Marin Katusa's Blog

When oil prices start to decline, investors and economists get worried. Oil prices in large part reflect global sentiment towards our economic future – prosperous, growing economies need more oil while slumping...

It turns out that China is not willing to pay whatever it has to for energy and metal resources. Several resource deals have faltered in recent months, indicating an increasingly choosy Chinese perspective on energy and metal acquisitions.

Coal prices are surging ahead even as most other commodities pull back, spurred on by expectations that metallurgical and thermal coal production will again fail to meet rising global demand this year.

In a dramatic about-face, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Monday that Germany will phase out nuclear power completely by 2022, shutting down its nine operational reactors and never restarting the seven reactors that were suspended in the wake of the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

A U.S. Senate committee has been conducting a hearing on the safety of hydraulic fracturing, as it is formally known. The province of Quebec, the state of New York, and the entirety of France have recently banned the technique. And two new studies claim that fracking-derived shale gas is actually worse for the environment than mining and burning coal. With so many claims flying around about this unconventional practice, let’s get a closer look at the facts.

For many years, trying to tap an oil sands deposit accomplished about as much as sipping molasses through a straw, but that is changing. So do oil sands companies make a good investment now?

The oil picture is always complex, but right now things are about as complicated as they can get.

The most important metallurgical coal basin in the world is underwater. Open pits have become lakes, stockpiles are soaked, and rail lines are submerged and in places destroyed. Damage is estimated at $5 to $6 billion.

To begin, geothermal is still the forgotten renewable and, compared with fossil fuels, has a long road to becoming a household word in the markets. The industry faces a series of challenges to be taken as a serious and viable alternative to the energy king, fossil fuels. Here’s a summary of strengths and weaknesses that came up at the forum.

For many who aren’t familiar with the region, the Middle East comes across as an updated version of Lawrence’s Arabia, only with lots of oil. But this mosaic of cultures isn’t made up of only Arabs or Muslims, and most Middle East countries are neither awash with heavily armed, rather excitable citizenry… nor with black gold, which is what we’re interested in. Twenty-three countries comprise the Arab League, but only Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Iran are major oil producers.