When Arab oil exporters imposed their embargo on the U.S. and the Netherlands in October 1973, George Schultz noted that the United Kingdom and France faced hardly any problem accessing crude oil supplies.Schultz was Secretary of the Treasury at the time and had earlier been in charge of Nixon’s Cabinet Task Force on Oil Import …
A few weeks back George Schultz posted a few happy memories on a Hoover Institution website from his time heading Nixon’s Cabinet Task Force on Oil Import Control way back in 1969 and 1970. The task force was charged with reviewing the existing mandatory oil import quotas, first imposed under the Eisenhower administration, and recommending …
Energy Imports and Energy Security: a View from 1970 Read More »
For many years Lubbock, Texas was the largest or among the largest cities with dual, competing electric utilities. If a consumer was unhappy with utility A, all it took was a phone call and about three days and the consumer would be hooked up to utility B. Standard economic theory suggests that such an arrangement …
Tesla Motors is doing more than shaking up the automobile industry by producing an exciting high-end electric vehicle and establishing a network of battery-swapping stations. Tesla wants to sell directly to consumers, bypassing established dealer franchising that dominates the industry. But such dealer franchising has not been a mere transaction-cost-driven Coasian outcome — it’s undergirded …
Last week I attended Mark Finley’s presentation in Chicago of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy for this year. In his role as General Manager of Global Energy Markets at BP, Mark is responsible for this annual analytical survey of world energy production, consumption, and trends. He’s an outstanding economist whose presentations are a master …
Interesting news — according to this BBC article, the most recent British Geological Survey indicates that there may be twice the shale gas deposits in the UK that were previously anticipated. Such a large potential source of natural gas has substantial implications: “If the estimates are proved correct, that would still suggest recoverable reserves of …
Michael Giberson Joe Ragan, a VP at Power generation company NRG, recently opined in the Houston Chronicle in favor of a capacity market for the ERCOT power grid in Texas. A capacity market provides what you might call “being there” payments to generators, whether the generator’s power turns out to be demanded in the market …
Lynne Kiesling As Megan McArdle noted on Wednesday, fracking in the US is causing dissension within OPEC; couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of cartel members. Megan’s analysis is dead on, well worth reading, and reveals how different the ideal strategies are of the different OPEC members. At some level, this is not new — …
Michael Giberson What do changes in the domestic U.S. natural gas market have to tell us about the world oil market? Hirsch, Bezdek, and Wendling wrote, “The North American natural gas situation provides some useful lessons relevant to the peaking of conventional world oil production.” Here is their assessment of the North American natural gas …
Michael Giberson … or a clumsy cartel causing excessive volatility in world oil prices, or maybe none of the above. Earlier this week the Cato Institute hosted a discussion of a recent report by Andrew Morriss and Roger Meiners, “Competition in World Oil Markets: A Meta-Analysis and Review.” Panelists included Morriss, FedEx chairman Frederick Smith, and …
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