Chevron Partners With Cleantech Open to Support Energy Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Job Creation

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - 11/17/09) - The Cleantech Open, the world's largest business competition, created to find, fund and foster startup clean technology companies, announced a new partnership with Chevron U.S.A. Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX - News). Chevron, which manages $240 million of venture capital investments in early-stage technology companies through its subsidiary Chevron Technology Ventures, will become the Cleantech Open's inaugural Global Partner in 2010. The Cleantech Open was established as a nonprofit organization in 2006 to aid the development of technology startups focused on addressing energy, environmental and economic challenges."Through our collaboration with Chevron, we look forward to drawing upon their 130 years of energy industry experience to support entrepreneurs and promising new technologies," said Rex Northen, executive director of the Cleantech Open. "As an industry leader and an investor in ...
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IEA Report Will Please Oil Bulls And Bears

The International Energy Agency (IEA) presented a mixed picture for oil demand going forward in a series of recently released reports. The agency raised its short-term demand estimates, but cut long-term demand estimates slightly. It also warned about falling investment levels by the industry. IN PICTURES: Digging Out Of Debt In 8 StepsThe IEA released its annual World Energy Outlook assessment last week, which estimated that global oil demand would grow 1% per year through 2030, moving oil demand from 85 million to 105 million barrels by that year. This wasn't a huge cut, as the IEA predicted global oil demand of 106 million barrels per day by 2030, in last year's report. (For a primer on the oil industry, refer to our Oil and Gas Industry Primer.)The IEA Remains CautiousIn another report, the IEA also had a carrot for oil bulls. It raised oil demand estimates for 2010 to 86.2 million barrels per day. This was the fourth straight month that the agency raised estimates, and it highlights the slowly building economic recovery underway.The IEA also had some cautionary advice for the world's energy producers, as it worries about under investment in new supplies for the future. Global upstream...
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As Growth in Oil Demand Slows, Some OPEC Countries Ramp Up Capacity

By SPENCER SWARTZ LONDON -- Energy forecasters increasingly predict slowing growth in global oil demand in the years ahead, but some OPEC nations are heading in the opposite direction and ramping up their capacity to pump oil. Qatar, for example, is set to raise its oil-production capacity early next year from an existing field known as Al Shaheen. The more than $6 billion expansion project brightens the revenue prospects of the Mideast state but highlights a bigger problem brewing for its partners in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. After keeping a tight tether on supply in recent years by cautiously investing, the 12-nation cartel finds itself battling an untimely convergence of lackluster consumption that magnifies its own rising supply capacity -- which may in turn reignite old battles between members over market share and ultimately push oil prices lower. OPEC output capacity is expected to increase around one million barrels a day in 2010 as projects enter service in Angola, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to Bill Farren-Price, energy director at Medley Global Advisors. "Significant challenges face OPEC next year," Mr. Farren-Price says. "It will struggle to integrate a wave of new OPEC production capacity that vastly exceeds world demand for its crude." Many of the projects started development well before the recession. Projects like Al Shaheen may swell OPEC's nominal spare production capacity, a measure of its overall capability to bring barrels to consumers, to roughly 7.5 million barrels a day. That would will leave OPEC capacity up about 15% from 2008, almost a 10-year high, depending on how much oil the group is actually producing. Operated by Denmark's AP Moller-Maersk, the offshore Al Shaheen field started producing crude in the early 1990s and could almost double in capacity to ov...
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