In an article about world oil prices posted on CNN yesterday, Exxon CEO Rex W. Tillerson, is quoted “Crude prices in New York would be around $40-$45 a barrel without the risk of supply disruptions.” That may be true, but if we look at recent price history, that’s still 2x what crude was selling for in 2002. Check the chart below which has the average price of crude oil per barrel.



I believe that market demand, not only from the US, but globally continues to increase while supply stays relatively flat. That’s a sure fire recipe for price increase. Yes, more oil reserves are being discovered, but each successive discovery is more expensive to harvest. Make no mistake about it, oil is never going to be “cheap” again.


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Technorati Tags: Energy | Oil Price | Supply Disruption

The Reese River project is underway with a 1,200m slim hole for exploration. Sierra Geothermal expects to tap somewhere between 13 and 30 megawatts (MW) when the project enters production. At 30MW, that represents enough power to run around 26,000 households in the US for a year.

An interesting side note on this is that Sierra’s drilling program is receiving some $580,000 of Federal assistance throught the GRED program, a program that has been eliminated with the release of the FY2007 US Federal budget. See this entry for more detail on this subject.

Thanks to Jim for passing this along.


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Technorati Tags: Energy | Geothermal | Drilling

Joint Venture of Silicon Valley publishes an annual report attempting to provide a holistic view of life and opportunity in the valley. To their credit, I’ve not seen a more complete view than what they’ve published – tip of the hat to Kevin for passing this along. The report for 2006 is available here. The report covers people, economy, society, place, and governance in the valley and is assembled by a diverse group of private and public agencies.

The general report is interesting enough, but I found a section on investment in clean tech to be very telling. Overall venture investment in the valley Quarters 1-3 in 2005 (Q4 2006 not yet available, so this will be a 3 quarter comparison) was $4.6B. The same period in 2006 saw the total rise to $5.2B, a healthy 13% increase year over year.

When we break out the clean tech segment, it’s even more interesting. Check the chart below:



As you can see the 2005 Q1-3 total investment was on the order of $95M compared with $480M in the same period for 2006. A 505% increase year over year. Perhaps even more importantly, the total share of clean tech in the overall venture picture increased from 2% in 2005 to 9% in 2006. The chart below gives a breakout of the general areas of investment in clean tech and the dollar amount in each category:



It’s clear that we’re starting to see a shift in the way people are thinking about “green” from something that “is good for the planet” to something that “is good business.” And that’s exactly the shift that needs to happen, until these technologies and their attendant environmental benefits are profitable, we won’t see the magnitudes of change required to make a difference. However, venture capitalists as a rule seek out places their money can work at multiples, it’s encouraging to see the expectation of returns in this segment.


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Technorati Tags: Energy | Investment | Clean Tech

Richard Branson today announced a $25M prize for the first viable means of “scrubbing the atmosphere of billions of tons of carbon gases from the atmosphere.”

It’s a big challenge, sort of the same spirit of the Ansari X Prize that gave $10M to the first non-government organization to reach space with manned flights twice within two weeks.


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Technorati Tags: Carbon Prize | 25 Million | Atmosphere Scrubber

Ormat Technologies (ORA) was granted an 11,000 acre geothermal lease off the coast of Texas. This is significant in it represents the first such lease in Texas, home of petroleum.

One has to wonder about the feasibility of tapping into such a resource in that area. By all indications it is a DEEP resource we’re talking about that will be technically difficult to tap – think ocean drilling rig expensive. We’ll watch development of this resource with interest. Thanks to Jim for passing this along yesterday.


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Technorati Tags: Energy | Geothermal | Texas