Archive for January, 2010

 

Weekly Political Roundup–Growing Consensus on Energy Security

The State of the Union on Wednesday was not the only public sign of a possible shift on energy and climate legislation.  Even before the president appeared to back gently away from cap and trade legislation (as discussed in yeste...

SOTU keeps energy/climate legislation alive(?)

The great Washington pastime of reading between the lines of the President's State of the Union address is in full swing.  If the POTUS had last night said "I support the Waxman-Markey bill and ask the Senate to pass it" -- that ...

Common Sense Required in Kazakhstan Dispute

The Financial Times reported yesterday that Kazakhstan is threatening to extract higher taxes from western oil majors.  Contracts on the country’s three largest oil projects (led by ChevronTexaco, BG/Eni and Eni respectively) w...

Cyber attacks threaten major oil companies

A SAFE Intelligence Report published this month (not yet publicly available) discusses the issue of energy infrastructure cyber security – in other words, the vulnerability of our nation’s electricity, oil, and gas facilities ...

Weekly Political Roundup – Falling Dominoes

Republican Scott Brown’s upset Senate win in the quintessential Blue State of Massachusetts has Democrats fretting about the state of their stalled agenda and now-hemorrhaging majority. Energy security hawk, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D...

Hope springs from Hoyer’s comments

Reuters is reporting comments from the number two leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer (D-MD), that breathe new life into the on-going debate about whether to pass economy-boosting energy security legislation t...

Oil Prices Continue to Interest

In two recent posts (“Is Oil Overvalued?” and “Oil Prices: Speculation vs. Fundamentals”), we have highlighted the always volatile issue of crude oil prices.  The first post asked why despite a global recession and health...

Oil Prices: Speculation vs. Fundamentals

Last week this blog pointed out the current oil price conundrum – extremely high spare capacity of upwards of 4 million barrels per day (mmbd) coinciding with high oil prices. Speculation or rebounding demand? At yesterday’...

“Cap ‘n tax” vs tax ‘n regulate

Today's FT has an nice little blog by Kate MacKenzie entitled "Carbon emissions reduction without cap-and-trade" about various thinking on the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Let's expand on -- and maybe clarify -- ...

Is Oil Overvalued?

This morning WTI crude traded at above $80 per barrel.  A year ago they traded closer to $40 per barrel.  The OECD oil demand projection is set to fall by 4.3% (-2.0 mb/d) year-on-year in 2009 and remain flat in 2010.  Notably,...
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