- #71
DrClapeyron
Sellers set limits on contracts. Government saying you can trade more contracts than sellers are willing to sell is nonsense. Who would honor these nonsense contracts or buy them in the first place?
Near-record oil prices could quickly fall by half if Congress were to rein in speculators, according to testimony Monday from a hedge fund manager and oil company adviser on Capitol Hill.
Michael Masters, of Masters Capital Management, told a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that - with greater regulation - oil prices could drop to $65 or $70 a barrel within about 30 days.
"That's half of where prices are today, and gas prices would reflect that," he said.
"If it is a bubble, then where is the evidence in the actual physical market?" asked Kevin Norrish, a commodities analyst with Barclays Capital in London. "There is an endless list of reasons why this argument is a very, very poor one - it will only make things worse."
ref: yahoo article cited in previous post.Leaders from the trucking, airlines and heating industries testified before the panel that speculation in the oil market has harmed their bottom lines.
mheslep said:The US is, now. Are you familiar with the sums of money being spent on renewable energy installation and research in the US?.[/I]
mheslep said:I think the chief beneficiaries of that import tariff would be oil companies with domestic reserves and leases.[/I]
mheslep said:The problem with most of the "renewables" people is that is all they want to do. They don't want to drill, they don't want to explore for more reserves, they don't want to do anything but research, research, research.
You did not answer my question. How much do you think should be spent and why that number?wildman said:Yes and they are not nearly high enough.
Fusion has been funded for 50 years. NIF is still fully funded.Fusion for instance is just barely limping a long.
I'd say 9/11 was basically a fanatical religion driven thing. Still, everyone likes the idea of depriving Middle East autocracies of funds; I am certainly for it. But before taking extreme steps consider two data points:Given that 9/11 was basically a energy driven thing, I think we should be spending more.
Says who? The leases may not contain any oil at all - they are mostly unproven; what they are is promising. They are leased because some geologist thinks the area is worth exploration, and they are being explored as far as I can tell. They are listed as non-producing until they start producing.They wouldn't be the only ones, but considering that 40,000,000 acres of federal leases have not been developed because of fear of Arab price uncutting, so what?
And that point might well be 70 years from now, use liquified coal and its maybe twice that.I guess that is a general fault of humans, no? However, look up peak oil. Exploring for more oil doesn't do any good after a point.
There has been no source presented in this thread even loosely demonstrating that there "ain't a whole lot more".My point is that after the Gulf shelf there ain't a whole lot more.
Wildman was talking about government spending on Renewable Energy Research, which is not particularly close to those numbers.mheslep said:Are you familiar with the sums of money being spent on renewable energy installation and research in the US?
Greatly increase it to what? $500B/yr? $1T/yr?
He doesn't say government, he says only the 'energy sector'. And to consider only government R&D would be myopic. Industrial and private investment are quite large; venture capital is readily available for renewable energy companies.Gokul43201 said:Wildman was talking about government spending on Renewable Energy Research, which is not particularly close to those numbers.
Well the entire DoE budget is ~$22B which includes other indirect research on issues like nuclear waste disposal. I am also fairly sure the NIF is not funded out of the Science office - the weapons modeling and test angle. Then there's the other government agencies, esp DoD:Gokul43201 said:The FY 2007 budget for the DOE Office of Science was $3.8 billion. Out of that, Energy Science and Fusion Research got about $1.6 billion.
http://www.biodieselnow.com/forums/t/20938.aspxIn a move that galvanized biofuels entrepreneurs, the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in November launched a major research program to enable the cost-competitive production of military jet fuel from both cellulosic and algal feedstocks. The director of the program, Douglas Kirkpatrick, says he thinks major questions about algal fuels' technical feasibility will be answered in "the next three to five years."
However unfortunate and wasteful, note that is a one time loss, not a yearly budgeted item unlike these examples above. Its also good reason to be weary of crash government programs, which is basically what the Iraq reconstruction project amounted to.Gokul43201 said:In comparison, about $15 billion remains unaccounted for in Iraq spending that same year.
mheslep said:He doesn't say government, he says only the 'energy sector'.
Sounds like he meant Government spending. Besides, we can't really tell the Private Sector what they ought to be spending money on.Wildman said:Then greatly increase spending for research and development in the energy sector. This can come out of some of the money we are spending for defense right now.
Sure we do. When the government pours $B into ethanol subsidies, wind and solar tax breaks, a great deal of private R&D capital breaks lose to create businesses that can profit from those markets. And that is just R&D. Land and other assets are committed in a larger way. Further, one could argue that we can't really tell the Government exactly how to spend either, especially for the esoteric goal of 'cheaper, greener, more independent energy'. Many examples - the Congressional DoE cuts of the administration's budget for one; in sum much of the process is controlled by some Congressman out to get money for his district and the result is a drastic distortion of original intent.Gokul43201 said:Here's a more complete quote: Sounds like he meant Government spending. Besides, we can't really tell the Private Sector what they ought to be spending money on.
Boo Kerry! Boo Schumer!BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's oil minister Monday opened international bidding on six oil fields that could increase the country's oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day.
But the oil ministry continues to negotiate short-term no-bid contracts with several U.S. and European oil companies -- a step recently criticized by two U.S. lawmakers.
...
Last week, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressing concerns about those no-bid contracts.
The senators, who released the letter, said they are worried that unfair distribution of oil revenue could inflame the violence between the warring religious and political groups of Iraq.
"We urge you to persuade the (government of Iraq) to refrain from signing contracts with multinational oil companies until a hydrocarbon law is in effect in Iraq," read the letter from Schumer and Kerry.
"At this time, the (government of Iraq) currently does not have in place a revenue-sharing law that could fairly allocate any revenue gained from Iraq's lucrative hydrocarbon fields between the three major ethnic groups in Iraq," read the letter. "We fear that any such agreements signed by Iraq's Hydrocarbon Ministry without an equitable revenue-sharing agreement in place would simply add more fuel to Iraq's civil war."
Okay, obviously the silly speculators aren't reading the right news yet. It's just a matter of time...we'll soon be down to double-digit prices again.Oil prices pushed back above $142 a barrel Tuesday on worries about tight supply and possible armed conflict between Iran and Israel. In the U.S., gasoline edged to a new record high.