Better Fill up today

[frawin]

Oil didn't close down on Monday,

[sixdogsmom]

You are right I think, but didn't it open down on Tuesday? That was why I couldn't believe the ten cent price jump over night, especially when later that day we saw everything from $3.99 to $4.16, all before we left the city.

[frawin]

The open doesn't set the price for the day, the close does.

[frawin]

I just saw more on the early news  that New York City is replacing 13,000 Cabs with Hybrid Vehicles. They are doing at the rate of 300 a month and hope have all hybrids by 2012. That is encouraging, every 1% of consumption we reduce is is a reduction of 200,000 barrels of oil a day, and that is 200,000 less we have to depend on from the Muslim world.

[frawin]

Crude in overnite trading is off a $1.00 in the front months, hopefully this pullback will continue. We still need to reduce consumption a lot more in the long run and increase the avaliability of more crude that we have control of.

[frawin]

Front Month Crude opened flat to down this A.M, tomorrow is the last day of trading for August, Natural Gas also opened flat to down, the Storage Report comes out today and I anticipate storage will still be off considerably.
Frank

[frawin]

Oil Falls for Third Day as Slowing Economic Growth Curbs Demand

By Alexander Kwiatkowski

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell for third day, the longest losing streak for a month, on speculation slower global economic growth is curbing fuel consumption.

Crude has plunged more than $13 from last week's record $147.27 on falling U.S. gasoline purchases. Economic growth in China, the world's second-largest oil user, was the slowest since 2005 in the second quarter. Plans for renewed diplomatic contacts between the U.S. and Iran eased concern a conflict will cut supplies from the Middle East's second-largest producer.

`` The demand picture is clearly demonstrating that current high prices are slowing both industrial and personal usage,'' said Robert Laughlin, senior broker at MF Global Ltd. in London. ``Geopolitical worries are receding especially in U.S. and Iranian relations.''

Crude oil for August delivery fell as much as $1.20, or 0.9 percent, to $133.40 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at $134.08 at 10:19 a.m. London time.

Prices have dropped 7.7 percent in the past three days, the biggest three-day decline since March. Oil fell as low as $132 a barrel yesterday, more than 10 percent below the record $147.27 reached on July 11. A drop of that magnitude is commonly referred to as a correction.

Prices fell yesterday after the Energy Department reported an unexpected increase in U.S. stockpiles and a drop in monthly gasoline demand. Consumption of motor fuel in the U.S. averaged 9.3 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down 2.1 percent from the same period last year, an Energy Department supply report showed.

Nuclear Negotiations

Prices also fell as plans by a high-ranking American diplomat to take part in nuclear negotiations with Iran tempered speculation that the U.S. or Israel may attack OPEC's second- biggest oil producer in a dispute over its nuclear program. Concern about a possible attack helped push oil prices to a record last week.

Undersecretary of State William Burns will participate in the European Union-Iran talks this weekend in Geneva, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday without giving details. This is a shift in the U.S. position on talks with a government it has shunned since 1980.

The U.S. will announce in the next month plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran, the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper reported today, without citing anyone. The Bush administration intends to set up a U.S. interests section in Tehran staffed by American diplomats almost 30 years after severing ties with Iran, the London-based newspaper said.

China Slowdown

Brent crude oil for September delivery traded at $135.84 a barrel, down 35 cents, on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange at 9:46 a.m. local time. Yesterday it declined $4.05, or 2.9 percent, to $135.81 a barrel.

China's economic expansion cooled to the slowest pace since 2005 as gross domestic product grew 10.1 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, down from 10.6 percent in the first, the statistics bureau said today in Beijing.

Gasoline for August delivery was at $3.2650 a gallon in New York, down 1.44 cents, at 9:14 a.m. London time. Futures reached $3.631 a gallon on July 11, an all-time high.

``U.S. drivers continue to curb travel whenever possible with retail gasoline prices above $4 a gallon,'' Harry Tchilinguirian, a senior oil market analyst at BNP Paribas SA in London, said in a report. ``Prospects for the U.S. economy and gasoline demand go hand in hand.''

Confidence in the global economy deteriorated this month from Asia to the U.S. as oil prices rose to a record and the financial crisis deepened, a survey of Bloomberg users on six continents showed.

T

[frawin]

This project is really good news for our future supply of oil. Canada is the safest outside supply we have and they have alot of untapped reserves. This is 7 billion dollar investment( and could run 50% more than that) that will take years to recover.

Oil may flow from Canada to Gulf

ConocoPhillips and TransCanada expand project reaching Midwest

By TOM FOWLER



A $7 billion pipeline project planned by TransCanada and ConocoPhillips could bring Canadian crude to Gulf Coast refineries as early as 2012.

The project, an expansion of a previously announced joint venture to move Canadian oil to the Midwest, will be the first time oil has flowed from the north all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. That's a reversal of what has been decades of south-to-north shipments

It would also deepen U.S. reliance on Canadian oil imports, which averaged about 2.5 million barrels per day in 2007, or 20 percent of all imports, according to Department of Energy data.

"I think we'd all prefer to import more from Canada than other less reliable regions of the world," said Jeff Dietert, an analyst with Simmons & Company International.

The 36-inch pipeline, called Keystone XL, would begin in Hardisty, Alberta, and run 1,980 miles through Montana, South Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma before ending in Texas near Port Arthur.

A 50-mile spur could also extend the pipeline to the Houston area.

TransCanada said it already has commitments for 300,000 barrels per day for 18 years from producers, but the pipeline will be able to handle up to 590,000 barrels per day.

The remaining capacity will be made available through an "open season," a process pipeline companies use to gauge interest in a project, that started this week and continues through Sept. 4.

Future expansions would increase capacity to 1.1 million barrels per day.

The increased Canadian shipments will likely offset declining imports from Mexico's quickly shrinking Cantarell field and from Venezuela, which is aiming more of its exports to China, analysts note.

Oil sands fertile

Development of the Canadian oil sands in a massive region that consulting firm Wood Mackenzie estimates holds more than 170 billion barrels of oil means similar projects like Keystone XL may follow.

Oil sands output is expected to increase from 1.2 million barrels per day to 3.5 million barrels by the end of the next decade, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

In addition to being from a nation on good terms with the U.S., Canadian crude is also less expensive. Dietert notes Canadian heavy crudes usually trade at about a $20 discount to West Texas Intermediate, which is the price of oil most commonly quoted.

So-called Maya crude from Mexico and Venezuela trades at about a $13 discount to WTI.

TransCanada and ConocoPhillips signed an agreement to build the Keystone Pipeline to deliver crude to the Midwest.

Construction has begun in Manitoba and North Dakota for that project, which will cost an estimated $5.2 billion. Delivery to refineries in Wood River and Patoka in Illinois are expected by late 2009 and shipments should be able to reach the key storage hub of Cushing, Okla., by late 2010.

Construction on Keystone XL could start by 2010 pending regulatory approvals.

Fits with strategy

ConocoPhillips spokesman Bill Graham said the Keystone expansion fits into the company's strategy of bringing together its North American assets.

ConocoPhillips is already one of the largest players in the oil sands, with more than 1 million acres under lease.

"It fits our strategic plan connecting our exploration and production assets in Canada with our refineries in the U.S.," Graham said.

While ConocoPhillips and TransCanada are joined on this project, the two companies are positioned as foes in Alaska, where both have proposed massive natural gas pipelines to bring that stranded fuel off the North Slope to other markets.

"That's just the nature of the business, where you can be both partners and competitors from one project to another," Graham said.

[Catwoman]

Gas is 3.79 in Wichita today.

[greatguns]

I filled up today.