Industry

January 2010 US Natural Gas Update

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Natural gas prices continue their recovery. Cold weather has caused high levels of space heating that have resulted in reduced gas storage inventories. Henry Hub spot prices have recovered from their September $2.18 low to an average price of $5.56/MMbtu in the week ending January 22, 2010 (Figure 1). The average daily spot price for 2009 was $3.95/MMbtu…

Richard Heinberg: Peak Coal and Blackout (book review)

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Richard Heinberg is an important figure in the world of those interested in the energy crisis and its consequences, and one of the rare few, along with James Kunstler, to have had their work at least partially translated into French…His latest book, Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, is dedicated to coal, and has aroused considerable interest, and this all the more so because it highlights a problem which had previously only been mentioned in relatively confidential reports: the imminent depletion of coal reserves.

There is (offshore wind powered) light at the end of the tunnel!

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I went on a visit of the port site in Zeebrugge where the foundations for the Belwind offshore wind farm (the financing of which I worked on) have been stored before their installation and wanted to give you a glimpse of the kind of logistics that entails and what kind of problems can happen (and how they are solved).

Jeff Rubin at the The Business of Climate Change Conference 2009 (transcript added)

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Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller built his reputation as one of Canada’s top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. In his recent book, Mr. Rubin predicts $225 per barrel oil by 2012 and with it the end of globalization, a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency.

Days of world consumption: A warning label for oil and gas discoveries

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I don’t expect any government agency to issue a regulation requiring a warning label on oil and natural gas discoveries. But the next best thing would be for journalists reporting such finds to put them into perspective using a days of world consumption figure, or if the find is natural gas that will only be marketed domestically, days of domestic consumption.

ODAC Newsletter – Jan 22

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Oil prices dropped this week on rising US inventories, a strengthening dollar, and news of a further crackdown on credit in China. Speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, Richard Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the IEA predicted that there would be little price volatility in 2010 as existing supplies and stock build ups would balance demand.

Oilwatch Monthly January 2010

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The January edition of Oilwatch Monthly is now available: 1) Conventional crude production – Latest figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates increased by 592,000 b/d from September to October 2009, resulting in total production of crude oil including lease condensates of 73.12 million b/d…