MattB

Coal, Oil and the Human Difficulty of Grasping Long Duration Problems

@353732 ... "It is not actionable to look beyond the strategic horizon: there is no business or personal return today for trying to "solve" a problem where the payoff to a solution is far distant and most uncertain but the cost of the solution is immediate and certain" ...

Fortunately there is always a cadre of idiosynchratic individuals prepared to take a stab at solving long-range problems - real or perceived - who, along the way, invent things that contribute immediately to our wellbeing. Without "grand challenges" it is difficult for us to think beyond incremental improvement. We certainly aren't going to run out of wood, coal or oil in our lifetime, but the inspired search for "ultimate solutions" will lead us to technologies and solutions that we would otherwise never strive to discover.

How Low Can Crude Oil and Gas Go?

Oil prices below $50-60 spell disaster for many of the primary producing countries' economies - notably Middle East, Russia and Venezuela. Geopolitics says the price cannot stay below that level for long without increasingly desperate measures to underpin the price. I agree that the spot price is driven more by perceptions and speculation than fundamentals - $30 makes no more sense than $150 did (although I think the latter is a truer reflection of the supply/demand balance once the global economic correction settles down). Looking beyond the violently swinging price pendulum, I think a realistic price target for 2009 - assuming there are no more major nasty suprises in the economic closet - is in the $65-80 range.

Forget $100 a Barrel - Oil Will Plummet to $30

Why isn't there a "report abuse" button at the end of the main article? This is the kind of nonsense "spin" that gets tabloid news its reputation, and isn't fit for Seeking Alpha (unless you want me to quit reading it and divert my short attention span elsewhere). Does the fact that it attracted a lot of comments get the author invited back to write more rubbish? Any hack can pull a bunch of headlines into an article and string them together with incoherent analysis. I want to hear real insight into the issue, not that the sky is falling, again (or has the bubble burst and Armageddon is upon us...?)

Natural Gas: Clean Fuel with a Dirty Little Secret

Even if your analysis is correct (personally I think "massively less under-supplied" would be more accurate), what makes this secret (and I agree, it's not obvious to the lay-man) so dirty? Are you suggesting the natural gas price is artificially high, given your so-called massive oversupply? Why would a free market bear artificially high prices if there was a glut of nat gas in the pipelines? USA should be greatful that in this aspect of energy, it is almost independent, and not reliant on LNG to "fill the gap"; with the weak dollar correctly pointed out by fx.. and the rapid decline in domestic oil production, a short-term over-supply of gas ought to be cause for celebration (and continued investment) not crying the sky is falling.

While Natural Gas Production Increases, Company Stock Prices May Not

Sorry ... wishful thinking that Fayetteville extends into AL!
:-)

While Natural Gas Production Increases, Company Stock Prices May Not

"While none of this gas will be coming on-line overnight"?
There are 19 shale basins in the US being actively drilled right now. In its recent white paper on US Shale Gas, Halliburton estimated the recoverable reserves at 500-1000 TCF.
The play that broke open this resource was the Barnett Shale under Dallas/Fort Worth. Its easterly extension into Alabama - the Fayetteville Shale - came next. Now we're seeing the same technologies applied shale all over USA ... Bossier-Haynesville, Marcellus, Woodford, Lewis, Antrim, New Albany, etc.etc.
The largest gas companies in USA - alongside a slew of fast-growing independents - are heavily focused on drilling and producing these resources ... and there's plenty of gas already in the pipeline that originates from them: about 4.5% of US nat gas supply comes from the Barnett Shale!

Oil: Does Supply and Demand Still Apply?

I agree with most of the earlier comments ... misses the point.
First, a large fraction (if not majority) the exploration wells are targeting natural gas, not oil. Liquids production may certainly have peaked (not going to argue about when) but the global energy mix features a lot more nat gas usage today (e.g. via LNG production and transport creating an arb market) and it will continue to grow in importance.
Second, the size of new discoveries follows an approx log-normal distribution, with only rare exceptions (e.g. Brazil). You need an exponential increase in exploration success to maintain a constant reserves replacement, and global offtake is increasing, not flat.
Third, enhanced oil recovery is allowing operators to get substantially more oil from existing discoveries than was possible in the past , and technology is also allowing recovery from intervals previously considered unproducable (e.g. shale gas, dominating US growth in nat gas development) These have a not insignificant effect on the supply side as "conventional" plays are replaced by "unconventional".
Conclusion: the supply side is way too complex to simply talk about drilling success rates and some mythical peak from whence liquid hydrocarbon production will be in terminal decline...

Energy Stocks Are Too Cheap to Ignore - Barron's

Totally agree with the article ... most US-based energy stocks are trading at less than half their NAV, calculated at $90 oil/$9 nat gas (to answer jimmy's point).

Don't get distracted by the home heating issue (with due respect to folks in the NE). Over 70% of a barrel of crude goes into transportation fuel (~45% motor gas & ~25% diesel/jet fuel). Until the US significantly reduces its dependency on the car to get from home to work (years), switches the motor fleet to alternative fuels or engines (technology arriving but many years to switch), and finds an alternative way to move food and consumer goods from source to centers of population (railway resurgence?), the demand for oil is staying high.

Nat gas is a great alternative, especially for power generation. The floor for nat gas price is generally set by coal, which has also been coming down but is probably near bottom (not my area of expertise - anyone care to comment on where coal prices are headed?) The floor for oil is, in my opinion, set by international supply vs. demand (e.g. China, India) rather than US demand. Provided the global economy doesn't get too adversely affected by US woes, overall supply/demand stays tight and oil price stays $90+ (long term, today's dollar value on foreign exchange)

I'm sitting tight on my US oil and gas exploration and production stocks; painful to watch them tank the past few weeks, but hopeful they will rebound (at a more sensible pace, perhaps) over next 6-12 months ... and deliver 30-40% gains (my estimate, by mid next year).