Pope And Crane On The Energy Bill
Anytime that Carl Pope of the Sierra Club and Ed Crane of the Cato Institute agree on something, it’s worth reading. Such is the case with this opinion piece in the Washington Post today.
Energy markets
Crude Oil Update
We’re drivin’, there’s political uncertainty in the Middle East, and it’s almost August, so U.S. inventories are being depleted in a typical seasonal pattern. Thus, as this Bloomberg News article reports, crude prices have gone up. But they have not gone up much, because the continuing economic malaise is countering the price-increasing factors mentioned above. …
OPEC’s Unsustainable Collusion
More evidence that the OPEC cartel production ceiling is unsustainable collusion. From May to June, OPEC production increased by almost 100,000 barrels per day. Check out the table at the bottom of the article to see who was able to cheat, and by how much, according to these estimates from Platts. Furthermore, this Reuters story …
IEA Demand Estimates
Furthermore, the International Energy Agency announced today that it is revising its oil demand estimates downward for the second half of 2002. They cite the slow economic recovery as the primary reason for the revision. Slower oil demand growth increases the likelihood that prices will remain stable (all other things equal, of course). This pattern …
Oil Market News
Lots of good oil market news today for consumers; a bit less good if energy stocks comprise a substantial share of your investments! A Platts survey of OPEC production shows a huge increase in May, according to a press release on Yahoo Financial News. Iraq coming back online and Venezuela increasing production after the oil …
Busy Week in Energy
This story from CBS Marketwatch does a nice job of summarizing the myriad developments in the energy industry in the past week. More thoughts later about how this house-cleaning is painful in the short run, but extremely beneficial in the long run as long as it doesn’t lead to knee-jerk, reactionary, thoughtless government regulation. Now …
Old Energy, New Energy
A Reuters article today posted on Yahoo Financial News illustrates a fascinating aspect of the energy future — the old fossil fuel industries can help create a “green energy” future more cost-effectively than totally green options. This article cites a presentation by a Shell official who discussed how oil refiners can use gasification to turn …
Energy Trading in Germany
According to Bloomberg News, Germany’s largest energy trader is planning to expand its US operations. What a great example of entrepreneurial opportunism — RWE representatives state explicitly that they have not engaged in the types of questionable trading practices that are driving the financial uncertainty in US energy markets. This is how competition creates stability; …