Etanol.nu

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices hit a record high $117 a barrel Friday as jitters over Nigerian oil supplies outweighed a rally in the dollar and fears of an economic slowdown in giant energy consumer China.

U.S. light crude settled up $1.83 at $116.96 a barrel, before hitting a record $117. London Brent crude gained $1.49 to $113.92.

... A Nigerian rebel group said Friday it had sabotaged a major oil pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell and vowed to step up attacks on oil installations.

Shell officials, which is currently pumping 400,000 barrels per day below capacity in the OPEC nation due to sabotage and security concerns, confirmed a small amount of production had been shut in.

Strikers at the major southern French oil port of Fos-Lavera vowed to remain on picket lines through Saturday. The strike trapped 23 vessels, including four crude oil tankers and six refined products tankers in the port.

A similar strike March lasted 17 days and forced four oil refineries with 603,000 barrels per day of combined capacity to curtail operations, helping spur a late spring rally in European diesel prices.

A British union will launch a two-day strike from April 27 at Ineos Grangemouth refinery, forcing it to shut down with an impact on the North Sea Forties pipeline system, which terminates there, both sides said on Friday.

I had read this somewhere, but it makes sense. I was telling my wife yesterday, if you think $4 is expensive for a gallon of gas, then you (wife) go push our car 35 miles and tell me how long it takes you. The gasoline (1 gallon) will do it in 30 minutes without breaking a sweat.

$4 for 28000 calories isn't too bad.

Management and trades union officials at the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland are to meet on Tuesday at the ACAS conciliation service for talks to avoid a strike planned at the weekend, a union official said.

"There's a party going to ACAS this morning for a meeting at 2 pm," Gordon Russell, a union convenor at the refinery for the trade union UNITE.

Russell said management had made no new proposals at talks with the union on Monday evening to avert the strike called over the 200,000 barrel a day refinery's pension scheme and the two-day strike was still set to go ahead on Sunday.

"Everything stays as it is pending the discussions," he said.

The planned strike at Grangemouth was one of the factors driving oil prices to a record high on Monday.

Refinery owner Ineos has started closing one of the refinery's three crude processing units as part of a safety shutdown ahead of the strike.

A shutdown at Grangemouth would reduce flows of North Sea crude into Britain and hit British gas supplies, if the Forties pipeline, which feeds the refinery, is forced to close.

In the grab bag of tax cuts dangled like bait by Sen. John McCain last week was a proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal tax on gasoline from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

This tax holiday would give the economy a boost, said Mr. McCain. No doubt he hopes it will give his presidential campaign a boost as well. Americans are paying the highest gas prices ever in this country, with the cost of a gallon heading north of $3.40 on average.

American motorists find high prices painful, but they also probably realize that the tax holiday will deny the government revenue for needed bridge, road and other improvements. This country's transportation network is an advertisement for yesterday, not tomorrow.

The nearly 20-cent-per-gallon temporary price cut advocated by the presumed Republican presidential nominee would also encourage more driving, thereby creating more pollution that worsens global warming — the alarming natural phenomenon that Mr. McCain has pledged to fight.

Policy-wise, then, the federal gas tax suspension would be a loser.

The rest of the economic program outlined by Mr. McCain at a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh included an expansion of President Bush's tax cuts mostly for upper-income individuals and corporations and a disappointing backing away from his earlier promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term.

Mr. McCain was on firmer ground when he was a deficit hawk.

Bush verkar ha kört landet rejält till botten http://politicalhumor.about.com/library ... resume.htm men tack vara att han vann fick vi i varje fall filmen En inconvenient truth..

/Aryan

Det är ena sidan av saken. Andra sidan är att Bush satte rejäl fart på etanolen, motarbetad av miljöorganisationer.

Ja den (in)hemska majsetanolen som han sent om sidor började stödja, vet inte om vi nu ska vara himla glada över det stödet, den ger snarare etanol ett dåligt namn.