Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten [...]

Found this on Political Wire and it’s typical of the nonsense we heard from her during the campaign…
Palin: We are the only state with a negative tax rate where we don’t have any income, sales or property tax statewide, and yes we have a share of our oil resource revenue that goes back to the [...]

While attending the Offshore Technology Conference earlier this week (on sponsorship by the American Petroleum Institute), one truth became very apparent: opening up the outer continental shelf to oil and gas exploration would create a lot of jobs.
Right now, our government is spending hundreds of billions in an effort to revitalize the economy, but President [...]

Today at the Offshore Technology Conference (which I am at on sponsorship by the American Petroleum Institute), I attended a panel discussion titled: The Case for Access to Oil and Gas Resources on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. As the title and graphic to my post probably reveal, the panel was less reasonable than the [...]

From today through mid-week, I’m in Houston attending the Offshore Technology Conference. I’m here on the sponsorship of the American Petroleum Institute which has brought in a cadre of bloggers, presumably to help generate coverage and discussion of petroleum issues. Since I believe energy and climate change policy will be some of the most important [...]

Following up on my earlier post about oil speculation, there’s news that 50 million barrels of oil are being hoarded on supertankers.
The market calls it “contango.”
I call it irresponsible.
From Marketplace…
“Contango” refers to a market condition in which the future price of a commodity is higher than the cost of buying it today. Right now, [...]

And they find that the folks who were trying to make a quick buck were affecting oil prices far more than the normal market forces of supply and demand.
Gee, that sounds oddly familiar…

Last year I argued time and time again that the energy speculators were the cause and that supply and demand couldn’t cause such [...]

I’m glad to see we learned our lesson…
From CNN:
After nearly a year of flagging sales, low gas prices and fat incentives are reigniting America’s taste for big vehicles.
Trucks and SUVs will outsell cars in December, according to researchers at the automotive Website Edmunds.com, something that hasn’t happened since February.
Meanwhile the forecast finds that sales of [...]

Massive energy speculation mixed with much lower demand is driving the price down, down, down for the foreseeable future.
From AP:
A report by the Commerce Department showed that sales of new homes fell in November to the slowest pace in nearly 18 years, while new home prices dropped by the biggest amount in eight months.
“The energy [...]

If you haven’t noticed, gas prices are back down. In fact, oil has been on one heck of a ride, going from $70 a barrel up to over $140 a barrel and back down to $70 in just one year.
The value of the U.S. dollar took a similar ride, except its value decreased dramatically [...]

As purse strings tighten and consumption plummets, the market runs screaming.
Reuters has more…
Oil dropped $6 to below $88 a barrel on Monday on expectations the growing financial crisis will further slow already faltering global fuel demand.
Crude prices have plummeted from a peak over $147 a barrel set on July 11 as high fuel prices and [...]

This may seem like good news for people at the pump, but let’s not forget that even with oil falling to $115 a barrel, it’s still well above where it was just a year ago…and a year before that…and so on.
And as the following graph from The Oil Drum illustrates, prices have dropped over the [...]

Why is McCain ridiculing Obama for a solution that would actually have an immediate impact on our fuel usage?
I’ll give you one guess…
From TIME:
The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about [...]

An unfortunate setback, but my guess is that somebody will fill Sheik Ibrahim al-Karbouli’s shoes quickly. Iraq is now starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, and whoever is brave enough to stand up could reap some serious rewards.
From the AP:
Unknown gunmen attacked the convoy of Sheik Ibrahim al-Karbouli in Youssifiyah [...]

Unlike McCain’s suggestion that Obama is himself responsible for rising gas prices, there’s nothing untrue about what Obama’s campaign is saying in this ad. However, by saying that McCain is in the pocket of Big Oil like Bush, he takes what could have been a solid campaign ad and turns it into a negative hit.

Obviously [...]

How do you distinguish a flip-flop from a principled policy shift? Well, let’s take a look at Barack Obama’s statements on offshore drilling.
In June, Obama said this:
“When I’m president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium here in Florida and around the country that prevents oil companies from drilling off Florida’s coasts. That’s how [...]

John McCain is running a new ad blaming rising fuel prices on opposition to oil drilling in the United States. The ad specifically references Obama as one of the hindrances to the drilling.
That’s misleading at best and dishonest at worst. If we canceled the ban on offshore drilling today, we wouldn’t be able to add [...]

I love this idea…and I would certainly take advantage of it if it becomes law.
The bill is called “The Energy Efficient and Environmentally Friendly Automobile Tax Credit Act of 2008″ and it provides tax credits of up to $2K for people who sell or trade in their car for a model that’s 20% more fuel [...]

It’s called the Pickens Plan and he lays it out pretty succinctly in this video…

It’s an intriguing solution, but one that falls short when you consider getting private companies to A) build more cars that run on natural gas and B) get oil companies to rebuild their infrastructure to offer natural gas as an alternative [...]