Word: oil
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...prices heads for a possible $4 a gallon in the U.S. this summer, it's tempting to blame Big Oil - as many in Congress did last week -for its bloated profits greased by generous tax breaks. But the players in the oil-producing world see things a little differently. OPEC officials, oil executives and oil-rich governments met Thursday in Paris at the International Oil Summit, to share their thoughts on the global energy crunch. Total chief executive Christophe de Margerie and Royal Dutch Shell's exploration chief Malcolm Brinded told officials from oil-rich countries that they needed more...
...oil companies' pleas were largely ignored at the summit. As if to underscore Big Oil's shrinking clout in the oil world, the summit's most powerful delegate - Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi - arrived after the big guns from the oil companies had left, and was mobbed by photographers and television reporters who waited for hours to catch him on camera. With Saudi Arabia sitting atop the world's biggest known energy reserves - 264 billion barrels of oil and nearly 258 trillion cubic feet of gas - Naimi is OPEC's leading figure, who can slash or boost world oil...
...Naimi had no good news for those hoping for some relief from sky-high prices. He said it could take "at least 50 years" for the world to comprehensively adopt alternatives to the oil and gas that today account for about 90% of world energy consumption. Naimi castigated Western governments that have pushed biofuels as the major energy alternative, which has ravaged forests and agricultural land. Biofuels, he said, "will produce just 6% of energy consumption by 2010, and has not even reduced greenhouse gases." Instead, the world's most powerful oilman advocated "truly renewable sources of energy, like solar...
...major cause of current high oil prices, of course, is record demand, fueled first and foremost by China's booming economy. "China is the major factor in demand," says OPEC research director Hasan Qabazard. He predicts that world oil demand will increase about 30% to 118 million barrels...
...Then, there's the question of speculation and exchange rates: Investors have poured billions into oil futures, in part because oil is priced in dollars, meaning that its price soars as the dollar sinks. "There's only so much OPEC can do, because we have no influence over those factors," says Qabazard...