Archive for July, 2009

The Associated Press / Forbes.com
July 10, 2009

DENVER — Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, who has made promoting renewable energy a cornerstone of his administration, on Thursday called natural gas “a mission-critical fuel” that is essential to the state and nation’s economy.

“Natural gas is a vital part of the new energy economy, a permanent part of the new energy economy, not a bridge fuel, not a transition fuel, but a mission-critical fuel,” Ritter told a crowd of industry officials at the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference in Denver.

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By Lananh Nguyen / The Wall Street Journal

LONDON (Dow Jones)–Nymex crude was broadly steady below $60 a barrel Monday in London, but high oil supplies and low demand continued to weigh on prices.

“Mounting stocks of oil around the world reflect the reality that oil demand remains on its knees,” said analysts at KBC Market Services, a consultancy based in the U.K. “Market fundamentals are weak, and if anything getting worse rather than better.”

At 1152 GMT, the front-month August Brent contract on London’s ICE futures exchange was up $0.25 at $60.77 a barrel, bouncing into positive territory after an earlier selloff.

The front-month August contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was trading $0.05 higher at $59.94 a barrel, also trimming earlier losses.

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By Anil Varma / Bloomberg.com

July 13 (Bloomberg) — India’s 10-year bonds gained after crude oil fell below $60 per barrel for the first time since May, tempering concern that local fuel prices will increase and lead to inflation.

Yields on most-traded debt due 2019 eased after oil prices dropped 10.3 percent last week, the biggest decline since January. India, which imports almost three-quarters of the oil it uses, raised fuel costs last month for the first time in more than a year. The notes also gained after the government said it will sell bonds worth 120 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) this week, 20 percent less than last week.

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Los Angeles Times
July 12, 2009

Ayear ago the Oracle of Oil, T. Boone Pickens, reinvented himself as the Wizard of Wind, launching a $58-million ad campaign to boost alternative energy and vowing to spend $10 billion to build the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle. It was a startling move from a staunch conservative who had made a fortune in the Texas oil fields, raising hopes that both ends of the political spectrum were coming around to the same point of view about weaning the country from its reliance on oil.

And then, last week, the Pickens plan foundered. Pickens announced that he was scrapping the wind farm. It’s too late to take back the $2 billion worth of wind turbines he has already ordered, so instead he has decided to place them in smaller projects around the country.

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By Steve Everly / The Kansas City Star
July 10, 2009

Oil and gasoline prices get the attention, but plummeting natural-gas costs are quietly freeing up billions of dollars and possibly setting up one of the cheapest heating seasons in nearly a decade.

Energy prices across the board have dropped over the last year, but the decline for natural gas has been especially dramatic. The commodity closed Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $3.37 per 1,000 cubic feet, a 73 percent drop from a year ago, when it was well over $12.

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UPI.com
July 9, 2009

NEW YORK, July 9 (UPI) — Crude oil prices held above $61 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday after U.S. inventories dropped in the week ending July 3.The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday stockpiles of crude fell by 2.9 million barrels, but remain high for this time of year.

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By Madalina Iacob / The Wall Street Journal
July 8, 2009

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–U.S. inventories of gasoline and distillates rose more than expected for the fourth week in a row, according to U.S. Department of Energy data released Wednesday.

Gasoline stockpiles rose by 1.9 million to 213.1 million barrels in the week ended July 3, the department’s Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report. This compares with a 900,000-barrel increase forecast in a Dow Jones Newswires survey.

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By Jad Mouawad / The New York Times
July 5, 2009

The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy.

The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. It is also hobbling businesses and consumers, who are already facing the effects of a stinging recession, as they try in vain to guess where prices will be a year from now — or even next month.

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By Sam Fletcher / Oil & Gas Journal
June 26, 2009

HOUSTON, June 26 — The near-month price for benchmark US crude futures climbed above $70/bbl again in the New York market with confirmation of additional disruption of oil exports from Nigeria and the euro recovering from its earlier losses against the US dollar.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC confirmed militant attacks damaged a pipeline carrying benchmark Bonny crude to the key export terminal in Nigeria. Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix, Zug, Switzerland, earlier reported recent attacks on oil facilities in the delta have likely reduced Nigeria’s current production to 1.3-1.4 million b/d, down from 1.9 million last July and 1.8 million in the first quarter of this year. “The attacks on the pipeline infrastructure are also having an impact on the running of the local refineries, Warri and Port Harcourt are said to be shut, and Kanuda [is reported] running on stocks, which will run out in the next 2 weeks and provide some support to the Atlantic Basin light-end products,” he said (OGJ Online, June 25, 2009).

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