DrumBeat: April 30, 2008
Prospective presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and John McCain want to scrap the U.S. federal gasoline tax this summer to help U.S. drivers (Barack Obama doesn’t). Ms. Clinton also wants a windfall tax on Big Oil (a suggestion that will receive a boost when those companies shortly announce further “obscene” profits). Recently, Stephen Harper declared that he might play the “oil card” if Messrs. Clinton and Obama reopen NAFTA. In Moscow, Caracas and Tehran, authoritarian leaders are using oil as a prop or a threat. In a dozen countries, from Iraq to Nigeria, oil is fuelling civil strife.
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Déjà Vu: The Fed’s Interest Rate Dilemma
The good news is we’ve been here before, and we know – well, at least 1980s Fed Chairman Paul Volcker knows – how to get out of this mess. Loose money in the 1960s and 1970s drove up the price of everything. A barrel of oil, which sold for $2.92 in 1965, rose to $40 in 1980. Most people believed that rising commodity prices indicated that the world was running out of resources. The Club of Rome predicted global ruin, and then President Jimmy Carter said that “peak oil” was right around the corner.
Gasoline costs force service firms to raise prices
Small companies such as pet sitters and housecleaners are finding it necessary to pass on some of the rising expense to customers as well as to cut back on driving.
Threat of fuel protests returns as cost of petrol hits £5 a gallon
Ministers are preparing for a fresh confrontation with the road haulage industry as the £5 gallon of petrol became a reality at the pumps yesterday.
Fuel protests returned as hauliers demanded help from oil companies and the Treasury, which is raking in huge surpluses from record petrol prices. The cost of filling an average car could reach £84 next year, one consumer body will say today. Air passengers are also being hit as British Airways announced that it was slapping new fuel surcharges on all tickets from Friday to offset the escalating cost of fuel. Long-haul passengers can expect an extra £30 surcharge.
The sky-high cost of fuel means that airlines are going out of business - sooner than environmentalists predicted. What does it mean?
British Airways is big loser as public stay grounded
Nearly half the British public have vowed to fly less in the coming year to help the environment, according to a new survey that will alarm airlines struggling with record fuel prices and the fallout from the credit crunch.
An exclusive poll for The Times shows that 46 per cent of consumers have pledged to cut air travel while 23per cent will fly only with those airlines that have a clear green strategy.
Hurrah for big oil profits. Seven million dollars an hour for BP and Shell, as the cost of jet kerosene bankrupts airlines and dear diesel puts up the price of just about everything from corn flakes to cucumbers. The cheer is not ironic; we should celebrate these gazillion- dollar profits because our world is now in deep trouble and without the grotesquely inflated earnings of the oil multinationals, we should be even deeper in the mire.
We will never have cheap oil again
When this wave of higher oil prices subsides, is it going to be business as usual? After the oil shocks of the 1970s and early 1980s, the oil price came back down and we went pretty much back to our bad old ways.
But this time it feels different.
ExxonMobil row masks true green dilemma
Yet underlying the protest from the trust fund Rockers is a big problem for oil companies - their ever-increasing reliance on the support of governments and regulators.
Exxon’s riposte to the climate change and peak oil lobbies is that technology rather than regulation will provide answers to our energy problems.
It is a disingenuous argument because the energy industry is at the governments’ knees begging for help - big dollops of taxpayer cash to build experimental power stations.
Pickens sends landowners letters
A select number of property owners from Childress to Jacksboro learned this week that T. Boone Pickens would like to do a little business with them.
The man who has made billions in gas, oil and hedge funds has an ambitious plan to build a combination water pipeline and electric transmission line from Roberts County in the Panhandle to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Landowners along the proposed route got notification that Pickens’ company is interested in buying right-of-way from them — or seizing it through the law of eminent domain.
The Politics of Gas Prices: Comprehensive Energy Policy Needed
Nothing sheds light on the state of US politics more so than do high gasoline prices. So far, McCain and Clinton both come out in favor of a “gas tax holiday”, although one must give McCain his due as the originator of this brainstorm. Clinton goes further and wants to enact windfall profit taxes on big oil. Both are big big mistakes. Obama, to his credit, has so far not joined in the populist rhetoric that Americans seem to just eat up like apple pie. However, Obama has still not taken me up on my offer to fly (at my own expense) to any place of his choosing for an hour presentation on peak oil so he can craft a real energy policy.
OPEC might hold extraordinary meeting over prices: Kuwait
KUWAIT - OPEC might hold an extraordinary meeting over skyrocketing oil prices, Kuwaiti Oil Minister Mohammad al-Olaim said on Wednesday.
“If there is any requirement for a meeting, we will not hesitate to meet,” Olaim said.
Indonesia may tender to sell crude oil
JAKARTA, April 30 (Reuters) - Indonesia may tender to sell crude oil that is piling up in storage in many production areas either because of bad weather or lack of tankers, energy watchdog officials said on Wednesday.
BPMIGAS marketing chief Budi Indianto told Reuters the total amount was estimated at around 13 million barrels and was spread across various locations in the sprawling archipelago.
Players turns on North Sea taps
Operators in the UK North Sea have started turning the taps back on from North Sea fields after the restart of the Forties pipeline and expect to reach full rates later today.
Mekong nations to form OPEC-style rice cartel - Thai PM
BANGKOK (Thomson Financial) - Thailand has agreed in principle to form a rice price-fixing cartel with Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia as costs of the staple grain surge, Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said on Wednesday.
The grouping of Mekong nations would be similar to the oil cartel OPEC, and would be called the Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC).
Environmental activist delivers impassioned plea at Caribbean tourism conference
According to Suzuki, “Island people, better than most, understand limits, and that resources are finite. Looming ahead for the entire world is the great crisis of our economy, peak oil, the moment when available oil supplies are all known and being exploited so that supplies will inexorably fall.
“The twin crises of ecological degradation and falling oil supplies will have massive repercussions for all countries, but none more so than those of the Caribbean and especially the tourism industry†said Suzuki.
Global warming expert raises concerns for tourism industry
BANGKOK (AFP) - Nobel Peace Prize recipient Rajendra Pachauri Tuesday warned tourism industry chiefs they need to reduce their impact on climate change as consumers become more environmentally aware.
“The tourism industry, for its own sake, will have to adapt,” Pachauri said to more than 200 Asia Pacific airline, hotel and tourist company chief executives at a conference on tourism and climate change.
Drink wine and save Mother Earth
OSLO (AFP) - Norwegians will soon be able to help save the planet from global warming by savouring a glass of Bordeaux, a wine importer said on Tuesday.
For every bag-in-box of Chateau Le Cluzeau 2006 sold in Norway the importer Bevco will buy carbon credits compensating for 18 kilograms of carbon dioxide.
That is almost six times the estimated amount of CO2 emitted in the production and transport of one bag-in-box.
OECD ministers plead for environment despite economic concerns
PARIS (AFP) - OECD environment ministers on Tuesday stood by efforts to tackle climate change, despite arguments in some quarters that at a time of economic uncertainty, spending on green issues could damage competitiveness.
Judge orders federal government to decide polar bear listing
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide within 16 days whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming.
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken agreed with conservation groups that the department missed a Jan. 9 deadline for a decision. She rejected a government request for a further delay and ordered it to act by May 15.
Higher energy costs from climate bills
WASHINGTON - People will be paying higher energy prices under a Senate bill to limit greenhouse gases, but how much will depend on how well the country can shift away from burning fossil fuels, an Energy Department analysis said Tuesday.
The Energy Information Administration said annual energy costs could increase on average of as little as $30 or as much as 10 times that much by 2020. The projected cost increases per household ranged from $76 a year more to as much as $723 a year more by 2030.
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