I’ve decided to stop posting to the Energy Investment Strategies web site and to take the site down eventually.  There are two reasons.   One is that I need to concentrate my efforts on fighting my cancer.  The other is that I think to a large extent my original aims for this site have been accomplished.  The site was started to educate investors about “peak oil”, its implications for potential future energy shortages, related increases in the importance and value of energy-related equities, and ways investors can best participate .  …

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Are stocks and oil bottoming?

Was last Tuesday’s 350-point rally the beginning of the end of the bear market or just a false “bear trap?”  And a related question: “Did oil bottom at $33 and will it get re-tested?”  Let’s see what we know.

Some things we know

Sometimes the objective observable facts can yield fairly clear conclusions.  Usually that’s not the case.  Usually you can use the available facts to make a decent argument in either direction.  But sometimes the facts seem fairly clear.

For example, there should have been clarity about being …

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A study released on 7/30/08 by Amercan Clean Skies Foundation and Navigant Consulting states that U.S. unconventional natural gas deposits are sufficient to supply 118 years of U.S. demand at 2007 levels.  Newly developed fracking and horizontal drilling techniques have made it possible to recover enormous quantities of gas from tight sands, coalbed methane, and gas shale formations, reports the Oil & Gas Journal (8/4/08) On the demand side, some leaders are starting to advocate the use of NG in lieu of petroleum to power cars.  Two Congressmen, Rahm …

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  By Ayesha Daya   July 2 (Bloomberg) — Natural gas, trading at a 40 percent discount to crude, may rise to reach the record price of oil as demand for cleaner-burning fuels increases, according to energy ministers from Qatar, Algeria and Iran. U.K. natural gas sells for 71.35 pence a therm, or the equivalent of $85 a barrel based on its energy content, compared with $141 for Brent crude. British natural gas rose 38 percent this year, lagging behind the …

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The price of natural gas in the U.S. has about doubled in a bit less than a year despite the fact that U.S. production has actually increased about 5%  due in part to new horizontal drilling techniques being applied to recently developed vast “unconventional” gas fields in the U.S. and Canada like Haynesville.  So it might seem like the price of gas has gotten ahead of fundamentals.  But there are good reasons to be bullish about gas prices longer term. 

Natural gas is inherently cheap on two scores.  One is that …

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One of the things I love about the Financial Times (the “pink” paper) is that their articles are short and to the point and they do not bleed from one page to another.  Anyway, the following piece from today’s paper puts further flesh on the bones of my recent LNG post to the point that U.S. natural gas prices are under pressure from the higher prices extant in other countries because U.S. ports are being outbid for LNG shipments.  This piece highlights Asian demand factors.  It also describes changing …

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An in-depth report on the market for natural gas in today’s Wall Street Journal focuses on the competition between the U.S. and Europe for LNG.  The price of gas over there is around $20 per mmcf, nearly double that here.  So there is good reason to suspect that over time the two prices will come closer as either supplies loosen up there or prices rise here in order to attract more LNG.  Most of the fundamentals that I have notice recently suggest prices will more likely remain high in …

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There seems to be much less discussion and analysis of the supply and demand dynamics for natural gas than for crude oil and other liquids.  Here is a link to the web site of the Natural Gas Supply Association, an industry trade group, that is replete with data and information about supply and demand vectors. This web site maintains that unproven NG reserves in the U.S., according to several sources that are presented, are about 6 - 9 times the proven reserves.  If such reserves become …

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2008 Thus Far: A Preview of Coming Attractions

My concern has been that at some point shortages of oil will cause a falling-stocks, rising-oil phenomenon that will crush my oil related stocks along with the whole market. 2008 has started like that. Oil was up 6.34% as of 2/29 (per the ETF symbol OIL) but stocks were down 8.5% (in terms of the S&P 500 ETF symbol SPY). For oil-related stocks, the falling stock market trumped the rising oil market, as I have expected. IYE, a broad-based oil-stock ETF, was down …

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An enormous discovery of natural gas fields in the northeastern Horn River Basin area of British Columbia has caused several stocks to take a vertical price trajectory.  The new fields are made feasible to develop thanks to new horizontal drilling and subsurface fracturing techniques.  On the other hand, the cost of drilling such wells is huge.

Here is a more complete report:
Huge discoveries in northeast ignite ‘massive land grab’ for drilling rights
DAVID EBNER

From Monday’s Globe and Mail

March 3, 2008 at 4:03 AM EST

CALGARY — The remote and rugged northern fringe of …

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Time to Step Aside

Greetings from snow-bound Crested Butte. CO.  I was supposed to be driving to California this weekend for two weeks on a Sausalito houseboat, but the gigantic west coast storm moving in my direction changed my schedule. The storm may be fortuitous – and symbolic. It provides time for reflection on the storm that raged in the stock market last week. And also the Iowa electoral storm that shook up the political world.

The stock market looks a lot like last August when the credit and mortgage market problems …

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U.S. gas stocks are at near-record levels.  New gas supply from the Independence Hub in the deep waters of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and from the Rockies Express Pipeline out West could put downward pressure on gas prices some analysts predict. read full post

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