Category Archives: Energy markets

Iran’s Untouchable Energy Exports

Yves here. Media reports in the US stress how tightening sanctions against Iran, particularly on banks, are increasingly isolating Iran, leading its currency to fall sharply. This article describes a key break in the cordon, that of electricity exports. But Iran’s major source of foreign exchange, its official dollar oil-related payments, via Standard Chartered, were roughly $500 million a day. The electricity trade is small relative to this total, but it is also an interesting act of defiance among American “allies”.

Ocean Power: The Ignored Alternative

Call it the joy of engineering.

Ocean power is an engineer’s dream, where seemingly all things are possible.

The Myth of Affordable Energy — Interview with Ed Dolan

In the interview Ed talks about the following:

• Why cheap energy is not vital to economic growth
• Why high oil prices aren’t necessarily a bad thing
• Why the U.S. Oil and gas boom is hurting Russia’s global influence
• Why Obama’s desire to cut oil industry tax breaks could be a great idea
• Why energy policy needs to be completely reformed
• Why Russia’s Arctic Exploration could cause the worst environmental disaster to date
• Why renewable energy investors should be very worried about the Natural gas boom
• Why the EU was flawed from the start
• Why subsidies for renewables are just plain wrong.
• Why we should give QE3 a chance
• Why abundant natural resources can bring a curse of riches

Is War with Iran Inevitable?

In light of the reader interest in the post yesterday on the impact of sanctions on Iran’s strategic options, this Real News Network interview provides a useful, if sobering, follow on.

Ironically, Sanctions Success Strengthens Iran’s Strait of Hormuz Trump Card

Military strategists appear to have missed a foreseeable outcome in their efforts to pressure Iran.

How Coal Brought Us Democracy, and Oil Ended It: Lessons from the New Book “Carbon Democracy”

Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller

Long before politicians mewled helplessly about the power of “Big Oil”, carbon-based fuels were shaping our very political, legal, intellectual, and physical structures.

Doing Some Math on Fracking Propaganda

By reader bob of upstate New York, which is still frack free and fighting

A story by the Associated Press that tried to do some jusitsu on fracking critics, claiming they were guilty of the same practices they accused the industry of using, namely, using bad science, ironically, it included a pro-fracking example of the same.

Chris Cook: Libor and Oil Market Manipulation – Rage Against the Dying of the Light

By Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange

A generation of markets is dying and the era of the Middleman is coming to an end. The ‘Bezzle’ – as J K Galbraith described financial misbehaviour in a boom, revealed by a bust – is now coming to light.

Jeffrey Sommers/Michael Hudson: Latvia, the Austerians’ Potemkin Village

Yves here. I’m dwelling on the spectacular failure of Latvia in part because readers like the writings of Michael Hudson, but more important, because a major push is on to reimage the implosion of that economy as some sort of success, not unlike the claims the Chicago Boys made for their efforts in Chile. It also doesn’t hurt that this account, which is a considerably expanded version of a recent Financial Times op-ed, is vivid and pointed.

By Jeffery Sommers and Michael Hudson, a associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and distinguished professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City respectively, who have both advised members of Latvia’s government on alternatives to austerity. They are also contributors to the forthcoming book by Routledge Press: The Contradictions of Austerity: The Socio-Economic Costs of the Neoliberal Baltic Model. Cross posted from Counterpunch by permission of the authors

Austerity’s advocates are declaring victory with Latvia’s battle against the European economic crisis and advocating it as the model for Greece & Spain to emulate. Curiously, Latvians have been declaring this “win” by exiting their country.

Oil Regulators Wimp Out on Requiring More Transparency

A Wall Street Journal article tonight (hat tip Joe Costello) has the whiff of disinformation about it. It dutifully reports that oil regulators have retreated in a serious way from requiring more disclosure of oil market transaction. The article never offers an explanation for the change in stance and focuses attention on actors who are highly unlikely to be the moving force.

Wolf Richter: Manna for Bankrupt Cyprus

In Greece’s chaotic wake bobs the listing Republic of Cyprus, soon to be the fifth Eurozone country, out of seventeen, to get a bailout. By June 30. Only last year’s €2.5 billion loan from Russia has kept it afloat. It’s economy is shrinking, unemployment is at a record, and real estate is collapsing after a phenomenal bubble and a nationwide title-deed scandal that has taken down the banks. But Cyprus has something—and it’s huge—that no other troubled Eurozone country has.

Objective of US and Israeli Policy is Economic Warfare Against Iran

Right after 9/11, Iran went out of its way to be helpful to the US, to the point where Stratfor regularly wrote about “the coming US-Iran alliance”. This interview with Gareth Porter discussed the current state of play in US relations with Iran, and discusses how the negotiations with Iran over its enrichment program look increasingly like cover for a an economic program designed to weaken Iran.

Shale Gas Hype: Subprime 2.0?

If my RSS reader is any guide, most of the press about shale gas has focused on two issues. First, shale gas is in considerable supply, cheap to produce, and burns far cleaner than other fossil fuels. Second, shale gas does not look so hot environmentally, all in. Fracking can pollute ground water (and potable water is our most scarce resource) and releases enough methane to make shale gas as detrimental as coal. Still, it has been treated as the Great Hope for America’s energy woes, a way to turn the US into an exporter, and maybe it will cure cancer too.

Chris Cook: Spikes and Speculation in the Oil Market – Flash Crash Part Deux?

By Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange

Cui Bono from High Prices?

If there is one thing that the history of commodity markets tells us it is that if producers can support and manipulate prices in their favour, then they will.