lance sjogren

Update: Crude Oil, Priced in Gold

Gmiki:

You make a good point about resource nationalism.

Furthermore- oil demand is rapidly increasing in the major oil producing nations.

The more they use, the less they have less to export.


Mexico, for example, a major source of US oil imports, is expected to not be an exporter for much longer, and in fact is expected to become an oil IMPORTER, due to 1). declining production (exacerbated by poor management) and 2). increasing use of its oil by its own domestic consumers

Update: Crude Oil, Priced in Gold

Mangolfer:

The developed nations have seen flat or even slightly declining oil consumption due to things like conservation.

However, a couple billion people in China and India who never had an automobile now would like to have one. In recent years their economies have been growing at a rapid rate and oil consumption has risen in tandem.

That more than offsets reduction in oil demand in the developed countries. Furthermore, reducing demand in developed countries is a slow process because everyone can't just run out and toss their SUV in the junk heap and buy a Prius. The price of a vehicle still dominates over the fuel cost over the life of the vehicle, so economic wise you need to run a car through its useful life before you junk it and buy something more fuel efficient.

But the most important point is that as Asia rises economically, the US becomes a smaller portion of the global economy, and economic affairs in the United States will have a decreasing influence on the global economy, and one example is oil conservation of oil.

Update: Crude Oil, Priced in Gold

What a stupid article.

Has this guy ever heard of peak oil?

Natural resource production is not like production in other sectors of the economy.

Oil prices are not based on repetition of past historical cycles, they are based on supply and demand. If someone wants to hypothesize low oil prices based on that, then have at it. One could for example argue that we are headed for a global economic depression and oil demand will plummet, so that the demand drops even faster than the supply drops under Peak Oil.

Or you could claim we are going to find a bunch more somewhere. Of course, we haven't found any major new fields for decades, but hope springs eternal.

But the rationale this guy gives for low oil prices is idiotic.

Slow Start for Lithium-ion Hybrids

Frazer:

I too am invested in Natural Gas and Lithium.


My NG's are pretty conventional ones, CHK, NFX, UPL, XTO

My Lithium play is WURNF. (Western Uranium trades in Canada but has a pink sheet version for US investors).

By the way- anyone who isn't familiar with trading pink sheet versions of Canadian stocks- you have to be careful how you do that so as to not pay big premiums due to lack of liquidity, poor execution on the part of some brokers, and high commissions in the case of some brokers.

I have found that they trade very well in TD Ameritrade. As far as I can tell, I generally get the pink sheets at the same price as I could get the Canadian stock (there is a slight tedious complication, however, you have to convert CAD to USD to know what limit price to set, since the Canadian stock trades in CAD and the pink sheet trades in USD)

Slow Start for Lithium-ion Hybrids

JFrazer:

Good point, natural gas vehicles are an excellent bridge while we are still working on batteries good enough to power true EV's.

Don't worry about Lithium supply, however. There is a 25 billion pound deposit of Lithium Carbonate in the western US. You can invest in it by buying Western Lithium or Western Uranium. (Western Lithium is a spinoff of Western Uranium, but WUC retained a 30% stake WLC when it spun it off.)

That is a mining deposit rather than a brine deposit like the Latin American Lithium sources have. As I understand it it costs a bit more to mine lithium in the ground compared to extracting it from brine.

But bottom line is that there is a huge supply of Lithium in the US that could be extracted at a price that would only incur a slight increase in the cost of a Lithium battery-based EV.

Slow Start for Lithium-ion Hybrids

Korthof:

Lithium battery technology has inherently far superior capabilities to other types.

We are still I would guess 3-5 years from having high-performing Lithium batteries for EV's.

However, where is battery research going on today? The vast majority of the articles I see about battery R & D involve various forms of Lithium batteries.

PHEV's and EV's using Lithium batteries are definitely not in the category of hydrogen or the Easter Bunny.


You sound to me like someone with a vested interest in NiMH or Lead Acid.

Based on its superiority on parameters such as energy density, there is every reason to believe at this point that Lithium batteries will be the mainstay of EV's. In the meantime I could imagine that there will be some vehicles in the short term that use less capable but more mature battery types such as NiMH and Lead Acid.

Analyst: Oil Prices Inflated by 50%

Mini Me:

I think you got it about right.


I guess with so much volatility in the financial markets, every financial whack job out there needs to predict that everything is either going to go up 50% or down 50%.

Personally I believe those who say the fair market price in the absence of speculation is probably in the 90-115 range.