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John Felmy is chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute (API), responsible for overseeing the organization’s economic, statistical, and policy analysis. He has over 25 years’ experience in energy, economic, and environmental analysis. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland. John is a member of several professional associations, including the American Economics Association and the International Association for Energy Economics. He was interviewed at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., by William F. Jasper, senior editor of The New American.The New...

Demands that the Shell Bakersfield Refinery remain open intensified Friday, as Sen. Barbara Boxer joined a chorus of calls to the Federal Trade Commission and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer to prevent the closure. "The plant must remain open until a buyer is found and a sale is completed. Otherwise, consumers will pay the prices," Boxer wrote in a letter to FTC Chairman Timothy Muris. Boxer's letter caps a week that has seen a wide array of critics of the proposed closure emerge. Also this week, the FTC announced it is evaluating the situation, and the state Attorney General's office...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Just two Arab countries have supplied almost 50 percent of California's imported oil over the past five years, a dependence that leaves the state more vulnerable than the rest of the country to disruptions in the world oil markets. The finding, based on an analysis of state and federal crude oil import statistics, underscores the challenges confronting both California -- the biggest gas-consuming state in the U.S. -- and the country as a whole as lawmakers grapple with consumer outrage over high prices at the pump and a U.S. deficit that has widened on the back...

If you’re wondering who owns “Big Oil,” chances are good the answer is “you do.” If you have a mutual fund account, and 55 million U.S. households do, there’s a good chance it invests in oil and natural gas stocks. If you have an IRA or personal retirement account, and 45 million U.S households do, there’s a good chance it invests in energy stocks. It’s a common misperception that oil executives are the only benefactors of industry success. Instead, the bulk of ‘Big Oil’ benefactors are hardworking men and women across America who boost their retirement portfolios through oil and...

HOBBS -- Sen. Pete Domenici will be featured speaker at a national energy policy conference May 27 at the Lea County Event Center titled "The Making of Energy Policy: Where Are We Going?" The conference is sponsored by New Mexico Tech, the Economic Development Corporation of Lea County, and the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy. Co-sponsors are the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. NMCEP, operated by New Mexico Tech, is organizing the conference, the group said in a news release. Registration will begin at 10 a.m., followed at 11:30 a.m. by a welcome and...

Chief among the pessimists is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, a group of European scientists who estimate that maximum oil production around the globe will peak in 2008 as demand rises from developing economies such as China... Others believe, like Maugeri, that the number of glasses is virtually limitless. John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, argues that peak oil- production estimates are so far off that for all practical purposes we might as well act as if oil will flow forever. "Ever since oil was first harvested in the 1800s, people have said...

WASHINGTON - High oil prices, which have been a factor in virtually all U.S. recessions over the past three decades, are surging again this year. And the higher crude oil prices climb, the more risk energy costs pose to what, until recently, many expected to be a banner year for the U.S. economy. Some economists are even beginning to worry about an outright recession if oil prices, already at record levels, go much higher. And concerns are rising about the threat of "stagflation," a dreaded economic malady of stagnant growth coupled with rising prices that had the United States in...

The economic impact of the 1995 Deep Water Royalty Relief Act is huge as are the consequences that would result from its modification or repeal by Congress.

Strong worldwide oil demand and lack of supply are to blame for steadily rising gasoline prices in the United States, an oil industry group said Friday. The American Petroleum Institute made no specific price forecast for 2011, but didn't seem to see a drop anytime soon. "Unless we see increases in supply, it's hard not to see a tighter market," John Felmy, the institute's chief economist, said in a conference call with reporters. Felmy said worldwide oil demand in 2010 hit a record of more than 87 million barrels a day, driven largely by strong growth in India, China and...

BUCKHORN, Ontario – Candy Penny and her husband have owned their novelty shop here just long enough to not know what it was like when American tourists flooded this small Peterborough County town in Canada’s “cottage country.” “I understand that, before the recession, every other license plate in town was from a different (American) state,” said Penny, a Michigan native who moved here when she married a Canadian. “Between that and the spike of gas prices in 2008 and again this summer, and the required passports to cross the border, our main business is Canadian.” Her shop is in a...

CENTRAL OHIO - As gasoline prices continue to climb, the oil industry said this week that by 2012, we could be paying not $4 per gallon, but $5. "It scares me," said Sharri Carroll, who was filling up her car in Hilliard Wednesday. "How are you going to afford to fill up your tank every week to get to work?" NBC4 took the concerns Wednesday to John Felmy, a Ph.D. a top official with the American Petroleum Institute. Felmy is one of the country's leading experts on gasoline prices who just happened to be in Columbus Wednesday

(CNSNews.com) -- Armed with a Power Point presentation to illustrate the state of American energy, John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute (API), said the majority of “big oil” and natural gas ownership is in good hands – the hands of the American people.According to a report published in 2007 by Sonecon, an economic advisory firm that analyses U.S. markets and public policy, corporate management owns only 1.5 percent of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.The rest is owned by tens of millions of Americans through retirement accounts (14 percent) and pension funds (26 percent).  Mutual funds...

HOBBS -- Sen. Pete Domenici will be featured speaker at a national energy policy conference May 27 at the Lea County Event Center titled "The Making of Energy Policy: Where Are We Going?" The conference is sponsored by New Mexico Tech, the Economic Development Corporation of Lea County, and the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy. Co-sponsors are the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. NMCEP, operated by New Mexico Tech, is organizing the conference, the group said in a news release. Registration will begin at 10 a.m., followed at 11:30 a.m. by a welcome and...

CALLICOON, New York (AFP) – After a lifetime struggling to make money from the land, New York farmer Bill Graby has discovered he's sitting on treasure -- possibly the biggest natural gas deposit in America. "It's like winning the lottery," says the 6.6-foot (two-meter) dairy farmer from the picturesque town of Callicoon in the Catskills hills. The deposit, called the Marcellus shale, stretches all the way from New York to Tennessee, containing 168 to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation. That dwarfs the previous big daddy, the Barnett shale in...

BY TIM JOHNSONtjohnson@herald.com A Venezuelan army soldier directs traffic at the entrance to a gas station in Caracas on Thursday, the 32nd day of a nationwide strike. Chavez and his opposition traded allegations Thursday on the state of Venezuela's oil industry, saying that oil production would return to its normal level of 3 million barrels a day within 45 days. ANDRES LEIGHTON/AP WASHINGTON - President Hugo Chávez pledged Thursday to return oil production to normal within 45 days in strike-crippled Venezuela, but U.S. analysts dismissed his claim and fretted over a sharp decline in U.S. crude imports.The Energy Department...

Who owns 'Big Oil?' It's not who you think. A recent study finds that ownership of oil and natural gas company shares is made up of a broad cross section of Americans. "This study disproves the popular misconception that 'Big Oil' is owned by a small group of industry insiders. In reality, across the oil and natural gas industry only 1.5 percent of shares of public companies are owned by company executives," said study author Robert J. Shapiro, undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs under President Bill Clinton. "The data show that ownership of industry shares is broadly middle class,...