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The oil patch boasts a new high-profile "villain," but this time we won't be seeing him in a perp walk outside a federal courthouse somewhere. Nope, in this case you can catch him every Thursday night on TV working maliciously to upset the rhythm of the iconic CBS reality show Survivor. And the Platts Oil Barrel plans to follow along, reporting his weekly antics as he attempts to "outplay, outwit and outlast" 19 other Survivor contestants vying for a prize of $1 million that goes to the last one standing sometime near the end of the year.

His name is Russell Hantz -- owner of Hantz Tankering in Dayton, Texas, near Houston. He's made no secret of his strategy for this season, which debuted last Thursday in Samoa.

A mix of jubilation and fear is in the air in Tokyo today. Yukio Hatoyama has been sworn in as the country's 93rd prime minister. In the few hours since he was approved by parliament, he has promised everything from straight talk with the Americans on beef and war, to slashing emissions by 25% in just ten years. 

Japan has turfed out the Liberal Democratic Party, dominant since 1955, and ushered in a new party with a new leader. The Japanese are certainly enjoying an Obama moment. And just like America back on January 20, the sight of a new leader promising sweeping change is bringing as much terror to Japan's vested interests as it is bringing euphoria to those who felt on the short end of Japan's decades-long deflation.

Fear is especially powerful for the Sogo Shosha, the middle-aged warrior class that feeds -- and feeds off -- Japan's giant $5 trillion-a-year economy. The Japanese insist, above all, that Hatoyama must finally fix the economy. And he's expected to take aim at the kind of cronyism that is their life-blood.

Forty years ago on July 20, 1969, a man walked on the moon, a milestone on a variety of fronts. At the time, the posted oil price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil was $3.35/barrel. Pegged to a generally accepted rate of inflation since then, it would be somewhere under $20/b in today's dollars.

In 1969, OPEC set the oil prices pegged to a dollar which was still on the gold standard. Also in 1969, the last of the great trans-Atlantic ocean liners, the Queen Elizabeth 2, made its first voyage, which was coincidentally the same year that the Concorde made its maiden flight and Boeing delivered the first 747 commercial airplane to Pan Am. The former marked an end of an era and the latter two were harbingers of the shift in travel, and the boom in jet fuel to come.

When members of the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America gather each fall and spring, meetings of the legislative affairs committee always draw a crowd. The forum covers a broad spectrum of topics - from global warming to renewable fuels to tobacco regulations - and it gives members a chance to learn about government actions that might affect them and an opportunity to weigh in with opinions.

This year was no exception. Members packed a ballroom at SIGMA's spring meeting in San Antonio for a three-hour briefing Friday by outside counsel Tim Columbus. On the agenda:

It looked like the opportunity of a lifetime.

The April 3 email from a director at London-based oil major BP sought my help in redirecting 65,000GBP ($92,287) to a "non-resident" account so the company could more easily work on a "specified Industrial Project at the Middle East."

And the director, Andrew Inglis, offered 40% of the total as compensation for my troubles. All I had to do was reply with "a brief information about you and your your business."

"Cash is king" -- that's the new industry buzzword that began to circulate ad nauseum as credit markets seemingly vanished before our eyes last month, although the ghostly transformation had been brewing for some time as US lenders struggled to stay afloat in a sea of bad mortgages.

We're going to liveblog some of the highlights of Platts' Gustav coverage here at The Barrel over the next few days. (All times are eastern daylight). The system shows that they were written by John Kingston, but many Platts' staff members have actually written for the blog, and dozens have gathered the information on the state of the industry leading up to Gustav's arrival, and its coming aftermath.

It is the middle of a long weekend indeed for US oil futures traders -- and reporters -- as the first major hurricane to threaten US oilfields in three years moves slowly and menacingly towards the coast of Louisiana. Traders were cursing the weather as Hurricane Gustav edged past Jamaica and Cuba as the weekend began -- but the storm is creating more volatility for their holiday planning than oil prices.

The underwhelming price response shows what a different world the markets are reflecting in 2008, compared to 2005 when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked absolute havoc on global oil markets, sending prices soaring by 10% or more as they tore through the Gulf of Mexico.

An ill-advised military incursion into South Ossetia by Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili set off a massive Russian response which threatens to cut Georgia in half. The geopolitical implications are substantial. Europe and the U.S. have condemned the magnitude of the Russian response but are powerless to affect the outcome.