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’Who won the energy speech?
It would be easy to brush off President Obama’s “Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future” initiative and associated speech yesterday as the obligatory promise to lower dependence on oil in response to the latest surge in gasoline prices.
A quick look at the US nuclear sector
With Japan’s nuclear crisis still uncertain, analysts on Monday began to tentatively assess the potential read across to sectors, companies and funds in the US.
Research reports from Citi and Credit Suisse both look at risks to the nuclear sector from fears of a seismic disaster in the US and from increased regulatory and/or public scrutiny.
Time to start watching the uranium-fossil spread
If energy markets were ever confused, it’s now.
On the one hand the Japanese earthquake immediately implies bearishness for crude oil on account of lower demand. On the other hand it implies a hike in demand for refined products.
The big four ‘known unknowns’ for oil
Citi analysts raised their Brent oil estimate to $105 and $100 for 2011 and 2012 respectively, from $90/barrel, on Monday.
That’s as Brent crude sits tight around the $115 per barrel mark, with WTI not far behind at $105 per barrel.
Evans-Pritchardium, the Telegraph hack of thunder
In case you missed it, there was a pretty major event that transpired over the long weekend in the UK.
While many were stuck on the M40 motorway, attempting to get out of London for the Bank Holiday,
A blob in commodity flows
Are commodities on the verge of a deflationary price collapse?
Walter J. Zimmerman, the chief technical analyst at United-ICAP, provided an interesting perspective on the matter to Bloomberg on Tuesday:
A UK power desurge
In the UK, it is a well know fact that power demand surges at the end of every episode of Eastenders, Britain’s best-loved TV show.
The reason that happens — for those unfamiliar with British custom — is because millions of people simultaneously rush to switch on their kettles to make a cup of tea.
Digging deeper into the CFTC’s position limits
Energy analyst Olivier Jakob from Petromatrix has crunched through the CFTC’s proposals on position limits released last week.
His findings are worth flagging up because they differ to the consensus view that the proposals,
Dubai is worth more than you think
That is, Dubai EFS crude — rather than the emirate itself — is worth more than you think.
As Morgan Stanley highlighted in its commodity outlook for 2010, Dubai crude, which historically traded at a discount to Brent crude due to its heavier and sour quality,
America’s greener trend
The world could probably do with another oil shock, as far as the effect of such an event on energy consumption goes.
From John Kemp, at Reuters, a counter-intuitive chart showing the amount of energy consumed in the US compared with the size of the economy;
Barcap say speculators are not to blame!
Last Friday the CFTC re-categorised the way it presents trader positions in its weekly report to reflect more specifically the type of contracts being held by “managed money” and “swap dealers” — ie,
Helius venture eyes whisky fuelled power
Helius Energy has formed a joint venture with a consortium of Speyside distillers to build a combined heat and power plant that will be the first in the world to be fuelled by whisky by-products. The £50m project will generate 7.2MW of electricity,
Regulator considers US curbs on oil trading
New trading curbs to clamp down on speculation in oil and other commodities are being examined by US regulators in a signal of a tougher approach to oversight of these markets, the FT reported. The CFTC,
Energy is currency
The “inflation or deflation” debate rages on.
We quite liked Gregor Macdonald’s view a few weeks ago that we could be headed into an environment where both inflation and deflation take hold — an economic climate we termed “compartflation”.
US energy braced for hurricane pressure
Rising reinsurance rates and falling capacity have left some insurers and US energy producers with more to fear than in past years as the Gulf of Mexico hurricane season begins on Monday, the FT reported.
Energy crunch time
The International Energy Agency has posted its recent report on the impact of the financial crisis on global energy investment on its website. The analysis was first submitted to the G8 Energy Ministerial meeting in Rome last weekend,
It’s not a liquidity crisis, it’s an energy crisis stupid
While the world’s best brains work furiously to alleviate the current financial crisis by employing all sorts of monetary and fiscal measures — tending to the liquidity nature of the problem — Michael Lardelli,
Just how big a problem is falling capacity utilisation?
Former commodity mega-bulls Goldman Sachs are expecting markets to continue to pull back from current levels in the near term as “fundamentals are not yet stable enough to support higher prices”, according to their latest Commodity Watch.
A commodity anchor, or oil as money
Former director at London’s International Petroleum Exchange (and frequent contributor to FT Alphaville’s Long Room) Chris Cook has long been campaigning for a new monetary system that would link monetary units to energy.
Opec back in the driving seat
Anyone superstitious should beware: not only is today Friday the 13, but the ides of March falls this coming Sunday. So it’s the perfect weekend for arguably two of the world’s most important leadership groups to be meeting to decide on tackling the financial crisis.
Banks, energy and emerging markets, oh my
Two interesting chart’s from Merrill Lynch’s emerging markets team.
The first is emerging market bank stocks vs financials in the developed world. It’s at an all-time high according to ML.
The second is emerging market energy stocks against their developed counterparts.
Chart of the Day, cement edition
Via The Oil Drum, here’s a “Pretty Stunning Graph of World Cement Production”.
As the Drum’s “Professor Goose” – aka Kyle Saunders, associate professor of political science at Colorado State University – notes: