Editor's Perspective

Under normal circumstances, enlarged expectations for a recovering global economy would be good news for oil markets. But what, nowadays, is normal?

A supply scare happened in May that not so long ago would have pushed up crude oil prices by $5/bbl or more. Prices instead declined.

Follow the logic: A blowout in deep water causes a massive oil spill that soils beaches, disables wildlife, and disrupts fishing and tourism; therefore, a pipeline that would carry oil produced onshore over land shouldn’t be built. Isn’t something missing here?

An important, mid-June test of the post-Macondo political mood favored the oil and gas industry.

A new step toward energy transparency by the UK government may become something for the government itself to regret.

The inability to meet impossible standards is not a license for demagoguery.

Of all the concerns raised by the Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, imprecision of the flow rate should rank low on a scale of urgency.

A blow to credibility must not limit the oil and gas industry’s ability to discuss technical problems.

As a bargaining tool in the politics of climate change, expansion of oil and gas leasing off the US always has raised problems.

Political gyrations over financial and energy reform camouflage a wicked hypocrisy.

The offshore oil and gas industry deals constantly with what can happen. Nearly all the time, it does so successfully. The exception is what changes everything.

Chevron has scored public-relations points in its legal quagmire in Ecuador—against the television network CBS, no less.

Listening to the Obama administration discuss expanded Outer Continental Shelf leasing is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Everything seems backwards.

If you planned to apply for an Energy Star rebate for that gasoline-powered alarm clock you’ve been admiring, you’re too late.

An industry loathed by the political left should cringe at audacious manipulations deployed in service to unpopular legislation for reform of US health care.

In the unusually complex oil market of the present, producers might profitably expect prices to swoon soon and hope events prove them wrong.

Meeting goals set by the Obama administration for carbon dioxide emissions would require sharp increases in fuel prices and strict regulation, a new report says.

Controversy over hydraulic fracturing fluids and their possible effect on drinking water demonstrates the boundless human capacity for inconsistency.

Shouldn’t a cold Northern Hemisphere winter give oil demand, struggling to recover from recessionary doldrums, a huge lift? Maybe not.