Oil may fall to $US45-$US55: OPEC

OPEC expected world oil prices to stabilise in a range of $US45-$US55 a barrel next year and had ample spare capacity to meet demand, acting Secretary-General Adnan Shihab-Eldin said overnight.“Based on fundamentals, prices should not increase. They should moderate below the levels of recent months,” Mr Shihab-Eldin said. theaustralian.news

Energy Storage – Your Pick Of Power Or Energy In The Ragone Plot

Energy storage is a big issue, especially if we’re going to be flipping from a society that uses 80% chemical energy (like oil) and 20% physical (like wind) to 80% physical and 20% chemical. Energy storage devices do have their technological limits, which means efficiency isn’t always the be all and end all of the […]

Hardy algae promising in biofuel production

Biodiesel can be produced from vegetation such as soybeans, sunflowers and rapeseed, but the best way to create the fuel may come from a little organism that likes sewage, grows in water and can produce up to 50 percent of its body weight in oil. The report stated it would take about 770 square miles […]

Environmentalists slam World Bank’s clean energy ‘failure’

The Washington-based World Bank, which provides finance to states for poverty alleviation and development purposes, has been tapped by the G8 as a key player in funding renewable energy sources. But FoE laid into the institution for failing to meet its already existing targets for increasing financial support for such projects. Despite a commitment to […]

HelioVolt claims thin-film advance for solar energy

HelioVolt (Austin, Texas), a four-year-old developer of thin-film photovoltaic coatings, said CEO Billy Stanbery’s model, also known as the “Intra-Absorber Junction,” provides a basic understanding of physics of CIGS thin films. The company further claimed that the model was an advance toward commercialization of the technology for solar energy production. eetimes

Treating Foreign Buyers Fairly

Now lawmakers are mulling an overhaul of the rules for foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies that can affect national security. The proposals range from giving Congress veto power over such deals to tougher enforcement of conditions Uncle Sam imposes. BusinessWeekOnline

Firm in $450 bln Exxon bid run from flat

The firm behind a $450 billion bid for the world’s top oil company is run from an $150-a-month apartment in the outskirts of the Chinese capital. Exxon dismissed the bid from King Win, a company incorporated in New Zealand with an apparent history of making unsolicited offers for large companies. [Editors Note: I also saw […]

Could Big Oil be a Scapegoat?

Who’s to blame? As consumers struggle to pay off gasoline credit cards and brace for what could be their highest winter heating bills ever, the easiest target for their frustration is Big Oil.Philadelphia Inquirer

Statoil CEO: 2007 Oil, Gas Output Target More Challenging

Statoil ASA (STO) is finding it increasingly challenging to meets its 2007 oil and gas output target of 1.4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day with the delay of two key projects, the company’s chief executive said Monday. Although CEO Helge Lund said at the company’s third-quarter earnings investors conference the target stands, “it […]

Shell Dutch Unions to Target Refinery, Expand to Gas

Royal Dutch Shell Plc workers in the Netherlands later today will start a strike, their first in the country in 26 years, to protest the company’s proposal to alter the pension plan. Workers at the 416,000 barrel-a-day Pernis refinery in Rotterdam and the chemical facility at Moerdijk will begin winding down output at 6 p.m. […]

Global demand for energy surging

LONDON The hurricanes pushed up prices to record levels. But some analysts doubt that high prices have had any significant effect on demand. Despite the storms, U.S. GDP grew faster than expected in the third quarter, indicating that the world’s largest economy appears to have shrugged off higher energy costs, at least for now. Reuters

Why are diesel, gasoline going opposite ways?

Though drivers who use gasoline have gotten a break at the pump in the last few weeks, the price of diesel fuel has hit record highs. That has a lot of readers asking: what gives?DIESEL DILEMMA Why is the price of diesel so high? Compared to the price at the pump in N.E. Colorado, regular […]

Exxon Dismisses Buyout Bid

Exxon Mobil Corp. on Monday dismissed a bid to acquire it for $450 billion by a little-known Chinese concern with an apparent history of making unsolicited offers for large companies. King Win Laurel Ltd. filed papers Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offering to buy the world’s largest publicly traded oil company for […]

Alaska Official Quits, 6 Others Follow After Flap with Gov. Over Pipeline

Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski said Thursday Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin agreed to quit his job after questioning the legality of the governor’s negotiations with producers on an agreement for a gas pipeline to the Lower 48 states. Six other high ranking members of the Department of Natural Resources also quit their jobs after hearing […]

A Global Shortage of Tools for the Oil Industry

Kim Bennetts, an executive at a Texas-based natural gas company, traveled more than 7,000 miles this year to the heartland of China to look for the right rig to drill four wells in the Piceance Basin, a booming exploration area in western Colorado. That is how far he needed to go to get the basic […]

Fuels of the Future Touted

Sky-high gas prices have everybody from trucking companies to Sunday drivers hungry for alternatives to their gas guzzlers, and the Bronx Community College Center for Sustainable Energy served up some food for thought. The all-day “Road to Energy Independence” conference Friday featured panel discussions on oil shortages, climate change and new technologies, as well as […]

Oil industry: No hurry to bump output

WASHINGTON “A surplus of supply is not good for the industry,” Shell Oil Co. president John Hofmeister said Friday. “Just as a surplus of demand is not good for industry. We strive for balance.” Hofmeister, speaking by phone, said “we will continue to work as an industry to increase supplies to the American people.” But […]

Blame The Oil Traders

Don’t blame Exxon Mobil for making profits of nearly $10 billion in the past quarter. Blame the oil traders. Despite what most analysts say are adequate supplies, the traders on Wall Street were acting as though supplies were going to get a lot tighter and they had been bidding prices to higher and higher levels […]

Market Virtually Guarantees Big Oil Profits

Oil companies reported another quarter of record or near-record profits, rekindling old debates about price gouging and a windfall-profit tax. Even after accounting for lost sales and damages to its rigs and refineries and pipelines in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast region, the third-quarter results were nothing less than breathtaking. Exxon Mobil was up 75 percent […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Waiting for Winter

Wall Street oil traders and analysts are starting to tell financial reporters that the hurricane dislocations are over for a while and the good times may roll for a while longer. Indeed earlier this week the Dow flew up 170 points on the idea that our oil problems no longer look as bad as they did a few weeks ago.

Where did all this optimism come from? Is it justified? The root cause, of course, is that the securities industry is based on eternal optimism and growth. Few have grasped, or are willing to admit, how close we are to the final oil crisis of all time.

Fall Church News

Russia: Forecast of 2% growth for 2006 oil output

Oil output in Russia may rise 2% on the year in 2006 according to Russia

Russian, Chinese firms battle for oil in Kazakhstan

While the government of Kazakhstan is Positioned midway between Russia and China, Kazakhstan has the highest proven oil reserves anywhere in the Caspian Sea region and is regarded as one of the most important potential sources of new crude oil supplies to world markets. The state-run CNPC, spurred by soaring Chinese demand for petroleum, won […]

Senator Schumer to White House: Tap heating oil reserves

NEW YORK — Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday that the Bush administration should tap into Northeast heating oil reserves to hold down rising home heating costs this winter, including a projected $1.2 billion increase in New York City. A Department of Energy spokesman said Sunday that would be a bad idea that could deplete the […]

Thailand oil use to fall

THAILAND’S consumption of oil will drop this year as consumers save energy because of higher oil prices, and it isn’t hurting economic expansion, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said, without giving details. “It’s the first time that our energy consumption is declining while at the same time the country’s GDP is still expanding,” Thaksin said on […]

China: Oil consumption growth drops 14% Jan-Sept

 China’s refined oil consumption increased only by 5.6 percent year-on-year in the first nine months on stable coal supply, sharply lower than the 19.7 percent growth in the same period last year, a government report said Tuesday.     The country’s coal production increased by 10.2 percent to 1.3 billion tons during this period, said the report […]

The roots of the Japanese oil victory in Lybia

In February 2000, Japan began the new century on a sour note when it lost its rights to the Khafji oil field in the Saudi-Kuwaiti neutral zone. Japan’s Arabian Oil Company had held exploration rights in that zone since 1957, and the loss of such a long-term investment was keenly felt. The problem was that […]

High Oil Prices Fueling the Next Gold Rush

The oil price hikes of the 1970s came to be regarded by major oil exporters as a mistake. Of course, they reaped enormous financial gains as oil prices rose tenfold between 1973 and 1980, but over the longer term the negatives outweighed the positives. The industrial world fell into a recession and oil demand sagged. […]

IOI reaps from high-yield oil palms

Malysian palm oil producer IOI has recently secured a long-term contract with the Netherlands-based Biox Group BV to supply palm-based products, namely palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) and refined, bleached and deodorised (RBD) olein. Biox, which is Europe’s largest and fastest-growing supplier of special bio-fuel blends for the energy sector, is renting a site at […]

Russian, Chinese firms battle for oil in Kazakhstan

While the government of Kazakhstan is ‘politically and historically closer to Russia, and is wary of China,’ it nonetheless believes that ‘its interest lies in a diversification of investments and export routes’ A battle between Russian oil giant Lukoil and China’s CNPC for control of key energy assets in Kazakhstan intensified last week with both […]

Minister declares nuclear ‘renewable’

Nuclear power is a renewable energy source, a government minister has declared, indicating a growing acceptance that future energy sources will have to be nuclear. In a debate on energy security in the House of Lords, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the Science and Innovation Minister, was asked whether he would reclassify nuclear as renewable energy. […]

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