Global oil markets are sensitive to weekly reports of U.S. oil inventory levels. Prices often move up when large falls are reported and down when inventories build – particularly when the data surprises the market. Each Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes its report on oil inventories. Unexpected drops can spark price spikes [...]

My last post here at Amateur Economists was all about the crazy run-around I experienced trying to get heating oil delivered to our house this summer for the coming winter. We ordered the tank filled in early June; but it was just last week that I finally got a heating oil company to fill our [...]

In early June, worried about the rapid increase in the cost of oil, I called my home heating oil provider here in Michigan and ordered a delivery to fill our tank, which is currently almost on empty. The price to fill the tank at that date was just shy of $1100, and last winter we [...]

On July 8, oilman T. Boone Pickens launched a personal initiative to promote wind power as a primary renewable energy source for the United States. Pickens wants the next U.S. president to lead the nation to 20% wind power by 2018 by tapping a “wind corridor” that runs from the Northern Midwest all the way [...]

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Energy published a report entitled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management. Called “The Hirsch Report” after its lead author, Robert Hirsch, its purpose was to lay out a governmental strategy for softening the effects of peak oil and its aftermath: that is, the chaos and [...]