much of it. The controversial issue is when a global peak will occur -- and what will happen then.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...HMs&refer=news
09-05-2006, 10:03 AM
#31
Moderator Alumnus
Tests of a deep-water well in the Gulf of Mexico could indicate a significant oil discovery, three companies announced Tuesday, in the first project to tap into a region that reportedly could boost U.S. oil and gas reserves by as much as 50 percent.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14678206/
09-05-2006, 06:34 PM
#32
Suzuka Master
Has anyone else noticed that the price of a gallon of gas has dropped ~ $0.20/gal in the past two or three weeks? I know that summer is the season of peak demand but I'm surprised by how fast prices have fallen.
09-05-2006, 07:38 PM
#33
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by Silver™
Tests of a deep-water well in the Gulf of Mexico could indicate a significant oil discovery, three companies announced Tuesday, in the first project to tap into a region that reportedly could boost U.S. oil and gas reserves by as much as 50 percent.
Fibo owns some Chevron
Alas, this is a proverbial drop in the bucket. NYMEX crude barely budged today, down 50cents pb. But I'm still not complaining.
09-15-2006, 03:56 PM
#34
Suzuka Master
Debunking Peak Oil
Producers Move to Debunk Gloomy 'Peak Oil' Forecasts
Saudis, Exxon Say Supplies Are Ample as Policy Makers Begin to Weigh Substitutes
By BHUSHAN BAHREE in Vienna and JEFFREY BALL in Dallas
September 14, 2006; Page A2
Leading players in the petroleum industry, including Saudi Arabia and Exxon Mobil Corp., are aggressively arguing that plenty of crude oil remains for world consumption, in an effort to counter critics who contend crude output is about to plateau.
That argument, known as peak-oil theory, has provided intellectual backing for the boom in crude prices and sowed doubts among some policy makers about crude's long-term reliability as an energy source. Such doubts, coupled with concern over sky-high prices, have added impetus to the search for oil substitutes -- including in Washington, where President Bush this year declared the U.S. "addicted to oil" and sparked a boom in interest in ethanol.
Some in the industry are keen to fight the threat posed by such fears.
Yesterday, Abdallah S. Jum'ah, chief executive of Saudi Arabian state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company by production, argued during a speech in Vienna that the world has more than a century's worth of crude left at current production rates. His talk followed similar remarks by a senior Exxon executive this week. Spokesmen for Exxon and Aramco said they aren't coordinating their remarks.
The belief that the Earth is running dry of oil is just one factor supporting crude prices. Oil supplies -- constrained by underinvestment when crude prices were lower -- have increased more slowly than demand, leading to a thin margin of spare pumping capacity and higher prices.
Demand has shown signs of slowing and prices have fallen from a nominal all-time high of more than $78 a barrel in July, though, adjusted for inflation, oil reached as high as $99.21 in April 1980. In New York yesterday, crude-oil futures rose 21 cents to settle at $63.97.
In a sign that oil-supply concerns are gaining currency, the Department of Energy has asked the National Petroleum Council, an oil-and-gas-industry research group, to investigate peak-oil claims. The council launched a study that includes different industries and environmental groups and appointed Lee Raymond, retired Exxon chief executive, as the study's chairman. It will survey existing studies and examine why they differ on how much oil and gas the world holds and what the response should be.
At an OPEC seminar yesterday, Mr. Jum'ah of Aramco said the world had produced only about one trillion barrels, or about 18%, of the earth's producible potential of 5.7 trillion barrels of oil. "That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent, and put our minds at ease concerning future petroleum supplies," he said. The remaining 4.7 trillion barrels should be enough to last more than 140 years at current output rates, he said.
Saudi Arabia, with a quarter of the world's proven crude reserves, has an interest in countering developments that would reduce demand. "If you are sitting on the world's biggest oil deposits, you would want to prevent the premature development of alternatives to oil," said Herman Franssen, president of International Energy Associates, a consulting firm in Bethesda, Md.
In an interview, Mr. Jum'ah said the Saudis "don't mind the development of alternatives to oil," because increasing energy demand means the world needs supplemental energy sources. But he objected to government subsidies and other supports that lead people to believe that alternatives like ethanol are a "panacea" that is "around the corner," he said.
Still, 3.5 trillion of the roughly 4.7 trillion barrels of oil Mr. Jum'ah is counting on will depend on the development of new technologies. "I believe we will eventually tally about one trillion barrels each from yet-to-be-discovered fields and higher recovery rates" from existing fields, he said in the speech. He also factored in 1.5 trillion barrels from nonconventional sources, such as Canadian tar sands.
Mr. Jum'ah's speech came two days after Exxon's Australia chief, Mark Nolan, told an industry conference in Adelaide, Australia, that "the end of oil is nowhere in sight." Mr. Nolan cited a U.S. Geological Survey estimate of more than three trillion barrels of conventional recoverable oil resources, of which one trillion barrels has been produced. Conservative estimates of heavy-oil and shale-oil resources push the total to four trillion barrels, while a 10% increase in recoverability will deliver an extra 800 billion barrels, Mr. Nolan said.
An Exxon spokesman said the company has long been making a similar argument.
Even mainstream analysts see a practical limit to supply. "The international petroleum system will be hard-pressed to produce more than 100 million barrels a day, given current technology," said J. Robinson West, chairman of consulting firm PFC Energy. Demand, expected to reach 84.8 million barrels a day this year, could rise to that level by about 2015, based on estimates for a different period by the International Energy Agency.
The industry says that while oil is finite, the known pool of obtainable oil grows as technology improves.
"I think there's a lot of misconceptions of what peak oil is," Mr. Raymond, who is leading the U.S. oil study, said in an interview last week. "The resource base is continually changing, driven by economics and technology." But he said his views won't dictate the study's results. "I may learn something."
Write to Bhushan Bahree at bhushan.bahree@wsj.com1 and Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com2
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115818976320462464.html
Saudis, Exxon Say Supplies Are Ample as Policy Makers Begin to Weigh Substitutes
By BHUSHAN BAHREE in Vienna and JEFFREY BALL in Dallas
September 14, 2006; Page A2
Leading players in the petroleum industry, including Saudi Arabia and Exxon Mobil Corp., are aggressively arguing that plenty of crude oil remains for world consumption, in an effort to counter critics who contend crude output is about to plateau.
That argument, known as peak-oil theory, has provided intellectual backing for the boom in crude prices and sowed doubts among some policy makers about crude's long-term reliability as an energy source. Such doubts, coupled with concern over sky-high prices, have added impetus to the search for oil substitutes -- including in Washington, where President Bush this year declared the U.S. "addicted to oil" and sparked a boom in interest in ethanol.
Some in the industry are keen to fight the threat posed by such fears.
Yesterday, Abdallah S. Jum'ah, chief executive of Saudi Arabian state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company by production, argued during a speech in Vienna that the world has more than a century's worth of crude left at current production rates. His talk followed similar remarks by a senior Exxon executive this week. Spokesmen for Exxon and Aramco said they aren't coordinating their remarks.
The belief that the Earth is running dry of oil is just one factor supporting crude prices. Oil supplies -- constrained by underinvestment when crude prices were lower -- have increased more slowly than demand, leading to a thin margin of spare pumping capacity and higher prices.
Demand has shown signs of slowing and prices have fallen from a nominal all-time high of more than $78 a barrel in July, though, adjusted for inflation, oil reached as high as $99.21 in April 1980. In New York yesterday, crude-oil futures rose 21 cents to settle at $63.97.
In a sign that oil-supply concerns are gaining currency, the Department of Energy has asked the National Petroleum Council, an oil-and-gas-industry research group, to investigate peak-oil claims. The council launched a study that includes different industries and environmental groups and appointed Lee Raymond, retired Exxon chief executive, as the study's chairman. It will survey existing studies and examine why they differ on how much oil and gas the world holds and what the response should be.
At an OPEC seminar yesterday, Mr. Jum'ah of Aramco said the world had produced only about one trillion barrels, or about 18%, of the earth's producible potential of 5.7 trillion barrels of oil. "That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent, and put our minds at ease concerning future petroleum supplies," he said. The remaining 4.7 trillion barrels should be enough to last more than 140 years at current output rates, he said.
Saudi Arabia, with a quarter of the world's proven crude reserves, has an interest in countering developments that would reduce demand. "If you are sitting on the world's biggest oil deposits, you would want to prevent the premature development of alternatives to oil," said Herman Franssen, president of International Energy Associates, a consulting firm in Bethesda, Md.
In an interview, Mr. Jum'ah said the Saudis "don't mind the development of alternatives to oil," because increasing energy demand means the world needs supplemental energy sources. But he objected to government subsidies and other supports that lead people to believe that alternatives like ethanol are a "panacea" that is "around the corner," he said.
Still, 3.5 trillion of the roughly 4.7 trillion barrels of oil Mr. Jum'ah is counting on will depend on the development of new technologies. "I believe we will eventually tally about one trillion barrels each from yet-to-be-discovered fields and higher recovery rates" from existing fields, he said in the speech. He also factored in 1.5 trillion barrels from nonconventional sources, such as Canadian tar sands.
Mr. Jum'ah's speech came two days after Exxon's Australia chief, Mark Nolan, told an industry conference in Adelaide, Australia, that "the end of oil is nowhere in sight." Mr. Nolan cited a U.S. Geological Survey estimate of more than three trillion barrels of conventional recoverable oil resources, of which one trillion barrels has been produced. Conservative estimates of heavy-oil and shale-oil resources push the total to four trillion barrels, while a 10% increase in recoverability will deliver an extra 800 billion barrels, Mr. Nolan said.
An Exxon spokesman said the company has long been making a similar argument.
Even mainstream analysts see a practical limit to supply. "The international petroleum system will be hard-pressed to produce more than 100 million barrels a day, given current technology," said J. Robinson West, chairman of consulting firm PFC Energy. Demand, expected to reach 84.8 million barrels a day this year, could rise to that level by about 2015, based on estimates for a different period by the International Energy Agency.
The industry says that while oil is finite, the known pool of obtainable oil grows as technology improves.
"I think there's a lot of misconceptions of what peak oil is," Mr. Raymond, who is leading the U.S. oil study, said in an interview last week. "The resource base is continually changing, driven by economics and technology." But he said his views won't dictate the study's results. "I may learn something."
Write to Bhushan Bahree at bhushan.bahree@wsj.com1 and Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com2
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115818976320462464.html
09-15-2006, 04:27 PM
#35
Moderator Alumnus
The recent sharp drop in the global price of crude oil could mark the start of a massive sell-off that returns gasoline prices to lows not seen since the late 1990s — perhaps as low as 1999's $1.15 a gallon.
"All the hurricane flags are flying" in oil markets, said Philip K. Verleger, a noted energy consultant who was a lone voice several years ago in warning that oil prices would soar. Now, he says they appear to be poised for a dramatic plunge.
Crude oil prices have fallen about $14, or roughly 17 percent, from their July 14 peak of $78.40. Contracts for October delivery of oil fell 75 cents in Thursday trading to settle at $63.22. Oil prices are expected to keep falling, just as natural gas prices have over the past year, in the weeks and months ahead.
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12...13414150c.html
"All the hurricane flags are flying" in oil markets, said Philip K. Verleger, a noted energy consultant who was a lone voice several years ago in warning that oil prices would soar. Now, he says they appear to be poised for a dramatic plunge.
Crude oil prices have fallen about $14, or roughly 17 percent, from their July 14 peak of $78.40. Contracts for October delivery of oil fell 75 cents in Thursday trading to settle at $63.22. Oil prices are expected to keep falling, just as natural gas prices have over the past year, in the weeks and months ahead.
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12...13414150c.html
09-18-2006, 02:08 PM
#36
Moderator Alumnus
You can tune out all the scare talk about Peak Oil for a while—probably a long while. Peak Oil is the theory, on the verge of becoming conventional wisdom, that the world's petroleum supply is topping out and will not be able to meet global demand soaring along with the economies of China and India. But a successful test in a mammoth field deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, announced on Sept. 5 by Chevron (CVX), Devon Energy (DVN), and Norway's Statoil (STO), should help put that scary scenario on hold for decades.
-------
...the capability to find and recover petroleum at extreme depths, temperatures, and pressures, as demonstrated by the Chevron team, may indeed tip the balance of supply and demand in the long term. There will be a new frenzy of drilling at these depths in the Gulf of Mexico, where about a dozen promising exploration wells have already been drilled.
Other parts of the world that once appeared beyond the pale may also come into play. Areas believed to have oil deposits extremely deep beneath the ocean floor, which could now become commercially recoverable, include the North Sea off the coast of Britain, the Nile River Delta off the coast of Egypt, and possibly coastal Brazil, says Andrew Latham, a vice-president at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh, Scotland. Other analysts say West Africa could harbor lots of ultra-deep deposits. The areas have produced oil before but never from these depths.
----
But given the powerful combination of high oil prices and new technology, the industry is gaining confidence that supplies will grow. It's pushing hard to produce oil and gas from difficult tar sand and shale fields as well as rejuvenating older fields with enhanced recovery methods. Cambridge Energy Research Associates predicts world oil and natural gas liquids capacity could increase as much as 25% by 2015. Says Robert W. Esser, a director of CERA: "Peak Oil theory is garbage as far as we're concerned."
http://www.businessweek.com/investor...ndex_investing
-------
...the capability to find and recover petroleum at extreme depths, temperatures, and pressures, as demonstrated by the Chevron team, may indeed tip the balance of supply and demand in the long term. There will be a new frenzy of drilling at these depths in the Gulf of Mexico, where about a dozen promising exploration wells have already been drilled.
Other parts of the world that once appeared beyond the pale may also come into play. Areas believed to have oil deposits extremely deep beneath the ocean floor, which could now become commercially recoverable, include the North Sea off the coast of Britain, the Nile River Delta off the coast of Egypt, and possibly coastal Brazil, says Andrew Latham, a vice-president at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh, Scotland. Other analysts say West Africa could harbor lots of ultra-deep deposits. The areas have produced oil before but never from these depths.
----
But given the powerful combination of high oil prices and new technology, the industry is gaining confidence that supplies will grow. It's pushing hard to produce oil and gas from difficult tar sand and shale fields as well as rejuvenating older fields with enhanced recovery methods. Cambridge Energy Research Associates predicts world oil and natural gas liquids capacity could increase as much as 25% by 2015. Says Robert W. Esser, a director of CERA: "Peak Oil theory is garbage as far as we're concerned."
http://www.businessweek.com/investor...ndex_investing
09-19-2006, 05:41 PM
#37
I feel the need...
Thread Starter
Plugging Peak-Oil Gap to Cost $20 Trillion, U.S. Says
By Stephen Voss
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The world needs to spend $1 trillion
a year developing alternative fuels, starting 20 years before the
peak in conventional oil production, in order to mitigate fuel
shortages, a U.S. Energy Department study showed.
``We have to start a long time before the peak or we'll have
severe liquid fuels shortages worldwide,'' said Robert Hirsch,
leader of the study, at the Oil & Money Conference in London.
Production peaks in Texas and the North Sea were examined in
two studies that advocated ``crash course'' efforts to cope with
eventual shortages of gasoline and other liquid fuels. The work
didn't predict when world production will peak, though Hirsch said
his guess is ``five to 10 years.''
There is no consensus among oil executives or policy makers
on when world production may reach its zenith, with some saying
it'll occur within a few years and others decades. The debate has
helped underpin a doubling of crude oil prices over two years to
more than $60 a barrel, on concern there aren't enough ready
alternatives.
source: bloomberg (full article)
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The world needs to spend $1 trillion
a year developing alternative fuels, starting 20 years before the
peak in conventional oil production, in order to mitigate fuel
shortages, a U.S. Energy Department study showed.
``We have to start a long time before the peak or we'll have
severe liquid fuels shortages worldwide,'' said Robert Hirsch,
leader of the study, at the Oil & Money Conference in London.
Production peaks in Texas and the North Sea were examined in
two studies that advocated ``crash course'' efforts to cope with
eventual shortages of gasoline and other liquid fuels. The work
didn't predict when world production will peak, though Hirsch said
his guess is ``five to 10 years.''
There is no consensus among oil executives or policy makers
on when world production may reach its zenith, with some saying
it'll occur within a few years and others decades. The debate has
helped underpin a doubling of crude oil prices over two years to
more than $60 a barrel, on concern there aren't enough ready
alternatives.
source: bloomberg (full article)
09-21-2006, 11:56 AM
#40
Moderator Alumnus
Originally Posted by Python2121
Can plastics be made from non petrolium products and other oils such as corn oil?
Yup.
http://www.newscientisttech.com/arti...petroleum.html