Iraq oil recovery effort costing lives
Scores of Iraqi oil workers have been killed or maimed since last year’s invasion after they defied death threats and remained in their posts, Oil Minister Thamir al-Ghadhban says.
Scores of Iraqi oil workers have been killed or maimed since last year’s invasion after they defied death threats and remained in their posts, Oil Minister Thamir al-Ghadhban says.
Pressed for time, Ahmad Hussein refuses to spend hours queuing for petrol at one of Baghdad’s teeming gas stations so he takes his car to a street vendor where it costs six times as much to fill up.
Crude oil prices are likely to stay near the record $55.33 a barrel reached this week in New York because global supplies of the raw material are peaking, Dallas oil investor Boone Pickens said.
In a rush to take advantage of high gas prices and low importing costs for liquefied natural gas, U.S. energy companies have been working to open LNG facilities on the nation’s East, West and Gulf coasts.
As the world’s known deposits of fossil fuel are being run down, not least because of the growing demand of economies such as China’s, the day may come when the big consuming countries will have to fight – literally, in the worst case scenario – for supplies. But it does not have to turn out that way if the far-sighted in Asia can persuade their countrymen to put aside the past and work together to ensure energy security for all.
Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke said the days of cheap oil are likely over, although he expects the economic consequences of higher energy prices will be “manageable.”
According to a report by the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies, most members of OPEC are pushing the limits of their oil production capability, and some probably are finding that their sustainable capacity is not as high as originally thought.
The Green Party’s two co-leaders grilled [New Zealand] Government officials yesterday about grossly inaccurate forecasts made last October about future oil prices.
China’s Communist rulers have a blunt message for anyone who frets about the planned Chinese takeover of Canada’s biggest mining company: Get ready for more to come.
Cheap versions of the “The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and The Collapse of The American Dream” are now available to anyone wishing to send it to an active soldier.
“With the price of oil above $50 a barrel, with political
instability in the Middle East on the rise, and with little
slack in the world oil economy, we need a new energy strategy,”
says Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a
Washington, DC-based research institute. “Fortunately, the
outline of a new strategy is emerging with two new technologies.”
With global oil demand surging and prices hitting record levels, the world’s 1,500 oil tankers are all booked up, and charter rates are soaring. The shortage of tankers is one sign of how strong demand and a lack of investment have left the oil industry’s infrastructure stretched thin.