May 5, 2009
Buffett Sees Massive Inflation to Handle Staggering Debt | moneynews.newsmax.com
China is buying natural resources at bargain prices. There are two reasons for this: 1. China needs to have access to as great a volume of energy and the less common metals used in high technologies possible, and 2. China's horde of dollar denominated paper will never again have as much value as it does today nor is much more of it it likely to long remain available to China at anywhere near the value it has today.
May 4, 2009
Study: Electric cars not as green as you think | news.cnet.com
Working with their blinders on, the activist environmentalist movement has managed to get politicians to waste vast amounts of capital, and even vaster resources of time and human endeavor, on the development of electrified cars using untested battery systems. Using current and reasonably predictable technology electric cars add almost nothing, nothing, to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and cost much more to produce than equivalent internal combustion engine powered vehicles intended for the same use! In a debt burdened world it is a tragic misapplication of brainpower and labor to continue to invest billions of dollars for marginal increases, if any, in movement towards the goal of an electrified global fleet.
May 4, 2009
Mining: Lynas, Wpl, OZL, ILU | ibtimes.com.au
China's hunt for natural resources to feed its already substantial heavy industrial base and its growing consumer products industry is fueled by the size of the reserves of capital accumulated by the Chinese state and driven by the single-minded goal of China's government of full employment for China. America's more and more isolated response to this drive by China for natural resources is to ignore it and assume that America and the Western world will continue to follow the American model of myopic free market capitalism in which natural resources will always be miraculously made available to the highest bidder. American bankers like to say that the golden rule is that "Them thats got the gold makes the rules." They're wrong. The rule is "Them thats got the rare resources makes the rules." Its the last few minutes of the new "Great Game," and it's not looking good for the home team.
May 1, 2009
Lynas Corp strikes $505m China deal | www.wabusinessnews.com.au
China today produces at least 95% of the world's supply of rare earth elements from its domestic mines primarily in Inner Mongolia. At the beginning of 2008 two very large Australian REE mines were well on the way to coming into production. Either one of them would eventually have been the largest single-point mine for REEs in the world. One of the Australian companies was also beginning construction of a REE refinery in Malaysia, which would have been the largest in the world outside of China. Control of the shares of both of the Australian companies is now coming into hands of state owned aggressive Chinese mining and trading entities. It has been predicted that Chinese domestic demand for REEs will exceed its domestic production in the next 2-4 years. That is precisely how long it will take for the two Australian mines and the Malaysian refinery to be brought into production. Three significant REE mining possibilities, only, now remain out of Chinese control.
April 27, 2009
Obama promises major investment in R&D | finance.yahoo.com
It takes twelve to twenty years to find, select, encourage, test, and educate scientists, engineers, and medical professionals. By contrast it takes just a few minutes to select from a crowd those who will run for public office. Yet the future of innovation in America depends on this second class of selected individuals. It is always just luck that gets us progress with this polticized selection system for education. America can not depend on luck.
April 22, 2009
Platinum Pollution Issue Gets Measured | www.nature.com
The ability of analytical chemists to detect low levels of metals in water has gone far beyond the ability of environmentalists to exercise common sense and good judgement.
April 20, 2009
Molycorp Minerals, LLC Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire Controlling Interest in Great Western Minerals Group | uk.sys-con.com
What possible advantage can there be for MolyCorp, which was privatized in 2008 by a group of venture funds, one specializing in mining, and underwritten by Goldman Sachs, in acquiring the publicly traded Great Western Minerals Group (http://www.gwmg.ca)? It may be that GWMG's business model and operations contains something that completes MolyCorp's business model for its Mountain Pass, California, rare earth mine, so that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Institutional Investors Participation in Recent Equities Market Rally: A Canadian Perspective
April 20, 2009
financial times ft.com | www.ft.com
The major Canadian equities market index, the S&P/TSX Composite Index, is up 5% YTD (up 25% since March 9th, 2009) ; with the overall value traded down 27%, and volume up roughly 18% compared with the same period last year on a year-over-year basis. The number of transactions is up 26% YTD vs. the same period last year. The TSX Venture exchange (which consists of micro and small capitalization companies) is up 24% YTD. The consensus among institutional investors in Canada, as elsewhere around the globe, remains divided. A few things likely need to occur before the majority of the naysayers move toward the other camp, such as; a visible and sustainable improvement in the global economy, a broad-based recovery in corporate earnings, a steady and meaningful increase in the prices of commodities, a slowdown or reversal in the recent rate of increase in the unemployment rate, more balanced conditions in the housing market, and a significant positive shift in consumer confidence.
April 20, 2009
Hybrid Hummer Promises 100 Miles per Gallon | blog.wired.com
The celebration of the creation of sophomoric toys for elites with public money ignores the fact that the supply and demand of lithium is a zero sum game. When the demand for high end toys for people with unlimited discretionary spending ability is high the demand for practical devices for the person of average means will go unfilled. Each 53 kWh battery for a Hummer, for example, will, if a lithium-ion type, use 53 kg, or 116 lb of lithium; it will cost as much as $53,000 at retail just for this battery!
April 13, 2009
No easy road for U.S. auto industry | www.latimes.com
It's been a common practice for carmakers to first introduce a new vehicle "type" in limited production as a marketing test. There have been, for example, the Corvette, the Thunderbird, the Aquacar, the Edsel, the Pinto, The Chevrolet Vega, The Cadillac Cimmeron, the American Motors Alliance, the Chrysler K-car, the Chrysler Minivan, the SUV, The GM EV1, the Toyota Prius, and so on. Few of the very, very, expensive marketing gambles for OEM auto makers have ever paid off, or even repaid their tooling costs, viz the second edition of the Thunderbird by Ford This explains why auto makers are reluctant to try out totally new car types or radical "under the hood changes" the benefits of which need to be explained to non technical customers. The reluctance of any major car maker to put a pure EV or a lithium battery using vehicle on any kind into even limited production is an old story not a new one.
Chesapeake Energy bites the natural gas bullet
January 25, 2012
Flurry of newbuild drilling rig deliveries in 2012 may dampen rig rates
January 20, 2012
Talisman joins the ranks of cautious E&P companies
January 12, 2012
Early signs of caution begin to cloud frontier exploration and production
January 4, 2012
It's too early in the game to write off Shtokman
December 8, 2011