Somebody gets it at The Washington Post.  Gal Luft makes perfect sense in this piece about how four other countries are becoming energy independent while the U.S. just plays silly games.  He left out the fifth country doing it, Denmark, which is going down a similar road to Israel’s except using wind instead of solar to generate the electricity.  ENERGIZED Iran and Brazil Can Do It. So Can We . Sunday, July 6, 2008; Page B01 When the founding fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined …

[Read more →]

The Oil & Gas Journal (5/5/08) published an analysis of the Iranian oil industry that begins: “The Iranian oil and gas industry approaches its 100th anniversary bloated, corrupt, and nearly bankrupt, managing four times the employees but two thirds of the oil production it had before the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79.”

The piece provides details supporting each of those allegations and it outlines the history of the industry, starting with the discovery of oil in 1908 by a predecessor company of BP.  Oil was nationalized in 1951 with a very successful …

[Read more →]

Only one short week ago I wrote that the price of oil is more likely to go down than up.  It did drift down toward $122, but Thursday and Friday saw the largest price spikes in the history of oil, with the price ending at new highs.  Why would I hazard a guess on the short term direction of oil after stating clearly that it is virtually impossible to make short term oil price predictions with any accuracy?  That’s a question I will probably keep asking myself …

[Read more →]

According to a report in The Oil and Gas Journal (2/18/08) an extremely cold winter has put severe pressure on Iranian natural gas supplies, which is impacting other parts of their economy.  The weather has increased residential and commercial NG use 18% so that it now consumes 90% of production. Strained NG supplies have hurt oil production which is (unbelievably) pressurized by injection of, you guessed it, natural gas. The affected oil fields produced 930 kb/d if oil last year.  Gas pressurization is down by 33% - 75%.  …

[Read more →]

Mexico, Venezuela, Kuwait, Iran, Russia and Indonesia.   click here.

[Read more →]

Under the deal, Iran would buy 100,000 barrels of Iraqi crude to be refined in the southern port of Bandar Abbas, then sell the product back to Iraq. The accord would have no upper limit on quantities.  For full article, click here.

[Read more →]