The Barrel

School buses in St. Louis, Missouri, are being retrofitted with crankcase ventilation filters to capture diesel emissions and keep pollution out of passenger cabins.

In South Dakota and Mississippi, older buses are being replaced with cleaner models, while others are being fitted with new heaters to reduce toxic emissions and conserve fuel.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, just not in the heating oil market.

US retailers are trying to jump-start holiday buying early this year, moving from the goblins and witches straight to the over-sized ornaments and eggnog flavored lattes.

Heating oil bulls looking for some holiday cheer aren't going to find it in the crack spreads. The December NYMEX heating oil crack spread settled at $6.44/barrel on November 16, the January 2010 crack at $7.41/b and the February 2010 at $7.94/b. By comparison, on November 17, 2008, the December 2008 NYMEX heating oil crack settled at $20.27/b, the January 2009 at $20.49/b and the February 2009 at $20.48/b.

Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3^rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, caused something of a stir 20 years ago when he wrote an article calling for universal AIDS testing, and for all those found with the virus to be quarantined immediately and forever. [Monckton later disavowed his proposal as impractical]. His Lordship's latest foray into the public arena is as a climate change denier and conspiracy theorist who sees Communists behind an international treaty to control greenhouse gases.

With more and more signs emerging all the time of an economic recovery taking root around the world, it was never going to take long before world oil demand forecasts started to look a bit more optimistic.

In its latest monthly report released November 12, the International Energy Agency confirmed this, raising its estimate of world demand in 2010 by 140,000 b/d to 86.19 million b/d.

In the world of OPEC, the word production can mean different things. There is official production, whereby OPEC sets quotas for individual members under an overall volume, and there is actual production, which can bear little resemblance to official levels.

And there is a further complication. OPEC, although it has given out the overall target number for the current output agreement, has not published the individual quotas under that target. Which means that people like my colleagues and myself have had to work out those quotas by ourselves, sometimes with a bit of help from delegates or ministers who may confirm figures or indicate that our calculations are close to the mark.

After dropping to the lowest levels in more than two decades this summer, Nigerian oil production is poised to rebound further in the near term following an amnesty agreement between the government and key militant leaders.

Crude production is on course to top 2 million barrels per day after the amnesty deal halted attacks on oil facilities, but the country may have its work cut out simply holding on to its current oil production capacity in the short-term.

It wasn't so long ago that upstream companies were stampeding to buy natural gas properties. For a few years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it seemed like every CEO's wish list included stakes in what was fondly called the "North American gas fairway" stretching from New Mexico to the Canadian Arctic.

A lot of the frenzy stemmed from what was then a growing gap between North American gas demand and the ability of industry to deliver the goods. Companies were reviving long-dormant LNG plants and planning dozens of new ones. Gas was a trendy commodity, and corporate presentations routinely included maps sporting company logos of the western North American gassy continental corridor that proudly boasted their regional holdings.

Saudi Arabia has long been a key supplier of crude to the US, holding the top slot through most of the 1990s until increasing volumes from Canada relegated the kingdom into second and sometimes third place.

But while Saudi Arabia has remained among the top five suppliers to the US, its exports have fallen dramatically this year, and it's not entirely clear why.

There is a story told to young Platts reporters that the term "mogas" has its origins in the early days of international oil trading.

The story goes thus: Amazed at the relatively cheap prices that you could buy 'gas' in the European market, US traders gleefully shelled out for cargoes only to find that in buying gas they had bought... well, gas.

There ought to be a law! It's the usual refrain, and often legislative action, when faced with serious concerns such as those that inspired a pending US House bill that would give the Department of Homeland Security authority over what chemicals are used in the refining process.