Oil crisis

[NoFakie 45]

They've stopped releasing oil from the strategic reserves. That means supply goes down and demand to refill them goes up.

 

To link this with the other thread, Iran is responsible for 14% of Japan's oil and rising. That could be down to zero if they're attacked.

[Ocean11 0]

> That could be down to zero if they're attacked.

 

I was thinking about that too. I wondered if that might act as a brake on the US actually going through with it. China is also very interested in Iranian oil.

 

It would surely make the US very unpopular with some key allies if they suddenly made Iranian energy unavailable.

[damian 0]

Price continues to reveal that a story is unfolding. Humble table sugar... a key input to the production of ethanol, which is a tentative renewable substitute (and compliment) to non-renewable fossil engine fuels. I have been speculating in sugar prices for years and this is a significant move.

 

Sugar:

[js 0]

BPC - it would be interesting to do a similar check on oil producing grains AKA biodiesel manufacture.

 

An interesting doco I viewed the other night showed a bloke with a biodiesel 'plant' in his garage - vegie oil in here, bio-D outta here. (Every Aussie bloke needs a shed, eh?!)

 

Unfortunately the Oz Government is putting a $0.38 per litre excise on the stuff. I reckon it's due to the fact that our much beloved Prime Minister has a mate who owns a huge ethanol factory!

[Ocean11 0]

Potato, is that line for worldwide price or what?

 

Did you see that the UK has mandated 5% renewable fuels by 2010.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/uk_mandates_5_r.html

 

I wonder if that's part of the story.

[sava 0]

Damn, that's a sweet deal.

 

**boom boom**

 

I'll be here all week folks!

[damian 0]

**I just read the rules and regulations regarding the SJ photo function and note that non-Japan and non-snow pictures are not encouraged. Andrew.SJ etc: I will use another online picture service for future 'very off topic' images. **

 

Ocean - sorry, I didn't add any useful additional info. That chart is for sugar futures traded on the NY Board of Trade (NYBOT). This contract is Sugar No.11 and is the 'world sugar' contract. This is indeed a mostly correct description as (at the risk of being over technical) the delivery grades into the futures contract include sugar grown in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ecuador, Fiji Islands, French Antilles, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Malawi, Mauritius, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Republic of the Philippines, South Africa, Swaziland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad, United States, and Zimbabwe.

 

Regarding the UK and 10% renewable sources: it is a very good move but perhaps not nearly aggressive enough. There was also a recent decision to have EC countries release more sugar from their huge stock piles to stop this recent price rush based on fuel related sugar demand.

 

For interest sake, I have attached the price history for sugar futures traded in London (LIFFE.EURONEXT exchange). Quite a strong up move this year that has gone sideways in recent months:

 

Sugar on the Tokyo Grain Exchange (quite an illiquid market, ie, it is very lighty traded). I didn't expect to see that strong uptrend:

 

SubZero - Interesting question regarding other feedcrops for bio diesel: Like sugar, I have been active in soybean products and canola (rape seed) for a long time. Both soy and canola are popular feedstocks: canola in Europe and soy in America (although it is an inferior stock). Neither show increased demand from biofuel industry:

 

Canola futures traded in Europe (going nowhere in particular):

 

Soy Bean Oil futures traded in America (moving down in a strong manner).

[SnowJapan.Com#3 0]

 Quote:

**I just read the rules and regulations regarding the SJ photo function and note that non-Japan and non-snow pictures are not encouraged. Andrew.SJ etc: I will use another online picture service for future 'very off topic' images.

Thanks for the post BPC.

Yes, as you are probably aware, we really don't want people to start using the SJ Photos section as a place to upload any non-ski/board/japan photos. The idea behind the Photos section is for it to hopefully build up into a really interesting and useful "ski/board-related" photo gallery. If it starts being littered with totally unrelated images, it's overall value to everyone will be diluted.

Now that a large number of people are checking out the new section - and also uploading more pics themselves - and now that we also display the "latest pic" on the very front page of our site, we really do want them to be relevant.

Hope you don't mind but we have deleted the pics from your member account so that they do not display in the SJ Photos section..... but, in this case we have uploaded the pics to another location and linked them into your above message just so that they don't just suddenly disappear from your post.

If we could ask that people do only upload relevant pics please, we'd be really grateful.

We're going to maybe have to make that a bit clearer on the SJ Photos pages as things get busier and busier.

Many thanks for your understanding

[damian 0]

That's totally fair. In fact I am glad you did the 'delete-move-relink' thing as I felt pretty silly having these images displayed on the front page of SJ!

 

Thanks for taking the effort to re-link them as well.

[SnowJapan.Com#3 0]

You're welcome.

 

We'll try and make the point about relevant pics/images a bit clearer on the Photos pages soon. We really think the Photo section will benefit from everyone keeping things relevant in the long run.

 

Many thanks!

[Honest John 0]

I'm often impressed with the responsiveness and helpfulness of the SJ site people. For a free service it's pretty incredible.