oil
For consumers, sentiment about prices generally follows two simple rules: more expensive and hard to get = bad, cheap and abundant = good. In that context, all the new oil “wealth” coming from sources like Canada’s oil sands, the US’s corn-based biofuels and, potentially, gas- and coal-to-liquid technologies definitely falls
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Oil prices and the broader economy are linked in complex ways, but there’s no question the connections are critical. While the investment, banking and mortgage sectors receive the greatest blame for nearly crashing the global economy in 2008, oil prices — which reached a record high of $146 per barrel
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Standards of living aren’t the only thing rising in so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China): along with a growing middle class, developing economies are also seeing a growing demand for oil. While oil consumption is steady or dropping in many developed nations, it’s rising rapidly among
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Who uses the most oil in the world? In this category, the US does have the right to say, “We’re number one.” As of 2010, the US used 19.15 million barrels of oil per day — more than double the figure for the consumer in second place: China, with
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In the good-versus-evil, broad-brush-strokes world of modern politics, it’s always someone’s fault when the price of oil — and, consequently, prices at the pump, grocery store and elsewhere — goes up. Back in fact-based reality, though, the truth, as always, is far more complicated. So why is West Texas Intermediate
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If you don’t care about the environment or climate change, start kicking the oil habit for the sake of the economy. That’s the message from two scientists who warn that declining oil supplies and increasing price volatility are posing a growing threat to the global economy, and a
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Will 2012 be the year we see oil prices rise to crushing record highs? Or will the cost of crude collapse as doomsayers’ predictions about the death of the euro, the bursting of China’s real-estate bubble and other economic calamities come true? We can’t tell you. With so
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What is it about oil that makes us so conflicted? Oh yeah … the love-hate thing. A line from the movie “Fight Club” sums it up: “You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total a..hole. Is this a pretty accurate
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Greenbang CEO Dan Ilett posed a simple question to our team over the weekend: “Guys — how much oil is left?” Here’s how our subsequent discussion went: Shirley Siluk Gregory, Senior research analyst: That’s the trillion-dollar question, isn’t it? Here’s what the International Energy Agency’s latest
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Reports of the “death” of millions of gallons of spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico might be greatly exaggerated, as scientists have found an underwater plume of hydrocarbons that’s at least 22 miles long, more than a mile wide and 3,000-plus feet deep. That finding flies in
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As BP CEO Tony Hayward is transferred, Captain Stillman-style, to a company joint venture in Russia, American-born Bob Dudley will step in to take his place. Given Dudley’s link to the Gulf Coast — he grew up in Mississippi — his anointment is a wise short-term decision, considering the devastating impact
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With the US Gulf Coast facing imminent disaster as the oil from a sunken drilling rig moves toward shore, some officials say it’s time to say a definite no to “drill, baby, drill.” It’s been just one month since President Barack Obama announced plans to open vast new