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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (44361)	1/6/2004 12:52:22 PM
From: tom pope	Respond to of 74559

the no big bsnks failing is the dog that did not bark during the night, and may be important... Good point.

To: energyplay who wrote (44361)	1/6/2004 1:41:28 PM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

The most important reason for US bank health is the steeply rising yield curve -- it's a license to print money, if you are a bank. Banks are having a field day with the carry trade, with little risk, given the Fed guarantee of low rates for a "considerable period". As for RE loan risks, banks are quick to pass those risks to foreign and domestic investors -- and will continue to do so as long as there is no RE crash.

To: energyplay who wrote (44361)	1/8/2004 8:48:08 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

<<high oil prices masking the problem>> A battle against shrinking reserves By Carola Hoyos Financial Times; Jan 07, 2004 BP and its biggest competitors must find fields the size of the North Sea every 18 months just to stop their reserves from shrinking. That task is becoming increasingly difficult. The boost they enjoyed from new technology in the 1990s, which allowed the majors to venture into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, west Africa and Brazil, has begun to subside. Nevertheless, more than two-thirds of the discoveries made in 2002 and 2003 were in these regions. They took up more than one of every $2 spent on exploration, according to Andrew Latham, analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the independent Edinburgh-based consultants. Production in the coming years also will be focused around the three areas. West Africa, which includes Angola, Nigeria and to a lesser extent Equatorial Guinea, is expected to add about 1.5m barrels a day to the world's output in the next five years, while Brazil contributes 1m. The companies best placed to take advantage of this are ExxonMobil, the world's largest listed oil company, which is present in all three west African countries, and Royal Dutch/Shell, the Anglo/Dutch energy group, and ChevronTexaco, of the US, which are present in at least one. Brazil remains in large part the playground of the national company, Petrobras. Most of the majors have a presence in the Gulf of Mexico. Last year, BP was ahead of the pack in adding oil reserves by buying them. The UK-based energy group struck Russia's biggest corporate deal last year, with TNK, and boosted its reserves by 4bn barrels. Meanwhile, the Middle East, which looked like a promising place to acquire reserves in 2003, turned out to be a disappointment. Companies are turning to more difficult areas, such as natural gas fields far from the markets they will serve, and heavy crude oil, which is expensive and environmentally controversial. In the past three years, oil companies have discovered less than half the reserves found between 1998 and 2000. If one sees an oil company's reserves as a measure of its health - as many do - the industry is ill, with high oil prices masking the problem