Crisis dents Brazil’s dreams of oil bonanza

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Plummeting crude prices and the evaporation of global credit seem certain to delay development of huge oil reserves off Brazil’s coast, which the government had hoped would solve many of the country’s ills. Just two months ago, with the price of oil at around $120 a barrel, Brazil was brimming […]

Booming Persian Gulf gets market reality check

Abdullah Hajeri led a march on the Emir The region

Petrobras, Cuba to Explore for Oil Close to Florida

(Bloomberg) — Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Cuba’s state-run petroleum company have signed an agreement to explore for oil off the communist island’s coastline about 100 miles from Key West, Florida. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed the agreement with his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, at a ceremony today in Havana. Petrobras, as […]

Peak Oil: Are Oil Prices Destined to Rise Again?

Crude oil futures continued down on Friday, spooked by the dim outlook for the U.S. economy. That Falling oil prices are only going to accelerate that trend, analysts warn, at a time when OPEC is accelerating output cuts and production declines at oil fields around the world is apparently increasing. Big oil as a whole […]

Edwin Black: The Plan

FP: So is The Plan is about energy independence? Black: Not at all. I FP: What could cause such an interruption? Black: Although many fear a protracted interruption could arise from a hurricane, such as Katrina or Ike, that can be fixed. True, it will cause discomfort for several weeks in certain parts of the […]

T. Boone Pickens liquidates energy equity hedge fund

Hedge fund operator and oil prognosticator T. Boone Pickens liquidated one of his hedge funds last month as the stock markets plunged. The Dallas billionaire converted his energy equity fund to cash and offered investors the opportunity to withdraw their money early. The fund started with $2 billion and could be down to around $400 […]

New Anxiety Grips Russia

MOSCOW This week

Promises, Promises: Chasing an elusive pledge

WASHINGTON Is it possible, or even desirable? Many energy experts say it’s not. People disagree on what energy independence means

For lack of a better word, wow.

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — Global crude-oil output is falling faster than expected, leaving producers struggling to meet demand without extra investment, the Financial Times said, citing a draft of an International Energy Agency report. Annual production is set to drop by 9.1 percent in the absence of additional investment, according to the draft of the […]

Iran feels economic pain as oil prices fall

TEHRAN, Iran The reason: As oil prices plunge because of the global slowdown, Iran is caught in a classic crunch. Ahmadinejad’s government failed to save enough of the billions in oil windfall it earned during the good years to now cushion the bad. The same crunch afflicts Venezuela and to a lesser extent, Russia, as […]

West African pirates kidnap French oilmen

YAOUNDE (AFP) The “Bourbon Sagitta” was stormed overnight as it took part in an operation to load crude oil onto a tanker in the Gulf of Guinea, near Cameroon’s maritime frontier with Nigeria, the shipping firm Bourbon told AFP in Marseille. “Armed individuals aboard two ‘flying boats’ boarded the ship and took 10 of the […]

What does cheap oil mean for investors?

Falling oil prices mean companies are scaling back on hard-to-exploit sites. What does that mean for oil supplies What’s causing this sudden pullback? Tumbling oil prices. As recently as July the price per barrel of Brent crude was setting new records

Man-made climate change seen in Antarctica, Arctic

OSLO (Reuters) – Both Antarctica and the Arctic are getting less icy because of global warming, scientists said on Thursday in a study that extends evidence of man-made climate change to every continent. Detection of a human cause of warming at both ends of the earth also strengthens a need to understand ice sheets on […]

Financial crisis has lessons for climate fight:expert

GOLD COAST, Australia (Reuters) – The world still has the funds and ability to fight climate change and nations should not use the financial crisis to delay policies on tackling global warming, a top carbon expert said on Thursday. James Cameron, vice-chairman of London-based Climate Change Capital, said the mobilization of trillions of dollars over […]

Shift to cleared trade could unblock oil markets

LONDON (Reuters) – Exchange-style clearing offers a way forward for the multi-billion dollar over-the-counter market in oil derivatives that has seized up because of the credit crisis. Volumes of over-the-counter (OTC) trade slumped in September after the crisis in the banking sector made participants nervous about counterparty credit risk. “The physical oil market is still […]

Nigeria to trim oil exports by 5 percent due OPEC cuts

LONDON (Reuters) – Nigeria will reduce crude oil export volumes by 5 percent in November and December due to OPEC’s production cut, its state oil firm said on Thursday. Nigeria joins the United Arab Emirates, which announced export cuts after the group’s emergency meeting last week. “As a result of the production cut announced by […]

Credit crisis to spur futures market oversight

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers’ zeal for new regulations will soon spread beyond the battered financial sector to futures markets as a newly elected Congress pounces on the credit crisis to expand government oversight. With oil prices surging to record levels above $147 a barrel this summer, many in Congress blamed speculators in futures markets […]

UK firms urged to wake up to peak oil risk

Non-executive chairmen advised to start asking questions over threat posed by dwindling oil supplies UK business leaders were today urged to undertake an assessment of the risks posed by the so-called peak oil phenomenon and join in efforts to lobby the government to take the threat more seriously, following the publication yesterday warning global oil […]

Russia: New cars stuck in limbo as crisis begins to bite

As the credit crisis spreads, car dealers are turning back deliveries of new vehicles. Hundreds of unsold cars line the road to Moscow as Renault Russia claims it has nowhere to put them. Truck drivers are threatening to block the road if the situation is not resolved. So far no one, not Renault nor the […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: A Steepening Slope

Thus far, last week’s OPEC production cut of 1.5 million barrels a day (b/d) has done little to stem the slide in oil prices. Immediately after the cut, prices went down another $4 on the theory that the cut was too small. OPEC of course is trying to maximize its revenue in real dollars. If […]

Oil-rich, remote and difficult

As rich countries poured billions of dollars into bank bailouts, China quietly announced plans last month to invest $100bn building roads and railways to open up remote central Asia to the rest of the world. More than 20,000km of rail track will be built in the coming decade to bring Chinese goods into central Asia […]

Oil-Price Rebound Could Be Severe

The slump in oil prices has spread relief among consumers and fuel-reliant industries, but also is squeezing the companies who could invest in new sources of oil — spurring concerns that prices will prompt them to shelve investments. Industry executives warn that could mean the world will face a dramatic ramping up of prices as […]

Richard Heinberg: Go Develop Yourself

In a recent commentary I suggested that, due to the confluence of the unfolding economic crisis and Peak Oil, we have now seen the last of aggregate world economic growth For many years I have resisted using the language of

Readily available credit and high oil prices were a boon for clean energy businesses. Fortune smiled on technologies like wind and solar when money was cheap, and when the gap in price between traditional fuels and low-carbon alternatives was narrow enough to make the alternatives look profitable. But credit markets have seized up and the […]

Cutting Through the Coskata Cellulosic Ethanol Hype

I have a strong distaste for companies or individuals who overpromise and underdeliver. Changing World Technologies (CWT) and their thermal depolymerization (TDP) technology is probably the poster child for companies that promised lots and delivered little. The hype was that they had the “technological savvy” to “turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other […]

Oil’s stunning retreat: How long can it last?

NEW YORK: After surging to record levels this summer, oil prices have suffered a dizzying collapse in recent months, echoing the darkening prospects of the global economy. Within three months, drastic swings drove oil prices from their peak of $147.27 a barrel to less than $65 a barrel. Oil industry analysts at Goldman Sachs, who […]

As Gas Prices Go Down, Driving Goes Up

VINTON, La. The sharp decline in gasoline use earlier this year

Oil’s Dropped, but Price Contracts Haven’t

As oil prices were spiking in July, Southwest Airlines chief executive Gary C. Kelly told a conference that his company was “very well prepared to weather the storm” and “prepared for $4 jet fuel.” But it turned out that what Southwest wasn’t ready for was $2 jet fuel. Famous for its ability to play the […]

Chevron Project Offers Glimpse Of Future: More Work, Less Oil

RIO DE JANEIRO — Chevron Corp. executive Ali Moshiri spent the past seven years scouring the globe for hard-to-get equipment, schmoozing foreign officials and taking billion-dollar risks to fast-track a new oil prospect off the coast of Brazil. Despite the full-out effort, Mr. Moshiri concedes Chevron’s $3 billion Frade (pronounced Frah-jay) project is a mediocre […]

Russia pushes an ‘OPEC’ for natural-gas nations

…For Russia, which blames the US for causing the current global financial crisis and the attendant collapse of oil and other commodity prices, forging new energy-based international relationships holds political promise. “There is a clear desire in Moscow to work toward breaking what it perceives as US dominance of the world economy, but it’s way […]

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