Natural gas caps longest advance since June
Natural gas futures advanced for a third straight week, the longest such streak since June, on speculation that unusually warm U.S. weather in late May will stoke demand for the power-plant fuel.
Shale-oil producers ready to raise output
After slashing the number of drilling rigs for months, U.S. shale-oil companies say they are ready to bring rigs back into service, setting up the first big test of their ability to quickly react to rising crude prices.
Saudi claims oil price strategy success
Saudi Arabia says its strategy of squeezing high-cost rivals such as US shale producers is succeeding, as the world’s largest crude exporter seeks to reassert itself as the dominant force in the global oil market.
U.S. taxpayers subsidizing world’s biggest fossil fuel companies
A Guardian investigation of three specific projects, run by Shell, ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum, has revealed that the subsidises were all granted by politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
At the gas pump, U.S. biofuel lobby scores a point against Big Oil
Over the past few months, privately held retailers Kum & Go and Sheetz have become the first significant chains to announce plans to start selling E15, a gasoline with 15 percent of ethanol, 50 percent more than the typical U.S. blend.
Shale oil output at Bakken and Eagle Ford starts a descent
Oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays look like they’ve peaked and other shale plays may not be far behind.
Cellulosic refiners hamstrung by chaos in RFS-credit market
Quad City Corn Processors reached a milestone last month by producing its millionth gallon of the advanced biofuel. But all is not well for the company.
Ethanol industry looks to drivers and exports for path out of a slump
Industry officials say that Americans are driving more, and are projected to use more fuel in 2015. Demand for ethanol is expected to increase. Some ethanol plants are making investments to boost output.
No valid argument against ethanol
Over the past 10 years, the Renewable Fuel Standard has lowered gas prices, reduced our dependence on foreign oil and reduced the pollution in our air and water. It has allowed drivers to choose cleaner, less expensive, Wisconsin-grown biofuels, such as ethanol. And the benefits don’t end there.
Hofmeister: Oil companies actually hate high prices
When it comes to oil companies and how they think, John Hofmeister knows of what he speaks. So when the former president of Shell Oil took to the lectern at the Hudson Institute’s “Fueling American Growth” conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday and told the assembled that Big Oil actually doesn’t like high oil prices, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
And yet … let us gather that in: Companies like BP and ExxonMobil that post billions in earnings (or slightly less, as the price of oil slipped late in 2014 and into 2015) actually prefer a world in which a barrel of oil trades at a safe, predictable, boring price.
Here’s an excerpt from Hofmeister’s remarks:
Contrary to some popular belief, oil companies don’t actually like high oil prices. They like predictable, rational prices that deliver a return on investment over time. Companies do not like spiking, ever-higher prices, because of what happens as a consequence: The cure to high oil prices is high oil prices. People stop buying. Surpluses develop and prices collapse.
What’s the cure to low prices? Low prices. Because people stop producing and, sure enough, we run into shortages, and prices rise. This ever-continuing volatility is not good for the industry, it’s not good for national security, and it is horrific for the economy. And oil companies have been around for a long time. They see beyond the advantages of volatility either way, and look for those predictable price spots – they call them sweet spots, actually – where you can achieve an attractive investor return on investment, and you can maintain a stable workforce, and you can invest in R&D, and you can produce just enough energy to keep the nation well-supplied.
Hofmeister, who’s on the board of advisors with Fuel Freedom Foundation and is one of the stars of the foundation’s documentary, PUMP, has predicted that oil prices will continue to surge upward over the next year because U.S. drillers won’t be able to simply ramp up production quickly again after the recent downturn in prices forced many of them to suspend operations.
The foundation has argued that the best way to reduce oil consumption, end oil-market volatility and make prices gasoline permanently low for consumers is to open the transportation-fuel market to cheaper, cleaner alternatives like ethanol and methanol.
Hofmeister said: “We will never get past the volatility of oil until we get to alternatives to oil.”
The primary reason that I care so much about alternatives and future fuels is, as a person from the oil patch, I know the limitations. I know what’s possible and what’s not, and the appetite for oil worldwide will never, ever be satisfied from the oil patch. It can’t be. The risks, the costs, the geopolitics, really cannot begin to address the 2 billion people on this earth who really don’t have access to oil-based petroleum fuels, and most of them never will. There just isn’t enough.
You can watch the whole video clip here:
