Premium Article Archive

• Geothermal Energy: More Exciting than Media Thinks

  Geothermal energy is hands down THE best renewable energy avenue out there: The Earth is always generating heat, and there won’t be any “peak heat”, nor could we ever extract this energy at the same pace with which the Earth generates it. The process has a carbon footprint that is negligible compared to other fossil fuel and renewable energy processes. Yet geothermal power gets decidedly little press.  The idea of geothermal power has been around for ages: Italy built the world’s first power plant that generated electricity from the Earth’s heat over a hundred years ago. In 1957, New Zealand…

• A Perfectly Positioned Company Set to Benefit from North America’s Oil Boom

  The most compelling news of the week in the energy world was the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) mid-term report, calling for a ‘supply shock’ from North America’s increasing oil supply.For those of us in the daily trading game, these ‘revelations’ are hardly that, we’ve been well aware of the hyperbolic growth of supply from tight oil in the US from the Eagle Ford, the Bakken and elsewhere, the growing supply from Canadian oil sands in the Athabasca, and the new and stunning deepwater finds in the Gulf of Mexico.  So, it has been hard to translate those IEA findings into…

• US LNG Exports … Who We Like

  This is it … the US Department of Energy is expected to decide on US natural gas exports this summer, and President Barack Obama has already suggested that the US could become a net exporter by 2020. At stake immediately are over 24 applications for natural gas exports to companies in countries that do not enjoy free-trade agreements with the US. America now enjoys record gas supplies with prices only 25% of those in Europe and Asia, and as it stands we’re probably looking at 25% growth in US gas supplies by 2035. The European spot price is around $10…

• Oil Market Forecast & Review 17th May 2013

  After falling from $97.38 on May 6 to $92.40 on May 15, July crude oil rebounded on May 16 to regain almost 50% of its recent break. This turnaround was expected, but most traders were looking for a test of the retracement zone at $91.77 to $90.45 before the rebound began. Despite showing strength on the daily chart, the market is still having trouble with a pair of main tops at $98.22 and $99.77 as well as a downtrending resistance line at $97.71. Until these resistance areas are penetrated with conviction, expectations are for the market to remain in a…

• BRAZIL: Round 11 in Rio, Hot and Getting Hotter

  Bottom Line: Rio’s 11th round of bidding for new concessions went down in an atmosphere of heavy competition, with Brazilian offshore acreage fast becoming some of the hottest oil and gas blocks out there thanks to some impressive pre-salt finds and developments.   Analysis: The National Petroleum Agency hosted the 11th round of oil concession bids in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 14 and 15 May. There was some very stiff competition for blocks in the Foz do Amazonas basin off the coast of Amapá state in northeastern Brazil. One deep-water concession here (FZA-M-57) garnered the single-highest bid of the…

• US: Mexico-TAP and the Dodd Frank Act

  Bottom Line: US Congress is reviewing House and Senate legislation that could see US companies working under the Mexico-TAP exempted from Dodd-Frank Section 1504 SEC disclosures about payments to foreign governments. Analysis: The Dodd Frank Act Section 1504 requires US companies to disclose payments to foreign governments, subnational governments and the federal government. Opponents of the act, which is pretty much everyone making money on government contracts, say it harms the competitiveness of US companies in the face of foreign companies who are not made to stand up to the same scrutiny. Right now, Congress is reviewing legislation concerning the…

• URUGUAY: Regasification Plant Heralds Major LNG Ambitions

  Bottom line: With final plans for a regasification plant in the Montevideo Bay approved, Uruguay is aggressively working to position itself as an energy hub despite a lack of conventional resources.Analysis: On 14 May, France’s GDF Suez won a contract to build a liquid natural gas (LNG) regasification plant off the Montevideo shore. The plant should be operational by March 2015, with an expected processing capacity of 10 million cubic meters of LNG per day and storage for 267 million cubic meters. Uruguay itself uses just 300,000 cubic meters a day. GDF Suez may seek subcontracts for the $1.125 billion…

• KURDISTAN: Understanding the Power Brokers

  Bottom Line: Kurdistan is a good place to be right now for E&P companies, but navigating the playing field of power brokers and gatekeepers is a challenging necessity if you want to break into this market—and it’s changing by the day. Analysis: ISA Intel is deep inside Kurdistan and our intelligence paints an interesting picture of the power broker/gatekeeper scene, and it’s a dynamic one. What is most important to understand in Kurdistan is that contrary to popular media stories, the two key political parties—the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—do not necessarily share an…

• Supercomputing: Game-Changer for Oil & Gas Exploration

  Oil majors are second only to the US Defense Department in terms of the use of supercomputing systems. That’s because supercomputing is the key to determining where to explore next—and to finding sweet spots based on analog geology. What these supercomputing systems do is analyze vast amounts of seismic imaging data collected by geologists using sound waves. What’s changed most recently is the dimension: When the oil and gas industry first caught on to seismic data collection for exploration efforts, the capabilities were limited to 2-dimensional imaging. Now we have 3-dimensional imaging that tells a much more accurate story. But…

• A Company that Stands to do Well from the Collapsing WTI-Brent Spread

  Another week away from my usual trading desk in New York does lead to a different and useful perspective on energy events without concentrating on the minute movements on my screens, specifically concerning Hess (HES) and PBF Energy (PBF) – both of which I’ve been thinking about.Here at this small conference on the West coast where I’ve had a chance to talk to a few different voices in the middle of the energy space, there are a few brewing stories that I’ve gotten some interesting and intelligent views – and might even lead to an investment idea.First is an update…