OPEC Sets A Quota: Throwing Darts In The Dark
OPEC meets this week to set its production quota for the third quarter, and the most likely outcome is for no change. Oil traders and pundits all have opinions about what they will do, and what they...
View ArticleEPA And Fracking Opponents: It Was Never About The Science!
There has been a lot of hullabaloo about the new fracking study by the EPA which found minimal problems from the practice. The oil industry hailed it as exculpatory while most environmentalists...
View ArticleHow Elon Musk Could Make Tesla Animal Cruelty-Free
After reading that two shareholders have proposed that Tesla become the first animal cruelty-free automaker, my first thought was to scoff, but given the sincerity of the request, it seems a shame not...
View ArticleDesperate Venezuela (1): The Crash In Revenues
Reports are that Venezuela is negotiating another loan from China, which is apparently almost as disturbing to Venezuelans as some Chinese. Loaning ever-increasing amounts to a government that looks to...
View ArticleDesperate Venezuela (2): Fire Or Ice?
The situation in Venezuela is unsustainable. The lack of medicine, the high crime rate, scarcity of basic consumer goods are creating an anger that can’t be assuaged. How can a government that makes...
View ArticleDesperate Venezuela 3: Will China Learn The Value Of Friendship?
In recent years, China has reportedly loaned the Venezuelan government as much as $70 billion, much of it apparently secured with promises of oil deliveries. Some of this has already been repaid, it is...
View ArticleElon Musk: Good Vision, Bad Math On Tesla
Elon Musk has become a 21st century rock star and his every move and pronouncement, um, tweet, sends frissons throughout the automotive and energy industries, or at least the press covering them. His...
View ArticleDesperate Venezuela 4: Oil Market Impact Of Unrest
Low oil prices would seem to suggest that there is nothing to worry about from potential political unrest in Venezuela. I think it’s more that the situation in Venezuela’s problems remain over the...
View ArticleThe New York Fracking Ban: Politics Trump Science
After hemming and hawing for five years, the state of New York decided to ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing of shale to extract petroleum. Apparently, the state health commissioner Dr. Howard...
View ArticleLow Oil Prices: History Not Science Fiction
In the late 1990s, after the oil price boom of 1996 and bust of 1998, with the accompanying hire-and-fire cycle in the industry, company executives sighed and talked about how they would exhibit...
View ArticleSome Predictions For The 2015 Oil Market
The Annie Forecast: The sun will come up tomorrow Some predictions are easy to make because they are simply acknowledgment of reality. Best example: The sun will come up, but solar power will remain...
View ArticleThe Conspiracy Behind The Oil Price Collapse (Satire)
A host of conspiracies have been touted to explain 2014's oil price drop, from the US desire to hurt Russia, to the Saudis attack on US shale producers, not to mention both countries’ antagonism to...
View ArticleKing Abdallah's Illness, Political Change And The Oil Market
With King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia in serious condition, oil market participants are undoubtedly nervous that this could portend change and even upheaval in Saudi Arabia. Concern that his death could...
View ArticleThe Oil Price Outlook For 2015: Beware Optimism
Around the world, petroleum industry executives at companies from Chevron to ExxonMobil to BP to Continental Resources are praying for oil prices to "recover," and quite a number of forecasters are...
View ArticleGreen Cars: The Ghost Of Henry Ford
In one of the most famous anecdotes about the automobile industry, Henry Ford, who created the production line and made cars a mass-consumer item, was asked why he didn’t offer cars in different...
View ArticleSen. Ed Markey Stirs The Keystone Pot With An Export Ban Proposal
Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey is about as close as an energy economist can come to a straw man. Listening to him speak can leave one open-jawed as he hews, not just to a liberal position, but a 1960s...
View Article'Twas Ugly Killed The Beast: Low Oil Prices Didn't Defeat The Soviets
Whether the current oil price collapse is more like 1986 and will linger (as I would argue), or 1998, and will be soon reversed (as T. Boone Pickens, Harold Hamm and John Hofmeister believe) is an open...
View ArticleForecasts Of Oil Price Bottom And Recovery
For oil price forecasters, it is all but mandatory to start with self-deprecating humor, because the track record is so bad. Late 2013, surveys showed predictions for 2014 of $104 per barrel for Brent....
View Article$20 Oil Rears Its Ugly Head
As the petroleum industry enters the historically weak second quarter with U.S. crude inventories at highs, the very real possibility that the price will drop sharply from current levels must be...
View ArticleWill Nigeria Election Mean A 1998-Style Oil Price Recovery?
It now appears as if Goodluck Jonathan will lose the presidency in Nigeria, and many are quick to call him a casualty of low oil prices. The last time oil prices dropped sharply (ignoring the 2008...
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