Results tagged “oil” from Green Mesh

The American Petroleum Institute sent me an email today asking me to sign a petition that will "demand that Congress and the President expand access to new sources of American oil and natural gas."

There is a picture of pristine American on the website and it also says we need to promote alternative energy... but for the love of god! let us drill.

It would seem that $49 a barrel for oil and gasoline heading into the $1.70 range has silenced the chorus of "Drill, Baby, Drill" and the choir director is frantically waving his baton.

The economy is imploding and the effects on the oil industry will become more obvious if the price continues to erode. It's hard to maintain new record profits to satisfy investors and have money for exploration at the same time when the overall price structure is eroding.

It is imperative for the oil industry to show investors that they have new found reserves that point to a future for this product. The high price for oil and the resulting large profits have masked the fact that as a whole the industry is pumping less oil.

A perceived future global supply problem for this fuel monopoly was the reason the price was high before the air was squeezed out of the big ball.

Anyone for an a taxpayer bailout for Exxon Mobil when their annual profit slips below $40 billion this year? Like General Motors and the banking industry which under duress has actually consolidated and become larger with fewer players giving each failure more impact to the economy, the oil industry might need money from you and me in the future...or else!?!

The consumer has the upper hand on the oil industry at the moment. It's a great time to take a deep breath and re-evaluate all decisions affecting "our" future going forward.

A spat of stories today following the announcement of ExxonMobil record profit unfolds how the free market may be the undoing of oil before the oil runs out.

• The days of $145 a barrel are over, it's now trading at $65.
• Exxon produced 8 percent less oil and gas equivalent last quarter than it did a year earlier even with ample capital to increase production. As oil prices slide, the budgets A 26 percent quarterly jump in Exxon's capital spending, which reflects the difficulty the industry faces in obtaining and exploiting the few new energy reserves it manages to get its drills into.

Suddenly, Exxon Is Challenged - nytimes.com

• Shell said Thursday it will indefinitely shelve a decision on expanding its operations in Canada's oil sands because of increased costs, while Marathon said its 2009 capital budget will be more than 15 percent smaller than this year's allocation.
• "Most of these companies have seen their peak earnings," Gheit said. "I think earnings will come down. The question is not if, but by how much, and who is going to suffer more."

Oil producers' profits may be at their peak - chron.com

When profit peaks, the squeezing begins, the monopolies expand and the alternatives are few.

HOUSTON -- ExxonMobil (XOM), the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter. usatoday.com

Can someone explain to me why they need more tax cuts?

Reinvesting to get more oil...they will hold us hostage and charge us more if their profit is cut...we all invest in oil with our pensions and 401-K and it would hurt us...

I need a reason to understand why this policy is a long-term investment in the future of a baby born today.

A few days ago I posted Jimmy Carter's solar panels shine in the movie "W"

The panels, installed on the White House by Carter in 1977 (along with a wood stove below) during that oil crisis, were an example set by leadership illustrating to the populous that they should move away from oil. The panels were removed in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan who was more of a let the free market work as it will guy. The money went with oil.

Solar panels returned to the White House in 2002.

In the 1870s and 80s, many scientists feared exhaustion of coal reserves.

"One must not believe, despite the silence of modern writings, that the idea of using solar heat for mechanical operations is recent. On the contrary, one must recognize that this idea is very ancient and its slow development across the centuries it has given birth to various curious devices." -- Augustine Mouchot, 1878, at the Universal Exposition, Paris, France.

An interesting review of solar history by Radford University, Radford, Va. with many pictures.

• Abel Pifre, Mouchot's assistant, set up a solar engine to print The Solar Journal in 1880.
• John Ericsson , inventor of the ironclad ship USS Monitor during the Civil War, believed solar engines would be needed in the future.
• American engineer Frank Schuman built a practical industrial scale solar plant at Meadi, Egypt in 1910.
• 1982-1988 If someone had said, "Build the world's biggest technological turkey to prove that solar power doesn't really work," the Solar One plant is the one they would have built.

OPEC is scrambling to tighten up supply as the price crude has dropped 56 percent decline in 16 weeks. Even when they moved to close the flow today, the price continued to fall.

Some effects beyond making U.S. drivers happy and adding a stimulus to the U.S. economy.

• With fewer petrodollars now flowing to the Gulf, Russia and other regions, a major source of global liquidity and investment in places like the United States and Europe is beginning to shrink.
• Iran's representative said that prices below $90 a barrel would hurt.
• A continued drop in oil prices, and a tough domestic economy, could jeopardize the position of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected on a populist platform and who faces re-election next year.
• Some analysts believe Hugo Chávez needs $100 a barrel to finance his expensive social programs and continue his international activism.

nytimes.com

It appears that low oil prices hurt the people who don't like us very much, foreign oil producers don't have the money to buy up our stuff in the U.S. and we don't really have any control over the supply of oil when OPEC's members control 40 percent of the world's oil exports.

Look for more OPEC drops in supply if the price of oil doesn't increase.

I think I will "help" out those suffering from low oil prices by not driving my car tomorrow.

OPEC oil ministers agreed today to trim overall output by more than 500,000 barrels a day in a compromise meant to avoid new turmoil in crude markets while seeking to bolster falling prices.

The news sent oil prices rising. Light, sweet crude for October delivery rose 97 cents to $104.23 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. (AP)

Oil had a short-lived dip below $100 due to sluggish demand and weakening global economies.

During the Republican National Convention, more than once, the people in the crowd responded to speakers with the chant, "Dril. Dril. Drill." It's an exciting knee-jerk reaction akin to the gas tax holiday (greenmesh 5/08).

We import over 50 percent of our oil from foreign entities that control the global price based on their own internal manipulation of the supply.

Of the 1,143.355 billion barrels of world proved reserves of oil, the United States has 20,972. (U.S. Energy Information Administration 8/27/08)

It really doesn't matter how much you drill here when someone who owns the majority of the resource can manipulate the price. It isn't like we get to keep what is drilled for ourselves.

Oil companies are global companies. When they are given the green light to start drilling that company sells the oil on the global market. Then those who have a majority of the resource (OPEC) manipulate their output to regulate price.

So drilling domestically really won't change the equation other than bolstering profits for global oil companies constantly thirsty for new sources of oil to prove to stockholders that there is a future supply of oil.

And it makes a great chant for conventions by people who are longing to take the situation unsolved for decades, because it is too profitable for those who control it, into their own hands and start boring it with a drill.

We are just feeding the machine by drilling with no short or long-term solution for consumers. If anything, if we don't let global oil companies drill our oil sometime decades from now, OPEC will suck themselves dry and we will still have dwindling reserves. This isn't likely though because we are always tapping our own reserves.

We Should be chanting, hydrogen hydrogen hydrogen... or solar, solar, solar or maybe, Think, Think Think !! and come up with some plausible alternative energy sources and implement them.

I can recall presidents since the 1970's, Republican and Democrat, all saying we need to free ourselves from the dependence of foreign oil. Some were mildly successful.

Here we sit in 2008 with the same dependence on foreign oil we enjoyed thirty years ago chanting "drill, drill, drill".