Monday, February 23, 2009

IBM and Oil 101

IBM's front page Oil 101 promotion as part of its 'smarter planet' efforts has been archived to here. Thanks to IBM for raising awareness of the issues we face with oil supplies.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Oil Drum - Book Review

In the oil drum review of Oil 101, Heading Out mentioned that I didn't incorporate the recent (Dec, 2008) changes to the US SEC definitions of reserves. The changes are referred to in paragraph 6 on page 296 of Chapter 14: Reserves of Oil 101. The changes take effect for financial reports filed after Dec 15, 2009. I agree with Heading Out that it is challenging to incorporate last minute changes into a book. A decision was made with knowledge of the new regulations to leave the existing SEC definitions in place (with reference to upcoming changes) as all of the financial reports readers see at the moment refer to the "old" SEC definitions.

Heading Out also made a very good point about it being beneficial to see expanded versions of charts and diagrams used in the book. I hope to address this with selected charts from the book appearing on the site www.morgandowney.com

First Post

Check out IBM featuring the book Oil 101 on the front of their global homepage this week (Feb 16-22, 2009). The oil industry is one of the world's biggest users of cutting edge technology.

Also, many thanks to the oil drum for reviewing Oil 101 on Monday (Feb 16, 2009). The oil drum is the leading global oil blog with a fantastic crew of experts.

I was quoted in Barron's last weekend in an article about the spread between heating oil and gasoline. Some have referred to the spread as the widow maker as many relative value traders foundered on it over the past year.

I called this blog 'Scarce Whales' as one of the many possible titles for Oil 101 was 'Scarce Whales and Dark Nights', which following visits to Nantucket, the 18th century Saudi Arabia, and reading about the whaleship Essex, I thought had a nice ring to it harking back to the the reason the modern oil industry sprang up (lack of inexpensive whales and a need for cheap lighting). The 'Dark Nights' part seemed a little too pessimistic and simply calling the book 'Scarce Whales' could have relegated it to the fisheries section of book shops.
 
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