Gasoline shortages
The effects of September’s hurricanes were still being felt across the southeast last week. While the refineries are nearly all back on line, 40 percent of the Gulf’s normal offshore production is still shut-in. The DOE continues to release crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make up for the shortfall. Gasoline shortages are expected to continue for another two weeks, but appear to be
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China
One of the key factors determining oil prices and global demand for oil over the next few years will be the course of China’s economy. Beijing continues to maintain that its GDP is now so big and its foreign exchange reserves so large that they can weather a deep, prolonged recession in the rest of the world and still continue to grow. China’s economy grew by 11.9 percent last year and
India
As power shortages and blackouts due to poor monsoon rains and increased demand spread across India, the issue of using expensive, subsidized diesel to fuel generators for backup power is becoming important. In one state, diesel consumption jumped by 14 percent in the weeks after the blackouts started. The issue is complicated by the policy of keeping diesel cheap to support agriculture and transportation.
Trouble in Detroit
Now that gasoline prices are receding, lack of credit to finance new car sales has become Detroit’s number one problem. In September, US auto sales reached a 15-year low with sales of cars and light trucks falling by 27 percent to 964,000. There was some good news, however, when President Bush signed off on a $25 billion loan package that will help automakers retool their plants to build smaller,
Briefs October 6, 2008
(clips from recent Peak Oil News dailies are indicated by date and item #) Russia’s oil production fell for the ninth straight month, down 0.4 percent in September compared to the same period last year, to 9.83 million barrels per day, the first time since 1998 that Russia will suffer an annual decline. In terms of new fields, there is very little that will come online in the next few years
