|
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » EWZ (RSS)
-
Gregor Macdonald submits: 40% of global oil supply is provided by OPEC, and 60% of global oil supply is provided by Non-OPEC oil producers. Russia is a Non-OPEC oil producer but if we take Russia out of that category, we are left with 44% of global supply. This sub-category, Non-OPEC ex Russia, is what I refer to as Free Market Oil. This is ExxonMobil (XOM), BP, Shell (RDS.A), Suncor (SU), and countries like Brazil, The United States, Norway, the UK, Mexico and Australia.
|
-
Gregor Macdonald submits: The September issue of Gregor.us Monthly, Learning from Lagos, addresses key events earlier this decade that helped to reveal the structural changes in the global oil system. From Moscow’s Spring 2004 attack on Khodorkovsky and Yukos, to the late 2005 campaign initiated by MEND in the Niger Delta, these actions at the margins of world oil supply signaled to other global oil producers that the era of spare capacity had come to an end. It is often too difficult to comprehend the totality of very large systems. This is why, unintentionally, many of these–I call them Oil Actors–performed a series of useful stress tests on world oil supply coming out of the 2002-2003 period. Once the feedback mechanism of these events filtered through the price of oil, that sent a new message and a new revelation to producers such as Venezuela, Brazil, and also to Russia and Nigeria–all producers that never before had been able to impact the price of oil. Complete Story »
|
-
Michael Johnston submits:For many Americans, the idea of “reducing our dependence on foreign oil” seems like an enormous undertaking. Decades after the push for developing green energy sources began, little progress has been made. The spectacular failures (remember the ethanol experiment?) have far outnumbered the mild successes. Solar power technology has improved by leaps and bounds, but it still hasn’t been proven as financially viable, and the U.S. trails badly behind China and Japan in the race to become the world’s dominant player. Although there is seemingly a Prius on every street corner, rising gas prices hurt just as much as ever.  Maybe we could learn a thing or two from Brazil. Following severe energy shortages more than 30 years ago, Brazil has successfully carried out a green energy revolution. The country that once imported 85% of its oil is now a net exporter. The Latin American nation (and potential Olympic host) relies on hydroelectric power for more than 80% of its energy needs and utilizes ethanol (or a gas/ethanol combination) to power 90% of the cars on its roads.
Complete Story »
|
-
Gregor Macdonald submits: 
Harold Hotelling was an economist in the 1930’s who wrote on a number of topics, but is known for his work in resource economics, and the eponymous Hotelling Rule. Writing in the Journal of Political Economy in 1931, Hotelling theorized that a rational producer of resources, say oil, would only be inclined to extract and sell that resource if the investment opportunities available with the capital proceeds were greater than simply leaving that resource to appreciate in the ground. Sounds reasonable, yes? But it’s not clear that the world–at least in the case of oil producers–has operated this way.
|
-
Gregor Macdonald submits: A complacent view that’s developed here in the United States over the past 40 years is that oil in our own hemisphere can be regarded, functionally, as being our own. Interestingly, that’s probably a result of US production having peaked in 1971 at an average of 9.6 Mb/day. Since that time it’s been better to print dollars and trade them for oil than to worry too much about our own, declining supply. Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil have each seen their own, individual oil production cycles play out over the past decades as well. But the first three of these have produced a non-trivial quantity of oil for US consumption during that time. Given that Mexico is currently experiencing a production crash, Venezuela’s oil industry has been damaged by government policies, and only Brazil is on the threshold of being able to increase production, it makes sense that the Oil and Gas Journal published a large piece on these three countries earlier this month: Special Report: Pemex, PDVSA, Petrobras: how strategies, results differ. I highly recommend the essay to my readers, which gives both a comprehensive update useful to oil watchers, but also provides very good background to those trying to learn about these issues. (I was also surprised to find out I’d been quoted in the article–perhaps O+G Journal could give me a free issue for the effort). Complete Story »
|
-
David Hunkar submits: Countries such as Canada, Australia, Brazil, etc. are blessed with plenty of natural resources and they are big exporters of commodities such as Natural Gas, Iron Ore, and Coal. In this post, let us take a look at the top five coal and iron ore exporters and importers in the world. 
Complete Story »
|
-
David Hunkar submits: Countries such as Canada, Australia, Brazil, etc. are blessed with plenty of natural resources and they are big exporters of commodities such as Natural Gas, Iron Ore, and Coal. In this post, let us take a look at the top five coal and iron ore exporters and importers in the world.
Complete Story »
|
-
-
 Excerpt from Raymond James strategist Jeffrey Saut's latest essay: Excerpt from Raymond James strategist Jeffrey Saut's latest essay, published Monday (April 27th): ...[W]hile we are cautious in the short term, we think the current rally phase has “legs” and will likely, after some kind of near-term peak and subsequent correction, reassert itself and travel higher. Whether this turns out to be a new bull market we will leave to Dow Theory, but we have made some pretty decent trading profits over the past eight weeks and therefore continue to recommend harvesting some of those gains. For example, in our March 16, 2009 report we wrote:
Complete Story »
|
-
Dr. O submits:Volatility historically still high but coming down which is bullish. 
The US Dollar has rallied off its lows and is consolidating at higher levels. The story for the past decade has been: lower dollar correlates with higher asset prices, and vice versa. If the US dollar does resumes its decline, asset prices would be expected to go up (inflate, lol). Complete Story »
|
-
Horacio Marquez submits: On October 27 of last year, as the market was beaten down in a stampede of panic selling, I realized that it had gone too far in its pessimism with respect to the future of the global financial markets and I recommended the iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund (NYSE: EWZ). At the time, the global financial system and the global economy were in a royal mess of proportions not seen since the Great Depression. Many of the major banks in the United States and Europe were in even greater disarray than they are now. With the credit markets totally frozen, consumers, companies and countries that had been caught overextended in their financing and with little or no cash reserves struggled to refinance their debts. Complete Story »
|
-
Dr. O submits:My last article featured continued caution on equities of all stripes, given the free fall in equity markets world wide for the past year or so. We've all been looking for "the bottom" or at least a tradeable bottom. Patience and cash has been well rewarded, and the US Dollar and US Treasuries have enjoyed striking rallies within the past year as equities both domestic and abroad have fallen historic amounts. We have noted a recent gradual reversal of this flight to safety, as US interest rates have begun slowly upticking, gold has fallen 10% recently, and certain stock markets appear to have stabilized at lower levels, such as the Chinese market. Other markets such as those in Japan, the US, and many other Western Countries have continued to decline and sink to lows not seen in over a decade. Complete Story »
|
-
Tate Dwinnell submits: By Guest Author: Robert Williams, PhD, P.E. How and why invest in Brazil. The why is directly connected to the massive oil / gas finds offshore Brazil in the last couple of years but also because of its well-established agricultural and mineral economy. The oil and gas developments projected for the next decade will further enhance their global economic stature. Complete Story »
|
-
IncaInvest.com submits: The government of Rio de Janeiro announced that the BG Group (BRGYY.PK), a world leader in natural gas, will invest $4 billion in oil exploration and production in Brazil. The majority of the investment amount will be earmarked for exploration in the oil reserves in the area of Tupi in the Santos Basin, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral, received the chairman of the board of the British company, Robert Wilson, and executives of the subsidiary in Brazil yesterday to discuss the possibilities for investment in oil fields in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Complete Story »
|
-
|
|
|