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Nigeria militia storm oil station
BBC
Asari accused the government of being a dictatorship
A militia group from Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta region has seized an oil pumping station, in protest at the arrest of its leader. More than 100 armed men in boats stormed the Idama flow-station, sources close to the Chevron oil company said. The occupation came after militia leader Mujahid Dokubu-Asari was remanded in custody for two weeks by a judge in the capital, Abuja. He wants more control of oil resources for the Ijaw people of the Niger Delta.
The deputy leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, Alali Horsefall, said militiamen were moving towards seven other oil installations in the area. “We will blow up everything. We will set fire to them,” he said. …
Last year, the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force contributed to a sharp rise in world oil prices when it threatened war against oil companies.
(22 September 2005)
Other coverage: Militants shut oil facilities as leader appears in court (Reuters)
Oil Tensions Heat Up in Nigeria (Wash. Post).
Survey: Majority wants oil firms taxed
CNN/Money
Most Americans say oil companies price gouge; want higher fuel-efficiency standards.
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NEW YORK – Americans are fed up with price gouging and government inaction on energy prices, according to a recent survey conducted for the Civil Society Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank.
The poll results, released Thursday, also showed that four out of five Americans — including 76 percent of Republicans — would support “a tax on the windfall profits of oil companies” if the resulting revenues went toward alternative energy research.
“Americans have seen too much price gouging and too little action from Washington on energy prices, fuel-efficient vehicles and our dangerous reliance on foreign oil,” said Civil Society Institute President Pam Solo.
(22 September 2005)
Truck blockade over fuel prices
Herald Sun (Australia)
HUNDREDS of angry truckdrivers are blocking major highways across Australia today, protesting against rising fuel prices.
Motorists are being warned to expect significant delays at Macksville and Gundagai in NSW, Rockhampton in Queensland, as well as Western Australia. The truck drivers are also protesting against poor wages and working conditions and are calling on the Federal Government to do more to help the industry.
One of the truck drivers involved in the protest action, Bunny Brown, is at the blockade on the Pacific Highway in Macksville in northern NSW. He said the recent hike in fuel prices was the last straw for truck drivers.
“That’s just topped it off,” he told ABC radio. “We’ve been trying for five years on and off and we can’t get recognition. We’re working for nearly nothing. Other drivers and small businesses are going broke every day while multinationals have a record profit margin every three months, and they won’t recognise us.”
(23 September 2005)
This is a new development for Australia, one possibly precipitated by yesterday’s ineffectual ‘Petrol Summit’ that oil companies didn’t even bother to attend. The federal government has smelt the smoke though, see their sudden backflip on ethanol labelling and PM Howards earth-shattering plan to meet with oil co. executives to encourage biofuel production.-LJ
Drivers reduce buying at bowsers
Nigel Wilson and John Stapleton, The Australian
PETROL consumption in Australia has fallen for the third week in a row as record prices prompt motorists to rein in spending. Figures provided by the major oil companies to the federal Government show that in the past week sales of petrol were down 5.5 per cent on the corresponding week in July.
(23 September 2005)
Venezuela ships additional 1,000,000 barrels of petroleum to the United States
Venezuelan Embassy in US via VHeadline
…The gasoline, produced by Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) will be available immediately to US consumers through PDVSA’s wholly-owned US subsidiary, CITGO Petroleum Corp’s distribution network … and is supplementary to PDVSA’s normal shipments.
“As a Hemispheric neighbor and business partner, we are pleased that we are able to provide immediate relief by increasing gasoline supplies available in the United States in the aftermath of this devastating natural disaster,” said Venezuela’s Ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera. “We’re sending additional barrels of gasoline that otherwise would have gone elsewhere, and we will continue to do whatever we can to help alleviate energy shortages and the dislocations faced by the people of the United States as a result of Hurricane Katrina.”
Three other shipments of 240,000 barrel each will arrive at regular intervals on the heels of this first. It is expected that the entire additional volume of close to one million barrels will be delivered to the US distribution system no later than October 31. …
(22 September 2005)
See also Venezuela offers support to indigenous.
With Oil, Chavez Plays It Safe
Venezuela’s President Pushes Foreign Companies Only So Far
David Luhnow and Jose de Cordoba, Wall Street Journal via MarxMail
To his critics, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez comes across as a messianic radical, cozying up to anti-American figures like Iran’s mullahs, blasting capitalism as the “road to hell” and threatening to stop shipping oil to the U.S., which relies on Venezuela for about
14% of its oil imports.
But when it comes to the country’s economic centerpiece, the oil industry, the fiery leader is more pragmatic than most realize. He
has squeezed more royalties and taxes out of foreign oil companies at a time when they can afford it because of high oil prices. And he is
using that money, along with a windfall in exports from state-run oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela SA, to help fund his leftist agenda at
home and to cultivate friends in the region.
The pragmatic arrangement reassures analysts that Mr. Chavez is unlikely to resort to spectacular measures like nationalizing foreign
oil investments or cutting off oil shipments to the U.S. About a third of Venezuela’s estimated 2.7 million barrels of oil a day comes from projects that involve foreign companies and more than half of Venezuelan oil exports go to the U.S., Venezuela’s natural market because of its size and proximity.
(29 August 2005)
IEA Dismisses Peak Oil Talk, Says Technology Can Boost Reserves
Bloomberg
The International Energy Agency said technological investments will expand world oil supplies, dismissing “peak oil” theories that supplies are running out.
“There is no shortage of oil and gas in the ground, but quenching the world’s thirst for them will call for major investment in modern technologies,” IEA Executive Director Claude Mandil said in a statement marking the publication of a 150-page book “Resources to Reserves, Oil and Gas Technologies for the Energy Markets of the Future.”
At least $5 trillion in investment will be needed in the next three decades to tap reserves, the IEA said, repeating a figure it has already used. The IEA has never before directly responded to “peak oil” theorists who say the agency is overly optimistic about estimates of increased production.
“There’s still a mantra that goodwill, hope and optimism will solve things,” said Matt Simmons, chairman of Houston-based energy investment bank Simmons & Co., and author of “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.”
(22 September 2005)
Blood for No Oil
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com via CommonDreams
The strangest aspect of media coverage of our invasion and occupation of Iraq involved that country’s oil. Everyone, including the Bush administration, was well aware that Iraq sat on a sea of it. It was obvious that Middle Eastern oil was a global lifeline and an ever more valuable commodity; and yet, unless you were a faithful reader of the business pages, for days, weeks, even months on end, it was impossible to find serious discussion of Iraqi oil in the mainstream media.
Forget the fact that a number of the major players in the Bush administration came out of the energy business; that Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, had had an oil tanker named after her (when she was still on Chevron’s board of directors); that the neocons and their supporters evinced a special interest in the oil heartlands of our planet (a.k.a. “the arc of instability”); or that the Pentagon was staking those heartlands out, base by base.
(21 September 2005)
Japan protests China’s gas drilling
Hiroko Tabuchi, Associated Press
Japan has lodged a protest against China’s drilling of gas in disputed waters in the East China Sea and called for a resumption of talks over the joint development of oil reserves in the region, a government official said Wednesday.
“Japan said it deeply regrets China’s one-sided decision to start extracting natural gas from the region, and calls on China to stop its activities,” a Foreign Ministry official said. He said government policy required that he not be identified by name.
Japan also called for an early resumption of talks to share drilling rights in areas that fall within the countries’ U.N.-defined maritime economic zones, the official said. Kyodo News Agency later reported, citing officials at the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, that the talks would be held late this month or in early October in Tokyo.
(21 September 2005)
Diesel rustling in US midwest
Garance Burke, Associated Press
As fuel prices climb, farmers and ranchers are facing a foe not seen in the Old West: the diesel rustler. A generation of farmers who grew up leaving the barn door open has taken to posting field hands to watch over diesel tanks at night, and locking up gas pumps even as thieves invent new ways to siphon fuel from farm equipment.
Peter Dompe, who grows beans and almonds in Crows Landing, some 90 miles southeast of San Francisco, has taken to sleeping overnight in his truck hoping to catch fuel snatchers who he says have made off with thousands of dollars worth of the diesel he uses to run his tractors.
(22 September 2005)
Rita causes Panic in Canada
James Stevenson and Alison Auld, Canadia
With hurricane Rita threatening major U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, gasoline stations in parts of Canada jacked up pump prices Thursday and consumers resorted to panic buying as they feared another imminent spike in fuel costs. …
In Kitchener, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said the federal Competition Bureau should investigate soaring gasoline prices and quickly try to determine why there were huge price swings reported across his province.
Some government backbenchers want legislation to impose a 90-day gas price freeze or to appoint a provincial gas price watchdog, ideas McGuinty rejected even though he had supported them when the Liberals were in Opposition.
(22 September 2005)
Long article with reports from all over Canada.
