Results from the first week of oil company earnings reports are in; of the super majors, only Total is missing, and it reports next week. Below are two plots of the change in daily oil production from these leading international oil companies and a few others. It’s a sobering picture.... Read more →

ChevronTexaco brought in record 2Q net income of $4.1 billion, slightly more than 2.5 times the $1.6 billion on the same quarter last year. Half-year to half-year, net income rose to $6.687 billion from $3.520 billion. Production of crude and liquids dropped 4.4% quarter-to-quarter (4% half-to-half). The charts below show... Read more →

Physorg.com. Intelligent Energy has successfully completed trials of its stationary, ethanol-based fuel cell system. The company is targeting distributed power generation in Latin America as an opportune market for technology such as this. Intelligent Energy formed in 2001 and set about acquiring three other companies that became the building blocks... Read more →

Dave Guilford, from Automotive News. There are an estimated 835 million motor vehicles on the world’s roads, according to J.D. Power and Associates. The big number — global vehicle count — is expected to swell from today’s 835 million to 1.1 billion within 15 years. That would be an increase... Read more →

ConocoPhillips (COP) reported a 53% increase in profit for the first half of this year, climbing to $3.691 billion from $2.408 billion for the same period last year. Second quarter profit increased a whopping 75% to $2.075 billion from $1.187 billion in 2Q 2003. Crude oil production declined half to... Read more →

ExxonMobil posted a record quarter, excluding special items, of $5.8 billion, up 39% from the second quarter of 2003. It also posted a gain in crude oil production, up 4.2% to 2.58 million barrels of oil per day. ExxonMobil, the world’s largest energy company, has a geographically balanced portfolio. You’ll... Read more →

Pushed by the “strong tailwind” of oil prices, Royal Dutch Shell posted a hefty $8.7 Billion profit for the first half of 2004, up 7% from the same period the year before. This incorporated a $4B profit for the second quarter, up 54% from 2Q 2003. At the same time,... Read more →

Hydrogenics entered into a five-year agreement with Deere & Company for continued R&D into hydrogen fuel cells in commercial vehicles. The agreement comes following earlier joint projects involving the integration of Hydrogenics’ fuel cell power module technology into Deere ePower vehicles. Hydrogenics develops and manufactures fuel cell and related new... Read more →

Both the EPA and CARB (California Air Resource Board) have certified the 2005 Honda FCX fuel cell vehicle as ready for commercial use. The second generation of the model, the 2005 FCX is the first to be powered by a Honda designed and manufactured fuel cell stack, and offers some... Read more →

Dan Neil at the LA Times on diesels. Nice backgrounder, review of the VW Touareg, and a good conclusion. I would argue that diesel is highly underrated by environmentally conscious consumers. For as giddy as people are about gas-electric hybrids such as the Toyota Prius or the coming-soon Honda Accord... Read more →

John Robb continues to write in Global Guerrillas on the extreme vulnerability of the global economy to a successful terrorist disruption of the oil/energy system. Today, the price of oil hit a record high of $43.05 a barrel (UPDATE). A combination of excessive demand, uncertainty, and a lack of spare... Read more →

A conversation with a colleague led me to this simple exercise: plot oil prices against the performance of the market indices over the last few months. Result: almost a classic inverse relationship. Oil up, markets down. The plots use data from 3 May through 27 July, using the closing spot... Read more →

I came across WorldChanging, a very interesting and substantive group effort on “Models, Tools, and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future.” What caught my eye was this review and recommendation of an online resource at the American Institue of Physics—The Discovery of Global Warming— that surveys the breadth and... Read more →

Reuters. Pirates stormed a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) tanker at anchor in Indonesia, firing shots at the crew. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said five men armed with automatic rifles boarded a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) tanker anchored at Anyer on Monday and fired at the crew before escaping with... Read more →

Chicago Tribune / AP. First, the specifics. GM is adding to its Hummer lineup: a smaller, midsize H3, and a higher performance, more efficient version of the H1 called the Alpha. GM has been talking about the H3 for months—a vehicle clearly targeted at DaimlerChrysler’s Jeep franchise, and a larger... Read more →

European Car. It’s not just rational; it’s emotional. The history of the last 20 years has been filled with tipping points—the moments when one commodity gives place to another. [In] Europe at least, we may well be experiencing a tipping point in which petrol gives place to diesel power. As... Read more →

BP announced record-breaking half-year results, posting a profit of $8.625 billion, up 20% from $7.213 Billion in the first half of 2003. Despite the strong results, analysts were slightly disappointed as the results were a bit lower than they had forecast. Lord Browne, CEO of BP, noted in his remarks... Read more →

This is going to be an Oil week. With the production figures coming out from the majors, I thought I’d spend some time poking around those, plus a few other aspects of global oil production and fuels that I’ve been wanting to explore for awhile but haven’t made the time... Read more →

Autoweek. Production, allocation and delivery constraints and delays are giving Toyota some problems. With new hybrids from other vendors coming out this fall, Toyota needs to resolve its issues. Dealers and customers are getting a bit antsy, and Toyota will lose some of its momentum if it is unable to... Read more →

The Toronto Star does a nice job in a long piece outlining the opportunities and the downside risks associated with the processing of Canada’s oil sands into usable oil. Some snippets: The flow of synthetic crude out of the oil sands today now exceeds that of conventional crude from Alberta’s... Read more →

A report issued late last year by the World Resource Institute and Sustainable Asset Management attempts to quantify the economic impact on the top 10 automakers in the face of increasing regulation on fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. The report, Changing Drivers: The Impact of Climate Change on Competitiveness and... Read more →

LA Times interview with Ford President Nick Scheele. Some interesting observations on cars vs. trucks, fuel cells and hybrids. Q: Don’t trucks still account for about two-thirds of your unit sales? A: But we saw that we couldn’t keep milking the truck market while competitors were climbing into it more... Read more →

Congress has approved an additional $2 million appropriation for Mac Trucks to continue its development of a diesel-hybrid powertrain for military and commercial use. (An earlier post on Mack diesel-hybrids here.) The $2M supplements funding in a contract for diesel-hybrids for the AirForce awarded at the beginning of this year.... Read more →

eSchoolNews Online. ISE Corp. and engine manufacturer Advanced Energy are both exploring hybrid-diesel options for schoolbuses. Headquartered in San Diego, ISE Corp., a manufacturer of fuel-efficient technologies and drive systems for public transit, is in talks with The Education Foundation of Harris, Texas, and the state’s Adopt-A-School Bus Program—an extension... Read more →

The EPA has awarded the University of Nevada, Reno, a $69,000 grant to investigate a cheaper, cleaner way to produce biodiesel from renewable fats and vegetable oils using ethanol rather than methanol. Read more →

Times Online. Next week a number of the oil majors will announce their earings and production figures for the first half. The Times reflects on what it expects to see: little production growth. More interesting is what is not happening at these energy goliaths. With the Brent crude price close... Read more →

When it is imported. Or, perhaps, if it does not come from corn. The flap over Cargill’s plan to import 63 million gallons of Brazilian ethanol into the 3 billion gallon a year market continues to escalate. (Earlier post here.) Senator Daschle has fired off a letter stating his intention... Read more →

California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted a diesel air toxic control measure that requires big rig truck and interstate bus operators to shut their engines down after five minutes of non-essential idling. The new regulation affects the more than 400,000 heavy-duty diesel trucks and buses registered in California and all... Read more →

A survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 55% of Californians believe that the environment should be the top policy priority, even at the expense of economic growth. A copy of the full report is here. Additional finds include: 81 percent of residents support requiring automakers to... Read more →

GM posted close to a 50% surge in earnings in the second quarter, from $879 million in 2003 to $1.3 billion this year. Like Ford, the majority of its revenue came from the financing arm. Unlike Ford, GM’s auto operations improved dramatically year-to-year and pulled in a more substantial chunk... Read more →

Bloomberg. Japan’s crude-oil imports fell 12% in June as Tokyo Electric Power Co., Asia’s biggest power producer, restarted nuclear reactors, cutting demand for fuel used in power generation. However, even though the volume of imports fell 12%, the value of the crude oil imports in June rose 14% to ¥449.2... Read more →

The UK Department for Transport (DTS) has released its study on Road Pricing. Yes, it is what it sounds like—a pay-for-what-you-use scheme. The entire report with economic analysis is here, along with an executive summary. Preliminary market research on the topic is available here. The UK is exploring this as... Read more →

In a move that takes the policy debate about CO2 and climate change away from federal politics and puts it in the courtroom, 7 states and New York City have filed suit against five big US power companies for creating a public nuisance with their greenhouse gas emissions. This action... Read more →

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced eleven new fuel-cell research projects valued at nearly $4.2 million, including private-sector cost-sharing of more than 20 percent, focused on solving remaining issues in developing solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems for commercial use. These are not the Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) cells most... Read more →

Daniel Howes in the Detroit News has an interesting perspective—if slightly defensive of the Detroit Big 3—on the marketing trouncing Toyota is handing its rivals. Because the confusion strengthens Toyota’s carefully crafted green marketing message. And it buttresses the image of Detroit’s Big Three-are-environmental-morons, a rap that GM, Ford and... Read more →

Ford has posted $1.6 billion in pre-tax earnings for the second quarter ($1.16B post-tax). Of that, however, only $83 million—5%—came from auto sales. Factor in special items of $140 million, including the restructuring of the investment in Ballard and restructuring in Europe, and Ford lost $57 million on its auto... Read more →

There is much agreement that hydrogen is the probable energy carrier of the future—there is little agreement on how exactly that hydrogen will come to be. Unlike wood, coal or petroleum, hydrogen isn’t sitting waiting to be harvested, mined or pumped. Rather, it needs to be produced. The diagram at... Read more →

The Straits Times. DaimlerChrysler delivered the first of its fuel cell cars to Singapore’s National Environmental Agency as part of a larger two-year trial that will see 60 such cars in Singapore, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Berlin. DaimlerChrysler maintains that the earliest full commercial roll-out will be in... Read more →

60 Minutes last night led with a rebroadcast of a 2003 story on Equatorial Guinea—The Kuwait of Africa? Part of the emphasis of the story was on the country’s “vast reserves” and the potential as a future strategic source of petroleum for the US, part on the corruption of the... Read more →

Business Standard. The Reva Electric Car Company (which also manufactures the country’s only electric, battery-powered car) unveiled a prototype Hs fuel cell car. It will certainly take a few years before RECC’s fuel cell car becomes a production reality, but the very fact that a relatively small company, based in... Read more →

New Posting from John Robb’s Global Guerrillas. Over time, these global guerrilla operations may yield enough control over global oil supply to replicate the power of OPEC. One potential target region is Caspian Sea oil—particularly from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan...Given this sparse and undefendable network, the potential for GG control of... Read more →

Couldn’t pass up this one. Dogs International Inc. (OTCBB:DOGN) announces today that the company is seeking potential merger and acquisition candidates in the alternative fuel industry. The company has continued to review companies that would improve its ability to diversify. The company is going to continue to build the Bed... Read more →

Citroën will unveil production models of its new C4 sedan at the Paris Motor Show in September. Citroën combined aerodynamic design (the C4 has a Cd (drag coefficient) of 0.28 – the best in the segment, according to Citroën) and its HDi diesels with Particulate Filter to produce a car... Read more →

Although Volvo’s sales in the US for June dropped 2.6% (13,339 to 12,992) from June 2003, its first half sales were up 2.1% (67,522 to 68,964)—the only first half year-to-year brand increase in the entire Ford lineup. Those first half results in the US contributed to an overall first half... Read more →

Usually I just flip past ads in magazines. The headline on this Cisco ad for IP voice communications caught my eye, however. Clever, and an indication of the increasing penetration of hybrids into buyer consciousness—or at least, into the consciousness of the creative director. (Click on image to enlarge.) Here’s... Read more →

I saw this on a presentation from BMW, and had to laugh. Besser Mit Wasserstoff (German) translates to “Better With Hydrogen.” (I am delighted by the German word for hydrogen: Wasserstoff. Water material. Water stuff.) Read more →

AP via San Jose Mercury News. Hoping to reduce air pollution from idling diesel trucks, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia will offer truck stop spaces where truckers can shut off their engines but still get electricity, air conditioning and even Internet access. “Most truckers let their engines idle at... Read more →

The Financial Express. Indian experts estimate that the country’s crude oil reserves will be exhausted in less than 20 years. “At the current rate of production, we have 18-20 years of oil buffer and about 28 years of gas reserves,” Avinash Chandra, former director general of the directorate general of... Read more →

PhysOrg.com. Solar Hydrogen Energy Corporation (SHEC Labs) reports that it has demonstrated the production of Hydrogen from water using its proprietary Solar Thermal Chemical Process. Utilizing the hot Arizona sun and a new Solar Concentrator developed by the Lab, the research team was able to extract Hydrogen from water at... Read more →

Berkeley Lab. With the addition of a 4,000-gallon fuel tank in the motor pool, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has become the first ethanol dispensing station in Northern California. This cleaner-burning, high-octane, environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline will soon power 60 vehicles in the Laboratory’s... Read more →