I took a crack this morning at explaining, by example, three things that are currently going on in our U.S. energy economy. The first is the way gasoline consumption has remained depressed, even as prices dropped. The second is the way the drop in consumption has been disproportionately carried out by people near the bottom …
South African firm Sasol and Exxon Mobil were among a group of firms fined last week by the European Union for running a wax cartel, trying to control the global price of wax. Really. I am not making this up: “There is probably not a household or company in Europe that has not bought products …
Back in July, when the price of gasoline was screaming upwards, people would regularly quote the highest price they saw on a pump. They were noticing not any sort of average, but the high side outlier. Lately, I hear people doing the opposite – the lowest price they see anywhere.
Today’s energy tip: low-flow shower heads and shorter showers. Yes, it’s an energy tip, not a water tip.
The September International Energy Agency’s September global oil market report suggests that the changes in consumption we’ve seen with higher prices this year may stick: Demand in the US may be poised for a more permanent, rather than transient, downward trend. Sustained high prices and sluggish economic activity are arguably likely to reinforce the current …
In which I whine about the state of the current presidential campaign energy policy debate.
WQ: Massive amounts of money flowed into the United States because the Bush administration produced absurd deficits through an utter lack of discipline and ill-advised tax cuts in a time of war. Then we asked foreign investors and governments to buy our debt to finance our lack of discipline. Thomas Friedman has made a convincing …
EIA reported today that gasoline supplies remain thin despite that vague notion we all had that the hurricanes are so very last week: [G]asoline inventories have declined to record low levels. At 179 million barrels, total motor gasoline inventories stand at the lowest level since 1967, based on monthly EIA data. Continuing reports of spot …
Qiang Wang of the Chinese of Academy of Sciences had a letter in the 29 August Science magazine (behind paywall) about the critical issue of energy subsidies in China. Rising global energy prices have caused a drop in consumption in the United States, but in China, not so much: You can see that higher global …