Increasing U.S. domestic production of oil matters. Energy Information Administration (EIA) chief Adam Sieminski had this analysis at an energy conference earlier this week (h/t Breaking Energy):

“There’s a fairly significant, long-standing relationship between spare production capacity in OPEC and what the pricing environment is for oil. So the 2 million barrel per day  increase in U.S. oil production that surprisingly took place over the last five years has resulted in higher OPEC spare capacity, and undoubtedly, has been a factor in why Brent oil prices are $103-$104/bbl rather than $125-$130/bbl.”

In other words, the head of the federal agency that analyzes energy data says the recent growth in U.S. production has helped reduce the price of Brent crude, a leading global bench... more »

Opponents of a free market for natural gas have been trumpeting a new study which purports to show that LNG exports would be an economic negative for the United States. This flies in the face of analysis done by the Department of Energy, The Brookings Institute, ICF International and others which showed that to boost economic activity open markets are the way to go. So we took a look at the study to figure out why their conclusions are not consistent with other industry or government projections. We found some serious biases and inconsistent assumptions added up to a fatally flawed report. Here are a few specifics.

The employment impact analysis is flawed because it assumes no incremental natural gas production.

For some reason the report assumed no natural gas supply response and th... more »

Gasoline prices have been climbing. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports:

The average U.S. retail price for regular motor gasoline has risen 45 cents per gallon since the start of the year, reaching $3.75 per gallon on February 18. Between January 1 and February 19, the price of Brent crude, the waterborne light sweet crude grade that drives the wholesale price of gasoline sold in most U.S. regions, rose about $6 per barrel, or about 15 cents per gallon.

By far the largest factor in gasoline pricing is the cost of crude oil – and the cost of crude has been rising since mid-December, as this chart shows:

There’s lots of detail from EIA here on the factors affecting global crude markets – chiefly increases in global demand as economies pick up steam after t... more »

Ridiculing a New York Times editorial blog is like shooting unusually large fish in a barrel, but this one from last Friday is so fantastical and extreme that a commitment to an honest debate on energy compels me to fire away.  And we don’t have to go far to start the fact check, as they lead with:

"The simple truth, as President Obama has recognized, is that a country that holds less than 3 percent of the world’s reserves but consumes more than 20 percent of the world’s supply cannot drill its way to energy independence."

You would think that by 2012 the New York Times would know better than to take political rhetoric as fact, as the Washington Post notes in giving the president Two Pinocchios for the above claim “A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing... more »

A new post up at Grist takes issue with the 9.2 million jobs our industry supports.

It says we come by the 9.2 million jobs number falsely, that we deviously include “indirect” or “induced” positions in the total. It says we’re not transparent about our jobs. For good measure, it takes a shot at Energy Tomorrow.org and its distinctive icon. Now, we might let the other stuff slide, but the icon – that we’ll defend!

Seriously, we’re not part of the food fight Grist wants to have – trying to pit oil and natural gas industry jobs in this country against green energy jobs. We don’t knock green energy or its technologies. The oil and natural gas industry invested  $71 billion in that area from 2000 to 2010 – nearly as much as the rest of U.S. private industry combined ($74 billion) and nea... more »