What a nice reference to have! Very helpful for those of us who are not so familiar with the lingo - thanks!

DUET for Deep Universal Eternal Truth

I think we should focus more on DUETs and less on the froth of the day.

Thanks all.

I found a small typo in the OPEC link. Right now it goes to open.org instead of opec.org.

Thanks again.

On MSNBC yesterday I saw this guy from Harvard who said one of the year's biggest business ideas is OPIC, an Organisation of Petroleum Importing Countries, to bargain directly with OPEC. This raises the question of what if OPEC holds fast to a price higher than OPIC is willing to pay. How long can these countries refuse to buy from OPEC in order to force a long term agreement on price?  How long can the OPEC countries hold on without petrodollars and euros?

I love the acronym page. We should add some kind of glossary too, for jargon that isn't an acronym. For example: "upstream" and "downstream" as used in the oil industry. I've seem them in context so many time I think I know what they mean. But I've never seen these terms defined anywhere, so I'm not confident I know the true definitions.

AGW - Anthropogenic Global Warming (global warming due to human activity)

BTW (that means By The Way, by the way) I saw a couple of funny news stories juxtaposed today, regarding the price of oil. From CNN:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/07/news/international/iran_oil/?cnn=yes

Will Iran dispute push oil to $130?
While the U.S. imports no Iranian crude, worries about Tehran's nuclear program are boosting prices. It could get a lot worse if the spigot is shut off.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Not a drop of oil from Iran reaches the nation's gas pumps. But escalating tensions about Iran's nuclear program are already being felt in oil and gas prices in the United States....

Simultaneously, from Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=acMm_3ZUUmok&refer=top_world_news

Oil Drops to 3-Week Low on Signs U.S. Supplies Jumped Last Week

That's the problem with the journalism business. You just got finished with this nice article all about how the Iran crisis is causing high oil prices, when they go and drop on you to a three week low. Suddenly your insightful article looks stupid.

JDH - James D Hamilton, Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, authority on energy economics and co-author of the Econbrowser blog.

Bush budget has no money to buy emergency SPR oil:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/06/news/economy/budget_oil.reut/index.htm

Congress is requiring the Bush administration to add almost 300 million barrels to the nation's emergency oil stockpile, but the White House on Monday did not seek money to buy the crude in its proposed budget for the 2007 spending year sent to Congress.

Two comments:
1) I wonder if the reason oil is down is due to the CERA conference in Houston today - no doubt they are spinning the bearish case on oil. (Im being facetious regarding market but who knows?)

2)Sign of the times (goes along with Rapture index) Economics is now the most popular undergrad major

Here are a couple fun links on the history of why "bbl" stands for "Blue Barrels"

 http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/non-renewable/bluebarrel.html

http://www.csub.edu/~dbaron/Sci360B/Bbl.htm

I agree with Interloafer's comments about expanding this list into a glossary, beyond only acronyms.  In addition, some of the entries would be even more useful with a sentence explaining the context in which the term is used, etc.

As it stands, the Guide is already a valuable reference.  Thanks.

Uh-oh!  Looks like the Oil Companies want to cook their books in private now!

Slackers / Peak oil burnout - This board isn't keeping up. Here we have a conference in Houston, the oil capitol of the world, today, 2-7-06, sponsored by CERA, making incredible claims, which you can get by an appropriate Google - here's one:

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_100047805.shtml

"101.5 million by the end of the decade"

Snip:

Thanks to a combination of higher prices, increased exploration and production spending, and improved technology, oil supplies are poised to grow much faster than they have in recent years. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a respected energy consultant, sees 20 or more major new fields coming on line each year through 2010. Altogether those fields could boost worldwide production capacity 15%, from 87.9 million barrels per day to 101.5 million by the end of the decade, CERA estimates. As a result, supply should exceed demand by 7 million bbl. per day, a huge leap from the current cushion of 1 million bbl. That should take pressure off prices. "OPEC countries have the potential, and [most] are increasing production," says Peter Jackson, a CERA researcher. "Non-OPEC production has increased at quite a lick compared to the 1990s."'

WTF?

OK, here's a few more acronyms - relating to volume measures of oil and gas, frequently used by petroleum engineers (PEs) and Reservoir Engineers (REs) as well as geologists and geophysicists (who never get abbreviated). All these are very "oily"...

stb Stock Tank Barrel (of oil)
scf Standard Cubic Foot (of gas)

The "formal" measures of hydrocarbon volume - nearly always in lowercase. Often the legal basis for sales agreements, always the legal basis of reserves reports. Theoretically the fluids should be measured at 60 degrees Fahrenhit and 14.7 psi (1 atmosphere). The "stock tank" refers to small scale onshore operations and is rarely present in a large-scale modern production facility.

M (Prefix to the above - nearly always in uppercase) Thousand
MM (Ditto) Million (yes, confusing, but that's what they use)
MMM Billion almost never seen, use bn or b or occasionally metric G
T Trillion never MMMM (also matches metric Tera)

e.g. MMscf Million standard cubic feet. Prefixes above T are almost never seen.

STOIIP Stock Tank Oil Initially In Place (in a reservoir before production starts) - reservoir engineers just pronounce it as a word "what's the stoip of this reservoir?". Sometimes it's STOOIP Stock Tank Oil ORIGINALLY In Place. When reading media reports of a discovery (especially reports from 3rd World governments) it is important to determine whether they are referring to STOIIP or reserves volumes.

GIIP Gas Initially In Place (never GOIP)

RF Recovery Factor ratio between recoverable reserves and STOIIP normally expressed as a percentage. Varies widely - typically 20%-50% for oil and 70%-90% for gas

BOE Barrels Of Oil Equivalent - some oil companies like to aggregate their oil and gas reserves so they can report a single number of BOE (or MMBOE) - the conversion factor varies from company to company but is normally about 6000 scf of gas = 1 BOE

I have a lot more of these but the above selection will be ample for understanding even quite technical reports from oil companies, think tanks etc.

hi

Some acronyms I noticed missing:

PG: Persian Gulf

P5, P90, etc

Cheers, Ian

I suggest a change of:

FT
Fischer-Tropsch process of converting methane or coal to liquid fuels

Into:

FT
Fischer-Tropsch process of converting methane, biomass or coal to liquid fuels

Or more elaborate:

FT
Fischer-Tropsch process of converting CO and H2 gas into liquid fuels. The CO and H2 gas can be made from methane, biomass or coal.

NYTimes is dissing the Prius mileage:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/business/08leonhardt.html

Seems to me Odograph discussed this on his blog.

Regarding the point about auto manufacturers using the non-guzzlers to balance guzzlers under CAFE, I'd rather have the choice to buy one or the other anyway.

Of course I'd also like to have a practical, affordable EV, but that seems to be too much to ask.  Which will be crushed first, the last EV-1 or GM itself?