Marin Katusa's Blog

At the latest Casey Research conference, respected investment analyst Porter Stansberry stood at the podium and predicted that the price of oil will fall below US$40 per barrel within the next 12 months.

North America is undergoing a natural gas revolution. The first part of the story is pretty well known: the advent of horizontal drilling and fracturing technologies unlocked huge shale-gas reserves across the continent, and the ensuing flood of production cut the commodity's price in half.

The energy market is a complex beast, its many parts interconnected through a multitude of linkages. When one part fails, the entire system reacts: certain linkages are burdened with extra stress, while other components sit idle.

Gasoline consumption in the United States has been dropping for years. In the last decade, vehicle fuel efficiency has improved by 20%, and the combination of that shift and a weak economy of late has pushed gasoline demand to its lowest level in a decade.

The Fukushima disaster reminded us all of the dangers inherent in uranium-fueled nuclear reactors. Fresh news yesterday about Tepco's continued struggle to contain and cool the fuel rods highlights just how energetic uranium fission reactions are and how challenging to control.

Rumors are swirling that India and Iran are at the negotiating table right now, hammering out a deal to trade oil for gold. Why does that matter, you ask? Only because it strikes at the heart of both the value of the US dollar and today's high-tension standoff with Iran.

To many walking the planet, fracking has a seriously bad reputation. Thanks to hyperbole and misinformation, fracking opponents have convinced a lot of people that the operators who drill and then hydraulically fracture underground rock layers thumb their noses at and even hate the environment.

For those who dream of world peace, the situation has moved way past disheartening to nigh on scary. And for anyone interested in the energy markets or hoping economic recoveries in America and Europe can help solve the world's suffocating debt problems, the outlook is dark and stormy because an unstable Middle East means expensive oil for the rest of the world.

Let's begin by positioning the sector. Investing in a pipeline company is similar to investing in a utility: Like electricity providers, pipeline companies operate in heavily regulated environments, and once they are up and running, pipeline operators enjoy stable cash flows from long-term contracts.

All through 2011 copper had remained essentially between US$4 and $4.50 a pound, but on September 11 it dropped below that range and didn’t really stop falling until October 4, when it bottomed at $3.05.