Understanding Energy Risk
That’s what BBC TV news is saying will be a shocking admission by the president when he goes on air tonight in the US to speak to the nation.
Obviously, most of the US and the world already knows about America’s addiction. But for Bush, a dyed in the wool oil industry supporter to say such a thing suggests either a Road to Damascus moment or some shrewd populist politicking in a week when ExxonMobil announced profits of $10 billion. You decide.
Read it here, courtesy of the WSJ.com.
The Observer speculates today that Iran crisis ‘could drive oil over $90′. Actually, the paper is quoting the Economist Intelligence Unit when it comes up with this figure but that hardly diminishes the sense of concern being felt around the world as the UN security council decides how to proceed against Iran’s nuclear build-up.
Bit of perspective here. The last time oil prices hit $90 (adjusting for inflation that is) was in 1980. The reason then? Iran again as prices spiked to all-time highs following first the fall of the Shah and then the start of the Iraq-Iran war.
With global supplies remaining tight for the foreseeable future (the Observer article quotes another analyst who estimates it will take two years for producers to recover spare production/refining capacity), any other oil shock - are we all keeping an eye on Nigeria? - will be bad in the short and long term.
Climate expert James Hansen says the Bush administration is unhappy about his calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Less ice in the Arctic means new places to drill for oil. And with that in mind, Arctic bordering nations including the US, Russia and Denmark (courtesy of Greenland) are all staking a claim to land and water rights in the northernmost parts of the world. Canada, as this BBC report suggests, has only just woken up to this brewing tundra grab and is now sending icebreakers north to stake its own claim.
And you thought the Middle East had oil political problems…..
A BP exec says oil companies will invest heavily in new technology over the coming years. Well they have to do something with all that profit they’ve made on oil markets (partly due to their underinvestment in refining technology).
As the WSJ reports, the president refuses to consider a bailout for the struggling auto industry and recommends they make more relevant products - by which we can only assume he means more fuel-efficienct or alternative energy driven cars and trucks.
Sage advice from a president who has yet to take any real steps in raising fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and who has campaigned for more domestic oil production as a way of ending America’s foreign oil dependence. You’ll excuse GM, Ford and the American public if they think they are getting mixed messages from their president.
The New York Times in a blistering indictment of Ford and GM’s business strategy says the US auto industry has to develop flexible fuel vehicles if it is going to compete in a global marketplace that looks set to be driven by high oil prices for years to come.
Saudi Arabia has pledeged to pump more oil to meet the latest increase in crude prices. Um, where exactly is all this new oil coming from and how, if all its previous pledges have had little effect on prices for the last two years, does Saudi Arabia expect the market to believe it can make a difference this time.
The promise seems twice as hollow when you consider that the Saudis will aim to keep OPEC producing at peak levels….just as OPEC member Iran threatens to cut production, which caused this price spike in the first place.
Saudi Arabia has long been the most conservative member of OPEC and understands that high oil prices will ultimately hit them the hardest as oil dependent nations wake up and see the need to diversify their energy supplies. OPEC suffered the most from its oil price increases in the 1970s as western nations sought new oil from other parts of the world and prices plummeted.
Iran might be playing a political weapon but Saudi Arabia is more interested in palying the pusherman
Trust a bunch of academics to come up with a pop-culture method of tracking environmental performance. Researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities have developed the world’s first ever Green List. The UK ranks 5th overall apparently leading the British government to rejoice (they need all the validation they can get when it comes to environmental performance) and enviro activitists to cry foul.
What to do if a terrorist attack sends oil prices soaring to $120 a barrel? Not the type of relaxing after-dinner conversation most of us expect to have but that’s one of the discussions tabled at the World Economic Forum’s annual big-wig meeting this month at Davos according to WSJ.com.
Along with the normal glitterati of celebs, top execs from all the Majors as well as the head of OPEC will be on hand. Love to be a fly on the wall to hear the debate between Western oil companies and OPEC titled: “How do we rein in those crazy Iranians so that they don’t prompt a serious investment in renewable energy and ruin it for the rest of us.”
Explosions along two main pipelines that carry gas from Russia to Georgia are being blamed on Russia forces by the Georgian leader, Mikhail Saakashvili.
Georgia and Russia have been at odds ever since the West-leaning Saakashvili came to power in 2003. He has consistently accused the Putin government of trying to undermine him and has infuriated Moscow by inviting US military advisors to train his forces in anti-insurgency operations.
It’s hard to say if this latest petro-pressure was okayed by Moscow, but following on the heels of the stand-off with Ukraine, complaints from European nations that their Russian gas supplies have been diverted and Iran’s bellicose comments over cutting off oil supplies, it seems that energy could become a potent weapon in 2006.