The Financial Times enumerates Gazprom's problems: are its ambitions to increase production any more than pipe dreams?  Competition for energy reserves in the Arctic Circle could prompt friction between Russia and NATO, a new commander at the alliance has warned.  Bloomberg reports that the holder of the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, Turkmenistan, is ready to export natural gas to European collaborators if they build a pipeline across the Caspian Sea to transport the fuel.  According to Oil and Gas Eurasia, Russia needs a total of $310 billion to fully carry out its program for the analysis and exploration of its continental shelf, a deputy natural resources minister has announced.  Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko has said that Russia has been invited as an observer to the December meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.  Finnish environmental ...

It’s one of the first rules in the book of mainstream economic wisdom: a country’s economy is the thermometer which “reads” its stock market’s temperature. If financial conditions are heating up, stocks rise; if they are cooling down, stocks fall. Were it so simple — millionaires wouldn’t make up a measly .15% of the global population.

Obviously, there’s a major flaw with this logic; namely, it isn’t true. Time and again, stock prices smolder to near boiling even as economic growth chills to the bone. (The opposite also holds: Stock prices cool down even as the economy is on fire.)

Take, for instance, Germany’s main stock index, the DAX 30. On August 13, Europe’s number one economy reported a .3% rise in gross domestic product (GDP) — Germany’s first quarter of growth since January 2008. Soon after, the …

Oil prices have reached a six-month high, surging to $65 a barrel.  The Russian Natural Resources and Environment Ministry has drawn up a proposal to create a reserve of lucrative oil fields.  An analysis conducted by the US Geological Survey says that nearly one-third of the world's undiscovered gas is north of the Arctic Circle, mainly lying in Russian territory, meaning the country's control of gas may be 'accentuated and extended'.  Central Europe's largest oil company OMV wants to open a delayed pipeline between Bratislava and Vienna as early as next year, which would give it direct access to Russian oil for the first time.  Italy has said it would support Moscow's proposal to have the European Union subsidize some of the gas bills that Ukraine is struggling to pay.  OPEC will leave its quotas for daily ...

Bald Eagle Energy, Inc., (BEEI.OB) is convinced that Alaska’s North Slope still holds vast undiscovered reserves of oil and gas. It’s a belief shared by some of the biggest oil companies in the world, fueled by continued discoveries in the area starting in the 1970s, and encouraged by record producing wells. It takes 150-200 wells in the lower 48 states to match the output of a single North Slope well, according to Roger Herrera, Arctic Power D.C. Coordinator, as quoted on ANWR.org.

The North Slope region continues to produce major discoveries. The Prudhoe Bay Field, the largest oil field in North America, has been joined by two other fields, the Point Thompson Field, and Kuparuk River Field. Since production began, Prudhoe Bay alone has resulted in over 10 billion barrels of oil, and still produces over 400,000 barrels every day.

And geological studies suggest

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Alaska Governor Sarah Palin recently stated, “Alaska remains the most prospective oil and gas area in North America. Thanks to our attractive geology, our stable business climate and our reasonable government environment, Alaska continues to attract healthy interest from the global energy industry.”

When petroleum production from the 48 states began to decline in the early 1970s, massive discoveries of Alaska’s North Slope region offered hope of a new source of domestic oil. In fact, the Prudhoe Bay Field discovery in this region became the largest oil field in North America at 15 billion barrels of oil and 27 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Since the discovery, over 10 billion barrels of oil has been produced and even today Prudhoe is recognized as America’s highest yielding oil field with production averaging about 400,000 barrels a day.

While the global average size for technical

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