A federal judge’s ruling last week directing the Obama administration to issue a long-delayed smog standard is reanimating a battle between businesses and environmental groups that has been dormant for three years. The Continue Reading
The satellite images viewed by President Obama before a meeting with eight Western governors were stark, showing how snowpack in California’s mountains had shrunk by 86 percent in a single year. “It was a ‘Houston, we Continue Reading
Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine spun further out of the central government’s control on Sunday as a mob stormed a police station in this Black Sea port and freed from detention Continue Reading
As Ukraine tries to contain a pro-Russian insurgency convulsing its eastern region, a perhaps more significant struggle for the country hinges on what happens beneath the ground here in a Continue Reading
Ukraine continued military operations to dislodge rebels from its eastern industrial heartland as violence that’s spread to the Black Sea gateway of Odessa threatens to loosen Kiev’s control of the regions. Government troops Continue Reading
Given that shale oil production is, in fact, currently doing the most to meet growing oil demand, any shale oil ‘bust’ is likely to have significant implications for an already-strained oil market. [1] While there’s some (strained) logic to the efforts of fossil fuel industry officials and their spokespeople to do nothing but offer the most optimistic scenarios and forecasts about future oil supply and production, it’s impossible to imagine that those in charge are not contemplating the very same facts we on the “other side” of the discussion regularly share. Facts are stubborn things. They refuse to go away, for one. Ideology and optimism may carry one today, but eventually there simply is nothing left to contend with except those often-inconvenient truths. It’s also understandable that foregoing today the accessible and still-economically-feasible extraction and production opportunities at hand in favor of transitioning their own efforts to efforts largely […]
In this informal paper, I conduct Hubbert Linearization exercises on the world’s 11 topoil producers as well as the rest of the world. The results are used to project the Continue Reading
As the Obama administration puts off once again any decision on authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline, there are whispers of another intriguing possibility. If the U.S. government fails to approve the Continue Reading
In the ongoing battle of wits, Russia and the West are out – oiling their energy arsenals – to achieve strategic objectives. In this rather crowded geopolitical chess board, with Continue Reading
Oil prices ticked up Friday on several factors that could increase demand, especially growing U.S. employment. Light, sweet crude for June delivery settled up 34 cents, or 0.3%, at $99.76 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, rising from a five-week low it had set Thursday. Brent crude on the ICE Futures Europe exchange rose 83 cents, or 0.8%, to $108.59 a barrel. The U.S. added 288,000 new jobs in April, 73,000 more than expected, which could mean more workers on the roads. In addition, Ukraine launched a large-scale offensive, bringing geopolitical risk back into crude pricing. And the Energy Department announced plans to put $200 million of gasoline into new storage reserves to help the Northeast in case of disaster. "There are a lot of little things, but even when combined that’s not enough to really push us much higher," analyst Jim Ritterbusch said. "The record-high stockpile […]
