Ocean Power: The Ignored Alternative
Call it the joy of engineering.
Ocean power is an engineer’s dream, where seemingly all things are possible.
Read more...Category Archives: Energy markets
The Myth of Affordable Energy — Interview with Ed Dolan
In the interview Ed talks about the following:
Read more...• 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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...Les Leopold: How Wall Street Drives Up Gas Prices
By Les Leopold, the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It. Cross posted from Alternet
Gasoline prices have been falling in recent weeks, but they’re still close to their five-year high after climbing steeply for three years. For every penny increase at the pump, $1.4 billion per year leaves our collective pockets, creating a drag on the sluggish “recovery.” Where does it go and what caused the price explosion at the pump?
Read more...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.
Read more...Chris Cook: The Ghost of Enron Past Explains Oil Market Manipulation
By Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange
I outlined in my recent post my view that the oil market price has been inflated by passive investors whose attempts to ‘hedge inflation’ actually ended up causing it, and have allowed oil producers to manipulate and support the oil market price with fund money to the detriment of oil consumers.
But there has always been a missing link – precisely how has this manipulation been achieved?
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