Recent Gas News

Live Shots -- Fox News.Com -- November 20, 2009 - 3:46 PM | by: Ruth Ravve
A 60 day money back guarantee. Its not something you typically get with a new car, but General Motors is betting its new return policy will drive you to take a chance on a new Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, or Cadillac. "May the best car win" is the latest marketing tool by the Detroit automaker, as it tries to boost confidence in its brand and downshift critics who say its vehicles can't stand up to the competition. "We stand by our vehicles, and we want to make sure that the customer is happy with their new purchase" a GM service rep says. "We want to show customers that we have reinvented GM". Customers who buy a car during the promotion, can test drive it for up to 60 days. If they decide they don't like it, they can bring it back to the  (go to article)

Bloomberg.com -- By Anabela Reis and Mark Deen

Nouriel Roubini said investors are “chasing commodities” and there is a risk of new asset bubbles emerging as stock markets and commodity prices surge amid record-low lending rates.

“There is a beginning of a bubble in financial markets,” with “asset prices going higher,” Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the global financial crisis, said in a speech in Lisbon today.

Equity markets around the world have surged in recent months, with the MSCI World Index up 25 percent so far this year and by around 66 percent since its March 9 low. The price of crude oil has jumped 70 percent since the beginning of the year to about $76 a barrel in New York.

Part of the increase in oil prices is “money chasing commodities,” Roubini said. “There is a r  (go to article)

Reuters.com -- WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Japan's Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T) has again produced the most fuel efficient and least polluting vehicles on American roads, the U.S. government projections for 2009 showed on Friday.

South Korea's Hyundai-Kia (005380.KS) and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), also based in Japan, followed closely behind, respectively, for the second straight year, according to preliminary performance data released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Overseas automakers mainly sell compacts and sedans in the United States, while their U.S. rivals produce more pickups, SUVs and vans, which generally get poorer gas mileage and emit more tailpipe emissions.

Honda and Toyota also lead the U.S. market in gasoline/electric hybrid vehicles, the most fuel efficient and cleanest car  (go to article)

WIRED.COM -- The town council in Tiburon, a Marin County community just north of San Francisco, has unanimously voted to install license plate recording cameras in a bid to bring down crime.

So what’s the story? Does the town have an unusually high level of violent crimes? Hardly. From 2001 to 2008, this community of less than 9,000 people saw a total of 47 violent crimes, of which only one was murder. And Marin County is the richest in all of California.

To add to the metropolis suburb Shangri-La image, the town boasts a median household income of over $100,000, a median home value of almost $2 million with a list of residents –past and present– that makes the cast of Oceans Eleven look like a high school musical.

Tiburon officials voted 4-0 — one member was absent — to install six license plate re  (go to article)

Reuters.com -- By Poornima Gupta

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. electric sports car maker Tesla Motors plans to go public soon, two sources familiar with the matter said, amid growing interest in green technology and battery-powered vehicles.

An IPO filing from the six-year-old start-up, best known for its $109,000 all-electric Roadster, is expected any day, said one of the sources. The person did not give a specific time frame, although IPOs typically take several months.

Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes declined to comment on what he called "rumor or speculation."

Tesla would mark the first public offering from a U.S. automaker since Henry Ford's Ford Motor Co debuted its shares in 1956. The IPO represents a landmark in the resurgence of electric car technology that most carmakers had dismissed as imp  (go to article)

Reuters.com -- WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Nearly two dozen members of the U.S. Senate sought answers on Friday from General Motors and Chrysler on efforts to resolve complaints from dealers who lost business with the car companies.

The Commerce Committee's Democratic chairman, John Rockefeller, its top Republican, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and 20 other members of the panel wrote to executives at GM GM.UL and Fiat-led Chrysler for information on negotiations with retailers.

"It's crucial that outstanding issues be resolved as expeditiously and efficiently as possible," the senators wrote.

Chrysler dropped nearly 800 dealers as part of its bankruptcy restructuring, while GM plans to whittle its retail network by 1,300 through 2010. GM also restructured in bankruptcy this year.

Hundreds of dealers compl  (go to article)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ -- NEW YORK - Oil prices fell below US$77 a barrel on Friday on a stronger U.S. dollar and amid concern about the strength of the global economic recovery.

Benchmark crude gave up 74 cents to settle at $76.72 a barrel on the last trading day for the December contract. Crude prices for January delivery lost 58 cents to settle at $77.47.  (go to article)

GasBuddy Blog -- As if oil company stockpiles were not high enough, the Department of Energy released today a report showing that the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the Gulf States contained a record amount of crude oil- some 725 million barrels, or 30 billion gallons of oil.

With U.S. demand at nearly 18.5 million barrels per day, this strategic stockpile would last the country 39 days with no other oil production or imports. That's a huge amount of oil. Add the amount of oil in other storage, the U.S. has over 1.2 billion barrels of oil in storage (ready to refine) and 23 days of gasoline supply (ready to ship to stations). Generally, gasoline stockpiles are considered adequate at 21-22 days. Another day of gasoline demand represents 3...  (go to article)

bloomberg.com -- BP Plc, Europe’s second-biggest oil company, has invested $3 billion in alternative energy globally and is on course to meet its commitment made in 2005 to spend $8 billion, said a company official.

London-based BP will focus mainly on wind power projects in the U.S., solar in India and China and biomass in Brazil, BP China President Chen Liming said at a Beijing conference today.

BP’s alternative energy unit earmarked $8 billion of investment in the decade through 2015. Expansion in biofuels, along with solar, wind-power and carbon-capture and storage projects, will help the company cut greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming, Katrina Landis, who heads the unit, said in September.

BP has secured possible sites for as many in 100 wind projects with a potential  (go to article)

VBS.tv -- Twenty billion barrels of oil sit beneath Los Angeles. Hidden in plain sight, thousands of wells pump day and night all over the city covered by hollow office buildings, camouflaged next to high schools, and concealed behind shopping malls.  (go to article)

LA Times -- This thought came to me as I was piloting the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle prototype around Dodger Stadium last Friday: When gasoline-powered cars sleep at night, they dream of being electric.

Think about it: Every year, automotive engineers find new ways to smooth more rough edges off the conventional automobile. For example, long gone are the rude jolts that used to accompany gear changes in automatic transmissions. These have been ironed out either by continuously variable transmissions (which have no stepped gear intervals) or by sophisticated suites of computer programming that modulate engine torque at the precise moments of gear change. Even set-to-kill sports cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Porsches -- cars that used to wrench your neck like a Leavenworth ...  (go to article)

GasBuddy Blog -- In a sign of how weak the economy is and how weak demand continues to erode refiner margins, Valero today announced it's closing its 210,000bpd plant in Delaware City, DE.

This is now the second U.S. refinery to shut its doors in November- the Western Refinery facility in New Mexico also intends to shut its 190,000bpd plant in Bloomfield.



While the news can temporarily help push oil and gasoline prices lower on "verification" that demand is low, and margins are negative, the long term outlook is that these plants will be well-needed if and when the U.S. economy makes a strong recovery. A key ingredient to positive growth after a recession has been affordable energy. If demand ever recovers, there will be less...  (go to article)

The Detroit News -- U.S. safety regulators have looked into hundreds of reports of uncontrolled acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles over more than five years. The complaints vary from sudden engine bursts that can be controlled by applying the brakes, to unintended acceleration that persists despite the driver's effort to slow the vehicle.

The reports are linked to 15 fatalities, including four people killed in a 2009 Lexus ES 350 that crashed on Aug. 28 after its driver was unable to slow the car, according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration.

Its investigations and those conducted by Toyota have led to three recalls, the first in 2007 to replace driver-side, all-weather mats that could entrap the gas pedal.

Toyota announced in September that it would recall ...  (go to article)

The Washington Times -- In an age of hybrid, fuel cell and electric cars, miles per gallon aren't what they used to be. That's because you can't measure the energy cost of an alternative-fuel vehicle in gallons of gasoline.
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3news.co.nz -- The world's biggest project converting toilet wastewater to bio oil was officially opened today at Christchurch’s sewage ponds, with an engineer predicting it's only a matter of time before service stations sell the biofuel.

Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee today demonstrated how to cut grass with a mower which runs off what was once toilet water.

NIWA scientist Dr Rupert Craggs says the project is causing a real stir for scientists.

“This is the biggest system in the world, it's great to get the opportunity to try these ponds out,” he says.

Basically, the ponds grow algae with the help of sunshine and carbon dioxide, the algae's gathered when the waste water goes through a harvester.  (go to article)

SeekingAlpha -- On Monday of this week the Electrification Coalition, a newly organized industrial lobby that styles itself as a

nonpartisan, not-for-profit group of business leaders committed to promoting policies and actions that facilitate the deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security dangers caused by our nation’s dependence on petroleum.

released a 170 page policy paper titled, "Electrification Roadmap, Revolutionizing Transportation and Achieving Energy Security." Like most industrial lobbies jostling for position at the Federal trough, the coalition's core membership includes a baker's dozen of top executives from AeroVironment (AVAV), NRG Energy (NRG), Nissan (NSANY), Johnson Controls (JCI), FedEx (FDX) and A123 Systems  (go to article)

Azcentra.com -- For the fifth consecutive week, Arizona motorists are spending more to fill their tanks.

Triple-A Arizona officials said Thursday that the current statewide fuel average for regular unleaded gasoline at the pump is $2.600 per gallon, an increase of 1.2 cents from last week.

They say gasoline prices in Arizona are 36 cents higher than last year at this time with Thanksgiving approaching, but 581,000 motorists around the state still are expected to hit the road for the holiday.  (go to article)

Bloomberg.com -- Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks and commodities fell after European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said policy makers will withdraw emergency cash gradually and Dell Inc.’s earnings trailed analysts’ estimates. The yen and dollar rose.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 0.5 percent to 1,089.37 at 11:58 a.m. in New York as Dell tumbled the most this year to lead declines in technology shares. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index and the MSCI Asia-Pacific Index dropped for the fourth straight day, the longest streaks in four months. Crude oil declined as the Dollar Index gained as much as 0.8 percent.

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By Chen Aizhu - Analysis -- (Reuters) -- Lorry driver Zhang Jianwei isn't worried about cleaner fuel requirements that come into force in China next year, raising the price of motor fuels -- he will just keep buying cheaper, dirtier diesel at smaller stations.

Zhang's example . . . shows why there will be little initial impact on China's fuel trade.

Motorists across China will switch to 150 parts-per-million (ppm) sulphur gasoline from January 1, 2010, from 500 ppm, and a lower content of benzene, a carcinogen, three years after the specifications were first announced.

The changes, a hard sell to motorists already facing record pump prices, won't bring China's fuel standards into linwith even stricter Western market benchmarks, tempering the risk of Asia's leading gasoline seller flooding export markets . . . .  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- China National Petroleum Corp., the nation’s largest oil company, signed agreements with Sudan to expand a refinery in Khartoum and swap oil production assets.

CNPC will swap shareholding in Block 6 with Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd.’s Block 5A in Sudan, the Beijing-based company and parent of PetroChina Co. said in a statement on its Web site today, without giving details.

The state-run oil company boosted output from overseas fields including projects in Sudan and Ecuador to a record last year to meet rising domestic demand. Sudan’s crude exports to China rose 13 percent to 8.6 million tons in the first nine months, becoming the sixth-largest supplier to the world’s second biggest oil consumer, according to Chinese customs.

 (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Ford Motor Co. said it will spend 4 billion reais ($2.3 billion) to expand in the growing Brazilian market, the largest investment it has made in the country.

The five-year plan will include adding to the Camacari factory that makes Fiesta small cars and modernizing the Troller plant that builds utility vehicles, Jennifer Flake, a Ford spokeswoman, said today. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company also will invest in new models for Brazil, she said.

The auto industry in Brazil, South America’s largest economy, is headed for record sales this year, the country’s automakers association said on Oct. 7. Ford ranks fourth in Brazil, behind Fiat SpA, Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co.

 (go to article)

CNN -- Carmaker Mini is preparing to launch a new special edition of the subcompact icon outfitted by its ultra-luxury cousin Rolls-Royce.

Both British automakers are owned by Germany's BMW.

The special edition cars will go into production in 2010 as 2011 model year cars. It has not been decided yet whether the cars will be available in the United States.

If they are made available to U.S. customers, they'll be in extremely limited numbers, said Mini spokeswoman Nathalie Bauters.

"It's going to be for Mini fanatics and those who want something really special from Mini," she said.

The cars' bodies will be no different from those of other Mini Coopers, but they will be coated in a special paint, the color of which has also not been decided, Bauters said.

 (go to article)

MarketWatch -- NEW YORK--Crude-oil futures fell Friday for a second session as a rebounding dollar and weaker stock markets continued to dampen commodities' prices.
Crude for December delivery, which expires Friday (today), fell 82 cents US to $76.64 a barrel near 10 am. Crude had made a three-day winning streak previously and is set to end the week up slightly.
This item also notes European speculation that glut of Bulls in crude trading may eventually spark a a big crude oil selloff.

Crude oil prices are vulnerable to a sharp correction because long positions or futures orders to buy are at an 'unstable' high level, analysts warn.

 (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Ferrari, Fiat SpA’s luxury sports- car division, recalled 2,356 F355 and 355 F1 models in the U.S. to fix a potential fuel leak that could set the engines on fire.

Ferrari will install fuel divider blocks to keep fluid from leaking into engine compartments, which can lead to a fire, the Italian automaker said in a letter on the Web site of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The voluntary recall affects some 1995 to 1998 model-year 355 F1 vehicles, some 1995 to 1999 F355s and some 1999 F355 F1s, Ferrari said.

Independent repair facilities installed screw clamps too close to fuel lines, damaging supply pipes, the company said in the letter. Vehicle owners will be notified in December and won’t be charged for the repair, Ferrari said in the letter.

 (go to article)

MSNBC -- German carmaker Volkswagen AG said Friday it will buy some assets of German contract carbuilder Wilhelm Karmann GmbH to create a new manufacturing subsidiary that will eventually build a new car model.

Volkswagen said it will begin vehicle production at Karmann's main Osnabrueck, Germany site and headquarters in 2011, but did not specify what new car it would produce there. It didn't release any financial details.

In a short statement, VW, based in Wolfsburg, said its supervisory board approved the acquisition of land, machinery and equipment formerly belonging to the Karmann holding company at the Osnabrueck site.

 (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Volkswagen AG’s supervisory board signed off on contracts for its takeover of Porsche SE in stages, clearing the way for Europe’s largest automaker to add the 911 sports car to its model lineup.

Porsche’s controlling shareholders, the Porsche and Piech families, will meet at Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg today to approve the documents, said Albrecht Bamler, a spokesman. Separately, Volkswagen endorsed the purchase of assets of insolvent carmaker Wilhelm Karmann GmbH.

The approval of the legal documents will allow Volkswagen to proceed with buying Porsche’s automaking division. The carmaker said on Oct. 20 that it will pay 3.9 billion euros ($5.8 billion) for a 49.9 percent stake in the Porsche unit by the end of this year  (go to article)

The Detroit Free Press -- Engineers work to fix glitches by deadline.

GM built about 80 Volt test cars. Most of the Volts in Athens' parking lot were built to test a specific system, so the engineers compared notes.

"The guy who runs the car wash came up to me with a box of parts and said, 'You might have a problem here,' " Bolio remembered. After a quick design revision, Bolio and a designer engineer spent four hours taking Volts through the car wash with no damage except to their patience.

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Bloomberg -- Valero Energy Corp., the largest U.S. refiner, said it will permanently close its Delaware City, Delaware, plant because of mounting losses after the recession eroded demand for gasoline and diesel.

The shutdown will affect 550 employees and will result in a fourth-quarter charge of $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion, Valero said today in a statement. Company spokesman Bill Day said the plant has lost $1 million a day this year.

The Delaware plant is the third and largest U.S. refinery to be shuttered this year because of poor economic conditions. San Antonio-based Valero acquired the plant through its 2005 purchase of Premcor Inc., a deal that gave the company the largest U.S. capacity to process heavy, cheap grades of crude.  (go to article)

The Detroit News -- Even on their days off, the engineers creating the Chevrolet Volt are working.

They're testing, measuring and evaluating what is arguably the most important vehicle in General Motors Co.'s history. They take their work home with them, literally, commuting in the vehicles, strapping baby seats in the back or picking up groceries.

When the official auto show season kicks off next month in Los Angeles, the Volt will play a starring role. On Monday, at Athens Coney Island, a group of Volt engineers talked about the car and how its development is progressing.

A half-dozen of the 75 Volts rolling around North America were lined up in the parking lot. Some had white grease pencil marks noting gaps or other fixes that needed to be addressed. The test vehicles, each costing more ...  (go to article)

Science and Technology -- Executives from the Shell Oil Company blasted a floundering, oil-covered sea otter Monday, accusing the small aquatic mammal of grossly exaggerating the effects of last week's hazardous petroleum spill.  (go to article)

Detroit News - Auto Insider -- Safety advocates say acceleration issue may not be easy fix

For years, Toyota Motor Corp. has investigated complaints from drivers saying their Toyota and Lexus vehicles accelerated all by themselves, and the company has identified essentially one cause. The trouble, according to Toyota, occurs when loose or ill-fitting floor mats, carpet covers or detached trim jam the gas pedal.  (go to article)

Detroit News - Auto Insider -- Steven Rattner, the Obama administration's former top auto adviser, disclosed for the first time Thursday that a key aim of restructuring Chrysler was installing a new management team.

The "principal driver" behind supporting a Chrysler-Fiat alliance, Rattner said, "was frankly to get new management and to get what we thought was one of two or three best management teams in the world."  (go to article)

Central Valley Business Times -- Slowly but steadily, gas prices dropped by another small amount over the past week throughout California, although prices remain about 60 cents per gallon higher than one year ago, according to price surveys Friday.

“At the moment, the biggest factor driving prices downward seems to be the seasonal dip in demand,” says Jeffrey Spring, a spokesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California. “Prices traditionally drop this time of year along with temperatures, which will be a little help for Thanksgiving travelers’ budgets.”

California’s statewide average price for a gallon of self-ser4ve regular on Nov. 20 is $2.943, third highest in the nation, surpassed only by Alaska and Hawaii.  (go to article)

Popular Science -- With its annual output of over 330 million tons a year feeding animals, running cars, and decorating South Dakota tourist attractions, maize is clearly Americas most important crop. That's why the newly published complete corn genome could drastically change the food, automotive and plastic industries. Already, scientists have identified genes that could boost yield, change the cell wall to make more biofuel, or raise the nutritional value of this vital cereal.  (go to article)

UPI Asia -- Tokyo, Japan — In the wake of last year's soaring crude oil prices, coupled with a growing environmental awareness, the development of alternative energy sources is moving into high gear. Among next-generation energy sources, hydrogen is proving to be a favorite.

Japan started selling the world's first household hydrogen fuel cell this year, and stands on the verge of selling fuel-cell vehicles. But there are still difficult challenges involving the manufacturing, storing and transporting of hydrogen. For these reasons, some experts say the advent of the hydrogen economy might be a pipedream.  (go to article)

CBC News -- A potential strike at an automotive parts plant in Lakeshore, Ont., has put the region's auto community on edge.
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Officials and workers at Johnson Controls have been in talks over a new contract since Monday, but workers say they'll walk off the job if they don't reach a collective agreement by midnight Friday.
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If Johnson's 120 workers strike, thousands of workers at Chrysler's Windsor assembly plant and other parts suppliers could be affected.
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The Philadelphia Enquirer -- The Associated Press -- Frankfurt -- German carmaker Volkswagen AG said Friday its supervisory board had approved certain agreement contracts for the planned merger with German sportscar builder Porsche, taking the companies one step closer to completing the deal.

The contracts set out the organizational, structural and legal details of the agreement which was first announced in May and which is hoped to be concluded in 2011.

The next step of the process will be VW shareholders approving that the company take on a 49.9 percent stake in Porsche AG through the issuance of new shares. An extraordinary VW shareholder's meeting is planned for Dec. 3 to take a vote on that issue.

"The creation of an integrated automotive group with ten strong brands follows a compelling industrial logic," VW, based in Wolfsburg, said . . .  (go to article)

Houston Chronicle -- WASHINGTON — Energy company executives on Thursday told a Senate panel that the federal government should allow more oil and gas production off the U.S. coasts, over the objections of environmentalists who said offshore drilling was too risky.

“Access to the vast resources in the (outer continental shelf) is critical,” said Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co. “Developing more of our own resources will … avoid the hypocrisy of being willing to buy (oil) from other countries rather than produce our own.”

Odum's comments came during an occasionally heated debate in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which voted earlier this year to expand drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The panel was exploring whether Congress should impose more environmental safeguards ...  (go to article)

SPIEGEL ONLINE International -- Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year. ... The planet's temperature curve rose sha  (go to article)

Forbes -- U.S. auto sales could top an annual rate of 10.8 million in November, General Motors Co.'s top sales analyst said Thursday. That would mark the first month this year that sales jumped to such levels without the aid of Cash for Clunkers rebates, which boosted sales in July and August. Executive Director of Market Analysis Mike DiGiovanni says the industry is having a solid sales month through the first 19 days of November, another sign that the economy is beginning a slow recovery from recession. He also said GM could see its fourth straight month of market share gains in November.
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Bloomberg -- General Motors Co., the automaker that emerged from bankruptcy in July, said most customers who return a car or truck under the company’s 60-day guarantee are exchanging it for another model.

About 200 vehicles are being returned under the automaker’s money-back offer, Mark Reuss, vice president of GM global vehicle engineering, said during a media round table in Warren, Michigan. He said most returns are by customers who changed their minds about their needs, such as favoring an automatic transmission over a manual.

“Less than 10 percent of the 200 are leaving GM,” Reuss said. He referred to a customer, a former Nissan owner, who traded a Cadillac sport-utility vehicle for one with the performance package.  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Crude oil declined for a second day in New York as the dollar strengthened against the euro, lowering the appeal of commodities as a currency hedge.

Oil closed yesterday at the lowest price since Nov. 13 as U.S. equity markets dropped. The dollar gained to as much as $1.4864 against the euro today, from $1.4925 yesterday.

“What oil does next depends on U.S. equities and the dollar,” Carsten Fritsch, an analyst with Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said by phone. “Fundamentally the oil price can’t be justified at current levels.”

Crude oil for December delivery fell as much as 55 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $76.91 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and traded at $77.25 at 11:21 a.m. London time. The December contract expires today.  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News were split over whether crude oil prices will fall or be little changed next week amid a weak dollar and ample fuel supplies.

Ten of 27 analysts, or 37 percent, said futures will drop through Nov. 27. Ten more respondents predicted that oil will be little changed. Seven said futures will rise. Last week, 50 percent of those surveyed said prices would fall.

“I think we’re still in a very well-defined trading range when it comes to oil,” said Phil Flynn, vice president of research at PFGBest in Chicago. “Oil just can’t stay above $80 a barrel, but by the same token it can’t seem to stay below $77.”

An Energy Department report on Nov. 18 showed U.S. supplies of crude oil, gasoline and distillate fuel,  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Crude oil prices may fall to about $60 a barrel in this and next quarter on weak demand from developed countries and growing inventories, Macquarie’s oil economist Jan Stuart said today.

Prices will rise to an average of $80 a barrel in the latter part of next year because of the strengthening world economy, Stuart said at a conference in Hong Kong.

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Businessweek.com -- By Jeff Salton

"Electric cars should be rewarded for their energy efficiency, not for moving emissions from exhaust pipes to powerstation chimneys" says the UK's Environmental Transport Association (ETA). In a report titled "How to avoid an electric shock—Electric cars: from hype to reality", the ETA has taken a close look at electric-powered vehicles (EVs) and their associated technologies.

Excerpt

EV history
As most readers would appreciate, interest in EVs has never been higher, nor have oil prices...a coincidence? Add that "incentive" to calls for air quality improvement and even legislation to cut CO2 emissions and it's not hard to see why EVs could be seen as a quick fix.

"..electric cars offer a good opportunity to store intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind energ  (go to article)

Bloomberg.com -- By Jonathan Fahey

Every giant company would like to be a little faster, more nimble, more creative. So it was no surprise that when Daimler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche was asked last week about the company's May purchase of 10% of Tesla Motors, an outfit that has delivered only 700 or so electric vehicles, he responded with a hopeful cliché: "The aspect I'm most excited about is the collaboration between a start-up and the longest-lasting automotive company in the world," he said.

Excerpt

But Tesla wasn't interested in making excuses. It simply wanted to make the first real electric car. Tesla grabbed what was available and made it work. It strung together 6,831 laptop batteries and designed an elaborate control system meant to ensure they don't cremate their drivers  (go to article)

Bloomberg.com -- By Bloomberg News

China National Petroleum Corp., the nation’s largest oil company, signed agreements with Sudan to expand a refinery in Khartoum and swap oil production assets.

CNPC will swap shareholding in Block 6 with Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd.’s Block 5A in Sudan, the Beijing-based company and parent of PetroChina Co. said in a statement on its Web site today, without giving details.

The state-run oil company boosted output from overseas fields including projects in Sudan and Ecuador to a record last year to meet rising domestic demand. Sudan’s crude exports to China rose 13 percent to 8.6 million tons in the first nine months, becoming the sixth-largest supplier to the world’s second biggest oil consumer, according to Chinese customs.

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Bloomberg.com -- By Ann Koh

Crude oil traded little changed in New York after losing 2.7 percent yesterday on concern that demand is weak as refining rates in the U.S. dropped and equity markets declined.

Oil, which has risen 74 percent this year, fell yesterday as investors closed off positions before the end of the year, traders said. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index declined 1.3 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.9 percent in New York yesterday.

“Both oil and equities have done well and towards the end of the year, it may be a time for investors to lock in profit,” said Victor Shum. “A retraction in oil prices and equities ought to take place. Both have come a long way this year despite weak fundamentals in oil and sustainability in economic recovery.”

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Houston Chronicle -- WASHINGTON — Utilities harnessing power from the wind and sun are up against a major challenge: how to store electricity so that it can be delivered to customers when the air is still and the sun has set.

“Cheap energy storage is sometimes called the ‘holy grail' of renewable energy,” observed Steven Kline, a vice president for the San Francisco-based utility PG&E. It is the key to unlocking the full potential of wind, solar and other intermittent renewable power sources.

So far, it has been an elusive goal. Companies have been searching for the best way to store massive amounts of electricity so that it can be dispensed on demand — like the energy contained in cell phone batteries, just on a vastly different scale.

Now, the federal government is aiming to spur a solution.  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state-owned oil company, said first-half profit fell 67 percent because of plunging oil prices and production cuts after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries slashed targets.

Net income fell to $3.15 billion, the state-owned oil company known as PDVSA said today in a statement posted on its Web site. Crude exports fell 4.9 percent to 2.75 million barrels per day, while production of crude and natural gas liquids dropped 5.4 percent to 3.22 million barrels, the company said.  (go to article)

Moneymorning.com -- A new fuel technology-unveiled just two weeks ago-is about to revolutionize the energy business.  (go to article)