Ecuador to declare emergency as oil production falls
Alexandra Valencia and Carlos Andrade Garcia, Reuters
Ecuador’s government will declare a state of emergency in two Amazon provinces where protests have cut crude oil production by state-owned Petroecuador to 29,400 barrels per day from the usual 201,000 bpd, officials said on Wednesday.
Interior Minister Mauricio Gandara said the state of emergency will be declared by President Alfredo Palacio. Under a state of emergency the rights to free association and expression could be restricted and security forces would be allowed to retake control of oil fields.
(17 August 2005)
Manila eyes drastic steps to cope with oil crisis
Bahrain Daily News
The Philippines is considering drastic measures, including fuel rationing and shorter working hours, to cope with the adverse effects of soaring oil prices, officials said yesterday after meeting to map out plans.
Finance Secretary Margarito Teves said taxes on imported oil will be cut or removed to cushion the impact on local prices, while Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said conservation measures are being drawn up.
“If we do not conserve, we will reach a point where the oil bill of the country is going to threaten the foreign exchange reserves,” Lotilla said.
(18 August 2005)
India, China: Comrades in oil
Jyoti Malhotra, Asia Times
NEW DELHI – Having gingerly circled around each other like two cautious pugilists for the past decades, India and China may be taking their first step in the creation of an Asian synergy that has much more to do with making real money than the rhetorical bombast of anti-imperialist morality.
Last week in Beijing, within days of China announcing that it would vote against a resolution led by India and Japan to expand the UN Security Council, vice chairman Zhang Xiaoqiang of China’s National Development and Reform Commission was feting Talmiz Ahmad, an Indian diplomat seconded to the Oil and Petroleum Ministry in New Delhi with the task of creating energy partnerships abroad.
As Ahmad and his delegation were shown around Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai, a senior Chinese oil executive told him, “The possibilities of India and China cooperating in Central Asia, Russia and Africa are enormous of course, but both of us must also work together in America and the big nations of Europe.”
The senior Chinese oil executive’s message was clear: American oil major Unocal’s recent rejection of China National Offshore Oil Cooperation (CNOOC)’s nearly US$18 billion offer to take over the US oil company had been grounded as much in American realpolitik as in the number-crunching offered by Unocal. India, on the other hand, growing at 8% per annum and hungry to elbow its way into the world’s top 10, could definitely bring something to the table.
(19 August 2005)
Putin Wants More for Russian Oil
Staff, The Moscow Times from Reuters & Interfax reports
President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that he was unhappy that Russia’s Urals crude oil sells at a discount to benchmark Brent crude, and asked the Cabinet to take measures to reduce the gap. “The price gap is very unfair,” Putin told the Cabinet members, Interfax and Reuters reported.
The Urals blend, the most common crude pumped in Russia, typically trades at a discount of around $3 to $5 to the benchmark Brent blend, which is bought and sold in London. The Urals blend has higher sulphur content and density than Brent, which makes it more costly to refine. …
(16 August 2005)
Energy and political experts say oil crisis could erupt
Muhammed El-Hasan, Daily Breeze (US)
Leaders gather in Torrance for a program simulating a global oil shortage and face the daunting task of developing contingency plans.
————
Civil unrest in Nigeria helps send oil prices from $60 a barrel to $80, putting the brakes on worldwide economic growth.
A month later, possible al-Qaida-linked attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and Alaska push the price of oil to an economically devastating $120 a barrel. U.S. gasoline prices have nearly doubled seemingly overnight.
Americans and the world are waiting to see what the only superpower does. What can America do?
Not much.
A simulated oil supply crisis played out Wednesday at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center. Rep. Jane Harman, D-El Segundo, was joined by former CIA Director James Woolsey, former California Gov. Pete Wilson and other energy and political experts in the event called Oil Shockwave.
“We’ve got to stop thinking we can solve this problem abroad,” said UCLA professor Steven Spiegel. “We’ve got to solve it at home. We’ve got to start dealing with it as a true crisis.”
The seven participants role-played as members of the president’s Cabinet. The 90-minute simulation, which portrays a seven-month period of oil crises, was developed by Securing America’s Future Energy and the National Commission on Energy Policy.
(18 August 2005)
See also the NPR report Shocking developments in oil:”An oil crisis simulation was staged in California yesterday. Participants included a congresswoman, an ex-governor and a former spy chief, all pretending to be presidential cabinet members. Jeff Tyler was there.”
In U.S. heartland, anxiety over Iraq, oil
Alan Elsner, Reuters
BROKEN BOW, Neb. – In the solidly Republican state of Nebraska, voters are expressing deep anxiety about rising gasoline prices and the war in Iraq, a possible early warning sign for President George W. Bush in one of his most reliable strongholds.
When Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel traveled around his home state this week, citizens at every stop brought up Iraq policy and the inexorable rise in fuel prices.
“Is there anything the United States can do to get some stability in crude oil prices in the world, because it affects everything we do?” Larry Ahlers, a manager at medical device manufacturer Becton and Dickinson in Broken Bow, asked Hagel in one of dozens of such encounters.
Hagel, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2008, responded that gasoline prices were likely to stay high for the foreseeable future because of rising world demand and the U.S. failure to develop new energy sources and conserve.
(18 August 2005)
Another Methane Move
Editorial, NY Times
Unless you live in the Rocky Mountain West, it’s hard to realize just how pervasive the push for new petroleum leases in that region really is. Although a vast amount of land is already under lease – and most of those leases have not been developed – the cry in the oil and gas community is for still more access to new territory.
The Bush administration has been encouraging this constant push for more drilling, almost entirely without regard to other values. A case in point is the growing pressure to open Valle Vidal, a part of the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico, to coal-bed methane development. …
(18 August 2005)
Energy prices plummet as demand falls
Sam Fletcher, Oil & Gas Journal
HOUSTON, Aug. — Energy prices plummeted Aug. 18, but not to any bargain levels, as the American Petroleum Institute reported a big drop in US demand during July because of high fuel prices.
Energy futures markets also were impacted by a US Labor Department report of a larger-than-expected increase in wholesale prices in the same month, signaling that high energy costs also are affecting other segments of the economy.
(18 August 2005)
Energy on NPR (AUDIO/RADIO)
Marketplace Morning Report
Are gas prices making Chris Farrell crazy?
Sure, the price of gas has shot up recently. Chris Farrell says: bring it on! Add some taxes! Scott Jagow asks if he’s lost his mind.
(18 August 2005)
Edwardian summer
Welcome to the second age of globalisation, and the labour practices of Victorian mill owners
Larry Elliott, The Guardian
…Finally, there’s the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when many experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.
In those circumstances it would be the height of folly to assume that there will be no economic consequences or that there will not be an intense – perhaps even bloody – struggle for the resource that more than any other has shaped the modern world.
(18 August 2005)
City traders facing up to climate change
Some traders could soon be crying out for environmental changes
Megan Rowling, BBC
The winner-takes-all world of stock markets and financial trading is not one you usually associate with attempts to save the planet. Yet if some of Britain’s biggest pension funds get their way, City traders will soon be discussing how climate change could affect the stock prices of FTSE 100 companies.
Nick Robins, of Henderson Global Investors, believes it might not be long before the market sees a profit warning from a company as a result of a failure to grasp the impact of emissions on business. “It is probable that some corporations will have made investments without taking into account the likely tightening of limits under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS),” he warns.
( August 2005)
Reader may wonder why this doesn’t appear under environment or sustainability, rather than under Politics & Economics. Reason is, its just talk, so far, about how some UK funds MAY begin to take climate change into account. When and how they’ll do that, and whether it’ll have any positive impact, is completely unknown. -LJ
