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Electricity prices see biggest jump in 25 years
Associated Press
The average retail price of electricity increased by more than 9 percent last year, the largest jump in 25 years, the government said Monday.
Electricity prices rose in 2006 by 10 percent or more in 14 states and the District of Columbia, according to an annual report released by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration. The average price increase was the largest since 1981.
Prices rose nationwide but most of the larger jumps were in the East, mainly due to the lifting of retail electricity price caps in states transitioning to competitive retail markets.
(22 October 2007)
Roll out the $100 barrel?
The Economist
The price of crude oil may be dipping again, but a significant record remains on the horizon
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SOME call it a curse, but those awash in oil must feel blessed at the moment. As the price of a barrel of crude touched a record $90 last week, before sliding once again this week, speculators have been considering an even bigger benchmark: the $100 barrel. The number rattles consumers, but their worry is probably misplaced.
Such records have been broken before. Whenever the nominal price of oil reaches a new round number, minds wander towards the century mark. Analysts at Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, predicted in 2005 that prices would reach triple-digits this decade, and now many think it could happen next year. Despite the fact that oil supplies remain stable for now, it is just a matter of time before oil fetches $100 a barrel.
The strongest force lifting oil prices at the moment is America’s weakened dollar.
(23 October 2007)
Are oil prices at their highest?
Varying factors make gauging value of energy a crude estimate
Kristen Hays, Houston Chronicle
Pinpointing the all-time inflation-adjusted record for oil prices is nowhere near as exact as it might seem.
Last week the roller coaster of crude oil prices climbed to $89.47 on Thursday and surpassed $90 by a few cents in trading Friday, then dipped to close out the week at $88.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
That left many analysts convinced that speculators drove prices up to capitalize on the weak dollar and fears that supplies could tighten in the face of geopolitical tensions such as the Turkish parliament’s approval of a possible military raid in northern Iraq.
Pundits predicted that prices are poised to blow past the highs of the early 1980s. But the exact price at which that will happen is about as clear as a barrel of heavy crude.
The federal government says prices still haven’t exceeded the January 1981 inflation-adjusted record of $93.09. The Paris-based International Energy Agency says the actual record was in the previous spring and is $101.70 in today’s dollars.
Some economists and analysts agree, but others say prices already reached a new milestone, depending on which number they pick as the previous high and how they adjust it for inflation.
“The bottom line is, real oil prices certainly peaked in the spring of 1981. The question is, have we hit the new record yet?” said Barton Smith, an economist at the University of Houston.
The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration says no, but acknowledges its stance is as much art as science.
(20 October 2007)
