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Cheap energy in UAE is over
Gundi Royle, Gulf News
The UAE’s electricity demand projections are staggering. Based on future development plans, the current installed capacity of energy will need to double by 2015. The amount of energy the UAE consumes is set to treble by 2020 – a reflection of a very energy-intensive lifestyle. Even as the energy-producing Middle East sells its wares in lucrative global markets, the UAE looks set to suffer from the resulting demand and price rise.
The UAE has one of the highest per capita gas consumption rates in the world. Until recently, the assumption was that demand growth would be met by creating additional generation capacity, fed by limitless gas resources.
(19 April 2008)
Mideast’s own oil consumption helping to drive prices up
Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers
Middle Eastern oil-producing nations are behind today’s record high oil prices, but not for the reason you might think. Taken together, oil-rich nations represent a bloc of fast-growing economies that are now sucking up new energy supplies almost as fast as they’re coming to market.
Together, the six nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are now consuming about as much oil as China, whose thirst for oil frequently gets the blame for tight global supplies.
(17 April 2008)
Iran’s president says oil prices too low
ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press
Iran’s hard-line president declared that crude oil prices, now above $115 a barrel, are too low, state media reported Saturday.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an oil and gas exhibition in Tehran on Friday that he thought the commodity still had to “discover its real value,” according to the Web site of Iran’s state-run television.
… Ahmadinejad accused Western industrialized nations of “selfishness” in their quest for cheaper oil.
“When they get hold of oil, they assume that oil is a free commodity and belongs to them and has wrongly been placed in other territories. … This is the spirit of selfishness and arrogance,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.
(19 April 2008)
Saudis put oil capacity rise on hold
Carola Hoyos, Financial Times
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer, has put on hold any plans to further increase long-term production capacity from its vast oil fields, its most powerful policymakers have said. In a series of statements, including one by the king himself, the kingdom has warned consumers it does not reckon there is a need for further expansion, an assumption disputed by the world’s biggest developed countries.
(20 April 2008)
