The Daily Graphic: Which Company More Able to Pay? $200 Billion BP or $100 Billion BP?

It’s totally reasonable and inevitable that the share price of BP would suffer mercilessly from the company’s gargantuan liability in the Gulf of Mexico.  Earlier this week I created the following chart of BP’s daily closing share price for it’s U.S.-listed shares.

When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar opined publicly that the company ought to be responsible for all unemployment claims related to the federal government’s six month moratorium on offshore Gulf drilling, BP’s stock took an especially nasty dive to a 14-year low on Wednesday.  I hope that the Obama Administration’s efforts to turn public opinion back in the president’s favor on this mess don’t backfire and kill what this country needs to be the proverbial “Golden Goose” for the next several years.  A heavily-regulated and monitored BP – in a strong financial position – is the company that will be able to afford the tens of billions of dollars needed to make the people and environment of the Gulf Coast whole.

Goldman Sachs Oil Forecast – $90 by 2010

Just a few days after OPEC projected oil at $90 per barrel in the first quarter of 2010, Goldman Sachs today is saying essentially the same thing:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its forecast for U.S. benchmark oil by 31 percent to $85 a barrel for the end of 2009 and predicted further gains next year as demand recovers and supplies shrink.

“As the financial crisis eases, an energy shortage lies ahead,” Goldman analysts Jeffrey Currie in London and David Greely in New York said in a report e-mailed today. The bank set a 12-month price target of $90 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate crude, up from $70, and introduced a forecast of $95 for the end of 2010.

Read the Rest of the Story at Bloomberg

Obama’s Big Step in Right Direction on Auto Fuel Efficiency and Emissions

The Rose Garden announcement made today by President Barack Obama is perhaps the first tangible example of the political and public policy synergy among environmentalists, national security interests, big business and consumers.

The president’s “National Fuel Efficiency Policy” will serve consumers with more fuel efficient cars – cheaper to drive – big business by streamlined and equal application of federal regulation, and the nation’s national security interests by decreasing our dependence on foreign oil.  Finally, less gasoline burned means less pollutants into the atmosphere, a policy environmentalists should heartily support.

According to information released by the White House, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the federal Dept. of Transportation and the state of California all collaborated with auto industry and environmental interests on the new fuel efficiency policy.

Among other things the new program will:

• Require that all sizes of cars and trucks become more energy efficient;
• Requires automakers to maintain an average fuel economy rating for their fleets of 35.5 mpg by 2016;
• Create a uniform national policy cutting compliance costs for automakers;
• Projects a reduction in oil consumption of 1.8 billion barrels over model years 2012-16;
• Projects a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 900 million metric tons over the same period.

The Daily Graphic: Stimulus Bill Changes EIA’s Forecast on Renewables, Energy Expense and Emissions

Source: Energy Information Administration