Crude oil rose in New York, poised for a weekly gain, on optimism fuel demand will increase amid improved prospects for an economic recovery in the U.S., the world’s biggest energy consumer.

Oil rebounded from last week’s 4.4 percent decline after U.S. crude oil stockpiles unexpectedly fell, an Energy Department report showed this week. Futures also rose as Asian stocks followed U.S. equities higher and the dollar traded near a one-week low against the euro…

The International Energy Agency next week will make a “substantial” downward revision to its long-term forecast for global oil demand, a person familiar with the matter said, marking the second year running the group has slashed its view of the world’s thirst for oil.

The forecast of slower growth in oil demand puts the IEA increasingly in a camp of contrarians bucking the popular view that crude demand will grow briskly in a postrecession world. That view holds that long-term demand will grow at a fast clip because of rising emerging-market wealth and consumption in places like China and India…

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries raised crude-oil production last month to the highest level in 10 months as members took advantage of higher prices, a Bloomberg News survey showed.

Output averaged 28.76 million barrels a day in October, up 80,000 barrels from September, according to the survey of oil companies, producers and analysts. The entire gain came from the 11 OPEC members with quotas, all except Iraq. The 11 countries pumped 26.31 million barrels a day, 1.465 million barrels above their target. Iraqi output was unchanged…

A giant mechanical digger gouges out a chunk of topsoil, grass and tree stumps, extending a neat furrow that stretches into the distance. Dozens of similar furrows run parallel with the regularity of a ploughed field.

Yet no crop could grow in the pitch-black surface exposed by the machine working 1,000ft below our helicopter. This is the edge of a fast-expanding open-cast mine in the Canadian tar sands, one of the world’s most polluting sources of oil…

What was the industry that powered Britain towards prosperity in the 1980s, and made us one of the most dynamic and successful nations in the Western world? I’ll give you a clue: it was described by a prime minister as “God’s gift” to the British economy; its revenue stream pumped ever larger amounts of cash into the Exchequer – and its subsequent collapse has helped send the public finances spiralling towards disaster.

If your first reaction was “the City”, think again. The answer is North Sea oil. One of the peculiarities of British politics – and economics – is the reluctance to take into account the critical contribution of oil to the economy. We spend so much time droning on about our excessive reliance on the financial sector that we tend to ignore this elephant in the room. But the truth is that, for the past quarter of a century, Britain has been a petro-economy. In 1999, we were producing more oil than Iraq, Kuwait or Nigeria. The following year, we pumped out almost twice as much natural gas as Iran – a country with reserves that are the envy of the world…

Iraq has struck a deal with a consortium led by US oil giant Exxon Mobil, and including Royal Dutch Shell, to develop the West Qurna 1 oil field.

This is the second major deal the country’s oil ministry has agreed with overseas oil firms this week…

The British oil giant BP will today take control of Iraq’s biggest oilfield in the first important energy deal since the 2003 invasion. The move has created uproar among local politicians invoking resentful memories of their nation’s colonial past.

The agreement to develop the Rumaila field, near the southern city of Basra, will potentially put Iraq on the path to rivalling the riches of Saudi Arabia within a decade — if the Government can fend off corrupt officials, continuing terrorist attacks on pipelines and political uncertainty…

Will it be China that finally pays the huge bills for repairing and rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq — and reaps the rewards? It’s looking that way: as the US and Britain look for an exit from the battle zones, China is digging in.

From its point of view, the wreckage of other governments’ half-completed wars offers a chance to strike deals on terms that look cheap on all but the most apocalyptic views of the course of those conflicts. To some involved in development on the ground, that has benefits, if China will risk money where others fear to tread. But to many in Washington, it looks as if China is winning the benefit of the struggles of the US and its allies…

The world faces a natural gas glut that will cool prices, says the International Energy Agency, raising the prospect that Russia’s grip over Europe’s energy security will loosen.

In a draft version of its World Energy Outlook (WEO), to be published next Tuesday, the rich countries’ energy watchdog says that “global gas markets have evolved from a seller’s market, driven by tight supply and demand, to a buyer’s market as demand weakens while new supply comes on stream”…

The biggest energy innovation of the decade is natural gas — more specifically what is called “unconventional” natural gas. Some call it a revolution.

Yet the natural gas revolution has unfolded with no great fanfare, no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up. In 1990, unconventional gas — from shales, coal-bed methane and so-called “tight” formations — was about 10% of total U.S. production. Today it is around 40%, and growing fast, with shale gas by far the biggest part…

From one end of the known world to the other, which is to say from Boston to Washington and some points in between, there is a consensus among the well informed that one part of a national energy plan is in place. Thanks to the discovery and mapping of huge reserves of gas in shale formations, we have an alternative to dirty old coal, and, possibly, imported oil for transport fuel. A 40 per cent increase in the country’s gas reserves! You can thank advanced American technology for that…

Today Daniel Yergin, author of the seminal oil industry tome ‘The Prize’, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that shale gas is a game changer for US energy. Those who follow natgas will have heard it all before: more advanced and affordable technology, mainly hydraulic fracturing or fracking, has opened up an abundant supply of gas that could satisfy US needs for many, many decades to come. Yergin’s point that this has happened with ‘no great fanfare,’ however, probably stands true for the average person who isn’t an avid follower of energy news…

Russia has warned the European Union that a new gas conflict is brewing with Ukraine, reviving memories of a previous dispute that led to fuel shortages across a swath of Central and Western Europe.

Moscow is pointing the finger at internal politics in Kiev and is complaining about disputes over bills owed by Ukraine…

After a year in which Europe slashed its imports of Russian natural gas, OAO Gazprom says it sees signs of a turnaround, with European demand now exceeding precrisis levels.

Analysts, however, said Gazprom’s customers had simply started buying bigger quantities of Russian gas late in the summer to take advantage of lower prices, not necessarily because the European economy was recovering…

The flames have burned for half a century but darkness still prevails in the Niger delta.

At night the orange glow from flares – fuelled by the waste natural gas from crude production – are the only lights visible across vast stretches of Nigeria’s oil region, where many settlements are starved of power…

India prefers gold; Warren Buffett chooses coal. The two commodities — one in glittering ascendancy, the other plumbing the depths — are almost metaphors for diverging views on America, the dollar and global economic recovery.

Asia’s big central banks have begun to swap their dollar reserves for lumps of useless yellow metal. Last month India bought 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund, almost half of the 403 tonnes earmarked for sale by the IMF. The gold fraternity had expected most of it to be snapped up by the Central Bank of China…

It might, in other circumstances, seem a quaint and harmless relic from another era: a coal plant built 99 years ago to assure Congress an independent source of power…

A $400bn (£240bn) plan to provide Europe with solar power from the Sahara moved a step closer to reality today with the formation of a consortium of 12 companies to carry out the work.

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) aims to provide 15% of Europe’s electricity by 2050 or earlier via power lines stretching across the desert and Mediterranean sea…

A global treaty to fight climate change will be postponed by at least six months and possibly a year or more, senior negotiators and politicians conceded today.

In a day of gloomy statements, the world’s key industrialised nations said they had abandoned hope of a legally binding treaty at the Copenhagen summit next month and had begun to plan only for a meeting of world leaders…

Carbon markets are not working and UK and US government policy is not encouraging investment in renewable energy, says a leading bank
A report from Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division (DeAM) says that the carbon market is not likely to contribute to significantly cutting emissions, ‘for the foreseeable future.’

It says that governments should focus on introducing stronger incentives like feed-in tariffs if they want to meet emission reduction targets by 2020…

For those concerned about global warming, all eyes are on December’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. The stakes could not be higher. Almost every new report shows that the climate is changing even faster than the most dire projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 2007 report.

Yet from my vantage point, internationally negotiated climate agreements are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons. First, since no government wants to concede too much compared with other governments, the negotiated goals for cutting carbon emissions will almost certainly be minimalist, not remotely approaching the bold cuts that are needed…

A U.S. effort to pressure Iran into nuclear concessions by curbing gasoline imports may have little impact because the United Arab Emirates and other countries are willing to keep shipping fuel to the Islamic Republic.

About $2.8 billion worth of gasoline passes through the U.A.E. to Iran each year, amounting to 75 percent of Iran’s refined fuel imports. Sanctions passed yesterday by the House Foreign Affairs Committee will have limited effect unless international curbs follow, said Cliff Kupchan, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, a New York political-risk consulting firm…

Britain’s manufacturing sector expanded unexpectedly last month and at the fastest rate in two years as the weak pound made exports cheaper and imports more expensive, according to new data.

Barely a month after Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that weak sterling “will be helpful” in rebalancing Britain’s economy, the latest Purchasing Managers’ Index showed that the UK’s manufacturing sector grew at the third-fastest rate since the series began in January 1992…

The European Union economy will recovery gradually over the next two years, while unemployment and government budget deficits continue to climb, the European Commission said Tuesday.

The commission, the EU’s executive arm, expects the bloc’s economy to contract 4.1% this year before expanding 0.7% next year and 1.6% in 2011…

China’s manufacturing sector grew last month at the fastest pace since April 2008, according to the country’s official purchasing managers’ index released on Sunday.

Analysts said the survey results confirmed that the country’s economic recovery was broadening as recovering export demand and consumption joined government stimulus as drivers of growth…