Some stats about oil producers

These graphs show the top oil producing countries and the countries with the most oil reserves, obtained from here.

Many of these countries are enjoying high income from the sales of oil in the international oil market, given that their cost is the same and prices are rising. However, when we look at the reserves, we realise that Saudi Arabia and Canada tops the list. Countries like Canada have a lot of reserve which are too expensive to be explored. Only when price of oil rises above a certain level that producers will find it lucrative to start investing in this operation. We wonder whether prices will actually rise to that extent or alternative fuels will be vastly available that oil is easily substitutable. The future of these countries can be extremely bright if the first scenario were to happen!

Electric car charging points

The new London mayor is doing a good job by increasing the number of charging points for electrical cars in London. Alongside other incentives such as no congestion fee and parking fee for these cars, this move will definitely take away another barrier - lack of charging points. This can enable users to prolong the journey, will less worry about places to ‘fuel up’ their cars at these Juice Points.

Electric cars in London has incease from 90 in 2003 to 1600 in 2008[Economist]. This incease of nearly 17 times can be caused by he increase in petrol prices as well as the incentives drawn up by the government favouring electric cars. Well, we hope that more people will take up the challenge and switch to electric cars. At the same time, we don’t want the congestion to increase.

Rise in UK inflation

The Metro today reported that prices are rising pretty steeply in the UK. This affects almost all basic things such as petrol, electricity, meat, milk, bread etc. And rises are all more than 10% - which is alarming. I do feel it every time I shop at Tesco, my bill is always going up(lately) - and most of the time, more than £20 per shopping, instead of less than £15 per shopping before this. Makes me wonder how about changes in prices at M&S and Waitrose(the high end ones). It is implied that people who shop there can afford the things at these places - when prices increase, they might stay with them(the rich ones) whereas the lower income ones might switch to Tesco/Morrisons/Sainsbury, reducing their total revenue. So, are Tesco, Sainsbury etc benefitting from this consumer switch? Let’s wait and see their next profit announcement.

New room

Last weekend was pretty hectic, moving rooms between Yins and me. Although the new room is smaller, it is pretty space efficient. Check out the poster - bought in Spain few years back(finally managed to put it up!).

And the view outside my window after the rain on Sunday. If you look closely you will see the second rainbow on the left of the ‘main’ rainbow.

More hydroelectric dams in Sarawak(E&T Magazine)

Sarawak’s state government has decided to explore their hydro potential by building 12 more dams by 2020. The total capacity they plan to reap from this venture is 4.8GW. If Bakun is also competed, Sarawak will have a total of 7.2GW! The current 930MW seems minute to the end figure we aim to achieve. Contruction is due to start in October this year. Well, hopefully this would help us increase our renewable energy capacity and hence displace some fossil fuel plant production. This however, will be quite tricky, given that we have IPPs operating fossil fuel plants - that we need to take as we are paying for it. How about exporting power produced by the dams in Sarawak to areas that need them in Borneo itself? Would it be viable? Is there demand for it?

Reports:

The Star

Malaysiakini

The diagram below, taken from Inside Sarawak, shows the location of these dams. Let’s hope these do not damage the environment extensively and do not cost us (Malaysia) losses in terms of natural reserves and tourism activities.

Wind Turbines in Malaysia

Wata just included a new post about wind turbines that caught my attention. Here’s the full write up (link from Wata’s blog).

What I find interesting is that Malaysia is moving towards using its natural resources. Wind is not particularly good in Malaysia as compared to the UK or Denmark, but islands like Perhentian can definitely gain a lot from this new installations(especially when it is jointly equipped with solar panels - which our country is rich in). Also, touching about technical issues, I presume these turbines are not connected to the main grid; eliminating the messy-ness that a typical wind turbine can cause the grid. By messy-ness I mean fluctuation and unpredictability which requires a lot of back-up generation. Since it was previously fueled by diesel generators, these provide excellent back-up when needed and when not needed, we save a lot on fuel cost!

“In the day, when we have less wind, the solar panels will cover the extra load. At night, the wind turbines will be the ones generating more power. If the solar panels and wind turbines do not create enough power, the diesel generator will (automatically run to) compensate for the deficiency.”

It’s good that we started small(at only a combined capacity of 650kW). It might be optimal to spread out these small devices to capture the resources form different angles and points on the island. However, we should also bear in mind that when other countries are moving towards 2MW and 5MW single wind turbines, we should do the same and beneft from economies of scale - in terms of having less number of generators, gearbox, installation space and maintenance cost as well as providing additional capacity. These additional capacity if found to be more than needed, should be stored by the various means available(although it is a bit expensive at the moment).

Rice prices in the UK

I have realised increase in prices everywhere including restaurants and their smaller rice portions. But when I finally went grocery shopping (for rice, after a long time) over the weekend, it really hit me. These are the prices of Basmati rice in Tesco London:

1kg:   £0.94 —–> £1.76  (87% increase)

500g: £0.54 —–> £0.90  (67% increase)

Why are there discrepancies in the rate of increase? I presume the 1kg was priced lower before to encourage people to go for bigger things (like most products do).

Good time to go on a diet innit?

The Big Mac Index, by the Economist

The Economist used a very interesting way to compare the exchange rate between different countries in the world. The only comparison was the price of a Big Mac. They kept the US Dollar as the benchmark and see how many more burgers can one buy in other currencies@their country. The index as shown in the graph below shows currencies that are overvalued(right) and undervalues(left).

Correction: Interesting to know that Malaysia is the most under-valued in the list presented; which we can see from inflationary prices.

Feeding the power - taken from E&T Magazine(VOL3, ISSUE13)

Regarding biofuels and food competing with fuel, > 14 countries have been involved in food-related violence and amongst them, Malaysia was the first on he list. A few interesting ones are outlined below:

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is struggling for his political survival because of voters furious over food prices.

In India, food markets stand empty and the number of milk offerings to Hindu deities that take place daily across the country has plummeted.

Egypt’s President ordered the army to start baking bread.

The Philippines has made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment.

Japan, despite a long-standing cultural aversion to GM rice, has been importing it for the first time.

Well, food is a necessity and once this is threatened, politicians are forced to face this problem before they can focus on development or other issues. Hence, watchdogs/government institutions need to play an increasingly strong role in making sure that biofuels do not compete with food(although it might seem more lucrative).

On the other hand, this article also mentioned that farmers can benefit from the higher prices tha they obtain for their crops now - which in turn reduces the need for subsidies for them to be sustainable.

Doubling of Malaysia’s CPI in one month!

The CPI for June is recorded as 7.7% which is more than double the amount in May(3.8%). According to TheStar, this is the highest in the past 27 years(highest in my life)! Obviously this has everything to do with the increase in petrol prices which led to increase in electricity tariffs.

Looking back 27 years ago, the CPI was at 10.8% in April 1981. The relation we can get here is that during Tun Mahathir’s time as a Prime Minister, the CPI index was never at an alarming rate.

However, the question remains as to what are the items that are put together to form the basket in order to calculate the CPI and is it truly reflective of our current price of goods? Any thoughts or pointers are very welcomed.