Sajakkini

Hishamuddin Rais

Oil markets have entered a “super-spike”’ period that could see 1970’s-style price surges as high as $105 a barrel, investment bank Goldman Sachs said in a research report. Goldman’s Global Investment Research note also raised the bank’s 2005 and 2006 New York Mercantile Exchange crude price forecasts to $50 and $55 respectively, from $41 and $40.

These forecasts sit at the top of a table of predictions from 25 analysts, consultants and government bodies surveyed by Reuters.

“We believe oil markets may have entered the early stages of what we have referred to as a ‘super spike’ period – a multi-year trading band of oil prices high enough to meaningfully reduce energy consumption and recreate a spare capacity cushion only after which will lower energy prices return,'’ Goldman’s analysts wrote. (Dikutip dari agensi berita Reuter 30 Mac 2005)

The United States must act now to deal with peaking world oil production or face disruptions far greater that the 1973 oil embargo or the 1979 Iranian oil cutoff, according to an article in the spring issue of Issues in Science and Technology. Evidence that world oil production will peak in the near future is becoming more compelling all the time, according to the article by Robert L. Hirsch, Roger H. Bezdek, and Robert M. Wendling, who produced a recent report on the subject that was published by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. (Dikutip dari journal Issues In Science and Technology – terbit pada 29 Mac 2005 keluaran National Academies dan University of Texas Dallas.) (more…)

Josh Hong

When the latest earthquake hit the Indian Ocean early this week, the region had just marked the fourth month after the deadly tsunami that claimed as many as 300,000 lives last December. Since the catastrophe, there has been intense diplomatic maneuver on the part of a number of major countries to enhance their international images for all kinds of reasons and purposes.

Some are more vocal than others in spelling out their objectives, and even naively and whimsically so. Taiwan, for one, made no attempt to conceal the hope of increasing ‘its international visibility’ and shoring up diplomatic support by pledging US$50 million to the tsunami-stricken countries.

Others have been, of course, rather discreet. Germany and Japan, with securing a permanent seat on the UN Security Council in mind, have been profusely active in the post-tsunami reconstruction. Japan, in particular, is a deep pocket and a complaisant paymaster that the US - from the Iraq war to the aftermath of the tsunami disaster – can ever rely on. The ‘generosity’ of the Koizumi administration has come to some fruition, as Kofi Annan has allegedly thrown his weight behind Tokyo’s bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council. (more…)