Word: petroleum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sector and imposed taxes on companies before the start of production, which effectively increased the financial risk of searching for new fields. In 1998, oil companies drilled 145 exploratory wells in Indonesia; in 2007, as oil prices soared, only 39 were sunk, according to the Center for Petroleum and Energy Economics Studies in Jakarta. Once a major oil exporter and East Asia's sole member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), today Indonesia can no longer meet domestic demand without imports; Jakarta this month suspended its membership in OPEC...
...sulfur and less nitrogen when it burns, says Barrows. Coal-to-liquid plants can also be used to clean up the mountains of coal left over at old mines. But in terms of carbon emissions, Fischer-Tropsch is dirty. A sliding scale of emissions from fossil fuels, goes: coal, petroleum, methane. Coal emits the most carbon dioxide per unit of energy obtained. The resultant fuel also emits more carbon dioxide when burned. "It's a double whammy," says Barrows. Ricketts cautions that Sasol's Secunda plant, which produces 150,000 bbl. of fuel a day, is "the world's largest...
...point is, it would only take about $9 billion to control the entire long position in oil. That sounds like an enormous amount of money, but some of the major individual players in oil are bigger than the market itself: Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Muizzaddin, of Brunei Shell Petroleum, is worth about $23 billion; Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud is worth about $21 billion; Russian Vagit Alekperov of LUKoil is worth about $13 billion. No, we're not implicating any of these guys in market rigging; in fact the list of billionaires with that kind of swag is long...
Anyone who ever doubted the centrality of oil and natural gas to the global economy should have been convinced by the political events of the past few months. As petroleum prices have risen to record levels, the spiraling price of gasoline has become issue number one in the American Presidential election. That's prompted Republican candidate John McCain to make expanded offshore oil drilling a focus of his campaign. For years, offshore drilling has been illegal outside parts of the Gulf of Mexico due to environmental concerns, with public support. But that has reversed in recent months, with even green...
Whatever that means for offshore drilling in the U.S., the real victims of the global thirst for petroleum will be overseas - areas that, until the recent price rise, were too remote and forbidding to be worth drilling. Case in point: the vast, impenetrable western reaches of the Amazon. Touching parts of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Brazil, the western Amazon has remained relatively unscathed compared to the eastern stretches of the rainforest, which have been ravaged by logging. With few roads, the western Amazon has remained so undisturbed that there are still new indigenous tribes living somewhere inside the jungle...