Search results for energy
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Posted
Nov 14 2008, 06:38 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
As ironic as it may seem, the finances of OPEC members may be as bad as at any time in recent memory. They have become poor as quickly as they became rich earlier this year.
OPEC obviously expected oil prices to stay above $100 for some length of time. Government budgets in places like Iran and Venezuela depend on high crude. Now they face massive deficits and no way to handle their obligations.
In places including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait parts of the banking systems are strained and the ability of royal families to buy new Hummers and private jets has been hurt.
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Posted
Jun 08 2009, 01:54 PM
by
Catherine Holahan
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This story has been updated. Read the new one here.
Drivers are shelling out far more to fill their tanks this summer than last winter, despite the severe economic downturn. And there's likely more pain to come at the pump.
Gasoline prices have risen sharply in the past month. This week, the average price for a gallon rose to $2.67, according to automotive group AAA. That's up more than 35% since December 2008.
To be sure, gas prices are still far less than consumers paid last summer. Oil prices hit a record high of $147 per barrel on July 11, 2008, pushing the average price of regular gasoline to $4.11. But the price of crude has soared in recent weeks. Prices jumped past $72 a barrel late last week, though they fell slightly on Monday as the dollar strengthened. (A stronger dollar reduces the desire to buy commodities as a hedge against inflation.)
Speculation shares some of the blame for price hikes
The recent gasoline price increases are perhaps more difficult for consumers to bear than even last summer's soaring prices. Unlike last July's spike -- which was fueled by increasing demand due to global economic growth, as well as speculation that the good economic times would continue - this year's increase is largely due to anticipation that the worst of the recession is over and that the economy will pick up. Unfortunately for many Americans and businesses, their personal fortunes have not improved along with investors' economic outlook, leaving them ill-prepared to pay higher prices.
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Posted
Jul 31 2008, 05:01 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Through much of the spring and early summer, Wall Street experts and oil analysts said gasoline could break above the $5-a-gallon barrier as oil moved close to $150 a barrel and vacation travel increased. This has broken the back of the car industry and crippled airlines as well.
In some regions of the country premium gas prices did top $5, but now, for the first time in a long time, the move in prices is downward. Data from the AAA show the national price for a gallon of gas falling to $3.96 this week, down from $4.05 a week ago.
With crude still dropping, how far can gas fall and can it make it back to $3 this year? Because of changes in consumption patterns, gas prices could fall sharply and fast.
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Posted
May 06 2008, 06:14 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
I'm really not here to scare you, but, get ready, I AM going to scare you.
The news got lots of attention: Goldman Sachs analyst Arjun Murti predicted Tuesday that the price of crude oil could hit $150 to $200 a barrel in six to 24 months. (Here's one discussion of the report. Another is here.)
Crude oil in New York promptly jumped to as high as $122.73 a barrel in New York before closing at $121.84. And, as I write this, crude was trading slightly lower in electronic trading. But it also had the perverse effect of pushing the stock market higher. Indeed, the biggest winners in Tuesday's stock market were oil and gas production companies, natural gas companies. (But not refiners; crude oil is rising faster than refiners can push their prices up.)
So, if crude jumps to $150 or $200, how does that translate into prices at the gas pump. Here's the scary part.
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Posted
Jun 27 2008, 01:49 AM
by
Andrew Horowitz
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
After the close of the markets Thursday, as the fear of a continued parabolic rise in the price of oil was still fresh on the minds of investors, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that that could help to reverse the direction of oil prices.
The bill would provide for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) to enact emergency measures to “maintain or restore orderly trading.” Concurrent to the bill’s approval, the CTFC released a notice that spells out the broad powers granted by Congress that have been used when the commodity markets have been manipulated in the past. Yes, manipulation.
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Posted
Apr 10 2008, 03:53 PM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Watch out, Texas! Get back California, Louisiana and Alaska! North Dakota and Montana are on track to knock all of you off your high horses as the oil capital of the United States.
According to a government report published today that has stunned the energy biz, a thin layer of rock known as the Bakken Shale, located a couple of miles under the Badlands, holds up 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, making it the single largest oil reservoir that federal scientists have ever assessed.
At today’s price of $110 per barrel, that puts the value at $475 billion, give or take a few bill, or more than enough to make people think ND stands for North Dallas. Or maybe that’s New Dhabi.
The U.S. Geological Survey only assessed the Bakken Shale in U.S. boundaries, so the full extent of the find, which stretches north into the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, will ultimately be larger. Already the estimate for “technically recoverable” oil – or that which is exploitable using current technology -- is 25 times higher than the last time the USGS surveyed the area, in 1995.
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Posted
Jun 16 2009, 09:50 AM
by
Catherine Holahan
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Drivers are shelling out far more to fill their tanks this summer than last
winter, despite the severe economic downturn. And there's likely more pain to
come at the pump.
Gasoline prices have risen sharply in the past month. This week,
the average price for a gallon rose to $2.67, according to automotive group
AAA. That's up more than 35% since December 2008.
To be sure, gas prices are still far less than consumers paid
last summer. Oil prices hit a record high of $147 per barrel on July 11,
2008, pushing the average price of regular gasoline to $4.11. But the price of
crude has soared in recent weeks. Prices jumped past $72 a
barrel late last week, though they fell slightly on Monday as the dollar
strengthened. (A stronger dollar reduces the desire to buy commodities as a
hedge against inflation.)
Speculation shares some of the blame for price hikes Read More...
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Posted
May 06 2008, 12:05 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
If soaring gasoline prices are blowing a hole in your commuting budget, perhaps you ought to consider going to work for an oil company. That seems to be the employment road to riches these days, as the industry reportedly faces the loss of half of its aging work force over the next decade.
According to a report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the energy industry will lose as many as 15% of its engineers in just two years to retirement, and has therefore launched an all-out assault on finding, training and retaining new young staffers. It sounds like the boom in demand for software developers in Silicon Valley in the '90s. Bonuses and perks are escalating as companies vie for talent. Report author Pritesh Patel said new workers will stream into the industry from around the world, but there will still be a “knowledge gap” that will hamper efforts to find and exploit new oil and gas reserves.
It sounds like this is a better direction for college graduates to head than the traditional havens of medicine and law. The Society of Petroleum Engineers has published a survey that shows the average base salary for petroleum engineers was $122,458 in 2007, up 5% from 2006. Bonuses, housing allowances, retirement plan contributions and the like reportedly push the average compensation to $167,712. All this at a time when doctors and IT pros are facing cutbacks.
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Posted
Jul 15 2009, 07:10 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Matt Simmons has been a lone voice in the wilderness warning Americans about the impending peak-oil crisis. His prediction of a global peak in crude-oil production at 73 million barrels per day in 2005 has proved correct. Worldwide total liquids production peaked at 86 million barrels in 2008.
All the "easy" oil and gas in the world has been found. Additional supplies will be found deep below the ocean, in challenging arctic regions, in tar sands, and shale. It will be dramatically more expensive to extract oil from these sources. Oil discoveries have been in a steady decline since the 1970s.
The United States has been dependent on 600 million barrels of oil from Mexico every year. By 2012 Mexico will become a net importer of oil, so 600 million barrels of oil will need to be replaced. Iran’s oil production is in decline as capital investment has been ignored for years. Russia’s production has peaked. Saudi Arabia continues to dissimulate about its ability to ramp up production. Their oil fields are 40 years old and in terminal decline.
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Posted
Sep 23 2008, 04:08 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The titanic global recession and anxiety about the government's failure to quickly fix the credit crisis pushed the price of oil up higher than it has been for months. High gas prices and slow growth in emerging countries decreased the demand for oil. Politicians said it was okay to drill off the coasts of Santa Barbara and Manhattan. The Brazilians found more crude reserves in deep water offshore than Venezuela or Russia have underground.
Oil prices had been volatile for so long that investors grew tired of it and chose to turn to something else. Mortgage-backed paper seemed like a good place to sweat out the future though no one understood the danger they posed. That made credit a perfect target for investor worry and government action
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