Oil Prices Today
Posts tagged Oil Spill
Should You Buy Your Heating Oil Over the Summer Months? No Need for Storage? Save Yourself Thousands
Sep 28th
As a consumer should you buy Heating oil in the summer?
The obvious answer is yes, because demand is less in the summer, therefore prices should be cheaper. Now is this an over simplification of the pricing strategy for heating oil, since it is subject to worldwide supply and demand?? Certainly but the general rule still applies. Cheap heating oil is more readily available when the overall demand is low.
What Drives Heating Oil Prices?
Heating Oil is a commodity and is traded on the futures market by traders betting on the relationship between supply and demand at a fixed time in the future. Traders base their decisions to buy or sell on expectations of future oil demand versus current reserves and anticipated production. Future demand can be tricky to predict and reflects traders’ interpretations of economic growth indicators.
What are the Tea Leaves Telling Us?
Many people on both sides of the Atlantic have been concerned about the affects of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. No one is sure at this point both the full effect of the oil spill and the corresponding moratorium on drilling in relation to the UK’s supply of heating oil this winter.? However, the supply of heating oil is not being adversely impacted at this time. Depending on the length and extent of the suspension on drilling by the U. S, prices could be negatively affected in the future.
That anticipated impact may be minimised to some degree by the current economic indicators, which are leaning toward moderate growth with no real signs of a significant increase in activity. While we would all like to see this improve, in the short term, it could restrain demand until production is restored.
What should you do as a consumer?
As with most things in life, planning ahead usually renders the best results. Heating oil suppliers have to buy the oil as well, so the better they can plan their needs, the better bargaining position they can assume. This applies to consumers as well, when planning for this coming winter.
If you are looking for a heating oil supplier you can contact the many of the UK’s national and local suppliers to discuss your coming needs.? Many will provide you with the best plan to minimise your cost but still be prepared, regardless of the severity of the season this price can fluctuate. Many large companies have the resources and a fleet of trucks to meet your needs, no matter how large or small, the loyal companies will always be there when you need them the most.
Renewable Energy And The Environment
Sep 27th
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 12 months you cannot be unaware of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It took months to stop the oil gushing out and, even now, that saga is not over. The environmental damage is monumental and, no doubt, we will be seeing a human toll in coming years due to the exposure of workers to volatile hyrdocarbon compounds and chemicals used to clear the oil. There is no doubt that this spill will be long remembered. Let’s hope we can learn from it.
While the world is not going to be weaned from its dependence on oil overnight, perhaps it has awakened an awareness of how reliant we are on non-renewable resources. When you look at the power to weight ratio for oil and its products, it is clearly a winner which is one of the reasons why it is so widely used. For more than a century now, we have used oil to power machines and have seen fuel efficiencies rise as our technology improved. As a result there is a huge amount capital both physical and intellectual invested in the internal combustion engine (or as some like to call it, the infernal combustion engine).
Given that capital and large scale vested interests, is it possible to move towards renewable energy sources?
I believe that it is and so do millions of others. In recent years there have been developments on a number of fronts that are helping us to move towards renewable energy sources.
Solar panels are becoming slightly cheaper and more efficient. They are now able to be made into flexible panels and even roof tiles that are not much more expensive than traditional tiles. This will lead to them being more widely adopted.
Wind and wave power is being harvested in many parts of the world to ease the demand for power from conventional power stations. While both of these are not new, it is only relatively recently that they have been implemented on a large-scale. As we gain more experience with them we can expect efficiencies to rise. These technologies are suited only to certain locations but every bit helps and, from a reliability point of view, it is better to have a number of smaller generators than one large one to reduce the damage should it fail.
Fuel Cells are becoming more common. They do generate heat and waste products (usually water) so there are still many questions remaining as to the applications they are best suited for.
Battery technology is probably the fastest developing aspect of renewable energy. Batteries are becoming smaller, lighter and capable of storing more energy so their power to weight ratio is increasing. It has meant that solar power generators are able to store more power enabling them to better cope with peak demands and protracted overcast conditions. It has also meant that they are now light enough and have sufficient energy density that they can power motor vehicles for distances that are worthwhile.
It is this last technology that I believe will be the key. While electric vehicles have been around for a long time, they have had limited range, limited speed and were usually heavy due to the batteries. As has been proven by the Tesla Roadster, this is no longer the case. A car that is virtually silent, can go 300 miles on a single charge and that can accelerate faster than a Ferrari makes renewable energy so much more exciting and inviting.
Imagine how much quieter and cleaner our cities would become if even half of the cars were electric. Directly and indirectly that would have to be better for the environment.