ODAC Newsletter – Mar 5

Crude oil rose in New York, poised for the third weekly gain in four, on optimism fuel demand will increase amid improved prospects for an economic recovery in the U.S., the world’s biggest energy consumer.

Oil also gained on a report that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will cut shipments by 2.3 percent in the month ending March 20. Crude pared yesterday’s 0.8 percent decline after U.S. initial jobless applications fell in the week ended Feb. 27, easing concerns that a jobs report today will signal a deteriorating labor market…

Asian buyers are taking record volumes of West African crude oil this year as fuel consumption rises in India, China and other East Asian countries, a Reuters survey of trade sources showed on Monday.

Imports of cargoes of unrefined oil from Nigeria, Angola and other African producers via Atlantic ports averaged around 1.79 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter, up from about 1.53 million bpd in the fourth quarter and close to 1.1 million bpd a year ago…

BP has laid out its plans to replace 1m barrels of oil output per day and add $3bn to profits over the next four years, as it seeks to prevent production from falling.

The supermajor is striving to stay ahead of arch-rival Royal Dutch Shell, after aggressive cost-cutting helped it to become Europe’s biggest company earlier this year…

Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Peter Voser defended the oil giant’s retreat from some green technologies to concentrate on oil and gas production in an interview with the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Shell withdrew from its solar business because it was not prepared to make the required investments, Voser told the newspaper adding that alternative fuel for cars remained problematic…

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) stands accused of “cashing in on blood oil” from tar sands just days after the taxpayer-owned bank was battered by the £1.3bn bonus scandal.

The bank denied the charge, maintaining that it has “very limited direct involvement” in such projects and pointing to its role as a leading arranger of finance for renewable power schemes…

Another Day and another demon for the market exorcists at the US commodity regulator.

In an attempt to get to grips with rising commodity prices, the authorities have recently been trying to force traders to release more information about over-the-counter (off-exchange) derivatives and impose position limits on basic commodities…

Even with Iraqi security forces on a heightened state of alert in advance of Sunday’s national elections, dozens of Iraqis were killed Wednesday in a devastating series of suicide bombings in the restive city of Baquba.

The attacks began with two car bombings near campaign offices and government buildings…

Backed by armed bodyguards, international oil executives have flocked to this southern Iraqi city to survey their potentially lucrative prizes: the fields that they hope will one day be pumping out dramatically greater amounts of cheap, plentiful crude.

For their companies, the fields that they won the rights to develop in two biddings rounds last year are their first foray into Iraq’s oil sector in over three decades…

BP is close to agreeing a $200m joint venture giving it increased access to US shale gas reserves, in a sign of the increased emphasis on gas that the group will set out at its strategy presentation for investors on Tuesday…

EDF, the French utility company, and Centrica, the owner of British Gas, plan to build the first new nuclear power stations in the UK by 2017.

The 10 new power stations will need a deep “geological disposal facility” to store the 200 tonnes of high-level waste due to be produced every year…

Those who hate environmentalism have spent years looking for the definitive example of a great green rip-off. Finally it arrives, and nobody notices. The government is about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle classes. It expects a loss on this scheme of £8.2bn, or 95%. Yet the media is silent. The opposition urges only that the scam should be expanded.

On 1 April the government introduces its feed-in tariffs. These oblige electricity companies to pay people for the power they produce at home. The money will come from their customers in the form of higher bills. It would make sense, if we didn’t know that the technologies the scheme will reward are comically inefficient…

George Monbiot’s attack on solar energy and the government’s “cash-back” solar photovoltaic (PV) market-building scheme paints a distorted picture of the industry I work in, and government policy towards it (Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off?, 2 March).

First, Monbiot gets the workability of solar wrong. He says: “The amount of power PV panels produce at this latitude is risible, [and] they also produce it at the wrong time.” Those who buy panels, therefore, will own a mere “fashion accessory”. The companies who manufacture solar PV in the UK have shown that putting solar panels on all available building surfaces would generate more electricity in a year, under typical cloudy British skies, than the entire electricity consumption of our energy-profligate nation. Some fashion accessory…

Japanese solar-panel manufacturers are expanding capacity in spite of concerns about oversupply in the sector, as they eye long-term growth in demand for renewable energy…

Today’s biofuels targets risk causing another oil supply crunch in the middle of this decade, a key report for the international energy ministers’ meeting in Mexico this month has warned…

Using fossil fuel in vehicles is better for the environment than so-called green fuels made from crops, according to a government study seen by The Times.

The findings show that the Department for Transport’s target for raising the level of biofuel in all fuel sold in Britain will result in millions of acres of forest being logged or burnt down and converted to plantations. The study, likely to force a review of the target, concludes that some of the most commonly-used biofuel crops fail to meet the minimum sustainability standard set by the European Commission…

Plans to encourage householders to make their homes much warmer and cheaper to run have been announced by ministers.

Consumers will be offered long-term loans to install insulation, solar panels or other green technology, which they can repay through energy bills…

The government wants to save 29% of carbon emissions from UK homes by 2020…

Houses with low energy efficiency will lose value under government plans to intervene in the property market to help cut greenhouse gas emissions from homes by a third by 2020.

Estate agents will be given guidance telling them to take more notice of energy efficiency when deciding the value of homes. Ministers believe that homeowners are more likely to pay for efficiency measures such as solar panels and insulation if their investment clearly increases the property’s value…

Capturing heat from power plants could help reduce Britain’s future generation capacity, projected to exceed 150 gigawatts by 2050, by 13 percent, according to a Combined Heat and Power Association report.

Diversifying the ways heat is supplied and using combined heat and power, or CHP, plants would reduce peak demand, making it easier to manage electricity usage, the report said. Heat represented 41 percent of Britain’s total final energy consumption in 2007…

As Greece’s debt troubles batter the euro, Britain has done its utmost to stay above the fray.

Until now, that is. Suddenly, investors are asking if Britain may soon face its own sovereign debt crisis if the government fails to slash its growing budget deficits quickly enough to escape the contagious fears of financial markets…

The case for man-made global warming is even stronger than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change maintained in its official assessments, according to the first scientific review published since December’s Copenhagen conference and subsequent attacks on the IPCC’s credibility.

An international research team led by the UK Met Office spent the past year analysing more than 100 recent scientific papers to update the last IPCC assessment, released in 2007…

The European Union will discuss raising its target to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 30 percent from 20 percent regardless of whether other countries agree to specific goals, a European Commission official said.

EU countries will discuss whether a more aggressive target for emissions cuts will be in their economic interests in terms of energy efficiency and security as well as gaining an advantage in moving first on green technology, Juergen Lefevere, an official at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action, said at a press conference in Tokyo today…

The regulation of carbon dioxide emissions does not drive industries abroad, a new report says.

According to its findings, the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, one of the world’s toughest mechanisms for carbon regulation, would only result in businesses accounting for about 2 per cent of emissions under the scheme moving their production overseas…

Carmakers are gathering at their annual jamboree in Geneva this week, collectively gasping for air.

A year ago the industry was in crisis.

Car sales had slumped, hit by the global recession and credit crunch that resulted in banks refusing to lend money, whether to people who were keen to buy cars, or to suppliers and manufacturers fighting for their survival…

Western governments may not realise it yet, but consumerism as we know it is doomed and resource war with China inevitable, the world’s biggest fund managers were told yesterday.

The unsettling message, which focuses on the potentially destabilising shortfall of the rare “technology metals” used in everything from mobile phones to guided missiles, was issued in Tokyo yesterday at the close of one of Asia’s largest annual investment forums…