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Service stations feel the squeeze
Some operators walk away from their business, returning it to the company
David R. Baker, SF Chronicle
High gasoline prices don’t necessarily make service station operators rich. Ask Ricardo Tan. Last year, not even record prices at the pump could save his Berkeley gas station business.
The problem wasn’t his location. His Shell station bordered University Avenue, thick with cars heading to and from the nearby freeway. But oil giant Shell, which owns the facility, was drastically raising Tan’s rent. The $2,000 per month he paid in the late 1990s had gone to $7,900 in 2001, then $8,600 the following year, he said. Now, the company wanted $11,710. And that didn’t include other monthly fees he was obliged to pay for credit card processing and station maintenance. …
Angry motorists, convinced they’re being gouged, often blame the face behind the service station counter. But ask dealers about their profit margins, and some insist they’re making 2 cents or less per gallon. They may even be losing money selling gas. …
(20 November 2005)
Oil’s 2-Month Drop Leaves Traders With Worthless Bets
Bloomberg
Crude oil may extend a two-month decline as concern about shortages eases, leaving traders who bet on $100 oil with near-worthless investments. “People who have put out extreme price scenarios have become very quiet,” said Craig Pennington, the head energy analyst at Schroders Plc in London, which manages $206 billion in assets. …
Exxon Mobil Corp. Chairman Lee Raymond told a U.S. Senate hearing on Nov. 9 that prices have probably peaked. Boone Pickens, a Dallas hedge fund manager who more than a year ago predicted oil would reach $60, says he expects prices to drop toward $50 a barrel as record prices lead to lower demand. Crude oil for January delivery traded at $57.80 a barrel in New York at 8:21 a.m. London time. That’s down 18 percent from a record $70.85 a barrel in August, when Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf coast and shut down about a fourth of U.S. oil and gas production. Hurricane Rita in September further damaged rigs and refineries. …
“We won’t see increases like the one in the past two years,” said Jacobo Penaranda, who helps manage about $4.6 billion at Barclays Fondos in Madrid. “When oil approaches $70, things start getting difficult for the market to keep rising because governments have reacted by releasing emergency reserves.” The governments represented in the Paris-based International Energy Agency on Sept. 2 said they would release more than 60 million barrels of oil reserves to avert shortages brought on by Katrina. It was only the second time in the organization’s three decades of existence that it had done so. …
Not everyone has given up on higher prices. Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Toronto, Canada’s fourth-largest bank by assets, said he’s maintaining a forecast for oil to average $93 a barrel in 2007.
(21 November 2005)
More rumblings of new-build nuclear for UK
Matthew Tempest, The Guardian
The former environment minister Michael Meacher today accused Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser of being a spin doctor for the nuclear industry amid reports that the prime minister plans to sanction a new generation of nuclear reactors.
According to today’s Times, Mr Blair is preparing to approve an expansion after Sir David King advised that this would be the best way safeguarding energy supplies while cutting carbon emissions.
(21 November 2005)
Iran in turmoil as president’s purge deepens
Simon Tisdall and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian
Iran is facing political paralysis as its newly elected president purges government institutions, bringing accusations that he is undertaking a coup d’état.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s clearout of his opponents began last month but is more sweeping than previously understood and has reached almost every branch of government, the Guardian has learned. Dozens of deputy ministers have been sacked this month in several government departments, as well the heads of the state insurance and privatisation organisations. Last week, seven state bank presidents were dismissed in what an Iranian source described as “a coup d’état”.
An informed Iranian source with first-hand knowledge of all the main political and clerical figures in the country said: “Ahmadinejad is defying everybody. He does whatever he wants and considers it to be right. This is not how things are done in Iran.” The upheaval at the highest government levels in Tehran follows the dismissal of four senior ambassadors and has raised questions about Iran’s ability to conclude negotiations on its nuclear programme which are due to come to a head at a UN meeting in Vienna next week. …
(18 November 2005)
Oil may be Canada’s undoing
Political pressure bubbles and flows
Rafe Mair, TheTyee.ca
We are inexorably moving towards a huge crisis in Canada, as the issue of oil and natural gas is moving from the geological to the political.
The story begins with the oil crisis of the 70s, which raised the world price of oil. The Alberta government, under Peter Lougheed, raised the price of Alberta oil, which brought howls from Central Canada since they imported from Alberta. The Trudeau government, fresh from a 1980 election win, introduced the National Energy Program (NEP). The program imposed federal authority over energy resources and established new price and revenue sharing schemes without western consent.
(21 November 2005)
Seeking clean fuel for a nation, and a rebirth for small-town Montana
Timothy Egan, NY Times
If the vast, empty plain of eastern Montana is the Saudi Arabia of coal, then Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a prairie populist with a bolo tie and an advanced degree in soil science, may be its Lawrence. Rarely a day goes by that he does not lash out against the “sheiks, dictators, rats and crooks” who control the world oil supply or the people he calls their political handmaidens, “the best Congress that Big Oil can buy.” Governor Schweitzer, a Democrat, has a two-fisted idea for energy independence that he carries around with him. In one fist is a shank of Montana coal, black and hard. In the other fist is a vial of nearly odorless clear liquid – a synthetic fuel that came from the coal and could run cars, jets and trucks or heat homes without contributing to global warming or setting off a major fight with environmental groups, he said.
(21 November 2005)
Favorable review of Governor Schweitzer’s energy plans in NYT
Jerome a Paris, Daily Kos
The New York times has a pretty long and mostly favorable article on Governor Schweitzer’s plans to develop coal-to-liquids technology which makes a number of points that all energy- and environment-minded kossacks should appreciate.
(21 November 2005)
The article mentioned by Jerome a Paris: Seeking clean fuel for a nation, and a rebirth for small-town Montana (NY Times).
Sheik, rattle and roll
George Clooney gets heavy in Stephen Gaghan’s wild oil-industry thriller ‘Syriana.’
David Ansen, Newsweek
There were more than a few moments in the complex, fascinating “Syriana”—writer-director Stephen Gaghan’s globe-hopping sociopolitical thriller about the oil industry—when I was confused, not quite sure who was plotting to do what to whom, or why. There’s a method to this murkiness, it turns out. Like the myriad schemers in the movie—oil-rich Arab princes, Texas entrepreneurs, CIA operatives, Islamic fundamentalists, Washington lawyers, Justice Department investigators—Gaghan uses misdirection to achieve his goals.
He takes us into a world that’s built on moral quicksand, where the good guys act like bad guys and the bad like good, and everyone has perfectly good reasons to do the terrible things they do. And when the pieces come together and clarity is finally restored, what you discover can make your hair curl.
(Nov. 28, 2005 issue)
