Venezuela Ready to Cut Oil Exports to US
Prensa Latina
Venezuela warned Tuesday it is ready to stop oil sales to the United States if the Bush administration keeps on threatening the countrýs national sovereignty.
Venezuela Minister of Energy and Oil, Rafael Ramirez, told Venezolana de Television Tuesday “work is being carried out to guarantee economic activity for our country and people under any circumstances.”
Ramirez reminded the same was done during the 2002-2003 sabotage, and that the economic activity will be maintained, with or without the support of the US.
Ramirez told Venezuelan journalist Ernesto Villegas that an eventual cut of oil exports to the United States would affect Venezuela, but he said that would be the price to keep the national sovereignty high.
“We are all ready to defend our rights,” he added.
(16 August 2005)
Venezuela Oil Min: Global Oil Capacity At Its Limit
Dow Jones via Energy Resources
The world’s oil producing countries have no spare oil production capacity left and some oil producers have even seen output decline, Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said during a television interview Tuesday.
“There is a production capacity that is at its limit in all oil-producing
countries,” said Ramirez.
“There is an important decline in non-OPEC countries, in the North Sea there is a decline of at least 200,000 barrels a day,” added Ramirez.
(16 August 2005)
Cheney joins the oil sands pilgrimage
U.S. Vice-President will visit Alberta as a secure energy supply leapfrogs up the list of U.S. priorities
Barrie McKenna, Globe and Mail (Canada)
Washington — It might be the lofty price of oil, the emergence of China as a voracious consumer of a scarce resource, or perhaps the fly fishing.
But U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney is coming to Alberta, and a visit to the oil sands is high on his agenda. The trip slated for next month is being billed as a mix of business and pleasure for the former oil executive and acknowledged White House energy guru.
He’s expected to tour one of the major oil sands projects in Fort McMurray, meet Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, speak to a gathering of the conservative Fraser Institute in Calgary, and steal away to an undisclosed location for a little hunting and fishing, according to Canadian and U.S. officials.
Mr. Cheney would be the highest-ranking member of the Bush administration to make a pilgrimage to the oil sands — home to the largest reserves of crude outside Saudi Arabia.
(17 August 2005)
Online stories at the Globe and Mail seem to jump behind a pay-to-view wall after a few days.
Electricity prices shock heavy users
Large manufacturers brace for 2006 costs
Dan Reynolds, Pittsburgh Business Times via MSNBC
Large manufacturers and other heavy users of electricity will face some hard decisions this fall.
As electricity deregulation continues to unfold in Allegheny and Beaver counties, the yearly run-up to budget decisions is going to have executives at U.S. Steel Corp. and other big users twisting in their chairs over energy cost.
…Chris Masciantonio, government affairs director for U.S. Steel, says his company expects its electricity costs in this region to be up to 35 percent higher in 2006 than this year.
…Doug Jackson, the manager of electrical engineering for the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, said with electricity prices tied to rising natural gas prices, big users of electricity are going to continue to feel pain.
…Masciantonio said U.S. Steel is going to have to get creative in the way it uses energy, including finding ways to generate electricity from byproducts of the steelmaking process, such as coke oven gas.
(14 August 2005)
Guzzle Gas, and Pretend
Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe via Common Dreams
Gasoline is over $2.50 a gallon, the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq is over 1,850, and what patriotic, heroic displays of sacrifice can we find on the American landscape?
Bigger garages. Bigger houses. New fuel economy standards that will omit the biggest cars. Hoo-aah.
Brave Marines we are. From the halls of McMansions to the steps of our SUVs, we fight our exurban battles, ripping up every living tree.
(17 August 2005)
Similar message to James Kunstler’s latest: Harry Shearer’s War.
India Energy Independence
James Cascio, WorldChanging
The President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (who is, quite literally, a rocket scientist), made a major speech this week on the future of energy in India. The presentation (available in full here) covers the current status of India’s energy production and consumption, and looks at what needs to be done to make India energy independent by 2030. It’s a sometimes surprising mix of ambitious high-tech green endeavors and an almost stubborn continuation of traditional fossil energy sources. It provides an interesting comparison to the 2005 Energy Act just passed in the United States — similar in some regards, dramatically different in others, but still clinging tightly to the old models of centralized production and control over energy.
Those who have been following India’s back room reluctance to participate in post-Kyoto restrictions on greenhouse gases won’t be surprised that the closest Dr. Kalam gets to discussing global warming is a vague mention that “the climate of the globe as a whole is changing.” He has good reason not to want to touch the carbon issue — he sees the bulk of electricity production coming from coal, albeit largely from coal gasification. As a result, there’s a pretty robust scenario painting India — not China or the US — as the main greenhouse gas emitter of the first quarter of the century, and Kalam’s proposals do nothing to dispel that fear. It’s interesting that China’s government seems more ready to address the environmental dangers of coal use than the Indian government; the silver lining to this acid raincloud is that, as a democratic polity, India is in a better position to vote in a government willing to grapple with the problem than China would be if its leadership was more intransigent.
But the Indian energy plan isn’t just coal and self-delusion about carbon.
(16 August 2005)
See original article for links, comments and more text.
Economy Shows Signs of Strain From Oil Prices
Jad Mouawad and David Leonhardt, NY Times
Inflation surged last month, the government reported yesterday, as the long rise in energy prices finally seemed to be pinching the American economy. After absorbing the burden of oil at $40 a barrel, then at $50 and beyond, consumers have started to react as prices have risen above $60 in recent weeks.
…If history is any guide, higher prices will hurt consumption, curb the nation’s output and shift spending patterns. The risks of a domino effect on the economy are real, economists say.
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that energy restricts growth,” said Anthony Chan, a senior economist at J. P. Morgan Asset Management. “It is doing so.”
So far, the economy has showed much more resilience in the face of higher energy costs than most analysts had anticipated. Although prices began rising in early 2002, consumers have kept shopping, companies have expanded and inflation has remained under control. At times, it seemed a new economic era had dawned.
Without question, economists say, rising oil prices cause less economic pain than they once did. It takes half as much energy to produce $1 of gross domestic product today, adjusted for inflation, than it did 30 years ago. Even at today’s prices, oil is cheaper than it was in the early 1980’s, once adjusted for inflation.
The falling costs of other goods, thanks in large part to global competition, have also helped cushion the blow from higher energy costs. While energy prices rose 3.8 percent from June to July, the price of all other goods inched up only 0.2 percent, the Labor Department said yesterday.
“There seems to be a greater tolerance in the economy in terms of what can be withstood,” said Doug Leggate, an energy analyst with Citigroup in New York.
But a spike in oil prices still hurts, economists say, even if the pain does not come immediately. In the past, the full effect was not felt until a year, or even two years, after prices began rising. Both of the last two recessions – in 1990-91 and in 2001 – began more than a year after energy prices started a sharp climb.
“It is way too soon to be sanguine,” said Andrew J. Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick in England, who has written about oil. “The influence of a petroleum shock runs deep and runs slow. My own view is that we will find oil shocks still hurt, and hurt fundamentally.”
(17 August 2005)
A comprehensive, in-depth article. The same story is also posted on the International Herald Tribune.
Oil Prices Ignite Wall Street Sell-Off
Josh Friedman, LA Times
The Dow falls 120 amid evidence that rising gasoline costs are crimping consumer spending and cutting into corporate earnings.
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Evidence that high oil prices were stoking inflation and cutting into corporate earnings ignited a broad sell-off Tuesday on Wall Street, slamming the Dow Jones industrial average to a 120-point loss.
The consumer price index for July came in at a higher-than-expected 0.5%, fueled in part by soaring energy costs, the government reported. Economists had expected a 0.4% increase.
Shares of Wal-Mart Stores weighed on the Dow after the retail giant warned that its profit this quarter would come in lighter than expected, partly because rising gasoline costs were crimping consumer spending. Prices at the pump are up about 36% in the last year, according to AAA.
“The market is really gun-shy because of the run-up in oil prices,” said Gary Schlossberg, senior economist at Wells Capital Management in San Francisco. “There’s a sense of foreboding as oil continues to rise.”
(17 August 2005)
Uranium mining: dollars for death
Kathy Newnam, Green Left Weekly
US President George Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard are leading the charge to rehabilitate nuclear power in the wake of fears around global warming. Radioactive dollar signs lit up in the eyes of mining and resource company executives on August 4 when federal resources minister Ian Macfarlane declared the Northern Territory’s uranium deposits “open for business”. Indigenous communities and environmentalists have vowed to fight the government’s plans.
(17 August 2005)
