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Interesting piece on Crude oil – it’s actually quite a complex substance: Some people arbitrarily speak about oil as if it is a single, indistinguishably homogenous substance without any unique differentiation, but this is actually not the case at all! In fact, there are many different kinds of oil. In its natural, unrefined state, crude oil ranges in density and consistency, from very thin, light weight and volatile fluidity to an extremely thick, semi-solid heavy weight oil. There is also a tremendous gradation in the color that the oil extracted from the ground exhibits, ranging all the way from a...

The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organizations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health. Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint. The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”. It believes health professionals are ideally placed to promote change because “we have ethical responsibility…..as well as the capacity to influence people and our...

Domestic oil refiners kept up their attack of climate legislation, saying a Senate bill under consideration could increase gas prices. Domestic oil refiners kept up their attack Wednesday of climate legislation, saying a Senate bill under consideration could increase gas prices. The group, among the fiercest critics of the measure, said the proposal could add 77 cents a gallon, or around 30 percent above today’s prices. Democrats on a key Senate panel shot back, saying the industry’s estimate is based on an inflated projection of the price of permits companies will have to hold to cover their carbon emissions. A...

U.S. consumers turned decidedly more pessimistic in October, according to a report released Tuesday, with households increasingly worried about job prospects. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its monthly Consumer Confidence Index fell to 47.7 this month, from a revised 53.4 in September, which was originally reported as 53.1. The current month's reading was well below economists' projections of 53.2, according to a survey conducted by Dow Jones Newswires. The downturn in consumer confidence at this stage of the recovery is to be expected, as it has occurred in previous recoveries (please see chart below), and does not...

Crude-oil futures rose Monday for an eighth straight session, ending at a new one-year high near $80 a barrel as a weaker dollar and rising U.S. stocks stirred more bullish sentiment among energy traders. Crude for November delivery gained $1.08, or 1.4%, to $79.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange,

Since taking office as the President of the United States, President Obama has encountered crisis after crisis. His next major crisis will be oil prices. Read full article... http://newsflavor.com/politics/international-relations/next-major-obama-crisis/

BASHING “speculators” is a popular pastime for American politicians trying to explain high and volatile oil prices. But whether speculation has really been responsible for spiking prices is a controversial issue. In 2008 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a report dismissing the role of speculators in last year’s startling run-up in prices. But banks, hedge funds and others who bet on oil (without a use for the stuff itself) still face limits on the positions they can take, if Gary Gensler, the new CFTC head, can show that their influence in markets does harm. On September 4th the...

Stimulus: Brazil, a leader in the use of biofuels such as ethanol and in the face of falling oil prices, still plans to spend huge sums to expand its offshore oil resources. Drilling rigs are infrastructure too.With oil prices scraping the bottom of the barrel, pun intended, there wouldn't appear to be much incentive to pursue the development of new oil resources. And in tough economic times worldwide, the necessary investment required would appear to be prohibitive. As the U.S. seeks to get its economy going by building roads, bridges and bicycle paths, Brazil has decided to create jobs and...

As Palin pointed out to Salazar, the USGS assessment "estimates that Arctic Alaska has mean technically recoverable resources of approximately 30 billion barrels of oil, 6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 221 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas."

A drop from an eight-month intraday high of $73.23 earlier this month accelerated after the World Bank said it expected the global economy to shrink by 2.9 percent this year, much worse than its March prediction for a contraction of 1.7 percent. The bank also lowered its 2010 growth forecast to 1.7 percent from 2 percent.

There is anywhere from 18-95 BILLION Barrels of oil underneath our continental shelf. There is almost 7 TRILLION Barrels of Oil in the shale under the Rocky Mountains (to be fair, with present technology we can only get to around 800 billion barrels of it. Today America Consumes about 20 Million Barrels/day approximately 7.5 million of which we get domestically. My math tells me, using the minimum numbers (18+800 Billion- to 95 to 7,000) divided by 20 million, divided by 365 days, the US has an import free Oil reserve of 112 -972 YEARS. Drilling would be a true stimulus...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices broke through the $70 per-barrel barrier Friday and more forecasters are broadening expectations for an upward swing in crude. Benchmark crude for July delivery lost 37 cents to settle at $68.44 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, finishing the week with a gain of nearly $2 a barrel. Earlier in the day oil jumped as high as $70.32 per barrel, the highest since October. Oil prices have been soaring for months despite a massive surplus of petroleum and natural gas. A large amount of speculative money has flowed into the markets, according to government...

Gasoline bottomed out at $1.75. Now it's $2.50. That's a 43% increase in a few months. Where's the howls of outrage from the MSMwhores? Where's the daily update on the previous days increase and the nationwide average? Where are the sob stories about people having to do without (fill in the blank) due to paying so much more for gas?

Crude oil has bounced since February to almost $60 a barrel despite worsening fundamental data. Commercial inventories are overflowing, having risen in the first quarter, a period when they usually drop. Moreover, as oil prices have risen, OPEC's discipline has started cracking, with the cartel increasing output last month for the first time since August.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Bush administration did not properly study the environmental impact of expanding oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast and canceled a program to find new reserves. A three-judge panel in Washington found that the Bush-era Interior Department failed to consider the effect on the environment and marine life before it began the process in August 2005 to expand an oil and gas leasing program in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas. The appeals court ordered the department, now run by President Barack Obama's appointee Ken Salazar, to analyze...

Nick Snow OGJ Washington Editor WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 11 -- Global petroleum demand will fall by another 400,000 b/d during 2009 as economic conditions worsen, the US Energy Information Administration said on Feb. 10 in its latest short-term energy outlook. EIA now projects that worldwide oil consumption will drop by 1.2 million b/d this year as a deteriorating world economy and a weak oil consumption outlook keep the market well supplied despite two downward revisions in the last 2 months by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Reduced demand and rising surplus production capacity through at least mid-2009 reduce the...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Oil prices slid closer to a new multiyear low Thursday because of growing doubts that the $789 billion stimulus package will reinvigorate the economy and demand for energy. Retail gas prices, meanwhile, reached a new high for 2009 on Thursday and appeared headed back to $2 a gallon as refiners cut back on production. Light, sweet crude for March delivery fell $1.04 to $34.90 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.61 overnight to settle at $35.94 after a government report on Wednesday showed that crude inventories jumped much more than expected. There...

Here is another example of what President Obama means by change.The new administration has wasted no time in canceling a decision by the Bush White House that let gas and oil companies explore for new resources. Remember when President Bush announced that he was lifting the ban on domestic drilling? That was way before the economy started tanking but it set oil prices on their downward trend. Now President Obama wants to send oil prices back through the roof to make sure that Al Gore and his global warming nuts gets their way with the American Economy. Higher Oil Prices,...

WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama may order a hold on a proposal issued in the final days of the Bush administration to expand offshore drilling in previously banned areas, an Interior Department official told Reuters on Wednesday. Shortly after being sworn in on Tuesday, Obama ordered all federal agencies and departments to halt pending regulations until they can be reviewed by incoming staff. An Interior official said the department is waiting for clarification from the White House on whether a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic and Pacific waters for...

Lost in the discussion of how we solve the financial crisis and the ongoing recession is the effect that Oil prices have had in its creation. It is true that sub prime mortgages were an issue way before gas prices hit $4.50/gallon, but things didn't start falling apart until gas prices cleared the $4.00 mark. Now that prices are are falling its almost as if the economy is receiving a ONE BILLION dollar a day stimulus plan. That is the difference between what America was paying per day for gas when it was $4.50 and what we are paying today:

It’s official! OPEC will cut oil production by 2.2m Bbl/day in real terms. So far, this hasn’t re-inflated the price of oil. In fact, the current price on a Bbl of Light Sweet Crude has reached $40.06. Thus, despite a reduction in global production from the cartel controlling 40% of the world’s proven reserves, the price of oil fell 8%. This would remind Sherlock Holmes of the dog that wouldn’t bark. This drop in oil prices particularly baffles in the face of a collapse of value in the US dollar. Economist John Kemp offers his prognosis on the current health...

Not everyone likes seeing oil prices plunge. This decade's historic high prices for oil and natural gas have stoked the rise of renewable power and alternative fuels. As fossil fuel prices smashed record after record, options like ethanol, hybrid electric cars, solar power and wind looked better and better. Now oil costs less than half what it did this summer. Ditto natural gas. If prices keep dropping and stay down, future fuels like cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel will have a harder time competing. So will solar and wind power projects, which compete against power plants that burn natural gas. Public...

CARACAS, Venezuela — They line up early, before sunrise, beside a massive metal fence to wait for a government grocery store named for a 1960s Venezuelan revolutionary to open. "The government pays for the subsidies, and that's why we elected the president, and that's why we love him," said Medarda Romero , 66, setting down a black garbage bag full of food. "He cares about the poor. Previous presidents didn't." Venezuela's government gets 50 percent of its income from oil revenues, however, and now falling oil prices threaten to force Chavez to scale back the food subsidies and other government...

I apologize to all readers for a stupid and inappropriate posting. It got my privileges revoked for a week. It will not happen again. Now, my thought. I watched most of the debate on Wednesday, until it frankly got boring. McCain seems to understand the anger and frustration. Bob Scheiffer almost got it when he asked about cutting spending and reducing the deficit. Neither McCain nor Obama gave a convincing answer. What we need - before Election Day - is an "I'm p!$$ed off" Day. Everybody is p!$$ed off about something or another. Let's channel it into a no work,...

LONDON (AFP) — World oil prices dipped briefly beneath 90 dollars a barrel Tuesday on growing economic gloom that was likely to further dampen demand for energy in the months ahead, traders said. * * * The price of crude oil has now plunged by almost 40 percent since striking record highs above 147 dollars per barrel in July. * * * Elsewhere on Tuesday, New York's main contract, light sweet crude for October delivery, dived 2.79 dollars to 92.92 dollars a barrel. Deepening worries about a slowdown in energy demand "are likely to haunt energy markets in the near...

LONDON (AFP) - Oil prices fell on Wednesday after a sharp spike the previous day as the market reacted to a much larger-than-expected increase in US crude reserves, traders said. New York's main contract, light sweet crude for September delivery, dropped 1.22 dollars to 113.31 dollars a barrel. London's Brent North Sea crude for October shed 95 cents to 112.30 dollars. The US government's Department of Energy said Wednesday that US crude oil stockpiles climbed 9.4 million barrels in the week ending August 15 -- analysts had forecast a much smaller gain of 800,000 barrels. The DoE said US gasoline...

A list and way to track number of economic issues and problems associated with Russia and its financial system: Main Google news search including "RTS" Russia Becomes Worst 3rd-Quarter Stock Market on Oil (Update3) - Bloomberg - good read! Investment Week, UK... a near 30% decline in the RTS index in recent months Lukoil cuts sale price of diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil in August - from Polish source Europe Grapples with Russia-Georgia Woes"With energy supplies at risk, the recent conflict in the Caspian region might spur the West to seek other gas and oil sources""The very fact of the...

BREAKING NEWS: Georgian troops are preparing to defend the town of Gori against the advancing Russian army.

GORI, Georgia — The conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia moved toward full-scale war on Saturday, as Russia sent warships to land ground troops in the disputed territory of Abkhazia and broadened its bombing campaign across Georgia. The fighting that had sharply escalated when Georgian forces tried to retake the capital of South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in the early 1990s, appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Shortly before dawn on Sunday, Georgia’s Interior...

1,500 Reported Killed in Georgia Battle August 9, 2008 GORI, Georgia — Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia veered closer to all-out war on Saturday as Russia moved parts of its Black Sea fleet toward Georgia’s coast and intensified air attacks on Georgia, striking two apartment buildings in the city of Gori and clogging roads out of the area with fleeing refugees. Russia acknowledged that Georgian forces had shot down two Russian warplanes, while a senior Georgian official said the Georgians had destroyed 10 Russian jets. Russian armored vehicles continued to stream into South Ossetia, the pro-Russian region...

(August 6, 2008)—Oil prices are falling, dropping briefly below $118 a barrel again, following a government report of bigger-than-expected jumps in supplies of crude oil and distillates, suggesting high energy prices are still eating into demand. The price of crude has recovered some now, but fell $2.03 to $117.14 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest since May 2. Oil prices are now down about $30 from their record high of $147.27, reached July 11th. Falling crude kept weighing on retail gas prices. Filling stations hungry for business reduced the price-per-gallon of regular on...

Sparks fly as ExxonMobil profit tops 10 billion dollars Jul 27 12:38 PM US/Eastern Surging oil prices helped drive quarterly profits for US energy giant ExxonMobil to 10.36 billion dollars, the latest in a string of mammoth profit reports that have drawn fire for the industry. The second-quarter profit was up 36 percent from a year ago and approached the company's all-time record profit of 10.71 billion dollars that was believed to be one of the biggest for any company. Stoked by skyrocketing crude-oil prices, ExxonMobil's net profit in the quarter to June came to 1.72 dollars per share. That...

Last update: 2:06 p.m. EDT July 30, 2008 WASHINGTON, July 30, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in response to remarks by President Bush on energy this morning at the White House: "The President knows, as his own Administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant - promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road. Americans know that thanks to the two oilmen in the White House, consumers are now paying $4 a gallon for gas. But what Americans should realize is that what...

The average American voter understands no more about the contributing factors of the current price of gasoline, than they do the falling value of their national currency. That makes them easy targets for political manipulation in a very important election year. Simple Supply and Demand Economics Most Americans kind of get this one, though they are often misled about the ups and downs of natural free market cycles and how much impact government has, or should have, on the matter. In short, the cost for one gallon of gas (or one loaf of bread) is dramatically increased when there is...

Since President Bush announced an end to federal ban on offshore drilling, the price of oil has dropped over $20 a barrel, the stock market is ticking back up and the dollar has strengthened. And all this because, why? Well, because the markets can be almost totally assured that supply will increase with new drilling offshore. In other words, Republicans are/were right: More drilling = more oil = lower prices. Overseas stock markets were higher and Wall Street index futures pointed to a solid open as the cost of oil retreated further and traders turned a bit more hopeful about...

Gasoline is at over $4 a gallon in late summer of an election year. Once upon a time, incumbent congressmen and senators would have reacted to this about as well as Dracula to sunlight and crucifixes. And they would have rushed to get prices lower by the first Tuesday in November, so as to best protect their precious re-elections. But not this year. Democrats have stopped all attempts to increase domestic drilling with the ruthless efficiency of The Terminator. On its face, this would seem to be an insane and suicidal move. Even with a biased mainstream media giving them...

Drilling in the Offshore Unleashing the oil companies. By Mark Hemingway After trading at a record high of $147 a barrel Friday, the price of oil saw its largest one-day drop since the 2003 beginning of the Iraq war on Tuesday, falling $6.44 a barrel. Wednesday, it fell another $3.71, to $135.03, and at one point was trading as low as $132. So what happened? As is usually the case with markets, a variety of factors caused this dramatic drop. According to the Associated Press, the Energy Information Administration announced that U.S. crude-oil supplies rose by 3 million barrels; beleaguered...

The domed ones on Capitol Hill have insisted that loosening up on those bans to drill offshore wouldn't make any difference for years and years and years. So how come the price of crude (futures) went down $10 the very day that Bush signed an executive order repealing the ban that his father had put in place when he was in the White House. Just imagine what the price of crude would fall to if congress did its part in repealing the ban that they put into place to appease the environmentalists! And further, I heard somewhere yesterday that the...

Bill Phillips spent nearly 50 years in the US oil and gas industry; most of his career was with the Phillips Petroleum Company. Bill is a descendant of Frank Phillips. Frank Phillips, along with his brother Lee Eldas (L.E.) Phillips, Sr., founded the original Phillips Petroleum Company in 1917 in Bartlesville, OK. Do you remember Phillips 66 gas stations? Phillips Petroleum Company merged with Conoco, Inc. in 2002 to form the current ConocoPhillips oil company. As you prepare to cast your crucial ballots this Fall, please think long and hard about the far-reaching, cumulative effects of the US political philosophies,...

...Senator Reid and House Speaker Pelosi have both stated that they will not allow drilling legislation to proceed, although they are both aware that the legislation now has enough support to pass both houses. Senator Reid yesterday acknowledged that only 80% of the Senatorial Democratic Caucus opposed lifting the moratorium. If that were the case, then that would mean that the legislation would have close to the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster. The argument of Reid, Pelosi, Obama and several other congressional leaders has shifted in the past few weeks from an attitude that we cannot drill to...

"Their proposals have been the legislative equivalent of a flyswatter when the American people are clamoring for the heavy artillery."U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday regarding the need for a serious and balanced approach to lowering the price at the pump:“As we stand here, Americans are suffering from the most dramatic oil shock in memory.  A single barrel of crude oil costs almost three times today what it did a year and a half ago. This is a crisis that demands our full attention. “Yet, until now, Democrats on Capitol...

Congressman Ron Klein is disappointed that President Bush has been "short-sighted" in lifting the executive ban on off-shore drilling. We are disappointed with Congressman Klein. With a complete lack of initiative or imagination, he continues to give us the Nancy Pelosi/far left talking-point response— the truly short-sighted policy. If we had not listened to every administration since Jimmy Carter, America could have been energy independent long ago. And yes, if we develop our own natural resources—ALL of them— the speculators will see that events in the Middle East will have little effect on our supply, which will then be reflected...

Democratic Senator Richard Durbinof Illinois declared, “We can’tdrill our way to lower prices.”When it comes to domestic oil production, the Democrats and their Green/Left supporters are all singing from the same deranged hymnal. In May, one of the choir leaders, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois declared, “We can’t drill our way to lower prices.” Never mind that 85 percent of America’s Outer Continental Shelf is off-limits to oil and gas exploration. Forget that the offshore areas that John McCain and George W. Bush want to open to exploitation might contain 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion...

Press Releases Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami 202-226-7616 For Immediate Release 07/15/2008 Pelosi on Gas Prices: ‘It’s the Economy, Mr. President’ Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders today held a news conference with economic experts following an economic forum this morning. At the forum, five national economic experts endorsed Democrats’ call for the President to immediately release a small amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce energy prices for American consumers. Below are selected comments by the Speaker on energy: “The President said today that he would not support the release of the oil...

To the U.S. Congress: Make Gas Cheaper NOW by: Increasing American oil production -- Drill here, drill now Building and expanding U.S. refineries

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, back from the Fourth of July break, last week delivered a typical harangue on Republican obstructionism and Democratic virtue that included a promise: By week's end, he would show Republicans his proposal to deal with "this speculation thing" that he calls the root cause of $4-a-gallon gasoline. It would attempt "to end speculation on the oil markets." By week's end Friday, Republicans had seen nothing of Reid's plan because of internal Democratic disagreement on details. But plenty of other Democratic legislative proposals floated around Capitol Hill claiming to resolve the nation's gasoline woes...

No combination of solar, wind, ethanol, biodiesel, or anything else will allow us independence in the foreseeable future. We are in a hole—and still digging. We have oil at a catastrophic $140 a barrel yet no sign of a bipartisan energy policy assured of passage—let alone the forceful execution needed to expand domestic supplies and restrict domestic consumption. Instead, we have the blame game about greedy speculators, careless consumers, and cowardly politicians, inevitable maybe in an election year but a betrayal of the promise of America. In the meantime, as gasoline soars over $4 a gallon, the availability of credit...

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline. The Democrats’ base -- wealthy white “limousine liberals”, and very poor people -- won’t be harmed, but the families who live in suburbia will be devastated. The multi-millionaires like billionaire Senators John Kerry & Jay Rockefeller, financial speculator George Soros, filmmaker Michael Moore, and actors George Clooney & Meg Ryan can easily pay for their auto and private jet fuel. Poor people are forced to...

SOURCE Video, charts, audio, and text at the site.

VW's 282 MPG Super Fuel Efficient Car The 1-Liter car has been around in prototype form since 2002 and greens everywhere have been drooling at its 282 miles per gallon fuel economy (or 1 liter of gasoline per 100 kilometers, hence the name). VW has finally decided to make more and sell them, and a limited edition (estimated in the thousands) should start selling in 2010. 1-Liter Car Technical Specs The One-Liter car (or 1-Litre, over in Europe) weights only 660 pounds. The body is made from carbon composites and it is shaped to be extremely slippery, giving it a...