Energy / Energy-General

• Media Portrays Obama as Anti Oil - But the Reality is Very Different

  Approximately 75,000 jobs were created in the oil and gas sector under the Obama Administration between 2009 to 2011, according to analysis of data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics. That’s roughly 69,000 more jobs than would be created by construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The figures, reviewed by the Centre for American Progress, show that overall employment in oil and gas (extraction, field support, pipeline construction and transportation, and petroleum refineries) increased by 13% in the last two years. The figures do not include categories such as gasoline stations, fuel dealers, asphalt paving, or lubrication production.…

• GOP Dance Kills Pet Pipeline Project

  Republican critics of the U.S. president continued to lob accusations at the White House by saying it wasn't doing enough to promote anything from jobs to energy security or was somehow misleading the American public by playing political games with the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. Yet the irony is that by playing their own political games, the Grand Old Party may have effectively killed off the project by forcing the administration's hands – at least for now. Way back in 2008, Canadian pipeline company TransCanada proposed an extension to the Keystone oil pipeline to feed refineries along the…

• Is Rossi Looking at Mass Production for the E-Cat?

  Andrea Rossi, the inventor and energy behind the E-Cat was interviewed by Gary Hendershot and Sterling Allan for the Smart Scarecrow Show last Saturday the 14th of January 2012.  The headline remark was Mr. Rossi has sent prototypes to the Underwriters Laboratories (UL).  As best can be determined, that remark is in the past tense. The customary view is the UL accepts products destined for sale in the final form, which is a fact.  However, the UL also offers governmental units assistance in establishing reasoned law, regulation and rules.  For manufacturers the UL also extends more than just final product…

• Keystone XL pipeline - investor's dream or brewing nightmare

  A year ago, the 1,700-mile, $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline, designed to export Alberta's oil sands oil to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, seemed a slam dunk. Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline is critical for TransCanada and the Canadian energy industry. If constructed, the three foot wide pipeline would transmit 700,000 barrels a day of hot, heavy, high-pollutant and corrosive oil sands tar bitumen from northern Alberta across the central U.S. to refineries near Houston and Port Arthur in Texas and facilities in Louisiana via a conduit whose walls would be ½ an inch thick. But what…

• Russia Drives Final Stake Through the Heart of the Nabucco Pipeline?

  European investors, ever eager to embrace massive and profitable energy projects, in the last several years have dreamed of somehow persuading Turkmenistan to divert volumes of its ever increasing natural gas production to fulfill one of Europe's most cherished reveries, the Nabucco pipeline. Quite aside from the billions in profits that Nabucco would generate, it would have the added political advantage of assisting one of Europe's most cherished ambitions, lessening its energy dependency on Russia, as state owned Gazprom now supplies 40 percent of Europe's natural gas imports. Worse, the EU's European Commission projects that the EU's overall gas consumption…

• Mozambique - Energy Sector Open to All

  Reading the news, it sometimes seems as if China has bought up Africa's energy resources lock, stock and barrel. But one nation is bucking the trend - Mozambique, who according to a recent report from the Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique, has seen its President Armando Emilio Guebuza essentially declare that the country's energy resources are open to all comers. And what a frontier it seems to be, especially for Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the largest U.S. independent oil and natural gas company by market value. On 5 October Anadarko Petroleum Corp. raised its estimates of reserves in its offshore Mozambican…

• Brazilian Offshore Fields - Caveat Emptor

  A decade ago Jim O'Neill, then Goldman Sachs head of global economic research and commodities and strategy research, coined an acronym that has increasingly come to dominate the last decade in a study reported entitled, "Building Better Global Economic BRICs." Despite the coy cuteness of the title, the paper's content was both serious and prescient, predicting the rise of the four BRIC economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China - over the next few years. O'Neill's forecast has come to pass, but what is interesting about the rise of the BRIC economies is that only Russia is a major energy…

• Brazilian Startup has Portfolio from the Amazon to Namibia

  In the world of investing nothing is certain, but some companies seem a much surer bet than others. With globalization, investors are searching worldwide for places to park their money, and many are increasingly turning to the so-called "BRIC" countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China, all of which are projected to be major economic powerhouses of the 21st-century. HRT Participações em Petróleo S.A., commonly referred to simply as HRT, is one such company. Last October HRT raised $1.54 billion in an initial public offering.  HRT has major ambitions - at the time of the IPO, HRT CEO Marcio Rocha…

• Will Namibia Become Another Pawn on China's Global Energy Chessboard?

  Western investors can be forgiven for having the perception that China has bought Africa's energy assets lock, stock and barrel. Last month however, a new oil frontier opened in South West Africa, which as yet represents a level playing field, with no Chinese investment as yet. Accordingly, investors should watch developments in Namibia, which earlier this month announced massive offshore oil finds. On 6 July Namibia's Mines and Energy Minister Isak Katali announced the discovery of vast oil reserves off the southern Namibian coast in the South Atlantic. During his ministerial briefing to Parliament Katali said, "Enigma Oil and Gas,…

• Brazil's Petrobras Goes for the Gold

  In the investing world, little is certain beyond the fact that energy stocks are usually a wise place to park money, as global demand is consistently outstripping production. Smart money should be taking a serious look at Brazil, which under former President Lula da Silva got its financial house in order, and over the last four years has made a number of offshore oil finds in the southern Atlantic in Brazil's Exclusive Economic Zone that last week led Francisco Nepomuceno Filho, Petrobras London head of exploration and production, to comment during an interview, "Brazil as a whole could have a…