Oil Futures Up On Oil Demand Projection

Crude futures gained Thursday after the U.S. Department of Energy gave a mixed picture of U.S. petroleum stocks but suggested that it may raise its 2005 projection for oil demand. Analysts said that tightening crude supplies in the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer, heighten supply-related fears and could push prices to new highs. […]

China Bacteria Outbreak Worsens, Dead Pigs Dug Up

The number of people infected by what Chinese authorities believe is a pig-borne bacterial disease in the southwest has jumped by 14 to 131, state media said on Thursday as officials insisted the outbreak could be controlled. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was watching developments closely, but a spokesman said the disease appeared […]

Gas at $2.86? Study sees big toll on jobs

If oil hit $80 a barrel and gas was $2.86 a gallon, consumers would shun big sport utilities in such large numbers that about 297,000 American automotive jobs would be jeopardized. Should gas reach $3.37 a gallon (presuming oil at $100 a barrel), about 465,000 jobs would be in danger. In either case, though, Ohio […]

India, China, the U.S. and the Balance of Power in the Indian Ocean

News on New Delhi’s foreign policy has recently been among the top stories in the media. On April 11, 2005, India started a strategic partnership with China, and, on June 29, 2005, signed a 10-year defense agreement with the United States. Western observers, however, have paid less attention to an ambitious Indian move in the military field: Project Seabird.

…

The geopolitics of the Arabian Sea and the Western Indian Ocean largely explains India’s determination in such an $8.13 billion enterprise. The China-Pakistan-India triangle is more than ever the Arabian Sea’s decisive geostrategic setting. For the Chinese, this trilateral relationship is crucial for two reasons: from the point of view of energy security, the Arabian Sea and Pakistan are Beijing’s access points to the oil-rich Middle East;

Japan Focus

First Field Tests in Germany of Fuel Cells for Homes

The utility company Baden-W

Iran: Door open to foreign investors

Iran’s incoming President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be open to foreign investors and Western companies should not take fright, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

Ahmadinejad, viewed by Western countries as a conservative, takes power next month after he won an election in June in the second-biggest crude exporter of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Al Jazeera

Pollution levy could push up price of European air fares

Ticket prices for return flights out of European airports could rise by up to €9 ($10.85,

”In All Likelihood, Events Are Now Set To Run Their Course”

A few days ago Roger Pielke Jr. pointed to a paper (PDF) by Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics called “On development, demography and climate change: The end of the world as we know it?” Pielke called it “refreshingly clear thinking on climate change.” That’s true, if by “refreshingly clear” he means “weep-silently-aplogize-to-your-children-and-throw-yourself-out-a-window […]

Road construction costs ’soaring’

The cost of constructing new roads is soaring, according to the Campaign for Rural England, which says money would be better spent on green alternatives. Campaigners say that of 151 road schemes recently completed or which are still on-going, 96 have gone over budget and 21 have doubled in cost.BBC

Chevron Speaks Up on Energy Depletion

Some day the world will run out of oil. No one knows for sure when that day will come. But the fact that Chevron, the nation’s second-largest oil company, is using this kind of language in a global campaign indicates that the day may come sooner rather than later. If Chevron is right, the world […]

A Discussion of the Effects of Price on Demand

Heading Out writes: The rising price of oil is obviously having some effect on overall demand. Realistically it is first being felt in the poorer nations of the world. Indonesia, despite its OPEC representative wanting higher prices, is domestically hurting as the price rises. Bolivia is seeing riots over what should be done with their natural gas supplies; Yemen is seeing riots following the doubling of gas prices. Yet there is some ingenuity in the world, in Papua New Guinea they are using coconut oil from abandoned coconuts to power a truck.

Rising prices may also be having an effect on both Indian and Chinese demand. And this may have a global effect, since it was their unanticipated increase in demand last year, which caught a number of people by surprise…

More after the jump at The Oil Drum.

Russia revises up oil production, export estimates for 2005

Russia’s economy ministry revised upward its 2005 estimates for oil production to 474 million tonnes and for oil export to 269 million tonnes, RIA Novosti news agency reported. Previous estimates for oil production and export were 470 million tonnes and 263 million tonnes, respectively, RIA Novosti quoted Andrei Klepach, an official from Russia’s ministry for […]

Nuclear industry to seek foreign investment

China’s ambitious plans to build some 30 nuclear reactors within the next 15 years will provide vast opportunities for foreign architecture & engineering (A&E) companies to cash in on the expanding clean energy sector, industry authorities said.     ”The gigantic project, which means building approximately two reactors each year, will see a great demand for professional […]

ODOT’s Peak At The Future

In theory, there are few things less terrifying than an Oregon Department of Transportation report detailing a pilot program to tax motorists by mileage driven. But tucked into the 55-page report on the possibility of trading taxes by the gallon for taxes by the mile (see “Back-Seat Big Brother,” May 25, 2005) is one passage […]

Will China pose a threat to world energy security?

China’s energy issue has long been under the spotlight in the world recently. Some foreign media even warned against the prospect of “China’s demand for energy as a threat to the world”. Does that logics hold any water? PeoplesDaily

‘Oil to Run Out in Next 15 Years’: President Yudhoyono Says

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that in the next 15 years the crude oil reserves in Indonesia would run out if there were no more new oil fields had been discovered. President Yudhoyono who was paying a state visit to China on July 27 to 30, 2005, made the statement in a meeting with members […]

Yuan, Smuan

The American media pretty much got bamboozled by the China yuan story. Strip away the rhetoric, and the proposed phased-in revaluation will move at the pace of a glacier and likely take years for the yuan to actually catch up to where it should be FinancialSense

Iran – Pakistan – India Pipeline Under Attack Before It

Pipelines traversing international territories often get played up at moments as opportune as their location is strategic. You wonder why so far international terrorists haven’t really cottoned on to this, because an attack on one of the pipelines would not be misplaced in any analytical study on how terrorists conduct their acts of barbarism. An […]

Scarcity economics and overcapacity

Neo-classical economics developed at a time when wealth was limited to what a relatively primitive industrial society could produce, and demand for goods was always greater than their supply. It is the economics of scarcity rooted in the medieval rule of parsimony, or principle of economy, frequently used by Franciscan monk William of Ockham (circa […]

Rumsfeld makes it to first base

The United States has headed off – at least temporarily – moves aimed at reducing its military presence in Central Asia. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a three-day swing through the region that ended Wednesday, has received a pledge from Kyrgyzstan that the US can maintain its air base there as long as needed […]

Record heat could be windfall for utilities

The intense heat wave sweeping much of the country is pushing electricity demand to new records — a situation that is stressing the power grid but which also could spur a revenue windfall for some power generators and utilities. Little more than a month into summer, new benchmarks for daily electricity use already have been […]

Oil recovery in Utah may get a big boost

Congress is poised to pass a long-sought energy bill that may finally help convert Utah’s vast oil shale and tar sands into billions of barrels of oil.
“We’ve sought this for years, and now it’s finally happening,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Tuesday. “We have more recoverable oil (in the oil shale and tar sands) in Utah and Colorado than there is in all the Middle East . . . more than a trillion barrels.”

deseretnews.com

BP CEO: Thunder Horse 2005 Start ‘Unlikely’

The startup of oil production at BP PLC’s (BP) Thunder Horse offshore platform in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico – affected by Hurricane Dennis – is “unlikely” to occur at the end of 2005, BP Chief Executive John Browne said Tuesday. The world’s largest semi-submersible platform, Thunder Horse tilted two weeks ago after the hurricane […]

Oil Prices Primed to Climb: Analysts

Is it time to close the book on the speculation theory of crude oil prices? As oil settles in near $60 a barrel, some analysts say it’s time to dispel the notion that heavy trading is the culprit behind record-high prices. Rather than poised for a spectacular crash, oil could keep climbing, they say. Light, […]

Fire Breaks Out on Indian Oil Rig

A fire has broken out on a major oil platform off India’s west coast – there are fears of many casualties. India’s Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said that up to 300 people were on the platform but their fate was unclear. “We had a major fire and the platform has been completely destroyed,” Mr […]

BP cuts production by 3.5% during 2005’s second quarter

Although the TNK-BP Russian-British joint venture has expanded its output, British Petroleum cut production by 3.5% in the second quarter of 2005 due to the higher taxes being levied on Russia’s oil sector and to oil-export restrictions, BP said in a report Tuesday, Gazeta.ru reported. However, market watchers disagree with this assessment. “Indeed, Russian taxes and duties have soared by some 20% of corporate earnings since early 2005. Still this factor cannot explain subsiding BP output. Corporate production may have plunged because of lower output from other BP-owned assets. Or BP simply sold off part of its units,” said Andrei Gromadin, an analyst with MDM-Bank.

RIA Novosti

Sacrifice, That Pesky Idea

The Sunday New York Times had an interesting article called All Quiet on the Home Front, and Some Soldiers Are Asking Why. The second paragraph of the article raises the question:

From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military’s war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?

The article goes on to discuss how the “nation at war” of 2005 bears no resemblance to the behavior of either the government or the citizenry during World War II.* Americans are not being asked to sacrifice in any way, except to perhaps send a care package or two to the troops to ostensibly boost morale. There is no serious talk of a draft (though the liberal blogosphere seems to have its suspicions), and in fact, Americans are even being explicitly told to continue living life as normal to “not to give terrorists a moral victory by giving in to the fear of violence.”

This is psychologically damaging to the troops. According to the article, soldiers are sensing that the regular citizen’s level of committment to this war is pretty weak. Says David C. Hendrickson of Colorado College, “Bush understands that the support of the public for war – especially the war in Iraq – is conditioned on demanding little of the public.”

More discussion of sacrifice (the comments to this post are very good) after the jump at The Oil Drum.

Big 5 ink new climate pact

The United States, Australia, China, India and South Korea are likely to unveil later this week a regional pact to combat greenhouse gas emissions, an Australian government official said on Wednesday.

The official, who declined to be named, confirmed a report in national newspaper The Australian, which said the secretly negotiated pact to tackle climate change would be known as the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate.

The newspaper said the pact would aim to use unspecified technology to “rein in greenhouse gas emissions” but the official said that, unlike the Kyoto protocol, the new agreement would not be focused on reaching specific greenhouse gas emission targets.

CNN

Tanker escapes pirates off Somalia

Armed pirates off the coast of Somalia have tried to board an Italian tanker for the second time in less than a week, Italian port authorities said.

The failed attack occurred on Tuesday morning about 137km from Somalia’s coast and lasted only a few minutes, said First Sergeant Massimo Maccheroni, a spokesman for Italy’s central port authority in Rome.

Al Jazeera

Riots force Yemen to cut fuel prices

The Yemeni cabinet has decided to cut fuel prices, less than a week after 22 people were killed in riots sparked by price rises for petrol, diesel and kerosene.

A Yemeni official on Tuesday said the lower prices would come into effect on Wednesday. Analysts had expected the government to revise its decision to appease public anger.

Price rises caused by cuts in subsidies set off riots in Yemen in the past, often leading the government to revise its decision.

Al Jazeera

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