We reported in our June Newsletter that the difference in price between the Canadian heavy oil benchmark Western Canadian Select (WCS) and the U.S. light crude benchmark WTI had narrowed to $8 a barrel (bbl). This was remarkable in light of the much wider differential of $15-25/bbl that had become common since around 2010 (see … Read More
Newsletter
Alaska’s oil and gas production tax is now a corporate handout
Although Alaska’s budget troubles have made headlines lately, it’s shouldn’t come as a surprise that a sharp drop in oil prices has put a state with a noted overreliance on oil and gas revenues in a financial bind. But in the midst of Alaska’s dire budget woes, how many people know that, when it comes … Read More
Who’s Blowing the Carbon Budget?
When in a hole, stop digging – so the saying goes. When it comes to climate, we’re all in a deep hole, but who’s doing the digging? New analysis by Oil Change International shows that when it comes to increasing the pool of unburnable oil reserves, it is private oil companies that have been digging … Read More
The Little-Known U.S. Export Import Bank and Its Big Fossil Footprint
The U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) provides financing and insurance for the export of U.S. goods abroad, including an average of over $4 billion dollars each year over the last 7 years for oil, gas and coal projects. Ex-Im’s authorization, which needs to be renewed periodically by Congress for the Bank to stay in business, has … Read More
Newsletter: Whither Energy Markets? Clean Energy Growth vs. Fossil Fuel Fatalism
Last month the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a Special Report on climate and energy, to inform governments about what is possible and necessary between now and the climate talks in Paris in December. Taking a break from its usual advocacy for more investment in fossil fuels (such as here and here), the IEA’s top-line … Read More
Newsletter: Where Does the Administration Stand on Lifting the Crude Oil Export Ban?
Washington DC is seeing a renewed push to eliminate the 40-year old regulation limiting the export of crude oil from the United States. The American Petroleum Institute has listed it as one of its top lobbying priorities for this Congressional session, and Senator Lisa Murkowski has begun a legislative campaign to eliminate the ban in … Read More
Newsletter: On the Road to Paris: #StopFundingFossils
The next six months offer a crucial window to phase out dirty energy subsidies as the world moves towards an agreement at the UN climate talks in Paris this December. Outcomes of three meetings in June – the G7 Leaders’ Summit, the meetings of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the UN … Read More
Newsletter: Tar sands crude-by-rail falls off a cliff
As Kinder Morgan and Imperial Oil together opened the third tar sands unit train loading terminal in the Edmonton/Hardisty area, the business of sending tar sands crude to market by rail hit the skids. Genscape monitors each of the three terminals and the latest figures show that two of the terminals loaded no crude whatsoever … Read More
Newsletter: Narrowing Canadian oil price spreads likely to be short-lived
Canadian oil industry watchers noted a Canadian oil price recovery in April and May as the heavy oil benchmark Western Canadian Select (WCS), climbed back from a 2014 trough of $28/bbl below West Texas Intermediate (WTI) in July 2014 to a high of $8/bbl below WTI in mid-May 2015 (see Figure 1). Of course, in … Read More
Newsletter: Beware cheap oil – campaigning in the oil price cycle
Media reporting on oil price changes tends to focus on the ‘new normal’, and often overlooks that oil prices have always been cyclical. What might we learn from the cycle, in order to think about longer-term campaign strategy? In particular, what if the industry’s expansion frontier starts to move away from the expensive extreme oil … Read More