The September International Energy Agency’s September global oil market report suggests that the changes in consumption we’ve seen with higher prices this year may stick: Demand in the US may be poised for a more permanent, rather than transient, downward trend. Sustained high prices and sluggish economic activity are arguably likely to reinforce the current …
In which I whine about the state of the current presidential campaign energy policy debate.
WQ: Massive amounts of money flowed into the United States because the Bush administration produced absurd deficits through an utter lack of discipline and ill-advised tax cuts in a time of war. Then we asked foreign investors and governments to buy our debt to finance our lack of discipline. Thomas Friedman has made a convincing …
EIA reported today that gasoline supplies remain thin despite that vague notion we all had that the hurricanes are so very last week: [G]asoline inventories have declined to record low levels. At 179 million barrels, total motor gasoline inventories stand at the lowest level since 1967, based on monthly EIA data. Continuing reports of spot …
Qiang Wang of the Chinese of Academy of Sciences had a letter in the 29 August Science magazine (behind paywall) about the critical issue of energy subsidies in China. Rising global energy prices have caused a drop in consumption in the United States, but in China, not so much: You can see that higher global …
In which my colleague Dan McKay rides the bus: I visited some West Side bus stops this morning to talk with commuters, and, man, are the buses packed. In at least one instance, the bus couldn’t take anybody new at a stop because it was so full. It’s pretty amazing the growth we’ve seen in …
It’s not only the price of black gooey fossil oil that’s crashing. Palm oil is tanking as well: Palm oil prices have nearly halved after hitting a peak in March, when surging crude oil prices boosted interest in the biofuels derived from palm oil. Analysts blame the rapid plunge on a supply glut and a …
On T. Boone Pickens: Pickens is a believer in the ability of free markets to solve our energy problems. Except when he’s not.
I’ll be on KNME this evening at 7 p.m. (public television here in Albuquerque) talking about T. Boone Pickens’ energy ideas. The show’s also webcast here (not posted yet, not sure when it will go up).
This piece by the AP’sMichael Casey poses a bit of a challenge for market believers like me: Over the past decade, Indonesia went from growing more than half its soy to relying on the U.S. for 70 percent of it. Now the poor among this country’s 220 million people are going hungry because of changes thousands …