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Crude oil futures pared gains in choppy trade on Thursday, after the International Energy Agency warned that elevated oil prices could derail the global economic recovery. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in July traded at USD100.28 a barrel during European morning trade, easing up 0.11%. It earlier rose by as much as 1% to a daily high of USD101.24 a barrel. The governing board of the International Energy Agency expressed “serious concern” that there were growing signs that the rise in oil prices was affecting the global economic recovery by widening global imbalances...

Brent crude fell $5 on Tuesday and U.S. crude dropped $4 as concerns over a deepening nuclear crisis in Japan heightened risk aversion and pushed prices lower in the oil markets. Brent crude for April delivery fell as low as $107.88 while U.S. crude for April delivery dropped briefly to $97.10.

At least 1.8 million barrels of crude oil in three tankers have left Libyan ports in the past 24 hours, shipping and trade sources said on Wednesday. "Crude oil is leaving the country."

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show. The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%. The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the...

Fears that the turmoil in Egypt could disrupt oil shipments passing through the Suez canal and engulf the Middle East drove the price of Brent crude oil through the $100 barrier for the first time in over two years. The price of a barrel of the benchmark Brent crude soared by more than $1.50 to as high as $101.08 a barrel as the protests against President Hosni Mubarak's regime intensified. Prices are now at their highest since September 2008, at the start of the financial crisis. Abdullah Al-Badri, secretary general of Opec, the cartel of oil producers, expressed concern about...

The Economy: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a six-month ban on deep-water drilling. When President Obama visited Louisiana on May 1, he talked about the possibility that the oil gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well could "jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home." Now the administration's response could jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands more. In a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the president's decision to suspend deepwater drilling...

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

Emergencies: As frustration with the federal response grows, Louisiana's governor lashes out at the feds for doing little except blame BP for the Gulf oil spill. Meanwhile, Congress sees a chance to raise your gas taxes. While the Obama administration continues on its quest to fundamentally transform America, the largely unabated Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to fundamentally transform the ecosystems and economy of Louisiana and the Gulf region. The federal government's response so far has consisted largely of scapegoating BP and ignoring its own responsibilities and lack of preparation, railing against Big Oil, while Congress...

Canadian oil sands will probably become the No. 1 source of U.S. crude oil imports this year, and could make up more than a third of the nation’s oil and refined product imports by 2030, according to a new study. The Role of Canadian Oil Sands in U.S. Oil Supply, a report from Cambridge, Mass.-based IHS CERA, says that in a fast-growth scenario, oil sands could represent 36% of oil imports by 2030, or 20% in a more moderate growth scenario, compared with 8% in 2009. Production of 1.35 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2009 could rise to between...

The BP Spill: Tuesday on Capitol Hill, oil executives were subjected to the Senate's latest show trial. Senators did not say the accident in federal waters was a federal responsibility or that nature spills more oil every day. The morning hearing by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and the afternoon session before California Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environmental and Public Works Committee prove White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's dictum that a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste — especially when your goal is exploiting the Deepwater Horizon disaster...

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way. The explosion that blew apart an oil...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Energy: A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit. From trying to stimulate jobs in nonexistent ZIP codes at great expense to worshiping the false gods of climate change, our biggest deficit these days may be in the area of common sense. A new study shows that many of our wounds are self-inflicted as we forgo the wealth and jobs to be found in our waters and under our feet. The study by Science Applications International Corp....

Crude oil and natural gas seeps naturally out of fissures in the ocean seabed and eroding sedimentary rock. These seeps are natural springs where liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons leak out of the ground (like springs that ooze oil and gas instead of water). Whereas freshwater springs are fed by underground pools of water, oil and gas seeps are fed by natural underground accumulations of oil and natural gas (see USGS illustration). Natural oil seeps are used in identifying potential petroleum reserves. As pointed out by the National Research Council (NRC) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, "natural oil seeps...

Cheap Crude Oil Is Gone, And That's Good News Commodities / Crude Oil Jan 15, 2010 - 04:21 PM By: Casey Research Marin Katusa writes: Over the next year or two, you will likely find yourself paying a LOT more at the gas pump. Big changes are taking place in the oil industry. With increased global demand and declining supply, easy oil is not so easy anymore. Everything is about to get more expensive. From gasoline to anti-freeze, life jackets to golf balls, and eye glasses to fertilizer. There are very few things in the modern world that aren't made...

<p>NAIROBI, Kenya — The EU's anti-piracy force says Somali pirates have seized a super tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States.</p>

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy Policy: Ignoring peak-oil Cassandras, BP has made another giant oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. We're not running out of oil. Our government just doesn't want us to look for it.The world is running out of oil and good riddance. That's the environmentalists' mantra. But since the first well was drilled near Titusville, Pa., 150 years ago, the prophecy has gone unfulfilled. Trouble is, those darn greedy oil companies keep finding the stuff. Oil has been produced in the Gulf of Mexico since the first well was drilled by Kerr-McGee Corp. in 1947. Some of the wells are...

Energy: We balk at importing "dirty" oil from Canada, but others aren't so reluctant. Exempt as a "developing" nation from Kyoto-like agreements, China has decided to help Canada develop its energy-rich oil sands.The Financial Post reports that PetroChina International Investment Co. has struck a deal to buy a 60% interest in Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.'s McKay River and Dover projects for $1.9 billion. China has been establishing energy beachheads around the world in its quest to keep its growing economy fueled. With possible conflict brewing between Israel and Iran, Beijing recognizes the need for reliable suppliers like Canada in an...

Energy Policy: A new study shows that Waxman-Markey will increase prices at the pump, deepen our dependence on foreign oil and shred our ability to turn crude into gasoline. Even fuel-efficient cars will still need fuel.Oil may bubble up out of the ground, but gasoline does not. It's made in those ugly little NIMBY places called refineries we are loath to build anymore because we're too busy trying to save the Earth rather than our economy and American jobs. When Hurricane Katrina shut down 20% of our refining capacity in a single day and raised gas prices in a single...

Cap-And-Trade: The administration likes to defend bad policies with analogies to the post office. New studies from a business group and the administration itself confirm that cap-and-trade belongs in the dead-letter bin.Along with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Rep. Ed Markey likens the cost of the Waxman-Markey cap-and trade bill to "about a postage stamp a day," based on estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office and the EPA. But as we and others have shown, they arrive at this magical number in part by ignoring the hit on gross domestic product and employment that will occur. As Garret Vaughan, economist...

Stimulus: Brazil, a leader in the use of biofuels such as ethanol and in the face of falling oil prices, still plans to spend huge sums to expand its offshore oil resources. Drilling rigs are infrastructure too.With oil prices scraping the bottom of the barrel, pun intended, there wouldn't appear to be much incentive to pursue the development of new oil resources. And in tough economic times worldwide, the necessary investment required would appear to be prohibitive. As the U.S. seeks to get its economy going by building roads, bridges and bicycle paths, Brazil has decided to create jobs and...

Energy: As Russian attack submarines patrol our eastern seaboard, Moscow signs a deal to help Castro's Cuba drill for oil off the Florida coast. In Moscow and Havana, the cry is "Drill, Comrade, Drill!"Two Russian nuclear attack submarines have taken up positions along our East Coast in recent days, another sign of renewed assertiveness by the former communist giant. The move comes as Moscow inks a deal with the communist relic of Cuba to drill for oil we refuse to go after. The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the...

As Palin pointed out to Salazar, the USGS assessment "estimates that Arctic Alaska has mean technically recoverable resources of approximately 30 billion barrels of oil, 6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 221 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas."

Energy: Will oil hit $250 a barrel? The Russians think so, as crude prices climb to an eight-month high. Meantime, House Republicans advance a plan to help the administration keep a domestic energy promise.The cost of July deliveries of crude bounced over $73 Thursday as the American Petroleum Institute reported shrinking U.S. inventories as the dollar weakens against the euro. Alexei Miller, chairman of the Russian energy giant Gazprom, is repeating his prediction of a year ago that oil may eventually reach the $250 mark.

Energy Policy: The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil. We've been told that for the last 150 years. The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.Ever since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pa., in 1859, experts have been predicting we would soon run out of oil. The latest is Dr. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency in Paris, whose job it is to assess future energy supplies by OECD countries. In an interview with the Independent, Dr. Birol says that based...

Energy: With Ahab-like determination, environmentalists have once again blocked oil exploration in the American Arctic. They may just have succeeded in putting the American economy on ice.On Friday, a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals Court panel in Washington, D.C., struck down the Bush administration's five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing off Alaska's northern coast. The plan was vacated, the panel ruled, because of allegedly insufficient environmental review because its "environmental sensitivity rankings are irrational." What is irrational is that despite a more than three-decade long record of environmental sensitivity at Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere, and despite booming polar...

Regulation: Ignoring the first rule of holes, a bankrupt state passing out IOUs welcomes an EPA waiver allowing it to further kill its economy. Too bad the state can't stop the air pollution imported from a growing China. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday granted California its long-standing request — denied by the Bush administration — for a waiver to allow it to impose even more stringent air pollution rules than currently required by the federal government.The way is now clear for implementation of a 2002 state law requiring new cars to increase their fuel economy 40% by 2016....

Did you ever wonder who might be the world’s biggest energy speculator? Now let me see, might it be T. Boone Pickens? Or perhaps it might be Prince Alaweed of Saudi Arabia. Maybe it is one of those big fund traders, you know, the ones that can allegedly control the price of oil on a whim. Well if that is what you think, you are wrong. ... (remainder of article at the link)

... "How is it that the price of oil can fall and yet the price of gasoline rises?" Somewhere along the way, most reporters covering the energy industry have convinced Americans that the price of oil and gasoline pump prices are somehow directly connected. Well, the connection is there, but it is a weak one; and certainly over the past few years, misinformation has confused the effect of oil prices on the price of gasoline and diesel. (Snip) Now, the most thoughtful question I’m asked is, "What is a fair price for oil?" The answer to that question differs greatly...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil dropped more than 3 percent on Thursday, touching the lowest level since May 2005 as record U.S. job losses intensified concerns of a long and deep global recession and further crushed demand expectations. The U.S. government reported the number of workers making new claims for jobless benefits last week surged to the highest in 16 years, helping to push down global equity markets. U.S. crude fell $1.81 to $51.81 a barrel by 1251 p.m. EST after earlier touching $49.75, marking the lowest level since May 25, 2005, when prices hit $49.58. London Brent crude shed...

Crude oil prices fall to half of record Published: Oct. 15, 2008 at 6:18 PM NEW YORK, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- Crude oil prices fell to a penny more than half July's record price, retracting 50 percent on the New York Mercantile Exchange in just over three months. Crude oil fell $5.11 Wednesday to $73.64 per barrel, a 6 percent drop on the day, as unsettled economies continued to support investors' fears of falling demand. "The honeymoon relief package reaction now appears to be giving way to uncertainty over its impact on global demand," Mark Pervan, a senior commodity strategist...

Crude prices could fall to $50 a barrel: Goldman Sachs 13 Oct 2008, 1017 hrs SINGAPORE: Goldman Sachs, one of the foremost bulls on commodities, turned a near-term bear on Monday after conceding that global financial turmoil would take a far bigger toll on demand than first anticipated. "We have underestimated the depth and duration of the global financial crisis and its implications on economic growth and commodity demand," its commodity markets research team lead by Jeffrey Currie said in a report dated Oct 13. The bank, which has consistently been at the top of oil price polls for years,...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - The International Energy Agency said Tuesday that tight global oil demand and supply balance, which had helped push up crude prices to record highs, is easing as higher prices and slower economic growth in developed countries curbs oil demand. Global oil demand for this year is expected to stand at 86.9 million barrels a day, unchanged from the previous month's forecasts, the IEA said in an August monthly report. Oil supplies, on the other hand, are expected to remain strong. The world produced 87.8 million barrels of oil in July, up 890,000 barrels from the previous...

With the cost of crude oil surging to record highs, a heated battle of blame is in full swing, with a lineup of suspects that includes the oil industry, Congress, commodity speculators, environmentalists and developing countries in Asia. Meanwhile, predictions that we've reached a peak in oil production or will very soon — dismissed only a few years ago as being alarmist and without merit — are receiving more serious consideration. The problem is, nobody really knows how much oil is down there. The only thing that's certain: Dead organisms produced a limited amount of oil long ago, and eventually...

Angered by soaring fuel prices, Europeans are protesting and taking a toll on consumers and companies by creating food stores shortages, lighting highways in the death of two people in Spain and Portugal. Amid warnings at the price of oil could sort of perhaps $250 a barrel within 18 months, EU officials plan to meet next week to consider solution to surging food and fuel costs. Adam McCarthy says he now spends nearly €60, or about $93, to fill up his Volvo, and he expects protests to continue across to Europe as drivers become increasingly frustrated.

Diesel fuel produced by genetically-engineered bugs.Several Silicon Valley companies are already genetically altering microbes and small organisms--bugs, so to speak--so that they produce something for nothing. The something? How about petroleum products. The nothing? How about agricultural waste--wood chips or straw or other biomass. The organisms eat the waste products and excrete crude oil. “Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones...

IN 2004, ARJUN N. MURTI, A TOP ENERGY ANALYST AT GOLDMAN SACHS, published a report predicting "a potentially large upward spike in crude oil, natural gas and refining margins at some point this decade." It was a controversial call, with crude around $40 a barrel at the time. But it was right on the money... ...We are getting closer to the end game here, where despite eight years of rising energy prices, supply looks like it is going to barely grow this year. We have been bullish, but we didn't expect such a slow growth rate of supply. And demand...

The Dow took a 325 point plunge on Friday as Wall Street reacts to an unprecedented $10 surge in crude oil prices and the largest one-month rise in the nation's unemployment rate in two decades. Today's Market As of 2:46 p.m. EDT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 317.46 points, or 2.52% to 12286.26, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 31.88 points, or 2.27%, to 1372.17 and the Nasdaq Composite Index lost 61.54 points, or 2.41%, to 2488.40. The consumer-friendly Fox 50 fell 21.92 points, or 2.22%, to 964.53. It didn't take long for Wall Street to erase all...

Oil is going to reach $150 USD per barrel by winter. Gasoline will hit $6 USD per gallon in the USA. What are we going to do then?

Bursting the Speculative Bubble - May 30, 2008 The Bubble may be ready to burst. The CFTC pushed by Congress may be sharpening the point on the pin that bursts the price balloon. Futures, Institutional Investors and Oil Prices. The volume of email commenting on the Michael Masters testimony before the Senate was surprising to say the least. While we disagree with some of his comments comparing the number of futures contracts to physical barrels, we do agree with the basic analysis and believe it helps explain some of the oil price increase over the last few ears. Since all...

<p>SELMA, Ind. — It's just a drop in the global oil bucket, but an eastern Indiana man is operating an oil well in his backyard in an effort to capitalize on soaring crude prices.</p> <p>Greg Losh's rig produces three barrels of crude oil a day, though he told FOX News that he hasn't started selling it yet. For now, he and his partners are keeping it in storage containers.</p>

Transportation Gasoline Grows On Trees Apparently scientists (and some of our readers, surely) have known that we can grow oil for years, and not in the grow-corn-make-oil kind of way. The Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii can be tapped (ala maple syrup) for a natural diesel fuel that requires only simple filtering before being poured into a truck. (This picture is of the tree's cells.) The catch? The diesel only has a shelf-life of about 3 months.So how many trees would it take to match the oil output of, say, Saudi Arabia? Check our stats after the jump. Saudi Arabia Oil Output...

The price of oil shot to a new high last night as Wall Street traders bought fuel contracts to offset the falling value of the dollar. Energy traders were also unnerved by a fire at Shell’s Bacton gas terminal in Norfolk, which threatened more than 45 million cubic metres of gas supplies, about 13 per cent of National Grid’s forecast demand. The blaze – which started at 6pm – was extinguished. National Grid sought to reassure markets that the facility, the third-largest in the UK, was still receiving adequate supplies. Light sweet crude oil for April delivery rose $2.95 to...

"Water, water every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water every where, Nor a drop to drink." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ----------------------------------------------------- Iran isn’t an energy-independent country. I’m well aware that Iran produces more than 4 million barrels of oil per day, the fourth-highest production in the world. And with the near-constant reporting about Iranian crude reserves during the past six months, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could be unaware that Iran has 132 billion barrels in proven reserves--or, at least, they claim to. But what’s often ignored is that...

Oilsands gain a dirty name Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post Published: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 Forget Canada's image as a source of secure energy to the United States. That was a couple of years ago, when the flavours of the day south of the border were indignation over soaring gasoline prices, while dependence on Middle East oil was the root of all evil, including the war in Iraq. Now that Hollywood actors are buying carbon offsets to feel even better about their air-conditioned mansions and private jets, Canada is held in contempt for being the source of the dirtiest oil...