bloomberg.com :

Crude oil traded near a record in New York above $145 a barrel as investors purchased commodities as an alternative to flagging equities markets. Oil has risen 19 out of 27 weeks this year as money managers bought crude futures rather than US stocks, which yesterday [3 Jul 2008] completed the longest streak of weekly declines in 4 years. Crude oil for August 2008 delivery climbed to $145.85 a barrel, the highest since trading .....

Update: Today's Drumbeat at The Oil Drum features two additional stories covering this issue:

Gas guzzlers and 'ghostburbs'

SUV factories closing, bicycle sales and train use rocketing, commuter belts becoming "ghostburbs" as residents flock to the inner cities . . . welcome to 2008 America, where soaring oil and petrol prices have triggered a sudden revolution in travel behaviour and a seismic upheaval in the automobile industry.

High gas prices t...

See here for details and sign up if you haven't already, it's free. No question, this has been one of the toughest months for alternative energy stocks since I began this site - we do seem to be in some kind of a global bear market.

I thought it would be interesting to contrast the prices with my earliest newsletter from the start of 2007;

• Oil was less than $60 which seems a world away now when we are clearly over $140 a barrel.
  
• The Wilderhi...

I have grappled over the past year with the question of just how much speculation is playing a factor in runaway oil prices. I think it is primarily a supply/demand issue, but I feel that such a large flow of money into commodities is also driving the surge.

Not so, says a new article in Fortune:

Hunting for oil villains

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Atlanta hedge fund manager Michael Masters has been a star witness in two recent Congressional hearings o...

rjacobsen0 pointed out over on the discussion board (post) that one of the 14 candidate questions in Science Debate 2008 is right in our wheelhouse: 3. Energy. Many policymakers and scientists say energy security and sustainability are major problems facing the United States this century. What policies would you support to meet demand for energy [...]

I was quite disturbed the other day to learn from the FT Energy Survey the other day, that the price per megawatt of wind turbines is continuing to climb. As the article says;

Shai Hill, division director of climate change at Macquarie Capital Securities, predicts that the price of turbines - which has risen by more than a third in the past two years to about £1.5m - will rise by 10 per cent this year and with a rise of the same amount expec...

It’s been a while since I last blogged here. Not for lack of stuff to blog about; this is a topic that will just get louder and more active as time goes on.  But I’ve been busy serving clients. In my early communal days, I can honestly say that I lived almost completely off-grid for a [...]

By Alisha Fowler and Jesse Jenkins. Cross-posted from the Breakthrough Blog.

On Tuesday the Senate failed to pass the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 (50-44). The bill contained, among other things, critical production tax incentives for the rapidly growing renewable energy industry. The Senate may get another chance to vote on the incentives this month, but their bickering, politicization of the issue and ultimate stalling is looki...

Everywhere you listen from radio, television, newspapers and friends is about the surge in oil prices and inflations.

My friend from Malaysia who knew about "peak oil" about the same time as me brushed off invitation to protest by many ladies there. He had been praised for his "ability predict the future" and even wrongly accused as government agent to convince people to conserve energy.

Yes, I did knew about all these is about to happen som...

So John McCain caught wind that the United States has 21 billion barrels of domestic proven oil reserves. That is his justification for drilling offshore and in ANWR, that and the fact that he was kissing up to the oil and gas industry in Houston earlier today. Regardless, the fact that we do have 21 billion barrels of oil reserves shouldn't give anyone any comfort since the United States will consume that amount in less than three years. McCa...

As the dual problems of global warming and peak oil become so pressing that even US politicians can no longer ignore them, they, and all Americans, will face a daunting series of public policy questions. In one way or another, all the questions raised by the need to rein in CO2 emissions and accelerate [...]