What the "tree huggers" don't realize, says 321energy.com founder Bob Moriarty, is that "the BMWs they drive to anti-Keystone protests need fuel." But the pipeline supporters who expect that fuel to come from American sources are just as delusional, Moriarty asserts in his scathing interview with The Energy Report. That's why he's looking beyond North America for lucrative oil plays. Find out which international producers may be ideally positioned to supply an energy-hungry U.S., and why Moriarty believes oil should be taxed "to the limit."

The Energy Report: In September 2012, you described $100/barrel [bbl] as the new normal. What market factors are behind today's price of $93/bbl?

Bob Moriarty: If the new normal is $100/bbl in any given market, the price should be as high as $115/bbl and as low as $85/bbl. The price will continue to swing around that. Even with the Bakken

In the past couple of years an industry that has been gaining increasing popularity is hydraulic fracturing or, Fracking for short. This process has created a natural gas bonanza in many shale regions like Barnett Shale Basin in Texas and Bakken Formation in North Dakota and some parts of Canada. Investors looking to capitalize on this growing popularity have a number of options right from an industry ETF to those providing auxiliary services to the industry. Before I discuss the 5 great opportunities in the sector, let me quickly talk about the basics of Fracking.

Overview

Simply put, fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations. It involves forcing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and lubricants into small cracks in the shale, which opens a natural pipeline for the natural gas to escape. This new method of extracting natural gas isn't really new and has

Crude oil and natural gas production in the U.S. has strongly rebounded in the past few years according to an article by Thomas Helbling in the latest edition of IMF's Finance & Development magazine. As a result, natural gas prices are at a 20 year low. But gasoline prices have not followed natural gas prices and have actually reached closer to the $4.00/gallon mark in recent weeks. Today, however the average national price is at $3.659 per the gasbuddy.com website.

(click to enlarge)

The IMF article notes that high crude oil prices and new technology have allowed produced producers to cheaply extract these resources from unconventional geological formations. The process of "fracking", in which fluids are injected under high pressure into rock formations such as shale rock to release trapped fuels, has revolutionized oil and gas production at prices that are profitable to producers.

From the article:

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In a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) titled “Shale oil: the next energy revolution”, the global consulting group predicts that worldwide shale oil production could soar to 14 million barrels per day over the next several decades and account for 12% of the global oil supply by 2035 (up from only 1% currently). As shale production spreads globally from the U.S., the increased global supply of crude oil could reduce oil prices by as much as 40% by 2035, relative to the EIA’s projection of $133 per barrel that assumes low levels of shale oil production. By lowering oil prices, worldwide shale oil production could increase world GDP by between 2.3% and 3.7% in 2035 (see chart above), which would expand the size of the global economy by $1.7 to $2.7 trillion per year. Here are some highlights from the report’s Executive Summary:

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By Dave Goodboy

There's a wave of wealth sweeping rural areas across North America.

Sleepy, rundown towns are bustling with commerce and activity as the new-found money breathes life into the economy. Poor farmers and other landowners of once near-worthless properties are swimming in capital from this new way to exploit a natural resource.

This new method of extracting natural resources isn't really so new, though. It originated in the 1940s, but it wasn't until 1998 that it was perfected enough to be an economically viable, widespread technique.

If you haven't guessed it yet, I am talking about hydraulic fracking, or simply fracking for short.

Simply put, fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations deep underground. We have known about this resource for many years, but only recently has it become economically sensible to drill for natural gas.

Fracking involves forcing a high-pressure mixture of

by Justin Kuepper

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has become tremendously popular in the United States and Canada over the past couple of years. By pumping pressurized fluid into a wellbore, the process enables companies to extract previously inaccessible hydrocarbons. The result has been a natural gas bonanza in many parts of the U.S., particularly in shale regions like the Barnett Shale Basin in Texas and the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, as well as in parts of Canada.

Below, we outline 10 ways to invest in fracking technology to help prepare your portfolio for what many feel is the next big thing in the energy world.

1. Market Vectors Unconventional Oil & Gas ETF (FRAK): An exchange-traded fund targeting the unconventional oil and gas industry, including coal-bed methane (CBM), coal seam gas (CSG), shale oil, shale gas, tight natural gas, tight oil and tight sands. After starting

Today as I pen these notes natural gas is trading at $3.89 per million BTU, down about 4 percent from Friday's close.

The news driving the commodity lower is not a sudden increase in production but forecasts of a warmer December than previously expected. Still, despite the drop natural gas is trading today at a higher price than its average over the past four years, or to be more precise, since the beginning of 2009.

Why pick 2009? Because it was the beginning of the surge in unconventional gas production: fracking started to take off right at the beginning of 2009. Now, readers know that we are not believers in fracking, or at least believers that fracking will change our energy calculus. If truth be told, I would side with Jeremy Grantham, CEO at GMO Capital and one of the financial world's sharpest thinkers, who recently wrote an opinion piece

By Jared Cummans

The past few weeks have been rough on crude oil, as the massive commodity has been seeing a major decline in price. But with a sudden drop, this fossil fuel may be offering in a nice entry point to investors looking to add some energy exposure to their portfolio. Since peaking in mid-September, crude has suffered losses of nearly 14%, as market turmoil has led to a healthy sell-off. Much of the speculation was sparked by the uncertainty over the presidential election and which candidate would come out on top.

Now that Obama has secured another four years in the office, crude may be able to make a comeback. Though Romney was seen as better for crude oil, the Obama administration will put plans in place to make the U.S. the largest producers of oil in the world in less than 10 years. Whether that

By The ETF Professor

The oil patch is aflutter on news that the U.S. could become the world's largest oil producer by 2020. That factoid comes courtesy of the International Energy Agency, which said the U.S. will surpass Saudi Arabia as the world's largest crude producer by 2020. By 2030, North America will be a net oil exporter, something the U.S. was last year, according to IEA.

"The recent rebound in U.S. oil and gas production ... is spurring economic activity ... and steadily changing the role of North America in global energy trade," the IEA said in its World Energy Outlook released over the weekend.

Assuming the IEA is correct in its prediction that crude will rise to $125 per barrel by 2035, this could be very good news indeed for the U.S. economy. It should also prove to be excellent news for

By Jared Cummans

The $6 trillion global energy industry has undergone a lot of changes over its long history, from the first successful oil tanker developed by Sweden in 1878 to the first mobile steel barges for offshore drilling developed by the Texas company in the early 1930s. But, in the modern era, hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") stands out as the single most important innovation.

Fracking: A Brief History(click to enlarge)

Hydraulic fracturing involves propagating the fractures in a rock layer using pressurized fluids in order to release oil and gas that isn't economically viable to extract using traditional drilling techniques. While fracking was technically first used in 1947, modern fracking techniques like horizontal slickwater fracking weren't commercially used until 1998 in the Barnett Shale.

The process works by pumping fracturing fluids - like slickwater, gel or foam - into a wellbore at a sufficient enough rate to

By Jared Cummans

Saudi Arabia has long been known as the world’s most dominant producer of crude oil, as the Middle East is rich with deposits of this fossil fuel. But the growth and rapid development of U.S. crude output has us on pace to dethrone Saudi Arabia in the not-so-distant future. We are currently on pace to average 10.9 million barrels per day for 2012, marking a 7% growth from the prior year, and the largest single year jump since 1951.

“The Energy Department forecasts that U.S. production of crude will average 11.4 million barrels per day next year. That would be a record for the U.S. and just below Saudi Arabia’s output of 11.6 million barrels. Citibank forecasts U.S. production could reach 13 million to 15 million barrels per day by 2020,″ writes the Associated Press. Note that even with this output, we would still have

The short answer is no, says Credit Suisse (CS) in a September 7 report, but North America as a whole could be energy self-sufficient.

CS hangs their thesis on 4 key pegs:

1. Flow rates from oil wells about 25% higher than now, based on future technology advances

2. More wells that are on average 39% closer together than they are now (the industry calls this "downspacing")

3. $95/barrel Brent pricing

4. Increased use of natural gas in the economy

The barriers to continental self-sufficiency are:

1. Fast declining production in shale wells

2. Oil below $75/barrel

3. Enough money to build pipelines and refineries

CS says U.S. oil production will peak out at 10 million barrels of oil per day (bopd) by around 2022-a double from 2008's 5 million. 2011 oil production in the U.S. was 5.7

Let me start by writing a bit about the upcoming debates and the election. The media, political analysts, political operatives and a handful of others are lathering up for the first Presidential debate scheduled for this Wednesday. Here are paraphrases of comments of note to investors:

• “This is Romney’s last opportunity to turn the election around”
• “Romney must come up big on Wednesday night”
• “This is the last possible game changer for Romney”

You will notice a common theme here – that the debate means something and if Romney is to win the winning effort begins on Wednesday. My take? For investors, what matters is Romney is not going to change the dynamics of the campaign and Obama will be re-elected. That is already priced into the market. What matters to investors is why Obama will be re-elected and why the debates do not matter.

I am a short term

While economic weakness and a strong dollar have kept oil prices depressed for the time being, many are still long-term bulls on the vital commodity. The world population grows at a rate of roughly 1% per year while surging economic growth in the BRIC bloc -- as well as other emerging nations -- looks to keep pressure on oil prices well into the future.

Beyond this, many of the world’s key oil fields are reaching or have gone past their peak production levels, suggesting that many of the top spots for the commodity will see declining rates of output in the near future. This trend has already begun to take place in Saudi Arabia’s massive Ghawar Field, Mexico’s Cantarell Field, and Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, forcing many major oil companies to look elsewhere for large amounts of recoverable supplies (see Two Energy ETFs Holding Their Ground).

While the

Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," may forever change the course of energy production in the United States. The energy boom is on - and it appears that there may be far more energy that can be brought to surface economically than anyone had ever thought.

Thanks to technological improvement, natural gas can be recovered as far as 10,000 feet below the surface of the earth with horizontal drilling techniques, a breakthrough that allows for more energy recovery with less work.

So far, the fracking story is limited to natural gas (note the wild divergence from the mean for natural gas to oil ratio). However, new firms and energy giants are looking at ways to use fracking technologies and systems to remove oil from source rock. While natural gas has grabbed headlines, it is the potential to recover oil from source rock that provides the biggest opportunity for profits.

ETF for

The Wall Street Journal and CNBC are reporting that the Obama administration is about to imminently unveil new guidelines on hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking. The WSJ reports this announcement, expected from the Interior Department, would introduce:

"sweeping new environmental-safety rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal land, setting a new standard that natural-gas wells on all lands eventually could follow."

Details Leaking

Based on reporting from the two news outlets, the new policy tightens the rules for wells, their stability and the treatment of wastewater tied to fracking. This is likely in response to concerns over possible ground water contamination. However according to the WSJ story, the new rules reportedly don't include disclosure requirements regarding the chemicals used in fracking, which will certainly cause some controversy. CNBC is reporting that the disclosure requirements are in place however, so stay tuned.

Initial Reactions?

One oil and gas

Energy has long been a popular destination for all types of investors, ranging from smaller individuals to sophisticated billion dollar hedge funds. It wasn’t that long ago that the strategies for investing in energy were relatively simple and straightforward: buy ExxonMobil (XOM). But thanks in part to the ETF boom, there are now options aplenty for tapping into global energy markets. Below are 13 different strategies for investing in energy, each offering unique risk / return profiles:

1. “Plain Vanilla” Energy ETFs

The traditional form of exposure to energy is still the most popular, as there are billions of dollars invested in products that offer exposure to “Big Oil” stocks such as Exxon, Chevron (CVX), and others. Even within this category, however, the options are far from homogeneous; there are various broad-based funds in the Energy Equities ETFdb Category that deliver unique exposure through weighting methodologies, geographic focuses, and

As gas prices continue to maintain their high levels, consumers are growing tired of surrendering their hard-earned money at the pump. But a break in gasoline prices may not be on the horizon, as the U.S. already pays well below the average of a number of other developed countries around the globe. And if history is any indicator, gas prices will continue to rise until a figure like $9 per gallon is just the norm; it may sound far fetched, but it also doesn’t seem like that long ago that you could get a gallon of gas under $2. With crude oil only slated to get more expensive, it seems that many are turning towards natural gas to be the fuel of the future, as its production and use has been surging in recent years.

As an energy source, natural gas has long been useful for appliances like ovens