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Record-breaking streak for oil
Crude oil has never been more expensive in your lifetime.
Oil futures prices have posted six record highs in the past nine trading days, pushing oil to $110.33 Thursday -- well above the previous inflation-adjusted peak of $101.70 in 1980. U.S. retail gasoline prices jumped to record highs this week, too.
Don't expect relief soon. Historically, as U.S. and European economies slowed, global demand for oil cooled, sending prices down. Not this time. Asian economies are still growing briskly, particularly China's and India's. As a result, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday it expects net global demand to grow this year by 1.7 million barrels a day, putting 2008 average daily global demand at about 87.5 million barrels per day.
OPEC, which last week decided to hold oil production to current levels, also said it does not plan to revisit production quotas until September. Could be a wild summer.
JOHN J. OSLUND
Winning with wind
General Electric Co. and Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world's two biggest wind-turbine makers, are reaping benefits from record orders by U.S. utilities racing to add generating capacity even as they face the loss of subsidies.
GE, Vestas and Siemens AG stand to gain although the extension of the production tax credit, due to expire in December, is stalled in Congress. Four years ago, the last time the credit wasn't renewed, orders came to a near standstill. Now, rising natural gas prices and state greenhouse-emission laws are fueling a surge in demand for wind power, which accounts for 30 percent of new generating capacity and may boost GE's wind-turbine sales 25 percent to $6 billion this year.
Xcel Energy Inc., the biggest U.S. provider of wind power, is buying 67 GE turbines for a Minnesota wind farm because the state requires it to get almost a third of its power from nonpolluting sources. Wind is the fastest-growing unit at GE Energy, the world's biggest power-plant equipment maker.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Lights out at U energy conference. Irony police notified.
Just as Lawrence Kazmerski, a top official at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was about to give the keynote address at the University of Minnesota's annual E3 conference at the RiverCentre in St. Paul, the lights went out, bathing the audience in darkness and a deep sense of irony.
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