November 2008

Lucian Pugliaresi gave a presentation on the role of oil in U.S. energy policy to the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine.  The presentation is posted on our publications page and can be downloaded here.

October 2008

EPRINC's Larry Goldstein was recently quoted in a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal.

In July, EPRINC's paper "'Silent disruption' limiting oil supply" was published in the Oil & Gas Journal (download here).  July also saw the release of an EPRINC paper (download here) that examined the costs and benefits of a national carbon emissions cap and trade program to the petroleum industry.  That paper was the basis of an article that subsequently appeared in the Oil & Gas Journal.

June 2008

Since moving from New York City 18 months ago, EPRINC has broadened its focus beyond the petroleum industry.  We have been especially active in evaluating the growing alternative fuels industry and other aspects of energy policy that extend past the petroleum industry.  Formerly known as the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation (PIRINC), we have had a close following by government, the media, and the public due to our unique expertise in the petroleum industry (for more on the history of EPRINC and PIRINC please see the About Us section of our website).  We certainly have no plans to abandon a 60 year tradition of leading edge assessments of developments in the petroleum industry, even as we broaden our analysis and expertise into new fuels and topics.

As the world has experienced rapid changes in its energy and commodity markets over the past few years, EPRINC has devoted itself to increasing the amount research and analysis that it makes available to the public.  The Foundation has begun leading workshops with industry experts on current energy developments to help foster discussion and fact-finding.   It has hired new research staff to augment the Foundation's analytical capacity and will be spending more time discussing these developments with interested parties in government, the public, and the media.

On April 15 EPRINC, along with the Energy Information Agency (EIA), held a roundtable discussion on the U.S. Government's ethanol mandate for 2008.  Following the event, which included representatives from several Federal agencies along with industry experts, Larry Kumins wrote a report summarizing the ethanol workshop's findings. That report can be downloaded here.

In March, EPRINC released a paper entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Events".  The paper discusses the relationship between expectations of oil production and the price of oil.  It examines predictions for future crude oil production made at the beginning of the decade and how a perfect storm of unforeseen events, primarily resource nationalism and civil strife, during the past few years have caused a string of supply disruptions, thereby lowering expectations for future output and resulting in a tight supply of oil.  An update of this report will be published in the Oil and Gas Journal on July 7, 2008.

All of EPRINC's publications are available free of charge and can be accessed from our Publications page.