There has been a lot of speculation lately over whether the Saudi oil production cuts over the past year have been voluntary. I have argued that they were voluntary based on a combination of what was happening with inventories last spring (crude inventories were very high and trending higher), and then price (started falling in [...]
Eia,Eia >
Running the Electric Grid with eSolar 
As I often do on a Saturday morning, I was up early reading through energy headlines. I happened across this story on eSolar:
Bill Gross’s Solar Breakthrough
“We are producing the lowest cost solar electrons in the history of the world,” Bill Gross is telling me. “Nobody’s ever done it. Nobody’s close.”
“We have a cost-effective, no-subsidy solar [...]
The Dominant Fuel in 2030
I just spent a fruitful week in Canada, learning about some of the biomass resources in Alberta. There are some interesting opportunities there for the right technology, and I expect that I will be making future trips up there.
One of the questions I was asked this week by one of my new Canadian friends was [...]
Where Our Gasoline Imports Come From
I started this post almost a year ago, but forgot about it. But someone at The Oil Drum just said they wished they had more information on where our gasoline imports come from. No need to wonder, because the EIA publishes this information.
For 2007, our Top 10 importers of finished gasoline into the U.S. in [...]
How Quickly We Forget
Retail gasoline prices in the U.S. peaked back in July at $4.17 a gallon. (Source: EIA). At the end of 2008, gasoline had fallen to $1.67. We typically use about 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year, so that $2.50 drop amounts to an annualized difference of $350 billion in the pockets of consumers – [...]
This Week in Petroleum 4-11-07
Update:
Gasoline Inventories Are Plummeting
This week’s report highlights:
U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 0.7 million barrels compared to the previous week. At 333.4 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are just above the upper end of the average range for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories [...]
This Week in Petroleum 12-06-06
I have a challenge for the conspiracy theorists out there who think oil companies purposely dropped the price of gas leading up to the recent elections. Here is the gasoline inventory graph for the past year, which the EIA just updated today at This Week in Petroleum:
Note that gasoline has dropped below the bottom range [...]
This Week in Petroleum 9-19-07
Some surprises in this week’s numbers:
The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration reported that crude inventories fell by 3.8 million barrels during the week ended Sept. 14, more than double the 1.5 million-barrel decline analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires, on average, had expected. However, crude inventories remain at the upper end of their average range [...]
Running the U.S. on Solar Power
How much land would it take for solar power to satisfy the electricity demands of the U.S.? I made some attempts to calculate this before, but a recent story may enable me to calculate some more reliable numbers if the solar is provided via solar thermal power:
Solar Power Heats Up: Another Plant Planned for Southwest
Two [...]
The 2009 EIA Energy Conference: Day 1
The Plenary
I covered Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s comments in the previous post. Here, I will cover the rest of Day 1. This is not so much a comprehensive summary as it is a collection of observations and things I otherwise found to be interesting. My notes at times are spotty, so if someone was there [...]
