Marin Katusa's Contributions

Dozens of countries are slowly altering their international allegiances because of energy considerations. Here I will shine a light on a few of the more significant transitions and how they might impact US and EU energy security.

Relations amongst the countries of the Middle East revolve around religion and historic allegiances. The region's Muslim countries are divided into Sunni and Shiite camps while Jews and Christians are in a constant battle for representation.

Stories of doubles, five-baggers, or even tenfold returns abound in the resource sector. These successes are exactly why we play the game: The discovery and development of a new oilfield or gas basin can create immense value, and being part of a story like that is extremely satisfying, not to mention financially rewarding.

News of a "monster" natural gas find in British Columbia has one again highlighted that North Americans need to make a choice. Do we want to keep the huge volumes of natural gas that have been discovered in recent years across the continent landlocked and transportable only by pipeline, or should we develop the infrastructure that will enable us to transport this fuel to the gas-hungry markets of Asia?

One of oil's most important characteristics is its fungibility, which means that a barrel of refined oil from Texas is equivalent to one from Saudi Arabia or Nigeria or anywhere else in the world. The global oil machine is built upon this premise - tankers take oil wherever it is needed, and one country pays almost the same as the next for this valuable commodity.

Competition is supposed to make competitors stronger, but when it comes to the battle between coal and shale gas for supremacy as the United States' power-generating fuel of choice, the rivalry instead has each commodity holding the other down.

At the latest Casey Research conference, respected investment analyst Porter Stansberry stood at the podium and predicted that the price of oil will fall below US$40 per barrel within the next 12 months.

North America is undergoing a natural gas revolution. The first part of the story is pretty well known: the advent of horizontal drilling and fracturing technologies unlocked huge shale-gas reserves across the continent, and the ensuing flood of production cut the commodity's price in half.

The energy market is a complex beast, its many parts interconnected through a multitude of linkages. When one part fails, the entire system reacts: certain linkages are burdened with extra stress, while other components sit idle.

Gasoline consumption in the United States has been dropping for years. In the last decade, vehicle fuel efficiency has improved by 20%, and the combination of that shift and a weak economy of late has pushed gasoline demand to its lowest level in a decade.

The Fukushima disaster reminded us all of the dangers inherent in uranium-fueled nuclear reactors. Fresh news yesterday about Tepco's continued struggle to contain and cool the fuel rods highlights just how energetic uranium fission reactions are and how challenging to control.

Rumors are swirling that India and Iran are at the negotiating table right now, hammering out a deal to trade oil for gold. Why does that matter, you ask? Only because it strikes at the heart of both the value of the US dollar and today's high-tension standoff with Iran.

To many walking the planet, fracking has a seriously bad reputation. Thanks to hyperbole and misinformation, fracking opponents have convinced a lot of people that the operators who drill and then hydraulically fracture underground rock layers thumb their noses at and even hate the environment.

For those who dream of world peace, the situation has moved way past disheartening to nigh on scary. And for anyone interested in the energy markets or hoping economic recoveries in America and Europe can help solve the world's suffocating debt problems, the outlook is dark and stormy because an unstable Middle East means expensive oil for the rest of the world.

Let's begin by positioning the sector. Investing in a pipeline company is similar to investing in a utility: Like electricity providers, pipeline companies operate in heavily regulated environments, and once they are up and running, pipeline operators enjoy stable cash flows from long-term contracts.

All through 2011 copper had remained essentially between US$4 and $4.50 a pound, but on September 11 it dropped below that range and didn’t really stop falling until October 4, when it bottomed at $3.05.

When oil prices start to decline, investors and economists get worried. Oil prices in large part reflect global sentiment towards our economic future – prosperous, growing economies need more oil while slumping...

It turns out that China is not willing to pay whatever it has to for energy and metal resources. Several resource deals have faltered in recent months, indicating an increasingly choosy Chinese perspective on energy and metal acquisitions.

Coal prices are surging ahead even as most other commodities pull back, spurred on by expectations that metallurgical and thermal coal production will again fail to meet rising global demand this year.

In a dramatic about-face, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Monday that Germany will phase out nuclear power completely by 2022, shutting down its nine operational reactors and never restarting the seven reactors that were suspended in the wake of the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.