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| The spectre of 'stagflation' (UK) |
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 Guest writes: A combination of stagnant output and high inflation not seen for decades is set to haunt policy makers for months if not years to come.
Even with the credit crunch, the housing market at its lowest ebb in 30 years, high street sales at their most miserable in half a decade, and industry reporting a collapse in orders, prices are still rising – and at an ever-faster rate. The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, did not admit as much in his mini-Budget yesterday, but his injection of £2.7bn of spending power into the economy may be designed to prevent a catastrophic collapse in demand as Bank of England policy makers find their room for manoeuvre to reduce interest rates constrained by record inflation.
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| B.C. and Alberta need each other’s power |
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| Guest writes: Alberta’s electricity market includes a host of buyers and sellers. At one end of the spectrum aresmall consumers like you and me who depend on electricity in our homes; on the other are huge industrial consumers mining the oil sands, operating pipelines and milling forest products.
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| US senators pressuring Saudis to hike oil output |
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| Guest writes: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats Tuesday introduced legislation to stop a U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia worth $1.4 billion in a tactic supporters said was aimed at pressuring the OPEC country to increase its oil output.
"We are saying that we need real relief and we need it quickly. You (Saudi Arabia) need our arms, but we need you to cooperate and not strangle American consumers," said Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat.
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| Senate approves end to oil reserve shipments |
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| WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate is directing President Bush to temporarily halt the shipment of thousands of barrels of oil a day to the government's emergency reserve.
Both Democrats and Republicans said such shipments make no sense when oil is costing more than $120 a barrel and could better be used to add supplies to a tight market and possibly lower prices. Senators voted 97-1 Tuesday to suspend the shipments until the end of the year.
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| The oily truth about America’s foreign policy |
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| Guest writes:
With the oil price heading upwards and President George Bush heading for Saudi Arabia, as part of a Middle Eastern tour, it is time to accept the truth. The pursuit of oil is fundamental to US foreign policy.
The importance of oil to American foreign policy is both obvious and curiously difficult to acknowledge in public. In the run-up to the Iraq war it was left to the left to make the argument that this was a “war for oil”. Establishment people – those in the know – rolled their eyes at this “conspiracy theory”.
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| The Why of Chokingly High Oil Prices |
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| Bush Together with Saudi Arabia Spells Disaster for America
There was a time when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) controlled by Saudi Arabia and under the pragmatic thumb of
Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, would have opened wide the oil spigots in the
face of sky high prices and a looming U.S. economic recession. The
kingdom's wily old minister wanted to maintain a balance, siphoning off
just enough out of consumer's pockets to keep the kingdom in opulent
palaces and extravagant gift items for U.S. Presidents -- all without
strangling the egg-laden Yankee goose that made the royal family's
life both fabulous and secure. Then too, no one in the oil patch
wanted prices so high as to make the search for alternative fuels economical.
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| What Condoms Have to Do with Climate Change |
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| As the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden should have some insight on the biggest threats facing the U.S. But when Hayden recently described what he saw as the most troublesome trend over the next several decades, it wasn't terrorism or climate change. It was overpopulation in the poorest parts of the world. "By mid-century, the best estimates point to a world population of more than 9 billion," Hayden said in a speech at Kansas State University. "Most of that growth will occur in countries least able to sustain it." The sheer increase in population, Hayden argued, could fuel instability and extremism, not to mention worsening climate change and making food and fuel all the more scarce. Population is the essential multiplier for any number of human ills.
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| UK: North Essex: fuel thefts rise sharply |
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| Guest writes: SOARING fuel prices were today blamed for an increase in the number of people driving off without paying at petrol stations.
Colchester's crime reduction officer, Colin Stiff, is warning forecourt staff to be on the lookout.
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| The peak oil culture wars |
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| ...Some conservatives may indeed look down their noses at rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi on buses and subway trains. But the antipathy expressed by the right toward the peak oil camp (which is where Krugman is positioning himself, even if he doesn't utter the magic words), goes much, much deeper than a mere distaste for energy conservation.
Partisan conservatives pooh-pooh peak oil (and human-caused climate change) because they think that to concede that these challenges are real and must be confronted is to acknowledge that greed is not always good, and that free market capitalism must be restrained, or at least tinkered with substantially. Peak oil and climate change are fronts in the culture wars, and to some conservatives, watching the price of oil rise as the Arctic ice melts, it might feel like being in Germany at the close of World War II, with the Russians advancing on one front while U.S.-led forces come from the other. The propositions that cheap oil is running out and the world is getting hotter -- as a result of our own activities -- threaten a whole way of life. The very idea that dirty Gaia-worshipping hippies might be right is absolute anathema.
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| CNN Wonders 'What If' Oil Hit $200 a Barrel |
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| Guest writes: Segment features speculation by reporter and 'peak oil' analyst, with no counter-arguments from today's reality.
As if record-high gas prices weren’t enough, CNN’s “Your $$$$$” speculated about “what if” oil were to spike to $200 a barrel.
“Well, if you think it is bad now, it could get worse and it could get worse pretty fast. Fasten your seat belt; fill ’er up, because as you say, it could get a lot worse,” special correspondent Frank Sesno told host Ali Velshi on the May 10 show.
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| McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change |
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| Guest writes: PORTLAND, Ore. — Senator John McCain sought to distance himself from President Bush on Monday as he called for a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, also pledged to work with the European Union to impose punitive tariffs on China and India, two of the world’s biggest polluters, if those nations refused to participate in an international agreement to slow global warming.
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| Saudi Arabia threatens to stop oil exports to Taiwan |
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| TAIPEI - Saudi Arabia has threatened to halt oil exports to Taiwan over Taipei's reluctance to invest in Saudi Arabia's power and water desalination plant, a report said Monday.
Saudi Arabia feels cheated by Taiwan's delay to invest in the Independent Water & Power Provider (IWPP) project and has threatened to suspend oil exports to Taiwan, the United Daily News (UDN) reported.
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| Libya to Reassess Italy Oil Deals Amid Government Row |
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| Libya is reassessing some of its oil deals with Italian energy company Eni SpA (E) as tensions mount between the two nations following the new Italian government's high-level appointment of a right-wing politician who has angered the North African country in recent years.
Conservative Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian billionaire, was sworn in for a third stint as prime minister Thursday along with his appointed ministers, who include Roberto Calderoli, of the anti-immigrant Northern League party that is part of Berlusconi's coalition government.
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| Nigeria: Nupeng Predicts More Crisis in Delta |
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| The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, has raised the alarm that unless the issue of Nigerian workers in multinational oil companies, whom it accuses of turning to slaves, is addressed the current crisis in the Niger Delta might be a child's play in the future.
NUPENG's national president, Comrade Peter Akpatason,who led executive members of the union to the Minister of State for Energy, Petroleum, Mr. Odein Ajumogobia, SAN, therefore appealed to the government to resolve the problem to forestall the likely consequences.
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| Petroleum : A Historical Review |
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| The effect that rising oil prices have on a market is not directly proportional to the cost of crude oil. For example, while crude oil prices increased 400% from 2003-2008, United States gasoline prices did not rise by the same amount. This is because the profits of distributors and retailers, production costs (such as refining, transportation), and taxes are all part of the price of auto fuel.
There is debate over the effect the current long term elevation of oil prices will have. Some speculate that an oil-price spike could create a recession comparable to those that followed the 1973 and 1979 energy crises or a potentially worse situation such as a global oil crash.
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