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Posted
Jun 27 2008, 01:49 AM
by
Andrew Horowitz
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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
Jun 24 2008, 09:50 AM
by
Bradley Meacham
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This post was written by MSN Money columnist Tim Middleton.
Something in the water in Washington turns people into gas bags, evidently, because the idea that financial speculation has doubled the price of gasoline is ludicrous.
Yet four Wall Street analysts told a congressional committee yesterday that if Congress reined in the oil-futures market, gasoline prices would fall almost immediately to $2 a gallon.
Charles Ober, manager of T. Rowe Price New Era, said he was struck by the "incredible lack of knowledge" on display at the hearings.
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Posted
Jun 05 2008, 01:38 AM
by
Jon Markman
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One of the most awesome things about the world energy shortage is that it has encouraged every wingnut science professor, inventor, entrepreneur and lawmaker with an ounce of moonbeam in their veins to announce a wacky solution. Maybe they can all generate heat just by making us laugh. Where is Rube Goldberg when we really need him?
So as my tip of the hat to World Environment Day – which is June 5, by the way – I would like to call your attention to my new column on solar thermal energy, and my favorite idea, which comes courtesy of the Australian National University.
Australia, you have to understand first, is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal, oil, natural gas and uranium. It’s like a floating strip mine which every resource-hungry nation of the world is doing its best to hollow out. Yet folks there
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Posted
May 27 2008, 12:24 PM
by
Douglas McIntyre
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Solar energy may be the wave of energy's future, but companies like Google and Chevron may best start-ups in getting to the benefits. A number of large American companies with tremendous balance sheets are pouring money into solar energy based on the fact that it is becoming more competitive with oil.
According to Bloomberg, "Costs for the technology will fall below coal as soon as 2020, the U.S. government estimates. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo invested last year in the biggest solar plant built in a generation; Chevron and Google are funding research; and Goldman Sachs is seeking land to lease as demand out-paces wind turbines and geothermal."
Given the potential size of the bonanza, the investments should not be surprising, but they could squeeze smaller solar energy companies out of the market. Firms like JA Solar and SunTech bet their entire futures
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Posted
May 06 2008, 06:14 PM
by
Charley Blaine
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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
May 06 2008, 12:05 AM
by
Jon Markman
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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
Apr 10 2008, 03:53 PM
by
Jon Markman
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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
Oct 15 2007, 11:23 AM
by
Matt Koppenheffer
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For the first time today, oil broke above $85 per barrel, partly due to the threat of yet more violence in the Middle East. Now I'm not going to argue that $85 per barrel is a catastrophic increase over, say, $80 per barrel -- though 6% is nothing to sneeze at -- but it's just stacking onto the incredible rise of crude oil over the past few years. According to nominal oil price data from the Department of Energy, a price of $85 would mean that crude oil is up an amazing 393%, or roughly 17% per year, since 1997.
As investors, we can look at this from the perspective of how much the continued rise will hurt the bottom line for a broad range of companies like Wal-Mart, JB Hunt, and Southwest Airlines.
On the other hand, we can also spend our time looking at the companies that are expected to continue to benefit from the amazing surge in oil prices. To get some ideas, I tapped the CAPS community and looked at a few different sub-segments of the oil industry
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