Foreword
So, I hear oil's really expensive at the moment. Sadly, since I'm the kind of person who doesn't know how much a loaf of bread costs, let alone a litre of fuel, this is probably not the right column to read if you're interested in price risk management. If, however, you're interested in the irrelevant comings and goings of a 30 something underling, you're in the right place.
By Charlotte James, Production Director, Commodities Now.

US Energy Law ... Five Years in the Making
Congress presented President Bush with a mammoth 1,723 page report he was eager to sign, even though it is likely to cost as much as twice estimates and failed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. The Senate passed the legislation [74/26] ending years of energy policy stalemate and at last providing a platform for US energy action to take place.
By John Sodergreen, Editor-in-Chief, Scudder Publishing Group, LLC.

Life on Hedge Row
Do you feel like you have been 'milked' recently? Perhaps when you go to the gas station and fill up with gas? Better yet, when you go inside and pick up that quick pint of milk to replace the one that represents your 10th grade biology experiment in your fridge, (only if you are a male that is). Have you then driven home to that quaint dinner party wondering about the correlation between the price of milk and the price of gas?
By Cai Palmer, Managing Director of Court Cavendish.

World's First Industrial Scale 'Carbon-Free' Facility
Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) has taken another step forward with the news that BP and its partners are planning the world's first industrial scale project to generate 'carbon-free' electricity from hydrogen.
By Guy Isherwood, Commodities Now.

The Brent Complex
Brent crude oil is the key pricing benchmark for crude shipped from Europe, Russia, West Africa and the Middle East. Given its importance as a pricing tool, active on-exchange and over-the-counter (OTC) trading has developed in Brent-related instruments, writes Joseph Raia of NYMEX. And the Exchange has introduced trading in various Brent futures and swaps contracts to provide the marketplace with additional risk management tools.
By Joseph Raia, NYMEX.

STP in the Gas Marketing Industry: Solving Compliance Issues While Increasing
Visibility, Efficiency & Accuracy
What does the term 'Straight-Through Transaction Processing' mean to the gas marketing world? It means one-time data entry, start-to-finish modelling of your business, and automating communications between systems that would otherwise require manual intervention. It is the critical piece in providing timely compliance, position visibility, efficiency and accuracy to gas marketing.
By Tim Curfman, Vice President of Development, SunGard Energy Solutions.

Portrait of the Market as a Young Man
The EU carbon market has burst into life since the emissions trading scheme formally began on January 1st this year. In its first six months the market has changed beyond recognition, gaining liquidity and confounding expectations of volatility. What is now required is greater depth.
By Andreas Arvanitakis, Point Carbon.

DUBAI: Taking Centre-Stage in the Gold Markets?
It may seem a little premature to suggest that Dubai might, in short order, become the epicentre of global gold trade - particularly as its exchange, the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX), has not yet been fully built. But things move fast in Dubai. The launch date for DGCX is just around the corner and Dubai has an enviable record for doing things well and doing things on time.
By Ross Norman, TheBullionDesk.com.

Filling the Void: A New Paradigm for Energy Marketing & Trading
The well-reported struggles of the merchant energy business have left an enduring impact on companies whose business depends on physical electricity, natural gas and the underlying markets for these commodities.
By Sidney Jacobson, Managing Consultant within PA Consulting Group's Global Energy Practice.

Manage Your Energy Assets As You Would Value Them!
There is no shortage of lessons learned from the collapse of Enron and others. Much has been written about the influence of corporate ethics, compliance standards (or lack thereof), mark-to-market accounting and outright fraud on the fate of companies affected. This article focuses on one of the contributing factors which did not attract its fair share of attention: how the various companies' approach to managing their large investment in energy assets (such as generating plants) contributed to their ultimate demise.
By Soli Forouzan, CFA, is SVP, Product Management & Market Strategy for SunGard Energy Solutions.

Vientiane Pact to Transfer Energy Technology
Having spent his first term in office ripping up international agreements, President Bush has begun his second re-writing a few and creating some of his own. Not least the announcement of what is becoming known as the Vientiane Pact, writes Guy Isherwood.
By Guy Isherwood, Commodities Now.