Petrol Malaysia

On CIMB's website, there is a link to an educational website known as "Futures Fundamentals", run by CME Group. While I may not know much about the group, I found that this video, "The Story of Oil", is quite good. It comes from an article, "Gas Prices Explained." Aside from this nice video about oil, there's also a cool infographic about how oil prices are affected. It deals with the different stages of oil production, namely: Extraction Transportation Exchange Refinement Gas Station These are quite new to me, but no doubt, they are nothing new to those in the oil and gas industry. Maybe some of you kind souls out there can point me in the right direction so that I can understand more about each stage. Oil is such an important thing, many of our industries rely on it: logistics, industry, energy, plastics, etc. I found it interesting that the website, "Futures Fundamentals", has many articles on futures. While I don...

In New York, Sandra Steingraber, who is with New Yorkers Against Fracking, claimed that the state's ban against fracking is not a loss for women. She claimed that 95% of the jobs created in the fracking industry are for men, while the leftover 5% of jobs for women are only for hotel maid and prostitution. What is Fracking. "Fracking" is the popular name for hydraulic fracturing, a process through which natural gas is extracted by pumping high-pressure water into layers of stone, which breaks up the stone and releases the natural gas. Controversy. In December 2014, the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, announced his decision to ban fracking in the state after considering representations from environmental experts. "I cannot support high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York", he said. "I think it’s our responsibility to develop an alternative … for safe, clean economic development." In actual fact, there had been a morato...

Kris Wiluan, one of Indonesia's 40 richest people. Picture taken from Forbes.com Kris Wiluan is a business magnate, and one of the top 40 richest people in Indonesia. He also happens to be a giant in the energy industry. His story may be seen as a series of lucky breaks, combined with his natural charm. In the 1960s, his parents sent him to Germany to study, but he turned up in England by mistake. His uncles convinced his parents that English was more practical, and so they allowed him to study in England. While studying in university there, he met his British wife. After graduating he became a programmer for Guest, Keen and Nettlefold, now GKN. Later, in 1976, he was offered to work for United Motor Works. A year later he began his own business. He began his business modestly, catering food and supplies to oil rigs, including videos and other entertainment. In an interview with the Telegraph, he describes his big break: One day, while transporting equipment for Dupont fr...

America's Richest Oil Tycoons. Source: http://money.cnn.com/infographic/luxury/americas-richest-oil-tycoons/index.html Today, I was surprised to find out that there are big oil tycoons in the USA. The no.1 and no. 2 spots in the USA are taken by David Koch and Charles Koch, two brothers. Together, the two brothers are worth USD89.7 billion, which is about RM332.28 billion. That's a lot of money, and almost 7 times the net worth of George Kaiser, who is the third richest oil tycoon in America. Their immense wealth comes from Koch Industries, Inc., originally an oil refinery which was co-founded by their father, Fred Chase Koch, in 1940. It was originally called the Wood River Oil and Refining Company. According to Wikipedia, Koch Industries Inc. is the second-largest privately held firm in America. Fred Chase Koch, the senior patriarch, had four sons: Frederick, Charles, David, and William (Bill). David and Bill are twins, but Bill was born 19 minutes later. I...

The price of RON95 is now RM1.95 and RON97 is now RM2.25. This price is cheaper than prices in October 2014, when the present pricing mechanism was imposed. The nice table you see above is from the Facebook page of Sinchew Daily newspaper. (Thanks, guys! I couldn't have done it better myself....) It's a frequent complaint of Malaysians whenever the price of petrol goes up. "What! Oil now up to $xxxx (insert figure here) per barrel! Soon our petrol will go up again. Soon everything will go up again...." And it is an accepted fact of life -- petrol prices will go up every so often, causing everything to go up. Coffee, food, clothes, services, etc. Everything goes up with the petrol. However, due to the current petrol war between Saudi and USA, excess oil production has driven oil prices down. Some articles say that it's to drive the USA out of the oil business. Reason? Saudi has lower breakeven point for each barrel produced (after the initial cost of d...

While I was browsing my Google Plus timeline, I came across this. Apparently in Japan and Korea, petrol pumps hang from the ceiling. This solves the issue of parking your car just right so that the pump is located next to where you pump the petrol i.e. the fuel filler cap or petrol cap. I once read from a book, car manufacturers make cars with their petrol caps on left and on the right so as to make sure that petrol stations won't have people queueing up for petrol pumps of a certain sort only. For example if all cars had their petrol caps on the left, drivers would want to park on the right of the fuel pump so as to fill up their car fuel tanks. Lefts and rights are all right as a solution when petrol pumps are located at chest level -- you need to pull them over to the petrol cap, and the closer the petrol cap is to the pump, the better. However, if petrol pumps hang from the ceiling, the issue of which side is the "right side" would not even come up. Here are ...

I found this visualization of the World's Biggest Oil Producing Countries over at Visualizing.org. Source I thought that I'd share it on this blog. I realised that the original image was too big and wound up being downgraded after uploading. So I broke it up into several images and uploaded it. Anyway, here it is: Overall summary of countries Saudi Arabia and Russia United States and Iran China and Canada Iraq and United Arab Emirates Mexico and Kuwait Brazil and Nigeria Venezuela and Norway Finally, Algeria.