Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, is embroiled in what might become one of the largest corruption scandals in the nation’s history. This week The New York Times reported that prosecutor general Rodrigo Janot had prepared indictments on at least 11 executives from Brazil’s largest construction companies. According to the story, Janot: is opening the way for […]
The price of Brent crude dropped $1.77 a barrel on Monday, to $67.30. Earlier in the day it had hit $66.77, its lowest mark since October 2009. BBC News has coverage here, and CNBC here. Traders reacted to a report from Morgan Stanley citing fears of a global oversupply. According to BBC: Morgan Stanley predicted […]
Cheap gasoline provides an overall economic benefit, The Economist writes in an article titled “Sheikhs vs. shale.” The price drop of some $40 since June (from above $110 to about $70) has shifted “some $1.3 trillion from producers to consumers. The typical American motorist, who spent $3,000 in 2013 at the pumps, might be $800 […]
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story about the “virtual pipelines” that hide in plain sight around the country: trains, sometimes up to a mile long, that carry oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota to refineries. Unlike oil pipelines, like the hotly contested Keystone XL that a Canadian company wants to build from […]
A California state senator has asked Gov. Jerry Brown to stop oil trains from traveling through the state’s “most treacherous” mountain passes.
A Reuters opinion piece by Mike Corones postulates that low oil prices could actually be good for the environment, as U.S. drillers are forced to hold off on new wells until the pricing structure recovers. That, in turn, means much of the hard-to-reach shale oil that is fueling the worldwide glut of supply will stay […]
Oil gushed from a broken oil pipeline in an Israeli desert reserve Wednesday night, causing what officials said was one of the country’s worst environmental disasters. The spill occurred in the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline near the Evrona reserve, on the Israel-Jordan border. Millions of liters of oil escaped in the rupture, which happened while workers were […]
It was inevitable: The drop in gasoline prices means Americans are buying more gas-guzzling vehicles, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. U.S. vehicle sales rose 4.3 percent in November, on track for 17.2 million sold for the year. That’s the quickest pace for a November since 2003. More from the story: “Psychologically, when people see […]
Kurt Cobb, who writes about energy and the environment, has a piece in The Christian Science Monitor about how OPEC is targeting the U.S. shale-oil “revolution.’ Cobb says it was folly for some proponents of U.S. drilling to think that oil would remain above $100 a barrel indefinitely. At $70, U.S. operations aren’t profitable enough […]
The oil price slide has hit some countries much harder than others, and cracks already are beginning to appear in Venezuela’s socioeconomic system. As NBC News reports, shortages of basic products, like toilet paper, toothpaste and medical supplies, have worsened as the price of oil has plummeted. The South American country, which is an OPEC […]
