In August, the monthly trade deficit fell to $30.7 billion from $31.9 billion in July. We got improvement from both sides as exports rose by $0.2 billion to $128.2 billion and imports fell to $158.9 billion from $159.8 billion in July, a decrease of $0.9 billion. This reverses two months where the trade deficit rose slightly. On the other hand, over the last year the trade deficit is down dramatically. A year ago our imports were $63.6 billion higher than now, at $222.6 billion, and our exports were $33.4 billion higher at $161.7 billion, resulting in a deficit of $60.9 billion. While the year-over-year improvement in the trade deficit is very good news, the reason for it is not so good. It was a refection of the overall collapse in world trade, something that makes everyone poorer. As far as the GDP calculations are concerned, it does ...

As the US strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) approaches capacity (721.5 million barrels filled out of a total possible 727 million, and will be filled by January 2010), the federal government will fade out of the oil-buying business. Some bearish traders believe that this factor can weigh in on prices, since most petroleum stocks in the United States are government-held rather than private. Bullish traders have also used the filling of the Chinese SPR as a reason that oil should go much higher.

The team at Casey’s Energy Opportunities believe that planned government buying or selling of crude oil for SPRs actually have very little impact in the overall market. However, an overall drawdown of worldwide inventory could put downward pressure on the price of oil. The various countries also have their particular reasons and influences in decisions to tap their reserves.

So which countries are executing preparedness plans to fill their strategic

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Offshore Nambia is quickly becoming one of the world’s greatest frontier oil provinces.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a few major companies took out oil exploration concessions there from the government of South Africa. In 1974, Shell (NYSE: RDS.A / RDS.B) discovered a gas field off the southwest coast with the Kudu project. Early estimates were 1 trillion cubic feet of reserves, but current estimates range up to 10 trillion. Kudu was big, but nobody much cared about natural gas back then. Gas was too cheap, and southern Africa was too far away.

There was hardly any development around Kudu for the next 20 years. South Africa was under international sanctions due to its apartheid regime, so oil companies and other outside investment stayed away. Almost nothing happened with energy development until Namibia became independent in 1990.

By the early 1990s, the gas field at Kudu intrigued foreign oil companies.

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Peak Oil and Petrobras

Tony Daltorio, Investment U Research

Back on Wednesday, September 9, I wrote on how to profit from British Petroleum ADR (NYSE: BP)’s huge discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, and how to profit from peak oil.

And while I stand by the profitability of both that find and stock, I think I should clarify that “peak oil” really doesn’t exist anymore. So instead, let’s call it peak-cheap-and-easily-recoverable-oil instead, since that seems much more appropriate.

The days of cheap and accessible oil are long gone, but that very fact opens up rich opportunities for investors who face up to the realities of today’s oil market.

Possibly the biggest reality comes down to this: Giant oil fields are the industry’s lifeblood. Out of the world’s 70,000 oil fields, the largest twenty account for a quarter of global production.

That’s

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The title, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, pretty much sums up the book’s thesis. This is actually Kevin Phillips’ third book on the subject matter, the first two being - American Theocracy and Wealth and Democracy. I haven’t read the first two of his books, but he freely admits in the introduction to Bad Money that the book is somewhat of a rehash of his first two books. In fact, he discusses almost not writing a third book until he realized that those topics he warned us of in his previous books were finally coming to fruition and that

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The trade deficit in July came in at $32.0 billion -- a significant increase from the $27.5 billion in June. The consensus expectation was that it would be close to unchanged. Since the trade deficit is a direct input into GDP (net exports), this will moderately reduce the expected growth rate for the third quarter. There was, however, some good news in the report: both imports and exports rose, imports just rose faster. Trade now seems to be in a sustainable uptrend, after falling off a cliff in the second half of last year and then stabilizing in the spring. This can be seen in the first graph below (from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/). A year ago, the trade deficit peaked at $64.9 billion on much higher levels of both imports and exports. The world-wide slowdown has dropped our exports by 22.4% from $164.4 billion to $127.6 billion this year, ...

Headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, Biofuels Power Corp.’s mission is to introduce renewable fuels for North America power and reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. Trading on the OTCBB, the company is the first in the biofuels power sector. This involves generating grid power from biodiesel and renewable gas. Incorporated in 2004, Biofuels Power Corporation is the first company to enter the U.S. power grid with 100 percent biofuels made from waste oils. They do not use corn and they do not remove edible vegetable oils from the food chain.

Biofuels Power Corp. gets fat from animal renderers (chicken, beef, and pork) and waste feedstock from vegetable oil processors. The company then processes the feedstock into spec fuel for their power plant. They have a laboratory with technicians that evaluate each feedstock and provide a recipe that will make a high-quality fuel.

Biofuels Power developed the nation’s first grid-connected biodiesel powered

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GreenMan Technologies, Inc. announced that it has retained the services of O’Neill and Associates, a leading full-service government affairs and public relations consulting firm. The firm has been engaged to assist GreenMan’s management team in working with government entities including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Energy. O’Neill and Associates will primarily focus on programs and federal funding associated with the Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Lyle Jensen, GreenMan’s Chief Executive Officer stated, “Through our recently announced acquisition of American Power Group, GreenMan has realigned its business focus to encompass a patented dual fuel alternative energy technology which reduces emissions, provides an alternative fuel for diesel fuel, and extends the useful life of a diesel engine. We believe the benefits of our dual fuel technology make the company eligible for many of the stimulus programs identified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With

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Chen Weidong, a Chinese oil services executive, has published a review of Michael Economides's book about Yukos and the Russian oil industry on Energy Tribune.  The excerpt below is not about Russia, but it was the most shocking part of Weidong's article.  Both Russia and China have avoided reforms to their state-owned energy sectors, posing some similar problems.

The revenue of ExxonMobil is more than the ones for CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC, combined but the number of employees of those companies, combined, is 30 times more than ExxonMobil's. Oil price has become internationalized; the price of oil products in China is higher than in U.S., indicating low efficiency and perhaps lack of competition. We all hope to improve the efficiency, but we are still not clear how this can be done.

China's reliance on foreign oil is more than 50 percent and is increasing. However, our petroleum

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Of all the people you might expect to spearhead a movement away from oil and onto alternative energy, T. Boone Pickens probably wouldn’t be at the top of the list.

But a year ago, the 81-year old chairman of BP Capital spent his own money to buy prime time on major networks and mobilized an “army” of believers in order to get the word out about the dangers of continued dependence on foreign oil.

Earlier this month, Pickens appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to discuss the progress of the “Pickens Plan,”which essentially seeks to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil through a combination of wind-generated power and natural gas powered vehicles. The goal: Drastically reducing or eliminating the need for foreign oil in as little as 10 years.

His timing was perfect, as oil prices shot to all-time highs around $150 a year ago. The plan garnered a lot of attention. And to

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