Gas is gonna go through the roof.....

[DiscoBiscuit]

Oil May Surge to $220 If Lybia, Algeria Halt...

Oil May Surge to $220 If Lybia, Algeria Halt...

By Grant Smith - Wed Feb 23 18:02:59 GMT 2011Wed, Feb 23, 2011

Africa halts exports from Libya and Algeria, Nomura Holdings Inc. said.

Crude futures rose to almost $100 in New York today, the highest in more than two years, as violence in Libya threatened to disrupt exports from Africa’s third-biggest supplier. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi vowed yesterday to fight a growing rebellion until his “last drop of blood.” Protests in Algeria led to the ending of a 19-year state of emergency.

“If Libya and Algeria were to halt oil production together, prices could peak above $220 a barrel and OPEC spare capacity will be reduced to 2.1 million barrels a day, similar to levels seen during the Gulf war and when prices hit $147 in 2008,” the Tokyo-based bank said in a note today.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has spare production capacity of about 5 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said yesterday that the organization will boost output if there is a shortage. Algeria produced 1.25 million barrels a day last month, while Libya pumped 1.59 million a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Both nations are members of OPEC.

Crude for April delivery was at $99.68 a barrel as of 12:38 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest since Oct. 2, 2008. Futures are up 24 percent from a year ago. Brent for April settlement climbed 5.4 percent, to $111.49, on the ICE Futures Europe exchange.
Gulf War

“The closest comparison is the 1990-1991 Gulf War,” during which OPEC’s spare capacity dropped to 1.8 million barrels a day and prices surged 130 percent in seven months, Nomura analysts led by Michael Lo in Hong Kong said.

Nomura said the $220 prediction may be an underestimate, as speculative investors trading crude oil who were not active in the early 1990s may amplify the price.

A surge to $220 would trigger demand destruction and a correction lower, according to Stephen Schork, president of the Schork Group Inc. in Villanova, Pennsylvania.

“These are levels that effectively kill the global recovery,” Schork said in an interview. “You can never say never, but $220 is blatantly not sustainable.”

Nomura forecasts that a jump to $220 would probably cause a temporary collapse in global oil consumption of 2 million barrels a day. That’s more than the 1.5 million barrels of daily growth anticipated this year by the IEA.
Scaling Back

Total SA and OMV AG followed Eni SpA, RWE AG and BASF SE’s Wintershall unit in scaling back their Libyan operations this week. The moves have reduced production by as much as 300,000 barrels a day, Vienna-based researcher JBC Energy GmbH said in a report today.

Protests in Algeria, while not as violent as in Libya, led to the announcement yesterday of an end to the state of emergency. The measure was imposed after the cancellation of the country’s first multiparty elections that Islamists were set to win in 1992.

“I see a higher chance for Libyan production to stop at the moment, but I will not be surprised if this rolls over into Algeria too,” Nomura’s Lo said by e-mail. “We are hearing a threat to oil infrastructure in Algeria already.”

If an export suspension is confined to Libya, rather than both countries, prices would rise to about half of the $220 a barrel forecast, Lo said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...if-libya-algeria-halt-output-nomura-says.html

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[Justin_Credible]

Just dropped $359 for 100 gallons of heating oil , ehhhhhhh

That should be considered a crime, disgusting. Way too much money people are making off of people trying to keep warm.

 

[SpasticGramps]

 

[igrowone]

nice graphic gramps, oil and its cost at a glance
stacking wood in the wood stove feels a bit sweeter whenever i see numbers like these

 

[Mountain]

A chart like that takes into consideration that buying/driving habits/patterns don't change. I think last time around with the oil crisis the magic number when peeps would start to make changes in their life was like $4.00/gal. At some point peeps will pull back but the thing that will be more difficult to deal with is the increase in everything else affected by high oil prices and not just driving like food, packaging, etc.

The Saudi's jumped in and said they will make up for any shortfall from Algeria/Libya.

 

[SpasticGramps]

Too much inflationary pressure IMO.


A side caveat. The Saudis are paying their citizens off with food and money so they don't start revolting. That's inflationary. How long can the game go on?

 

[LovableHuggable]

Too much inflationary pressure IMO.


A side caveat. The Saudis are paying their citizens off with food and money so they don't start revolting. That's inflationary. How long can the game go on?

They are protesting March 11th so not much longer. If Saudi goes the way of Egypt and Libya I think 200 oil is optimistic. WWWIII is my pessimistic outcome.

 

[Mountain]

If Saudi goes the way of Egypt and Libya I think 200 oil is optimistic. WWWIII is my pessimistic outcome.

Well I think who ever is in charge will want to pump oil. For sure though any issues in Saudi Arabia will cause some major volatility with prices. Considering the US presence in SA this one would be interesting though. I still feel a lot of the recent price activity in oil is fear and speculation. Either way demand will drop when prices rise.

OK...premium at the pump where I'm at is $3.95+ a gallon.

 

[igrowone]

there was this guy on cnbc today, interviewed about current technology with oil shales(of which we have massive amounts)
claimed the new break even point is $35 a barrel, Mobil is the supposed holder of the technology
not really too sure how much of this to believe, but the Alberta oil sands were considered worthless not that long ago
so i don't know what they think they have, kind of curious though

 

[Mountain]

there was this guy on cnbc today, interviewed about current technology with oil shales(of which we have massive amounts)
claimed the new break even point is $35 a barrel, Mobil is the supposed holder of the technology
not really too sure how much of this to believe, but the Alberta oil sands were considered worthless not that long ago
so i don't know what they think they have, kind of curious though

I don't know much about oil shale stuff. One of the problems with oil sand deposits is the huge amount of water it takes for processing.

 

[DocLeaf]

If petrol/gas gets any more expensive,, then the tramps will switch to drinking alcohol instead!!

 

[igrowone]

I don't know much about oil shale stuff. One of the problems with oil sand deposits is the huge amount of water it takes for processing.

i remember in the 70's the technology was building a kind of miniature 'still' in the shale rock, idea was to drill some holes, fire off some of the shale, and heat/pressure forces out some oil
my guess is Mobil has some adaption of the natural gas rock fracturing technique for use on shale formations

 

[whodare]

ive been wondering now if our government has held off allowing real heavy drilling of american oil sources because oil was cheap from the middle east...

2 -3 a gallon is something we can deal with. 4 is pushing it 5 might start causing problems...

looking at a glass half full picture this will certainly cause a push for more domestic energy sources and sustainable energy all which will create jobs...

seems like the time to really push for industrial hemp...

 

[Justin_Credible]

ive been wondering now if our government has held off allowing real heavy drilling of american oil sources because oil was cheap from the middle east...

2 -3 a gallon is something we can deal with. 4 is pushing it 5 might start causing problems...

looking at a glass half full picture this will certainly cause a push for more domestic energy sources and sustainable energy all which will create jobs...

seems like the time to really push for industrial hemp...

I was listening to Dobbs on the radio the other day, and he was saying to expect largest gas price hikes in recent history of the country....just saw on the news that yesterday was the largest single hike since 911, 6 cents a gallon increase in one day. he also said that economists have speculated that the last oil crisis and how far gas went in price was sort of a test to see how much our economy could handle. 4 dollars a gallon will make the usa stagnant and little to no growth, service industry closings (restaurants, shopping centers, malls etc) 5 dollars a gallon would crush the usa's economy unless the increase took place over a four to six year period....

 

[whodare]

I was listening to Dobbs on the radio the other day, and he was saying to expect largest gas price hikes in recent history of the country....just saw on the news that yesterday was the largest single hike since 911, 6 cents a gallon increase in one day. he also said that economists have speculated that the last oil crisis and how far gas went in price was sort of a test to see how much our economy could handle. 4 dollars a gallon will make the usa stagnant and little to no growth, service industry closings (restaurants, shopping centers, malls etc) 5 dollars a gallon would crush the usa's economy unless the increase took place over a four to six year period....

agreed... i just hope that we react the right way as a country, we really need to evaluate the sustainability of our energy production... to rely on other countries for consumer goods is ok i guess but to ever rely on another country for something like gas which is vital to the stability of our economy just seems stupid...

we live in very technologically advanced times there is no reason we cant produce our own energy...

 

[SpasticGramps]

This guy isn't happy down in the 504.

Motorist dials 9-1-1 over rising gas prices

The complaints that the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office receives on a daily basis run the gamut from the mundane loud barking dog to the routine reports of speeders, to the make-you-shake-your head-and-say-what? calls about "my child is refusing to go to school."

But the call that came through on Thursday caught even veteran law enforcement officials off guard and perhaps created a new category: Way out of the ordinary.

But it also may be a sign of the times.

At 2 p.m. on Thursday, the St. John 9-1-1 emergency call center received a report from a motorist who became irate when, he said, a local gas station increased the price of the fuel - while he was filling up his truck.

The unidentified motorist told authorities that when he first pulled into the station at Birdie's Food and Fuel, located at 901 East Airline Highway in LaPlace, the price on the pump read $3.049 per gallon. But, while he was pumping, the price shot up to $3.189. The motorist confronted the station attendant but got no satisfaction, so he dialed 9-1-1.

"He said he didn't think it was fair," said Sheriff's Office spokesman Capt. Dane Clement. "And the store attendant wasn't very cooperative, so he called the Sheriff's Office."

Clement said no arrests were made. The deputy filed a report, which will be forwarded to the State Attorney General's Office as a civil complaint.

Sam Aljousi, the manager at Birdie's, said the customer pulled into the station while the prices were being changed and wanted the cheaper price.

"Everybody had to wait," Aljousi said. "There's no way, no way, no way. It's all done by a computer."

Benjy Rayburn, the Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Agro-Consumer Services, backed up Aljousi's claim.

"Once that pump is initiated, it is impossible to change the price," Rayburn said. "Now, it can change from the time you pick up the pump to the time you put it in your tank, but not while you are pumping."

"I don't know if anything will come of this," Clement said of the complaint.

Economists have warned that gas prices have become increasingly unstable due to unrest in the Middle East. The AAA gauge of national averages showed a 6 cent increase from Thursday to Friday, the biggest one-day jump in two years according to CNNMoney. The national average price of regular unleaded gasoline is $3.60. Around LaPlace the average price was $3.19.

Clement said that he has seen a lot of strange calls in his 14 years at the Sheriff's Office, but this one was among the strangest.

"It's out of the ordinary," he said. "Way out of the ordinary."

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Joule Unlimited Claims It Can Make Diesel Fuel With Sun, Water & CO2
JAY LINDSAY 02/27/11 09:15 PM

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow.

Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels.

What can it mean? No less than "energy independence," Joule's web site tells the world, even if the world's not quite convinced.

"We make some lofty claims, all of which we believe, all which we've validated, all of which we've shown to investors," said Joule chief executive Bill Sims.

"If we're half right, this revolutionizes the world's largest industry, which is the oil and gas industry," he said. "And if we're right, there's no reason why this technology can't change the world."

The doing, though, isn't quite done, and there's skepticism Joule can live up to its promises.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientist Philip Pienkos said Joule's technology is exciting but unproven, and their claims of efficiency are undercut by difficulties they could have just collecting the fuel their organism is producing.

Timothy Donohue, director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says Joule must demonstrate its technology on a broad scale.

Perhaps it can work, but "the four letter word that's the biggest stumbling block is whether it `will' work," Donohue said. "There are really good ideas that fail during scale up."

Sims said he knows "there's always skeptics for breakthrough technologies."

"And they can ride home on their horse and use their abacus to calculate their checkbook balance," he said.

Joule was founded in 2007. In the last year, it's roughly doubled its employees to 70, closed a $30 million second round of private funding in April and added John Podesta, former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, to its board of directors.

The company worked in "stealth mode" for a couple years before it recently began revealing more about what it was doing, including with a patent last year for its production of diesel molecules from its cyanobacterium. This month, it released a peer-reviewed paper it says backs its claims.

Work to create fuel from solar energy has been done for decades, such as by making ethanol from corn or extracting fuel from algae.

But Joule says they've eliminated the middleman that's makes producing biofuels on a large scale so costly.

That middleman is the "biomass," such as the untold tons of corn or algae that must be grown, harvested and destroyed to extract a fuel that still must be treated and refined to be used. Joule says its organisms secrete a completed product, already identical to ethanol and the components of diesel fuel, then live on to keep producing it at remarkable rates.

Joule claims, for instance, that its cyanobacterium can produce 15,000 gallons of diesel full per acre annually, over four times more than the most efficient algal process for making fuel. And they say they can do it at $30 a barrel.

A key for Joule is the cyanobacterium it chose, which is found everywhere and is less complex than algae, so it's easier to genetically manipulate, said biologist Dan Robertson, Joule's top scientist.

The organisms are engineered to take in sunlight and carbon dioxide, then produce and secrete ethanol or hydrocarbons – the basis of various fuels, such as diesel – as a byproduct of photosynthesis.

The company envisions building facilities near power plants and consuming their waste carbon dioxide, so their cyanobacteria can reduce carbon emissions while they're at it.

The flat, solar-panel style "bioreactors" that house the cyanobacterium are modules, meaning they can build arrays at facilities as large or small as land allows, the company says. The thin, grooved panels are designed for maximum light absorption, and also so Joule can efficiently collect the fuel the bacteria secrete.

Recovering the fuel is where Joule could find significant problems, said Pienkos, the NREL scientist, who is also principal investigator on a Department of Energy-funded project with Algenol, a Joule competitor that makes ethanol and is one of the handful of companies that also bypass biomass.

Pienkos said his calculations, based on information in Joule's recent paper, indicate that though they eliminate biomass problems, their technology leaves relatively small amounts of fuel in relatively large amounts of water, producing a sort of "sheen." They may not be dealing with biomass, but the company is facing complicated "engineering issues" in order to recover large amounts of its fuel efficiently, he said.

"I think they're trading one set of problems for another," Pienkos said.

Success or failure for Joule comes soon enough. The company plans to break ground on a 10-acre demonstration facility this year, and Sims says they could be operating commercially in less than two years.

Robertson talks wistfully about the day he'll hop into the Ferrari he doesn't have, fill it with Joule fuel and gun the engine in an undeniable demonstration of the power and reality of Joule's ideas.

Later, after leading a visitor on a tour of the labs, Robertson comes upon a poster of a sports car on an office wall, and it reminds him of the success he's convinced is coming. He motions to the picture.

"I wasn't kidding about the Ferrari," he says.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/28/joule-unlimited-diesel-fuel_n_829057.html

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[SpasticGramps]

NYMEX Crude to $102.08 as of now following the Libyan Air strike. Up 2.5% in a day and it's still running! It was just a matter of time before NYMEX converged back with the higher crude prices which have been over $100 for a while. Brent Crude is now at $115. Europeans must be paying $9-10 a gallon by now.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

I topped off today at $3.58 for regular unleaded, will probably be $4 before April.

 

[Mountain]

I topped off today at $3.58 for regular unleaded, will probably be $4 before April.

I'm basically already paying $4/gal. We all know what happens to gas costs during the summer driving season. Don't think I'll see $5/gal before the season's out unless something really crazy happens.