Fossil Fuels

Oil prices: Wild 2008 ends with mild contango

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Spot prices finish the end very low, but what about the long end of the curve, where market practitioners reflect their medium term expectation of the oil buy / sell balance?

Some would say the curve is in deep contango (i.e. future prices are higher than the spot), reflecting a strong expectation that prices will resume their upward movement as soon as the crisis is less severe.

Does that mean more market players are convinced by peak oil?

The Top 10 Peak-Oil-Related Stories of 2008

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1. The Global Recession
2. Price Volatility: Who Knew?
3. Falling Investment = Building the Big Boomerang
4. The IEA Changes its Stance (will U.S. EIA, CERA and Exxon-Mobil follow?)
5. The Campaign and the Elections
6. OPEC Cuts Production
7. The Large Exporters: from Boom to Busted
8. Shale Gas: Game Changer or Rope-a-Dope? [or “a mixed blessing”]
9. Food vs. Fuel Hit Pocketbooks Worldwide
10. Global Production Peaks, on the Production Plateau

The Transition Town Movement: Embracing Reality and Resilience

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For several months I have been meaning to write a review of Rob Hopkins’ The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, but other things got in the way-like a planetary economic meltdown and out of control climate change that exceeds some of the most dire predictions by climate scientists. I should have spoken out earlier in support of this movement, but I didn’t. Now, as we commence this new year, I am.

I will begin this book “review” by telling you that I find nothing-absolutely nothing wrong with The Transition Handbook. If that then makes this article into a commercial for the book instead of a review, so be it.

With twig and dung

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From the hills of the Deccan Plateau in western India’s state of Maharashtra, the world of export fuels is unimaginable. In these hill villages firewood is still the primary fuel. In the hour before the sun goes down over the hills and the temperature drops, women bearing head loads of bundles of light branches head back to their simple homes. What these families have in common with many hundreds of thousands of households in rural India is their continued reliance on wood as fuel, whether for cooking or, as in these windswept hills, for keeping warm.

Ukraine-Russia: some background and context

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Worries about Russia or Gazprom using the “gas weapon” against Europe are misplaced. In their official capacity, both are keenly aware of their absolute dependency on exports to Europe for a huge chunk of the country’s income, and on the need for stable, reliable long term relationships to finance the investments needed in gas infrastructure (and they know their clients share that need). They are happy to play power politics with the West’s worries as this goes down well with their own domestic audiences, but fundamentally they will not rock the gas boat.