Weekly Energy Update: Keystone XL, The Safest Pipeline Ever Built

A leaky future with pipelines and the unresolved fallout from the Manhattan Project; water competition in dry states between frackers and farmers; and a look at exploration challenges in the forbidden (and forbidding) Arctic in this week’s premium newsletter.Pipeline leak detection is about to go another round in the media with TransCanada Corp.’s announcement that Keystone XL will be the safest

Commodity Update: Open Interest Analysis for June 20th, 2013

August WTI crude oil lost $3.34 on heavy volume of 812,238 contracts. Volume was the highest since June 7 when 871 598 contracts were traded and crude oil advanced $1.27 while open interest increased by 24,058 contracts. Additionally, the decline on June 20 was the largest of 2013, and the closest one to it occurred on April 3 when WTI declined $2.74 on volume of 675,832 contracts while open

Alfa Billionaires Launch L1 Energy Fund

The former owners of TNK-BP and the Alfa Group let it be known in March that they were shopping around with their eyes on the oil industry in a big way; this week, the Alfa Group announced it would invest $10-$20 billion or more in global oil and gas projects. They’ve been looking for somewhere to put the billions they made on the sale of their TNK-BP Russian venture last year. Alfa Group took in

Follow up to Crude oil, What’s his Next Energy Idea?

On 6/18 with Crude oil futures within 1.25% of $100/barrel I made a bold prediction that Crude would not cross $100 this time and instead it would retreat $3-5 in the coming weeks. An interim high was made in August futures the very next day at $99.21 and as of this post futures are nearly 6% off those levels. We are finding mild support at the 50% Fibonacci level at $92.75. In my opinion we may

CNPC to Build China’s First Ever Shale Gas Pipeline

CNPC has announced that it plans to build China’s first ever pipeline dedicated to transporting shale gas.The 57 mile long pipeline will run from shale gas fields in the Sichuan province to join with an existing pipeline in the Yunnan province.The EIA published a report last week that assessed shale reserves around the world, and they allocated the largest reserves to China, with an estimated 1.1

Indonesia and Chile to Build Thorium Nuclear Reactors

A small Canadian energy company may soon be about to install thorium-fuelled nuclear reactors in Indonesia and Chile, in order to generate energy for the grid, or desalination plants.The world currently has 435 commercial nuclear power plants, all of which run off uranium, but thorium is gathering support to replace uranium as a nuclear fuel, for several reasons. Thorium is much safer than

Is the Central-South Asian Energy Transmission Project just a Dream?

In early June, a newspaper in Pakistan announced the Asian Development Bank would withdraw from a much-anticipated energy transmission project that aims to connect Central and South Asia. The report stated that security fears in Afghanistan were prompting the ADB to drop its 40 percent interest in the project.The newspaper, the Express Tribune, cited a senior official from Pakistan’s Ministry of