Oil: A Bird’s Eye View of Rita’s Fury

A helicopter ride reveals partly flooded refineries, smashed ships, and blocked waterways. The industry’s recovery will take a great deal of time Seeing is believing. The Coast Guard invited Platts on a reconnaissance helicopter this week to observe the damage from Hurricane Rita, which came onshore Sept. 24 as a Category 3 hurricane near the […]

Natural Gas Prices Set Record, Pointing to Costly Winter

Natural gas prices set a new record today, presaging higher heating bills for a majority of Americans this winter as well as soaring costs for industrial manufacturers of such products as plastics and chemicals. Since the beginning of the summer, the price of natural gas has doubled. But unlike crude oil or gasoline, whose recent […]

The Airline Crisis Is About to Get Much Worse

Top airline cuts flights over oil price Refinery outages caused by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina have made worse an already bad situation for U.S. airlines. In addition to record crude prices, the airlines are paying as much as a 60 percent premium for refined jet fuel. That has pushed the price they pay per barrel […]

Attack on Iran would rocket oil prices to $400 dollars.

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 29 Abbasi described the West

Sustainability of Supply?

Speech by Shell’s CEO describes the challenges and remaining opportunities Shell sees for worldwide hydrocarbons (conventional and unconventional).  I found two things interesting:  1) Despite an upbeat tone, title of speech contains the prominent question mark; 2) The admission (as with Chevron) that the era of cheap oil is over (buried in second-to-last paragraph).“We can […]

Indonesian Students, Police Clash Over Gas

Indonesian Police Clash With About 100 Students Protesting Drastic Rise in Fuel Prices JAKARTA, Indonesia Sep 30, 2005 “Anarchy will only deter investment,” said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has made the unpopular decision to raise the price of gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene sharply. The size of the increase was to be announced late […]

The Oil Drum: A Conversation with Richard Heinberg

Stuart writes: I caught up with Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over, and Powerdown at the recent Peak Oil and Community Solutions Conference. Here’s the (interesting and detailed) conversation. Much more after the jump to The Oil Drum.

Why isn’t energy conservation a higher priority?

MSNBC.com answers your questions on business, personal finance With gas prices back on the rise this week, Susan in Florida is wondering why the government hasn’t made energy conservation a higher priority. And a number of readers, like Mark in Wisconsin, have asked: why rebuild New Orleans when it’s so vulnerable to flooding? (We thought […]

No easy fix for Rita-damaged oil works

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Getting off-shore oil and natural gas platforms back in service after two Gulf of Mexico hurricanes is proving difficult, according to a published report Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported that efforts to restart facilities a week after Hurricane Rita blew through the area are being hampered by a lack of […]

Zim’s economic crisis drives it back into steam age

Zimbabwe announced it was moving back into the steam age on Wednesday by recommissioning 10 coal-fired locomotives to cope with the country’s economic crisis. Further indications of shortages came from hospitals, which are turning away patients because they do not have basic medicines and surgical equipment. In the courts, state witnesses said they were too […]

OPEC rejects UK’s Brown comments on lacking transparency regarding reserves

It is unfair to say that OPEC is not transparent enough regarding its production and its reserves, OPEC interim general secretary Adnan Shihab-Eddin said during an oil conference here. He was reacting to comments made by UK Chancellor Gordon Brown calling on OPEC nations to become more transparent and ‘prevent high prices hurting the poor’. […]

Marine Organisms Threatened By Increasingly Acidic Ocean

Every day, the average person on the planet burns enough fossil fuel to emit 24 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, out of which about 9 pounds is then taken up by the ocean. As this CO2 combines with seawater, it forms an acid in a process known as ocean acidification. A new study […]

India looks east for gas

With the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline caught in the US crossfire over Iran, India’s quest for energy security continues in other fronts, with progress being made in the proposed Myanmar-Bangladesh-India (MBI) gas pipeline project. As US interests in these regions is low at the moment, India has been talking in earnest with the two nations […]

Asian nations for energy co-op, faster trade talks

Trade ministers from Southeast and North Asia said today they would work together to improve energy security and push ahead with talks on free-trade agreements in order to boost regional trade. Ministers and senior officials from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and from Japan, China, and South Korea, who met in Vientiane, Laos, […]

Renewables targets to be set at 20%

The 2001 directive on renewable energies aims to increase the share of renewable energy sources from 6% to 12% of the EU’s total energy consumption by 2010. Three years after its adoption, in May 2004, the Commission published a first progress report, showing that member states are not on track to meet their national targets […]

Angola, Nigeria want aid for oil exploration deals

Along with bids, India will have to offer economic development packages to Angola and Nigeria if it wants to acquire oil and gas exploration blocks in these countries. ..Economic development package could include assistance in power, railways and construction of roads. Nigeria made it clear that though the winning bidder would get the blocks, the […]

Madagascar says to become oil producer in 3-4 years

Madagascar is expected to start producing crude oil for the first time within the next 3-4 years, the government said on Thursday. Several blocks on land and offshore to the west and south of the huge Indian Ocean island are expected to yield 60,000 barrels a day at the start of production, Elise Razaka, director […]

World Petroleum Congress calls investment in African oil, clean energy

A global oil conference concluded Thursday in South Africa’s Johannesburg with calls for more investment in African oil. While delegates from around the world argue over high oil price, clean energy including a green gas to liquid technology steal some of the show as world oil supply tightens. The 18th World Petroleum Congress was convened […]

Oil tops South American summit agenda

Brazil and Venezuela have agreed to build a $2.5bn (€2bn) oil refinery, the highlight of a South American summit to boost trade and co-operation. State-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and Brazil’s government oil company Petrobras signed the agreement late yesterday, as the presidents of eight South American nations prepared to meet today in the Brazilian […]

‘Military Only’ Refinery Sought

The Pentagon may soon get authority to build a “military only” refinery on one its newly closed bases, a move some members of Congress hope will better insulate U.S. defenses from gas shortages. Even though the first Energy Bill was passed less than two months ago, back-to-back hurricanes and $3-a-gallon gas prices have members scrambling […]

Indonesia police warn of anarchy over fuel rise

THOUSANDS of police are protecting petrol stations and Government buildings across Indonesia from mounting protests against plans to raise fuel prices tomorrow. With queues of up to a kilometre to buy petrol, hundreds of demonstrators converged on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s palace in central Jakarta, demanding the price rise be abandoned. Large fuel subsidies, which […]

All Gulf oil output shut down

BATON ROUGE, La. The Minerals Management Service reports that all oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has temporarily ceased. M-M-S says its survey indicated that 100 percent of oil production in the Gulf is shut down as well as more than 80 percent of natural gas production. The Gulf supplies 29 percent of the […]

Essential oil

Economists are surprisingly sanguine about the impact of higher oil prices – but only in the short term, writes William Keegan in the Guardian All conversations at the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington last weekend led to the subject of oil – and many of those conversations […]

When Does Hubbert Linearization Work?

An interesting question is to know when does this style of Hubbert Linearization work? The empirical answer for a small non-random sample of five countries and one state is that it always seems to work as a pretty decent rough approximation once the graph has settled down into the linear regime. If anyone wants to […]

Katrina Pipeline Damage More Than First Thought

Hurricane Katrina did more damage to underwater oil and natural gas pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico than previously thought, according to the U.S. agency that oversees offshore energy production. The head of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, Johnnie Burton, said two weeks ago that Katrina did not do as much damage to offshore […]

Project Delays ‘Drive Up Price’ of Oil

Delays of big oil projects are helping to drive oil prices higher as energy companies become increasingly unreliable at delivering production from new oilfields on time, a recent analysts’ report has warned. Oil production in 2007 will be 2m barrels a day less than expected because companies are increasingly having to delay the date at […]

Where gasoline’s not so peachy

Georgia, Alabama and Florida still seeing price hikes as pump prices stabilize or fall elsewhere. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Drivers in much of the Southeast — and especially Georgia — probably have a hard time believing reports of retreating or stable gasoline prices around the rest of the nation. In Thursday’s AAA daily gas price […]

Heating sticker shock coming

A big jump in natural gas and heating oil could make this a tough winter for homeowners. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Just as prices at the gas pump are generally starting to retreat around the nation, consumers could be in for a much bigger case of sticker shock when they see their home heating bills […]

Stay snug this winter

5 Tips Home Edition: Five ways to keep your energy bill down. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – In light of the two massive hurricanes that battered the Gulf Coast, your household energy costs are going to skyrocket this winter. What do you need to know and what do you need to do to contain some of […]

Rita’s aftermath buoys oil prices

Crude oil prices stayed above $66 on Thursday amid further concerns over Hurricane Rita’s impact on US supplies. In France, the situation is looking more complicated, as a strike that has closed Total’s refinery in Normandy threatens to spread to the firm’s other plants. France is a significant supplier of gasoline to the US. BBC

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