[NukeNet] Rising Energy Prices: Oil/gas/coal/uranium/ethanol price charts

[Mike Ewall]

Hi folks,

I recently completed (painstakingly) piecing together a chart showing 
coal price trends since 2000 and got this, as well as charts I've 
made of oil, gas and uranium prices (since 1986, 1976 and 1987, 
respectively), up on our website.  I also found a 10-year ethanol 
price trend chart, and added that as well.

See: http://www.energyjustice.net/peak/

This represents the most complete and up-to-date data available from 
the Energy Information Administration (coal, oil and gas) and other 
sources (for uranium and ethanol info).

You'll see that oil and gas prices were very stable until 1999, when 
both started rising dramatically.  Oil prices are now 4-5 times their 
historical average.  Gas prices are 3 times their historical 
average.  Coal prices have roughly doubled in that time.

Uranium prices were also quite stable until 2004.  They're not about 
9 times their historical average and are projected to increase to 15 
times their historical average within the next year.

This is what peak oil, coal, gas and uranium looks like.  Biofuels 
(or "agrofuels" as more people are starting to call them) are 
following similar trends, based on the rising costs of nitrogen 
fertilizers that are made with large amounts of natural gas.  These 
fertilizer imports have tripled (from 14% to 42%) since 1991 (and 
mostly since 1999) as our domestic nitrogen fertilizer production has 
largely moved to other countries, chasing the gas supply.  Our 
ability to grow our food, as well as the ability to grow 
agriculture-based biofuels, is becoming very dependent on imported 
fertilizers -- a proxy for importing natural gas, which isn't as easy 
to import without liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal capacity 
drastically increasing.

Anyway... feel free to use/share this, but if you do, please give 
credit.  The raw coal price data isn't public and it took me a ton of 
work to graphically piece together the shorter snapshots that EIA 
makes available.

These charts are also available in my "energy technologies" 
powerpoint, which you can find here: http://www.energyjustice.net/resources/

Mike Ewall
Energy Justice Network
215-743-4884
catalyst at actionpa.org
http://www.energyjustice.net