Another oil major invests in renewable energy

After finally resolving the dispute over Kashagan (a fair result financially, although not a kind one for corporate reputations), Eni was able to move on to happier news today with its announcement of a $ 50m investment in to solar energy research at MIT.

Italian business leaders have long resented the fact that cloudy Germany has a much better-developed solar power sector than they do, so it is an obvious interest for a company looking for a future beyond its established strength in oil and gas.

This route is becoming a well-trodden path, with all the oil majors includ-ing BP and even ExxonMobil investing in R&D for alternative energy. The question one has to ask, though, is whether they will benefit very much from it in the end. History shows that it is hard to realise the full potential of a new business that competes directly against your traditional core activity. Just look at IBM and Xerox.

We have not yet found the Microsoft and Apple of the energy world, but somewhere, they are probably out there.

CERA on $100 oil: where is the “break point”?

An excellent analysis of how we got to $100 oil on the website of Cambridge Energy Research Associates raises the question of how much higher prices can go, but does not answer it.

The piece appears to suggest that the “break point” for oil prices, as illustrated in figure 6 with some cute little blue figures, is about $ 120. At that point, factors such as the rise of energy efficiency, alternative fuels and other policy changes, as well as the economic impact, really begin to take their toll on demand.

As CERA points out, however, the average price for WTI over 2007 was a “mere” $72 a barrel; $100-plus sustained for a year or more would do much more damage to the world economy than anything we have seen so far. The break point may well turn out to be pretty close to where we are now.

Opec’s efforts to defend $100 notwithstanding, I think a slowing world economy still means we are likely to see oil lower at the end of 2008 than at the beginning.

$100 oil defies the economic outlook

US crude has touched $ 100 a barrel at last – well, just about, anyway — meaning that I have scored the first success in the FT’s predictions for 2008.

It was, of course, a very easy call to make: it was impossible to believe that there would not be some event sufficient to push a volatile oil price up the few extra dollars that it needed. As it has turned out, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, fresh attacks in Nigeria and a weak Institute for Supply Management survey of US manufacturing have done the trick.

Behind those immediate factors, the underlying factors behind the strong oil price are well-rehearsed. Opec agreed cuts in its production in 2006 and those cuts held for much of last year, helped by the fact that some members such as Iran and Venezuela would have found it hard to increase production even if they had been allowed to. Non-Opec production has been deeply disappointing, partly as a hangover from the years of under-investment at the beginning of the decade, partly because mature areas such as the North Sea have been declining faster than expected, and partly because some oil-rich countries such as Russia have become less hospitable to foreign investment. At the same time, demand for oil in emerging economies, particularly China and the oil producers themselves, has grown strongly.

Yet while that combination of forces sent oil from $ 60 a year ago to $ 100 today, it is hard to see it being sustained, at a time when the outlook for the world economy, and in particular the US, is so troubling. China attracts the attention in terms of the oil market, because it is the biggest source of demand growth, but the consumption of China and India together is less than half that of North America. An important question for the oil market as the year wears on will be how far China can avoid the turbulence created by the economic problems of the US. Recession in the world's biggest oil consumer plus a slowdown in the world’s strongest-growing oil market do not sound like a prescription for high oil prices.

The only way you can realistically remain an oil bull and an economic bear – which is what the markets seem to be right now – is if you take a very negative view of the supply outlook, and the evidence to support such a view remains unconvincing. Today's Lex column takes a timely pop at peak oil theorists, pointing out that while Marion Hubbert was right about the US, he was way off on his predictions of world output. The latest warnings about Opec’s long-run supply potential, published in Opec’s own review, are sobering, and suggest a future of tighter supplies and higher prices. But in the near term, it looks likely that demand for oil will take a hit – partly, of course, as a consequence of the high price – while supply is rising, and in the months to come we will see a retreat from $ 100.