By Haden Kirkpatrick. Over the last two decades, fully electric cars have had, let’s say, a slow start. In 1997, the Toyota Prius was released as the world’s first mass-produced hybrid. And while hybrid technology has taken off, drivers have been hesitant to accept fully battery-powered tech for a variety... Read more →

Opinion by Michael Sivak The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to protect human health and the environment. However, as the EPA is getting ready to relax the future vehicle fuel economy standards, the time is right to consider whether, under the current administration, this agency’s mission is,... Read more →

by Dave Crichton Driverless cars are poised to decongest personal car traffic, shrink our eco footprint, free up parking spaces and reduce the frequency of collisions by about 90%. This could result in a conservative estimate of $642 billion in cost savings. But as promising as autonomous private vehicles are,... Read more →

by Andreas de Vries and Dr. Salman Ghouri for Oilprice.com Two diametrically opposed views dominate the current debate about where the oil price is heading. On the one hand, there is the view that the price of oil will be “lower for longer”, or even “lower forever”, as the electrification... Read more →

by Dwayne Purvis for Oilprice.com Notwithstanding that oil demand has increased for over 150 years, it will eventually stop increasing. If oil demand were to reach an actual peak, then the top might be easier to predict. As it stands, the forecast models of demand are likely predicting peak demand... Read more →

by Leonard Hyman and Bill Tilles for Oilprice.com International news services now report that Japan’s Toshiba Corporation (9502.T) is preparing to make a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the US for its Westinghouse Electric subsidiary. For most of our readers this news evokes little surprise. This is merely another chapter... Read more →

by James Stafford of Oilprice.com We’ve gone electric, and there’s no going back at this point. Lithium is our new fuel, but like fossil fuels, the reserves we’re currently tapping into are finite—and that’s what investors can take to the bank. You may think lithium got too popular too fast.... Read more →

by James Stafford of Oilprice.com So far, lithium has been the hottest metal of 2016, beating out gold, with exponential demand expected over the coming years. Although the price trajectory of the metal has been subdued in recent months, the fundamentals behind the long-term trajectory suggest strong potential for long-term... Read more →

by Roger Bedell, Founder, Opbrid Are we looking at vehicle electrification upside down? Why are we focusing on electrifying smaller vehicles like cars and delivery trucks when electrifying really big trucks makes the most economic sense? Electricity is about ½ the cost of diesel or gasoline. This means the more... Read more →

by David Yager for Oilprice.com The impact of rising oil prices on North American light tight oil (LTO) production is said to be a “Catch 22”, the title of Joseph Heller’s popular 1961 novel set in WWII. The premise was you could get out of the army if you were... Read more →

by James Stafford of Oilprice.com With prices set to double by 2018, we’ve seen the bottom of the uranium market, and the negative sentiment that has followed this resource around despite strong fundamentals, is starting to change. Billionaire investors sense it, and they’re always the first to anticipate change and... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com Total global oil production could decline for the next several years in a row as scarce new sources of supply come online. According to data from Rystad Energy, overall global oil output will fall this year as natural depletion overwhelms all new sources of supply.... Read more →

by Rakesh Upadhyay for Oilprice.com The next OPEC meeting on the 2nd of June will act as little more than a forum for continued altercations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The 2 June 2016 OPEC meeting will be held amid a backdrop of oil prices near $50 per barrel, a... Read more →

by Professor Andrew Alfonso Frank, CTO Efficient Drivetrains Inc. and UC-Davis Emeritus, Bruce R. Thomas and Catherine J DeMauro Abstract. The Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle with Long Electric Range (PHEVLER - pronounced “fevler”) is a new category emerging in the electric vehicle marketplace. PHEVLERs are defined as PHEVs with sufficient... Read more →

by James Stafford of Oilprice.com Demand for lithium—the hottest commodity on the planet and the only commodity to show positive price movement in 2015—is poised to continue on its upward trajectory, becoming the world’s new gasoline and earning the moniker of “White Petroleum”. And the battle for market share in... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com Oil prices have climbed by about 50 percent from their February lows, topping $40 per barrel. But the rally could be reaching its limits, at least temporarily, as persistent oversupply and the prospect of new shale production caps any potential price increase. US oil production... Read more →

by Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com This is a financial cold war—nothing more, nothing less. While there are billions of reasons to cut output, and every major producing country is reeling from the loss of revenues, some are weathering the current bust better than others, but the devil is in the... Read more →

by Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com With OPEC breaking down and any kind of coordination among its members on price cuts looking increasingly unlikely, it now appears that oil prices could remain below $50 a barrel for a year or more. As producers confront this unpleasant reality, some will finally start... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com Russia’s central bank recently warned about the growing financial risks to the Russian economy from Saudi Arabia encroaching upon its traditional export market for crude oil. Russia sends 70 percent of its oil to Europe, but Saudi Arabia has been making inroads in the European... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com Oil and gas companies have had a tough time over the past year trying to weather the storm of falling oil prices. But the political and financial winds are moving in the wrong direction for the industry, raising more “above ground” problems at a time... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com One casualty of the oil price downturn could be the megaproject. For years, as conventional oil reserves depleted and became increasingly hard to find, oil companies ventured into far-flung locales to find new sources of production. Extracting oil from these frontier areas required more advanced... Read more →

by Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com For the first time in close to a century, mankind may be about to give serious attention to a technology that has the potential to be a true game-changer in transportation. Elon Musk famously proposed the idea of the Hyperloop a few years ago [earlier... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com We are a little more than a month away from OPEC’s next meeting, which will be held in Vienna on December 4, 2015. OPEC altered the course of the oil markets last year when it decided to cast aside its traditional role of maintaining balance... Read more →

by Mike Millikin, editor, Green Car Congress This post is part of the ‘Think Further’ series sponsored by Fred Alger Management. For more “Think Further” content, please visit www.thinkfurtheralger.com.” The car has become the most computationally complex high-tech device with which the vast majority of consumers will ever come into... Read more →

by Dalan McEndree for Oilprice.com Two men enter, one man leaves, two men enter, one man leaves, two men enter... —Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome November 27, oil consuming countries will celebrate the first anniversary of the Saudi decision to let market forces determine prices. This decision set crude prices on... Read more →

by John Manfreda for Oilprice.com Since 2009, China has been taking a much more active role in its pursuit of international oil contracts. In 2009, for the first time, Saudi Arabia exported more of its oil to China than it did to the U.S. China also made large investments in... Read more →

by James Stafford of Oilprice.com While other commodities are floundering or completely collapsing in this market, lithium—the critical mineral in the emerging battery gigafactory war—is poised to explode, and going forward Nevada is emerging as the front line in this pending American lithium boom. Most of the world’s lithium comes... Read more →

by Dalan McEndree for Oilprice.com President Putin’s recent moves in the Middle East—to shore up Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria through deployment of combat aircraft, equipment, and manpower and build-out of air-, naval-, and ground-force bases, and the agreement in the last week with Iran, Iraq, and Syria on intelligence... Read more →

by Dan Doyle for Oilprice.com Dan Doyle is president of Reliance Well Services, a hydraulic fracturing company based in Pennsylvania. On September 10th, the EIA reported a production decline in the Lower 48—essentially shale production—of 208,000 BOPD (barrels of oil per day). That is a staggeringly enormous number, approximately 10... Read more →

by Art Berman for Oilprice.com The party is over for tight oil. Despite brash statements by US producers and misleading analysis by Raymond James, low oil prices are killing tight oil companies. Reports this week from IEA and EIA paint a bleak picture for oil prices as the world production... Read more →

by Martin Tillier of Oilprice.com As traders, investors and pundits, we all like to think that what we do is akin to a science. We believe that by working harder and being smarter we can give ourselves an edge, that enough research will reveal to us the next move, either... Read more →

by Dalan McEndree for Oilprice.com “If you are the world’s leading energy economy, you produce energy, that’s what you do.” “A government can stay irrational longer than it can stay solvent.” “Even in the short term, you’re dead, if you commit suicide.” The first quote modifies a GEICO commercial describing... Read more →

by Dalan McEndree for Oilprice.com OPEC next gathers December 4 in Vienna, just over a year since Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi announced at the previous OPEC winter meeting the Saudi decision to let the oil market determine oil prices rather than to continue Saudi Arabia's role of guarantor of... Read more →

by Doug Williams Recently, the Energy Resources Center made headlines by saying the EPA’s shift on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) would equal adding 1 million more passenger vehicles on the road. (Earlier post.) The RFS has been controversial from its beginnings in the early 2000’s. It’s also a political... Read more →

by Dalan McEndree for Oilprice.com In the last quarter of 2014, in the face of possible oversupply, Saudi Arabia abandoned its traditional role as the global oil market’s swing producer and therefore it role as unofficial guarantor of existing ($100+ per barrel) prices. In October, Saudi sources first prepared the... Read more →

by Gaurav Agnihotri of Oilprice.com Saudi Arabia has long enjoyed the status of being the top crude oil exporter in the world. With record production of 10.564 million barrels per day in June 2015, Saudi Arabia has been one of the major driving forces behind the current oil price slump.... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com Many oil companies had trimmed their budgets heading into 2015 to deal with lower oil prices. But the rebound in April and May to $60 per barrel from the mid-$40s suggested that the severe drop was merely temporary. But the collapse of prices in July—owing... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com A flood of bearish news has pushed down oil prices to their lowest levels in months, with WTI nearing $45 per barrel and Brent flirting with sub-$50 territory. With a bear market back, there is pessimism throughout the oil markets. Goldman Sachs is even predicting... Read more →

By Gaurav Agnihotri for Oilprice.com With the recently concluded nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries, oil prices have already started heading downward on sentiments that Iran’s crude oil supply would further contribute to the already rising global supply glut. The economic crisis in Greece, OPEC’s high production levels... Read more →

by Henry Hewitt for Oilprice.com During the late innings of the ICE-age (as in the Internal Combustion Engine age) it has become clear that feeding gasoline and diesel to the next billion new cars is not going to be easy, or cheap. In China alone, 500 million new vehicles can... Read more →

by Leonard Brecken of Oilprice.com As stated previously, asset monetization by small E&P operators will start in earnest in the second half of this year out of cash flow necessity. Most, if not all, smaller market capitalization companies, public or private, are still free cash flow negative (operating cash flow... Read more →

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com The fallout of the collapse in oil prices has a lot of side effects apart from the decline of rig counts and oil flows. Oil production in North Dakota has exploded over the last five years, from negligible levels before 2010 to well over a... Read more →

by Andrew Topf of Oilprice.com The financial pages of Canadian newspapers have been full of headlines lately announcing the potential of two large shale oil fields in the Northwest Territories said to contain enough oil to rival the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana. The report by Canada’s National... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com> Is US shale about to make a comeback? Oil prices have rebounded strongly since March. The benchmark WTI prices soared by more than 36 percent in two months, and Brent has jumped by more than 25 percent. There is a newfound bullishness in the oil... Read more →

by James Stafford of Oilprice.com Saudi Arabia continues to ratchet up production, taking market share away from US shale producers. According to OPEC's latest monthly oil report, Saudi Arabia boosted its oil output to 10.31 million barrels per day in April, a slight increase over the previous month’s total of... Read more →

by Leonard Brecken of Oilprice.com Last Friday we finally got confirmation of where all the natural gas supply has been coming from as Cabot (COG) reported its earnings. Just like Chesapeake (CHK), they reduced natural gas output, but on a much grander scale. CHK has yet to report and will... Read more →

by Michael McDonald on Oilprice.com Even as financial commentators on CNBC are starting to come around to the idea of a bottom in oil prices, the key question for US oil producers remains one of timing. How long will the oil price slump last? Is this a relatively short term... Read more →

by Alexis Arthur for Oilprice.com Argentina, once a regional energy leader, is now better known for financial busts and bombastic politicians than hydrocarbons prospects. Still, with a resource potential both vast and untapped, the nation has never been far from energy investors’ minds. The question today is just how much... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com Predicting and diagnosing the trajectory of oil prices has become something of a cottage industry in the past year. But along with all of the excess crude flowing from the oil patch, there is also an abundance of market indicators that while important, tend to... Read more →

by Nick Cunningham for Oilprice.com It may be difficult to look beyond the current pricing environment for oil, but the depletion of low-cost reserves and the increasing inability to find major new discoveries ensures a future of expensive oil. While analyzing the short-term trajectory of oil prices is certainly important,... Read more →