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In recent days, oil prices have climbed above $100 per barrel. As chaos spreads through the Arab world, we could soon see much worse. According to recent testimony given to Congress by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the current soaring oil prices are no reason for concern. According to the stock market, which has dropped hundreds of points each time oil prices have edged up another dollar or two, the situation is a five-alarm emergency. Who is right?

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Energy: A new study shows that our reluctance to develop domestic energy will cost the beleaguered U.S. economy trillions in opportunity costs, reduce our gross domestic product and increase our trade deficit. From trying to stimulate jobs in nonexistent ZIP codes at great expense to worshiping the false gods of climate change, our biggest deficit these days may be in the area of common sense. A new study shows that many of our wounds are self-inflicted as we forgo the wealth and jobs to be found in our waters and under our feet. The study by Science Applications International Corp....

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil touched a high for this year above $74 a barrel on Friday ahead of further pointers on the economic health of the United States and as the dollar flagged against a stronger euro. By 1305 GMT (9:05 a.m. EDT), the new front month U.S. crude futures contract for October delivery was up $1.15 at $74.06 a barrel, after briefly touching $74.48, its highest of the year. London Brent crude for October was up $1.10 at $74.43. Oil is on track for a 7.3 percent gain this week, and was last at this level on October 21,...

Goldman Sachs is once again warning the world of a coming spike in oil prices that will remind everyone of 2008. The current financial crisis is to blame. While we focus on fixing the banking sector, we've forgotten that there are fundamental problems with the commodites markets. The spike from 2008 will return because there's been "decades" of poor investment decisions by oil producers. When the economy kicks into gear around the world, supply shortages will become problematic, and the price of oil will spike. Says Goldman via Alphaville, "As the commodity markets rebound with the broader global economy we...

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."

Energy: With Ahab-like determination, environmentalists have once again blocked oil exploration in the American Arctic. They may just have succeeded in putting the American economy on ice.On Friday, a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals Court panel in Washington, D.C., struck down the Bush administration's five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing off Alaska's northern coast. The plan was vacated, the panel ruled, because of allegedly insufficient environmental review because its "environmental sensitivity rankings are irrational." What is irrational is that despite a more than three-decade long record of environmental sensitivity at Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere, and despite booming polar...

Energy Policy: The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil. We've been told that for the last 150 years. The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.Ever since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pa., in 1859, experts have been predicting we would soon run out of oil. The latest is Dr. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency in Paris, whose job it is to assess future energy supplies by OECD countries. In an interview with the Independent, Dr. Birol says that based...

Energy: New drilling techniques may open up a 14-year supply of natural gas trapped in porous rock in the Northeast. That is, if environmentalists in New York and elsewhere don't keep it trapped in the ground.Natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels, so clean that it is a key part of oilman T. Boone Pickens' plan to wean us off foreign sources of energy. Natural gas can fuel a new generation of automobiles that would help us achieve energy independence and at the same time contribute to a cleaner planet. In the northeastern U.S., there is a massive...

A top expert tells Congress that oil will be around for a long time and high inventories and low prices are no excuse not to find more. Oil shock? How about a no-oil shock? Be careful what you wish for, goes the old proverb. Well, as we all had hoped, energy prices have fallen — but only as part of the global decline in economic activity. This has been used as an excuse to further discourage exploration for and development of domestic oil resources. But if the economy does recover, that policy could provoke another recession.

Energy: Analysts have found that investors spooked by the peak oil theory — the belief that crude production has topped out and is in decline — are partly behind the soaring oil prices. Someone should set them straight.Blame part of $135-a-barrel oil on the increased demand in China and India, where the populations and economies are growing rapidly. But the impact of those nations on crude prices in recent months is suspect. Global oil consumption grew 2% in the first quarter of this year over the first quarter of 2007, while production increased 2.5% over the same period. On a...

Today's Financial Times headline ("Spitzer to Streamline Rules for Wall Street") is an example of government allowing good old Yankee free enterprise to become more competitive with other international challengers. The Financial Times also contains additional evidence of increasing inflationary pressures and of interest rates around the world, particularly in the European Union (E.U). Meanwhile, in face of growing inflationary evidence and increasing interest rates among our key competitors, our Fed has kept our rates on hold. While it warns of inflation as its main concern, our Fed appears "frightened" to compete either against inflation or with the rising interest...

One is by rail; two is by sea The United States must prepare for the inevitable day when fuel oil supplies run short. If the White House won't lead, the states should. The Roanoke Times Gov.-elect Tim Kaine's transportation listening tour has brought out the rail enthusiasts along the congested Interstate 81 corridor. The need for massive improvements, including dedicated truck lanes and expensive tolls, could be avoided if only truck traffic were diverted off the highways and onto the railroads, chants the rising chorus of rail enthusiasts. They have a point. But making the case on congestion alone won't...

WE DO NOT YET KNOW enough to make a definitive estimate of the amount of time it will take to get the pipelines pumping at full capacity, all of the refineries up and running, the port operating on a normal basis, and other parts of the Gulf Coast economic structure back into pre-Katrina shape. But we know a lot more than we did in the first days after the storm.We know that, unlike the local residential sector, the nationally important economic infrastructure will recover surprisingly quickly. This reflects, at least in part, the unambiguous incentive that the private sector oil,...

REPUBLICANS, giddy and gloating, are understandably proud of the outcome of the election. Democrats from Boston to San Francisco are on a 24-hour suicide watch. Before the GOP euphoria gets out of hand, though, consider that the next four years could be challenging in ways unimagined.I'm not thinking mainly of the president's domestic agenda, court vacancies, or Iraq, difficult as those tasks may be. No, the far greater challenge may come in mastering the global economic Rubik's Cube of a world dramatically more financially integrated than even when the president's father was in office. No surprise event, sudden imbalance, or...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices broke into record territory above $52 Thursday on heightened concerns that supplies of heating fuels will prove inadequate during the northern hemisphere winter. U.S. light crude futures set an all-time high at $52.38 a barrel, marking a 60 percent surge in prices so far this year on the strongest demand growth in a generation and a thinning cushion of spare capacity to cope with supply outages. London's Brent crude also struck a record peak, at $48.15 a barrel. "We're in uncharted territory. There aren't many reasons to sell and there's lots of reasons to buy...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks tumbled on Thursday after oil prices hit record highs for the fifth consecutive trading session, jumping above $44 a barrel amid renewed supply concerns. The oil price jump came after July sales from U.S. retailers largely met modest expectations but failed to excite most investors. Shares of Wal-Mart (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) fell, dragging down the Dow, as the world's largest retailer said July sales were not fueled by its namesake discount stores. Trading remained light before Friday's release of U.S. employment data for July. Economists polled by Reuters expect nonfarm payrolls -- a...

July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil futures in New York rose to a record on concern increased demand and disruptions to supply may sap inventories before the Northern Hemisphere's winter, when heating fuel consumption peaks. Oil rose as high as $43.14 a barrel, the highest in the 21 years since the futures began in New York, and traded at $43.13 at 2:39 p.m. Singapore time. On Wednesday, oil rose to $43.05 a barrel after OAO Yukos Oil Co., Russia's biggest oil exporter, said its shipments may be cut by a dispute with the government over tax payments. Oil futures have...

IS ANOTHER oil shock in the making? All indications point to that considering the rise in world crude prices, not just in the spot market, but also in the futures segment. In the past, the rise in the spot price of crude as, for instance, ahead of both the Gulf wars, was not accompanied by a sympathetic jump in the forward price simply because the market expected the spike to be short-lived. But, this time, the forward price has been going up sharply. Crude oil has jumped 13 per cent in three weeks. Oil for July delivery reached a record...