Energy Wars

Saudi Arabia confirmed it would pump *9.7m barrels a day* next month, an increase of 200,000 and the highest level in nearly 30 years, as it repeated its standard offer of extra barrels if customers demanded them.

If you want to flush out market manipulation, don't turn to the sleuths in Congress. They've been probing trading of the oil markets for two years and completely missed a company at the center of the action. During that period, a barrel of crude oil has risen from $50 to $140, leaving a wide swath of Americans facing a choice this coming winter of buying food or paying their heating bill.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The price of retail gasoline could fall by half, to around $2 a gallon, within 30 days of passage of a law to limit speculation in energy-futures markets, four energy analysts told Congress on Monday. Testifying to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management said that the price of oil would quickly drop closer to its marginal cost of around $65 to $75 a barrel, about half the current $135

As the pain induced by higher oil prices spreads to an ever growing share of the American (and world) population, pundits and politicians have been quick to blame assorted villains--greedy oil companies, heartless commodity speculators and OPEC. It's true that each of these parties has contributed to and benefited from the steep run-up. But the sharp growth in petroleum costs is due far more to a combination of soaring international demand and slackening supply--compounded by the ruinous policies of the Bush Administration--than to the behavior of those other actors.

KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Tonight, oil was again in the headlines across the globe. The world's main oil producers and consumers will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Sunday for a summit of home truths, we hope, about whether anything substantial can really be done to force the price of oil down, not just for a few weeks or months, but beyond. And the truth seems to be: no, it can't. Australia's Energy Minister Martin Ferguson will be there, he says, to push for increased production. But there's serious doubt about OPEC's (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) capacity to sustain a meaningful boost.

Bob Hirsch talking "Worst Case Scenarios" for Oil...as in "maybe $500/bbl" in the next few years...with increasing uncertainty/volatility (yes, that's right, oil could snap back down to $100/bbl, but then snap back up even higher again in a few months...without even considering geopolitics and other "above ground factors," which of course we must.)

REFINED, distilled and then burnt, petrol's explosive power propels the world's largest economy. But its soaring price is punching holes in the US engine - and the rest of us are anything but immune. The globe's thirstiest energy consumer is reeling from high petrol prices, with a barrel of oil hitting $US137 ($145) on Thursday's markets. Even if there is still division about whether the high point of global production - "peak oil" - has been reached, most analysts agree that cheap oil is finished.

Crude oil prices rose sharply on the world's commodity markets tonight after the head of Opec dismissed as "irrational and illogical" a call by Gordon Brown for the cartel to pump more oil.

When Clinton and McCain proposed cutting gas taxes, I asked my environmental economics students, "So how much do you think drivers will save?" The students diligently Googled the numbers. "Well," said one, "the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents and the average state tax is 28.6 cents, so that's 47 cents a gallon drivers will save!" "But what about elasticity of demand and supply?" I asked. "Oh!!! Forgot about that!"

Forget $4 per gallon for gasoline--let's talk about how things will be--or could be--when it's $25/gallon and strictly rationed: 5 gallons per household per month. I don't mean to trigger a cardiac arrest, but here is a serious, experienced analyst foreseeing $450/barrel oil. At about 28 gallons of distillate (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, etc.) per barrel, that's $16/gallon without refining, shipping, taxes and retailing expenses. So let's just call it $25 per gallon.

One of the standard talking points about high gas prices is the notion that restrictions on exploration and drilling in environmentally sensitive federal lands and offshore areas have tightened supplies of oil at a time of heightened demand. If we can just open those areas and drill more, the logic goes, gas prices would plummet. Never mind that the oil in ANWR wouldn't be available for years. Moreover, as the Campaign for Our Future notes: Drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, at most, lower the cost of a barrel of crude oil by 50 cents in 2025.

The world's largest solar photovoltaic farm is strangely beautiful. Fields lined with solar panels tilting sunward seem almost like a massive environmental art project-one with an empowering message to the world. We can find ways to run the world predominantly on clean energy if we choose to. It's already beginning. By 2020, Portugal plans to generate over a third of its energy from renewables, with that percentage increasing every year.

Last Tuesday I was a witness of a very sad episode. Belgian riot police employed force against a group of French and Italian fishermen marching to the European quarter to protest violently against high price of fuel. A car crash occurred as a consequence of the riots. The frustration of the demonstration is easy to understand, but certainly demonstrations and street fights are not the answer to this problem. Oil prices are high and will go higher. No demonstration can change that.

American policymakers have long viewed the protection of overseas oil supplies as an essential matter of "national security," requiring the threat of - and sometimes the use of - military force. This is now an unquestioned part of American foreign policy

The situation is not good. Our average gasoline price just climbed past $4 a gallon and all indications are that it will continue to rise. After Goldman-Sachs made headlines by telling us that oil is going to $150 or maybe $200 a barrel in six months or maybe two years, Morgan Stanley announced that oil was going to $150 dollars a barrel by the 4th of July. Not to be outdone, the CEO of Russia's Gazprom, weighed in with a forecast of $250 oil in the "foreseeable future." As oil jumped $11 in a single day to just below $140 last week, all of these estimates seem plausible.

We all know that gasoline is at $4 a gallon and oil is at $135 a barrel. But if you think that's the end of the story, don't talk to economist Jeffrey Rubin of CIBC World Markets. By Rubin's reckoning, we've barely passed the halfway point on a steady march upward that will take gasoline to $7 a gallon and oil to $225 by 2012. Though there will be fluctuations, the underlying rise in prices, he says, will have pervasive and often surprising side effects. Among them:

ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview.

Because of their sheer scale, all Canadians are affected by the Tar Sands, no matter where they live. If you live downstream, your water is being polluted and your fish and wildlife may be dangerous to eat. If you live in Saskatchewan you are a victim of acid rain. If you live in BC, "supertankers" may soon be plying your shoreline carrying Tar Sands oil to Asia. If you live in Ontario, you are exposed to harmful emissions from the refining of Tar Sands Oil. And the impacts do not stop at Canada's border - US refineries are re-tooling to handle the dirty oil from Alberta.

SOUTH-SOUTH elders, youth leaders and organisations, weekend, described as an insult and an affront to the leaders and people of the region the plan by the Federal Government to draft one-time Minister of External Affairs and Under Secretary-General (USG) of the United Nations, Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari to preside over the forthcoming summit on the Niger Delta, saying they will not accept it.