Energy News

WTI Crude hit profit taking as predicted hitting out target of 95.50 & in fact bottomed exactly here. We could continue lower today for good support at 94.50/40 & a buying opportunity with stops below the 100 day moving average at 93.95. Then look for 93.64 as the next support. If we hold on to 95.50 we could crawl higher to try resistance at 96.45/60. We should struggle here but a push higher targets 97.00/17 for a selling opportunity. Stops above 97.35 for a run to April highs at 97.80 & another selling opportunity, but will need…

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The war in Syria is taking a sudden turn – and a potentially dangerous one. Having already oozed into Turkey with a number of attacks by Syrian forces across the border increasing and the explosion of two huge car bombs in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli about two weeks ago there is a real risk today of seeing the war expand into two of Syria’s other neighbours; Lebanon and Israel. As the tide turned in favour of Syrian President Bashar Assad in recent days with the fighting for a key strategic town on the Lebanese border going…

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Exxon Mobil hasn't asked federal regulatory authorities to restart the Pegasus oil pipeline, which burst open in a neighborhood in Mayflower, Ark.  In March, a 22-foot rupture in the pipeline spilled about 5,000 barrels of diluted Canadian crude oil into an area of marshland, though the company said it's been effectively cleaning the area with long-term remediation in mind. Policymakers on both sides of the Canadian crude oil debate have focused on issues ranging from emissions to economic stimulus. If pipelines like Keystone XL have any chance…

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What is New York billionaire-philanthropist George Soros spending his money on? New position in energy companies in Houston, Texas to the tune of $88.4 million in the first quarter of this year alone. So far in Q1 2013, the New York-based Soros Fund Management LLC hedge fund has acquired an $8.4% stake in Apache Corp (APA), a $7.4 million stake in C&J Energy Services Inc. (CJES), a $6.5 million stake in Cameron International Corp (CAM), a $6.5 million stake in Cheniere Energy Inc. (LNG), a $16.7 million stake in Southwestern Energy co (SWN)…

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Russia's biggest company turned 20 this year. But at Gazprom, there appears to be little cause for celebration. The state-controlled natural gas monopoly, which was established as a publicly traded corporation in 1993, recently announced that its net profits fell by 11 percent last year and its valuation dipped below $100 billion for the first time since 2009.Moreover, Gazprom's books are currently being audited by the Russian authorities and its business practices investigated by the European Union. Some key Kremlin insiders are reportedly even…

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How would the global framework transform if the trans-national trade in energy ceased to be a significant factor in strategic affairs? Some states, dependent principally on the export of oil or gas, would cease to be powers by that measure. Other states, dependent on oil or gas imports for viability, might be freed of that foreign exchange drain and the need to project power merely to dominate energy trade sources and supply lines. They could project power for more traditional reasons.  It is now possible to foresee a 21st Century world in…

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has analysed 20,000 shipwrecks in US waters to determine the potential oil spill threat that they pose, and then presented their report to the Coast Guard.Lisa Symons, the resources protection coordinator for NOAA’S Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, said that the “report is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the potential oil pollution threats from shipwrecks in U.S. waters. Now that we have analysed this data, the Coast Guard will be able to evaluate NOAA's recommendations…

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Poland seems to have killed its own shale gas industry before it even got a chance to fully get off the ground.In 2011 the US EIA estimated that Poland contained shale gas reserves of around 187 trillion cubic feet, more than a fifth of the total reserves attributed to the US. Prospectors moved in from the US and Canada, hoping to be involved in the rise of Europe’s richest shale gas deposits.Tom Maj, head of Polish operations for Talisman Energy Inc. of Canada, explained the attraction: “Exploration in a new basin is always an extremely…

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After a three month search, Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK), the second largest natural gas producer in the US, announced on Monday that it has found a suitable replacement for the position vacated by Aubrey McClendon in April; and they have poached their new chief executive officer from no less than rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp.Robert Douglas Lawler, the senior vice president of international and deepwater operations at Anadarko (NYSE: APC), will take over as CEO of Chesapeake on the 17th of June. Lawler, who worked for 25 years at Anadarko…

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After grounding its fleet in January due to the fire risks posed by the new lithium-ion batteries used on board, the Boeing 787 Dreamliners have once again returned to the air.The lithium-ion batteries were introduced as a lightweight power source, however, problems with overheating were quickly discovered, causing one plane to ground quickly, and another to burst into flames. In the laptop computer, and electric car industries lithium-ion batteries had similar overheating problems at first, but changes were quickly made to avoid these events,…

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President Obama’s Department of the Interior has issued a conservation plan to protect the giant US Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska. The plan makes no mention as to potential oil and gas development in the region, and this has upset the Alaskan government.Seeking to nudge the federal government into considering the possibility of drilling in the nature reserve Alaska’s government has decided to invest its own cash in an assessment of the potential oil and gas reserves in the area.The administration of the Republican…

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Crude oil:July WTI crude oil advanced 64 cents on volume of 632,229 contracts. Open interest declined by 4,828 contracts, which relative to volume is approximately 60% less than average. The June contract accounted for loss of 37,325 of open interest because it will shortly expire. We continue to advise a stand aside position in crude oil due to the inherent risk involved in all markets, especially when the equity market begins to setback.Brent crude:July Brent crude gained 16 cents on very light volume of 440,721 contracts. Volume was the lowest…

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Brent Crude did push on for 105.31 & made a high for a high for the day exactly here as predicted. We are overbought now & should see some profit taking after 4 days of gains but if we continue higher look for a retest of 105.95/106.05 May highs. This should hold again this week so we could exit longs & try shorts with stops above 106.50 for a test of March lows at 106.80. Immediate support is at 104.40/30 so a break below here should trigger sell orders & keep the market under pressure for 103.85/75. This should hold the downside…

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If you want an objective view of energy, ask an economist, who can tell you what to expect to pay at the pump in the coming years, and why, as well as what to expect from medium- and long-term economic growth and what the real drivers will be. These are questions that are crucial to a pending decision by the US government over natural gas exports, and while we know where big oil stands versus its manufacturing rivals—it’s the economist who can set things straight. Mark Thoma is a macroeconomist and time-series econometrician at the…

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America’s energy infrastructure is in dire straits and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has given it a D+ in a “report card” that measures everything from the electricity grid’s transmissions capacity to oil and gas distribution channels. The whole premise of the report is that there is progress, but we’re only half way there. While technological advancements are rapidly evolving, transmission and distribution systems that would allow us to actually take advantage of these advancements have not been put…

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Since the December 1991 fragmentation of the Soviet Union, no issue has divided the post-Soviet states and its former Eastern and Central European colonies than energy issues. As the post-Soviet space slowly lurches from a centrally planned economy to something somewhat resembling capitalism, energy exports have remained a critical support of the Russian Federation’s economy. In the U.S. government’s Energy Information Agency’s authoritative “Country Analysis Brief Overview,” of the Russian Federation’s hydrocarbons,…

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It was announced Friday afternoon, when no one was supposed to pay attention: after years of controversy, heated rhetoric, intense lobbying, and stiff opposition from some unlikely bedfellows, with multinational industrial and chemical companies weighing down one side of the bed, and environmentalists tossing and turning on the other, the Obama Administration decided in favor of the US oil and gas industry. With geopolitical ramifications.The Department of Energy “conditionally authorized” Freeport LNG Expansion LP and FLNG Liquefaction…

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The famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr once humorously observed, "Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future." And so, as the world considers yet another rosy oil supply forecast, this time from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), it is worth reviewing the agency's record.Back in the year 2000, the IEA divined that by 2010, liquid fuel production worldwide would reach 95.8 million barrels per day (mbpd). The actual 2010 number was 87.1 mbpd. The agency further forecast an average daily oil price of $28.25 per barrel…

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And the stories regarding Tesla just continue to pop out of the wood work. Can they do nothing without grabbing the media’s attention?This time, to be fair, it is not something they have done, but rather something being done to them.North Carolina has proposed a bill to ban the sale of Tesla’s electric cars in the state.As the Daily Beast reports, “technically it’s a ban on automakers selling cars directly to consumers without going through a licensed dealer, but because Tesla is the only automaker that does this, it’s…

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A report has been released detailing a third party investigation into the anomalous heat produced from reactions inside the E-Cat HT (High Temperature) machine.High resolution thermal imaging cameras were used to record the heat of the reaction tube of the E-Cat, with the data recorded on a second by second basis; and the electrical power input was measured using a large bandwidth three-phase power analyzer.Data was collected from two separate experiments, one using the E-Cat HT, and the other using the E-Cat HT2, a technologically improved version…

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