The Wall Street Journal asks who’s responsible for the fall in price of crude oil over the past few days: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/08/12/falling-oil-whodunnit/

Thomas Friedman in the NYT (clearly just back from strawberry picking in the Nordics) asks is it better for oil to remain high: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html?em

Tom Raftery has been saying for months that oil is better off over $200 per barrel: http://greenmonk.net/the-sooner-oil-hits-200-per-barrel-the-better/

And back to the WSJ which claims at off-shore drilling is really a complete non-issue despite the above: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/08/12/rigged-why-does-offshore-drilling-dominate-the-debate/

Image courtesy of http://flickr.com/photos/welshy/

Shell made £2,000,000 profit per hour last quarter.

Some points from GreenBang:

• First, Shell maintains it is committed to investing in renewable energy and clean technology and the company does spend $500m a year on alternative energy resources. But let’s put that into a bit of perspective – that’s about five days’ profit based on today’s results.
• Next is the fact these latest profits were boosted by Shell’s Canadian oil sands business. The high price of oil now makes this controversial form of oil extraction financially viable for the big oil companies (not just Shell), but it is more energy and carbon intensive than traditional extraction.
• Finally let’s not forget Shell recently sold its stake in the Array London wind power project – the world’s largest offshore wind farm project, although Shell maintains that decision was not a reflection on its commitment to alternative energy and points to its involvement in many similar projects around the world.

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