Just One Sector: Fuel Efficiency Pure Plays

"Peak oil is dead," Rob Wile declared last week. Colin Sullivan says it has "gone the way of the Flat Earth Society", writing Those behind the theory appear to have been dead wrong, at least in terms of when the peak would hit, having not anticipated the rapid shift in technology that led to exploding oil and natural gas production in new plays and areas long since dismissed as dried up.

John Petersen submits:As a result of sweeping regulatory changes, the second decade of the new millennium is shaping up as a time of unprecedented progress in automotive fuel efficiency. In the EU, where small cars have been prevalent for decades, gasoline prices of $5 to $8 per gallon are the norm and consumers prize diesel engines, new regulations will require automakers to reduce tailpipe CO2 emissions to an average of 130 grams per kilometer (g/km) as follows:

An increasing push to substitute natural gas for oil and improved fuel economy could lead to the end of growing oil demand much sooner than many are predicting. That was the forecast made on Tuesday by Seth Kleinman, head of energy strategy at Citigroup. The broad consensus in the oil industry and among analysts right now is that global oil demand will continue to grow past 2030, a forecast that takes its cue from the robust oil demand growth of the last few decades. But Mr. Kleinman said changing trends in the last couple of years challenge that assumption.

Morningstar submits: by Bradley Meeks Although much has been written about two uncertainties in life, none is more famous than a letter written by Benjamin Franklin to Jean-Baptiste Leroy in 1789, in which Franklin stated, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". While death can be considered one of the two certainties in life, several unfavorable secular trends are hampering longer-term growth and profitability in the death-care industry.

As U.S. retail gasoline prices once again near $4.00 a gallon, does this pose a threat to the economy and President Obama's prospects for re-election? My answer is no. The graph below plots average U.S. gasoline prices, adjusted for inflation, over the last decade. This is now the fourth time we've been near the $4 threshold. It first happened in June 2008, again in May 2011, and again in April of this year. In fact, on each of those previous 3 occasions the average U.S. retail price of gasoline was higher than it is today.

John Petersen submits:One of the most seductive and dangerous stock market myths is the immensely popular but demonstrably false notion that the rapid cost reductions and performance gains we enjoyed during the information and communications technology revolution will be repeated in the age of cleantech. The persistence of the mythology is astonishing when you consider that the entire history of alternative energy proves that cost reductions and performance gains are extraordinary events, rather than common occurrences.