ODAC Newsletter – Mar 19

OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna this week caused no surprises in deciding to keep production quotas unchanged. Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi described current prices as “beautiful”. Indeed as the group met the oil price rose to $82/barrel, close to its 2010 high despite only 53% compliance by OPEC to its quotas and low US demand.

World Has Much at Stake in Nuclear Power Decision

Just days before French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged attendees at a Paris energy conference to buy more nuclear power plants, a very different nuclear power conference was held in Potsdam, Germany. The Brookings Institution and the Global Public Policy Institute convened 35 people from governments, academia, think tanks, and industry to consider nuclear power’s future. Craig Severance offers his own insights, and his conference presentation on why new nuclear power should undergo a rigorous business oriented “Due Diligence” process.

The end of Australian manufacturing?

Alan Kohler had an interesting column in The Business Spectator recently (“The cars that ate Australia“) warning that as our car fleet transitions from the internal combustion to electric vehicles, local car manufacturers need to start looking to manufacture EV’s or they (and all their suppliers) will end up shutting down.

Post Carbon Exchange #1: Richard Heinberg & Lester Brown (transcript added)

In this premier Post Carbon Exchange, Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg talks with Lester Brown, Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, about hopeful developments in alternative energy, as well as the importance of Brown’s updated path toward a sustainable future, “Plan B 4.0”.

New oil report says demand will not let up – Mar 16

-World oil demand’s shift toward faster growing and less price-responsive products and regions
-Economists deliver a sturdy smackdown of peak oil demand
-Study Finds that Peak Oil Demand is Decades Away, but Minimizes Effects of Rising Consumer Product Prices
-Forecasts underestimate oil demand, study says

Which Train Is Leaving The Station?

My busy eating, drinking & breathing schedule prevented me from going down to Houston for CERAWeek this year. It’s funny how that works—something seems to come up every year. So I’ll have to use news reports to get a feel for how this year’s exciting oil & gas Schmooze-Fest went. Tuesday, March 9th was Oil Day.