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OIlprice.com's Energy section focuses on all energy related topics that can't be easily classified in our other categories. Topics covered are fossil fuel energy, solar energy, wind energy and many other types of energy sources.
Russia is ready to institute a $35 billion “anti-crisis” stimulus plan intended to rescue an economy crippled by plummeting oil prices and Western sanctions by increasing spending on agricultural and social programs while cutting most other spending by 10 percent this year. Defense and social spending would not be touched. At the core of the plan is shoring up banks and big companies – mostly energy concerns – to keep them from collapsing until the crisis has eased, and to increase pension payments to match inflation. These initiatives would be paid for by reductions in spending for long-term government programs,…
Yet another large energy company has shifted its focus from capital spending to savings because of the increasingly low price of oil. Sasol Ltd. of South Africa is reassessing its plan to invest in building a large gas-to-liquid (GTL) facility worth up to $14 billion in Louisiana. Already, Sasol has a broad program to save $347.3 million by 2016, and it said in a statement on Jan. 28 that it wants to save more, targeting the GTL complex that would turn natural gas into liquid fuels. It would be situated in Westlake, La., on the shores of Lake Charles. In…
Russia’s economic freefall and isolation from the West has made it increasingly eager to build its relationship with China, even at the cost of lost leverage with Beijing. But new economic data from China shows that Russia has succeeded in capturing a larger share of the massive – and growing – Chinese oil import market. China’s imports of Russian oil skyrocketed by 36 percent in 2014. The rapid rise in Russian oil exports to China is displacing other sources, such as Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members. The Wall Street Journal reports that China’s oil imports from Saudi Arabia fell…
As the oil and gas industry deals with a very unfavorable international market environment, Mexico’s current government can no longer ignore the risks posed by the country’s challenging security scenario. 2014 has been a difficult year for Peña Nieto’s government, as it endures a considerable public backlash resulting from a series of corruption scandals and its mishandling of the case of the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Mexico. Over the past six months, personnel of the oil and gas industry have also continued to be targeted by criminal groups. Adopted from its predecessor, Peña Nieto’s security strategy has enjoyed…
Cheap gas and oil aren't the only forces disrupting the U.S. electric system. Solar is already wreaking havoc, and large-scale batteries are looming. What Uber and Lyft have done to the taxi industry worldwide is just beginning to happen to the electricity industry; and it could shock consumers – particularly the less affluent – as surely as though they had stuck their finger in an electrical outlet. The disruptive revolution is not only happening here, but also in Europe, as Marc Boillot, senior vice president at Electricite de France (EDF), the giant French utility, writes in a new book. Ironically,…
The business world is full of sometimes conflicting theories about what caused the plunge in oil prices during the past seven months, and how low that price will go. But Goldman Sachs seems to have come up with a unified theory. It began late in the afternoon of Jan. 26 when Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told the CNBC television program “Closing Bell” that he expected the average price of oil, now around the $45 range per barrel, to fall further, perhaps as low as $30 per barrel. “My view is we’re probably in the lower,…
How does the economy really work? In my view, there are many erroneous theories in published literature. I have been investigating this topic and have come to the conclusion that both energy and debt play an extremely important role in an economic system. Once energy supply and other aspects of the economy start hitting diminishing returns, there is a serious chance that a debt implosion will bring the whole system down. In this post, I will look at the first piece of this story, relating to how the economy is tied to energy, and how the leveraging impact of cheap…
The Ukrainian government has repeatedly claimed it is doing its best to improve the oil and gas investment climate, but official statements are the opposite of the reality, as Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is leading the great deception. According to Prime Minister Yatseniuk, Ukraine has taken a number of important steps to reform the energy sector, and has even achieved success in the formidable fight against rampant corruption, as well as signed open and transparent contracts for purchase of the natural gas from EU member states. Now he claims Ukraine is looking forward to Western companies' investment in Ukraine's gas…
The major news story breaking in the oil space today is the passing of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and the succession to the throne of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. This comes at a time when oil prices have fallen over 60 percent since June 2014, aided substantially by OPEC’s decision in November not to cut crude oil production. In recent months, the rhetoric from Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali Al-Naimi has been that the Kingdom, home to more than a fifth of the world’s crude oil, would not intervene and instead allow the markets to decide the price…
In his penultimate State of the Union address – and first before a Republican-dominated Congress – President Barack Obama declared that the US is ready to “turn the page.” The economic and jobs’ data is promising and America is “ as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years,” he stated. Unfortunately, just what that next page holds – especially for the energy industry – was left, more or less, to the imagination. Still, upon closer look, we can glean just enough to develop a clearer picture of what lays in store for energy…
