Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
FERC orders California to pay Enron and other energy companies $250M, the very companies that the state argues should be refunding $9 billion to California for market rigging during the power crisis three years ago. Meanwhile, questions are raised about Cheney’s knowledge of price fixing. And Bush attempts to revive failed Ken Lay inspired energy policy.
Robert Bryce on the Texas-Washington-international crony network. “If you believe, as I do, that worldwide oil production has reached its peak, then they’ve set up a global showdown.”
Financial globalisation has raised the risks of contagion, or the knock-on effects through which one country’s vulnerabilities can spread through the global economic system.
After several failed efforts to unseat Venezuela’s popular President Hugo Chavez, the fuel sector of corporate America is getting nervous. Venezuela is growing in prosperity, relying on its own mineral resources and technological patents to build new wealth. Chavez is exactly the kind of indigenous national leader whom American power can’t tolerate.
Full text of a lost speech. “By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?… Oil is unique in that it is so strategic in nature. We are not talking about soapflakes or leisurewear here. Energy is truly fundamental to the world’s economy.”
When oil was found in 1996 in Equatorial Guinea, the former Spanish colony in West Africa was one of the poorest countries in the world. Today, this small and sparsely populated country of 465,000 inhabitants has an offshore production of 350,000 bpd, making it the third largest sub-Saharan producer of oil, behind Nigeria and Angola. According to the African Development Bank, a year after oil was found, gross domestic product went up 76 %.
The European Union says it has modified an ambitious U.S. plan to promote democracy in the Middle East. [propaganda warning]
Shaken energy managers throughout Silicon Valley are finding cheap, long-term electricity deals a thing of the past as they go about trying to replace expiring energy contracts.
Syria continues to sell oil to U.S. companies and encourage U.S. investment in its energy sector, despite Washington’s unilateral sanctions, Oil Minister Ibrahim Haddad told Reuters.
With significant energy shortages forecast as early as 2006, California is dangerously close to experiencing a repeat of the energy crisis that nearly crippled our economy and threatened our environment a few years ago.
Off the West African coast, the sharks are circling the sleepy “chocolate islands” of Sao Tome and Principe, eager to bite off slices of billions of dollars of hoped-for oil revenues.
European Commission regulators and the U.K. government are close to an agreement on a 1.5 billion-pound ($2.7 billion) state bailout for British Energy Plc, the country’s biggest power generator, people familiar with the situation said.
