America’s riotous real estate

Last February the sirens howled in Hollywood as the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) rushed reinforcements to the 5600-block of La Mirada Avenue. While a police captain barked orders through a bullhorn, an angry crowd of 3,000 shouted back expletives. A passer-by might have mistaken the confrontation for a major movie shoot, or perhaps the […]

Panel recommends Indonesia leave Opec

JAKARTA – A government panel has proposed that Indonesia cease being a member of the Opec oil cartel and become an observer because of the financial costs of membership, a document obtained by Reuters on Tuesday showed.
Indonesia, Asia-Pacific’s only Opec member, is unable to meet its assigned Opec supply quota and last year become a net oil importer due to production problems at ageing wells and a lack of fresh funds for investments.
The panel of senior oil and other government officials, appointed in February, examined three proposals: remain an Opec member, quit the group, or change its status to that of observer, the document showed.
“Considering the above, it can be recommended that if possible (Indonesia) take the third alternative, which is to remain a member but seek an observer status, so freeing us from the obligation to pay contributions,” said the document.

Reuters via nzherald.co.nz

Iran’s Gasoline Consumption Tipped To Rise By 10 pct This Year

Iran’s gasoline consumption would grow by 10 per cent this year, an oil company chief predicted here. Managing director of NATIONAL IRANIAN OIL PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION COMPANY (NIOPDC) Hossein Kashefi told the English-language Iran Daily that daily import of gasoline would climb to 26 million liters as consumption grows to 66 million liters a day […]

Bush to raise question of oil production with Saudi Arabia

Bush to raise oil concerns with Saudis Says high oil threatens global economy, wants Saudis to increase production. Saudis promise more oil April 19, 2005: 6:47 PM EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday he will raise concerns about the effects of high energy costs on the global economy when he […]

Mexico’s oil reserves overstated

Pemex: Reserves overestimated The national petroleum giant reports that deepwater deposits in the Gulf of Mexico may be half of what was initially predicted. BY NO According to a new study published on Sunday by state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, the potential for oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has been greatly overestimated. Petroleos […]

Privitization of Mexico’s oil considered

Privatize Mexico’s Oil The Monitor’s View The government of Mexico receives more than a third of its funding from its state-run oil monopoly, PetrWhile many countries live directly from their oil revenues, this set-up is not conducive to ending corruption and reinforcing democracy, as Mexico has slowly been trying to do. By relying on Pemex […]

Crystals may be sunken energy treasure

Unfortunately, no one is sure how to accurately find large accumulations of crystals, or safely and economically withdraw the gas from the depths. And some scientists are warning that a misstep in the pursuit of methane hydrate could lead to catastrophic consequences Link

Oil price pushes past $52

LONDON (Reuters) – Oil prices shot back above $52 a barrel Tuesday, breaking a two-week decline from record highs as U.S. refinery problems re-ignited gasoline supply worries. U.S. light crude climbed $1.68 to $52.05 a barrel, down from an all-time record $58.28 struck on April 4, but around $8 up from prices at the end […]

GM: No target for return to profits

General Motors Corp.’s first quarter loss — the biggest in 13 years — was about as bad as expected, but the company’s lack of guidance about the problems facing the world’s No. 1 automaker sent its stock skidding Tuesday. GM said it lost $839 million, or $1.48 a share, excluding special items, in the quarter, […]

Wholesale prices jump on energy costs

Wholesale prices rose steeply in March on surging energy costs, the government reported Tuesday, but excluding volatile fuel and food costs producer prices came in tamer than analysts had forecast. The Producer Price Index, the government’s key measure of wholesale prices, rose 0.7 percent in March, compared to the 0.4 percent increase seen in February. […]

Confronting America

America is teetering on the edge of recession. We

OPEC postpones quota hikes until June

KUWAIT/PARIS – The OPEC oil cartel will raise supply to near 25-year highs next month even though it will postpone a formal rise in production quotas until a June meeting, the groupmsnbc

Exploration will not provide the oil to match demand

It is more than a year since oil prices doubled, but what are the oil companies doing? Some exploration continues but little net increase in refining capacity is planned and most of their effort seems to be going into mergers and takeovers. What do they know that they haven’t told us? More oil fields will, […]

Goldman: Costly oil not a bubble

The surge in oil prices during the past year is backed by the economics of supply and demand rather than the result of a short-lived bubble, the global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs said Monday. “The fundamental shift is not a bubble generated by speculation, but that of a systematic upward shift in […]

Oil’s not well with the world

At an estimated cost of $4 billion, and scheduled to take 20 years to build, the proposed TransApex tunnel network is arguably the most ambitious construction project in Brisbane’s history. But chances are the project probably will be discontinued after the tunnel to the airport is completed in 2013. The reason

Tilt! – Stephen Roach

An unbalanced global economy is at risk of becoming unhinged. Beset by record imbalances between current account deficits and surpluses, it doesn

High Energy Prices are here to stay – Marshall Auerback

Concern that rising oil prices could harm the global economy dominated weekend meetings of world finance ministers and central bankers who gathered after Wall Street plunged to new lows for 2005. There were intense talks about the energy situation at both the meetings of the Group of Seven major industrialized countries and the policy-making committee […]

Housing starts tumble

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Housing starts plunged 17.6 percent in March, marking their steepest drop in more than 14 years, as groundbreaking for both single-family and multi-family homes tumbled, a Commerce Department report showed Tuesday. CNN Money

Oil unlimited?

Predictably, the recent rise in oil prices has the usual doom-and-gloom crowd, which has consistently been wrong for 30 years, saying once again that this proves we are running out of oil and that severe curbs on gasoline consumption must be imposed to preserve what little is left for future generations. They need not worry. There is growing evidence that oil is far more plentiful than we have been led to believe.

Washington Times

Twilight In The Desert:

The Coming Saudi Oil Shock And The World Economy

PDF:
Matthew Simmons book/ presentation

Are Oil Prices Headed for a ‘Super Spike’?

So just who is this super-spike man, and what in the world was he thinking? Well, his name is Arjun Murti, and he’s a veteran oil analyst and a managing director at Goldman. Press-shy by nature anyway, the poor guy was so unsettled by the reaction to his report that he refused all interview requests

World blackouts may grow as investment stalls

Blackouts could get more frequent as utilities fail to attract investment needed to secure future power supplies, according to a global survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Seventy two percent of utility bosses surveyed said supply security was a major concern, up from 65 percent in a similar poll last year, PwC said on Monday. More than a […]

German Investor Confidence Wanes as Oil Darkens Growth Outlook

Investor confidence in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, waned for the first time in six months in April amid concern record oil prices will damp economic growth. The ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim said today its index of institutional and analyst sentiment fell to 20.1 from March’s 36.3. Economists expected a decline to […]

Algeria seeks oil on flashpoint border

Algeria says it will pump millions of dollars into oil exploration along the Moroccan border, an area considered dangerous for decades due to the two countries’ differences over Western Sahara. Algeria’s declaration on Saturday came a day after Morocco said chances of discovering profit-making oil in the kingdom were intact.

Is it all relative? Maybe oil prices aren’t so bad, after all

We groan when our grandparents go on about Coca-Cola costing only a nickel in their day. How did things become so much more expensive, they always want to know? Here’s the short answer: With inflation factored in, that same bottle of Coke during World War II would cost roughly what we pay for it today. […]

Sleepwalking into the Apocalypse: A conversation on Peak Oil

Recently, I’ve been discussing with friends the prospects for Life After Cheap Petroleum. It’s surreal sometimes to see the way we all go about our lives as if there were no end to the Potemkin Village fossil fuel economy we’ve built ourselves. Sometimes, talking about the very real reality of resource depletion, you’d think you […]

Student gets 8 years for SUV vandalism

An aspiring physicist was sentenced Monday to more than eight years in prison and ordered to pay $3.5 million for his role in a spree of arson and vandalism that targeted gas-guzzling Hummers and other sports utility vehicles. Rejecting pleas for clemency from William Cottrell, a 24-year-old doctoral candidate in physics at the California Institute […]

UK inflation rate jumps to 1.9%

The annual rate of UK inflation rose to a greater-than-expected 1.9% in March, its highest level for nearly seven years. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said price rises in food, furniture, petrol and air fares contributed to the rise.

Calls for $105 Oil May Have Pegged Top in Oil Prices

In early April, Goldman Sachs shocked Wall Street when its oil analysis group predicted that the price of oil would rise to $105 per barrel. The events since then have proven the report to be wrong, at least in the short term. As of April 18, 2005, oil prices, after having risen to $58 per […]

Iran tries to win friends using its fuel reserves

As it faces the threat of global sanctions from the United States and Europe over its suspected nuclear weapons program, Iran is fighting back with a powerful weapon of its own: its vast oil and gas resources. Iran’s ruling clerics are meticulously arranging energy sales and building partnerships with influential countries, including China and India, […]

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