Driving back from Sharjah the other night, it was eerily dark as we drove through the so-called industrial area. "Do we pass the mad house?" asked a fellow passenger as we tried to maneuver around the unfamiliar streets of this UAE emirate. "What mad house?" screeched another passenger as the black car rumbled past a deserted palace, where rumor has it the chairs do jigs on the ceiling and things often go bump in the night in a building that is permanently dark.
The oil patch boasts a new high-profile "villain," but this time we won't be seeing him in a perp walk outside a federal courthouse somewhere. Nope, in this case you can catch him every Thursday night on TV working maliciously to upset the rhythm of the iconic CBS reality show Survivor. And the Platts Oil Barrel plans to follow along, reporting his weekly antics as he attempts to "outplay, outwit and outlast" 19 other Survivor contestants vying for a prize of $1 million that goes to the last one standing sometime near the end of the year.
His name is Russell Hantz -- owner of Hantz Tankering in Dayton, Texas, near Houston. He's made no secret of his strategy for this season, which debuted last Thursday in Samoa.
Lost in the financial chaos of the 2009 downcycle is the emergence of what appears to be a fundamental change in the way the industry deploys rigs for land drilling in North America. That change will result in a need for fewer rigs once the industry shakes off the recession and returns to work, according to a handful of analysts, led by Jim Crandell at Barclays Capital.
Grabbing a propane-run taxi is nothing unusual in Tokyo, but you need to be lucky to catch a hybrid taxi. Soon, you may have a much better chance of grabbing hybrids anywhere in Tokyo, and other major cities in Japan.
Recently, I was one of the fortunate few to catch a ride in Toyota's best-selling hybrid, the Prius. My driver excitedly told me about his three-month long experience with the new vehicle. Hybrid cars are no longer part of tomorrow's world here, and they are already helping slash demand for gasoline across Japan.
A mix of jubilation and fear is in the air in Tokyo today. Yukio Hatoyama has been sworn in as the country's 93rd prime minister. In the few hours since he was approved by parliament, he has promised everything from straight talk with the Americans on beef and war, to slashing emissions by 25% in just ten years.
Japan has turfed out the Liberal Democratic Party, dominant since 1955, and ushered in a new party with a new leader. The Japanese are certainly enjoying an Obama moment. And just like America back on January 20, the sight of a new leader promising sweeping change is bringing as much terror to Japan's vested interests as it is bringing euphoria to those who felt on the short end of Japan's decades-long deflation.
Fear is especially powerful for the Sogo Shosha, the middle-aged warrior class that feeds -- and feeds off -- Japan's giant $5 trillion-a-year economy. The Japanese insist, above all, that Hatoyama must finally fix the economy. And he's expected to take aim at the kind of cronyism that is their life-blood.
It was pretty clear in the runup to OPEC's September 9 meeting that ministers were not going to change quotas.
But, given that there had been a lot of comments from OPEC ministers about falling adherence to those quotas and high inventories in the industrialized countries, it had been expected that the communique would call for stricter compliance.
It's not unheard of for OPEC to spring surprises and come out with an unexpected decision on production but that looks highly unlikely at the meeting that will take place late on September 9.
Every utterance by ministers arriving in the Austrian capital over the past couple of days suggests that OPEC will again rubber-stamp the deal agreed last December to remove 4.2 million b/d of crude supply from world oil markets.
The Indian airline industry received yet another blow September 8, when about 360 Jet Airways pilots went on an illegal strike in Mumbai to protest the dismissal of two union employees in August.
It's an old sporting adage and one that in England is often ascribed to the legendary football manager, Brian Clough. Ahead of a key soccer match, an interviewer posed the question of whether Clough could expect to win a game when, on paper, his team was clearly outclassed.
Clough, never short of a Churchillian response, coolly observed; "The game's not played on paper, young man. It's played on grass."
For doubting Thomases of Cash for Clunkers handouts, here's more fodder for skepticism in the face of what proved blowout media coverage: according to a University of California-Davis study, the federal government's Cash for Clunkers program is expected to have paid "at least 10 times the 'sticker price' to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide."
"While carbon credits are projected to sell in the
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