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Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the U.S., supplying more than 2 million barrels of oil imports a day. Here the heads of the U.S. and Canadian Chambers of Commerce argue that a new pipeline from Alberta, Canada to Texas would supply an additional 1.1 million barrels of oil a day. The pipeline project- called the Keystone XL pipeline- has been under review by the U.S. government since 2008. An Energy Dept study in February 2011 found that the project should go ahead, but it is being held up for further environmental studies by the Obama administration. The delays may be the result of opposition to Canadian oil sands development. At the same time significant progress has been made in reducing the environmental impact of oil sands development. About 80% of the water used in the process is now being recycled. Tailing ponds containing waste product from the oil shale process are also being reclaimed for green land and replanted with trees and shrubs. TransCanada says the Keystone XL pipeline could create 20,000 new American jobs for construction, and 250,000 jobs in the long run. Strict environmental standards can be followed say Donahue and Beatty, because the U.S. is partnering with Canada....

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Crude from Canada's Alberta oil sands brings about $65, a large discount from the $115 for Brent crude and the $97 price in the U.S. The increase in U.S. oil output is causing a surplus in the U.S., reducing demand for Canadian crude. The lack of enough pipelines to bring this crude to the U.S. also affects prices. The $50 discount to Brent crude affects Canada's oil revenues and economic growth. Canada's central bank cut the growth rate forecast for 2013 to 2% from 2.3%. This is also likely to weaken Canada's currency.

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CEO Norbert Reithofer who became head of BMW in September is pushing BMW in the direction of more collaborative work with other car companies. He has set as a goal collaborations in the areas of components, drive systems and modules. Daimler's new chief Dieter Zetsche s also rethinking how it approaches its business. One way to develop new technologies and purchase parts and components efficiently is to work with other companies who are striving to do the same things. Both CEO's see their companies as midsize manufacturers in a world of auto manufacturing where Toyota and VW, GM and Ford have the advantage of much larger sales over which to spread their research dollars, or to make efficient purchasing by using volume purchasing. Daimler is encourged by its participation in a combined effort in the area of hybrid technologies with BMW, GM and Chrysler, and the progress made in that area through collaborative effort. This is making both companies rethink their intense rivalry since the 1930's, one based in Stuutgart and the other in Munich. Both companies have good profits and as the environment gets harsher with steel prices rising, with demands from the public for tougher new auto emission and fuel efficiency stadards requiring allocating more dollars for R&D, a strong euro and a struggling US economy. The challenge they face is sustaining this profitability as it becomes more costly to operate in this environment. Both companies have appointed some of their talented executives to profitability teams which are working at developing more collaborative efforts....

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There are serious issues facing crude oil production from Alberta tar sands which stem from environmental concerns, and the captal intensive, energy intensive, nature of production from tar sands. According to a recent RAND study energy production from tar sands causes 10-30% more greenhouse gas emissions. Add to that destruction of boreal forest, destruction of bird life, and the contamination of water supplies from the lake size tailings ponds used to store spent water from oil sands projects. Large amounts of steam are needed to separate the dirt from the oil in the tar sands. According to Environmental Defence about 4 billion litres of contaminated water leaked from these tailings ponds and this seepage is polluting rivers in Northern Canada. The technology for trapping and storing the carbon dioxide from the production process is still in the research stage. The other hurdle facing the tar sands development is the price of crude which is around $49 a barrel. While some older tar sands plants can operate even at $30 a barrel, newer operations need $60 or $70 per barrel for acceptable returns, according to Prof. Leach, a professor of environmental economics at the University of Alberta. For these reasons Canadian tar sands production which is now at 1.2 million barrels a day is not likely to go much higher or approach the 3.5 million barrels a day predicted for 2015. Petro-Canada said it would suspend 23.8 billion dollars of expansions in Alberta to tar sands projects, and Canadian Natural Resources is cutting its capital spending in half. ...

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Smaller companies are being squeezed by rapidly escalating costs as costs are going up as fast as oil prices, and face tighter emissions rules in Alberta's oil sands projects. Some projects now cost 2 to 3 times the original projections and there is a severe labor shortage. Even the big players will find it difficult and expensive. To meet the stringent emissions rules, as Prime Minister Harper signs on to new international greenhouse emissions targets, Shell may have to use a technology that captures CO2 from the plants that process the oil sands and store the gas underground. This costs $120 a ton, and would cost Shell upwards of $2 billion a year just to capture and store the CO2, for the 15-20 million tons of CO2 that would be emitted when it increases production to 770,000 barrels a day. The cleanup from oil sands processing is costly because processing is very pollution intensive. Production of one barrel from these oil sands is 3 times more polluting than producing conventional oil. Synenco Energy, which had a project in partnership with China's Sinopec for mining and processing the oil sands called Northern Lights for $10.8 billion, called off the project last year because of all these hurdles, slashed its work force, and decided it may sell the company. Currently 1.1 million barrels a day come from the Alberta oil sands. 2020 output was expected to rise to 4.3 million barrels a day. But now this looks too optimistic. CAPP forecests 3.8 million barrels a day, but even this may be on the high side. ...

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The new Ford Focus being unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in 2009, is a new kind of car for Ford. This is a new kind of effort, a new discipline that Ford CEO Mullaly has advocated from the beginning. Making one car for all markets worldwide. Early on Mullaly told Ford's chairman Bill Ford that Boeing did not have a 737 for Europe and a 737 for the US and a 737 for Asia, why was Ford building a Focus for Europe and a Focus for the USA. In fact before Mullaly the Focus for the USA was a stripped down version of the European Focus and did not make much of an impression. The new Focus will have 80% common parts and 75% of parts from the same suppliers worldwide, so that a Focus made in Germany and the USA will share the same parts as a Focus made in Russia and a Focus made in China. And all of these plants will go into production at about the same time with the new Focus. To accomplish this transformation of Ford for "One Ford" worldwide, which is also on every business card carried by Ford managers, Mullaly appointed Derrick Kuzak as head of global manufacturing. See link for Derrick Kuzak. And the strategy was announced in mid-2008 with the start of retooling of truck factories in Mexico, Kentucky and Michigan, to make small cars designed in Europe for global markets. The task of coming up with one design for a global car was given to Martin Smith, a British designer based in Cologne, Germany. Smith says tastes are converging worldwide with the internet use, and customers are more unified than one would think, and whats emerging is a new kind of global cool if one looks for it. This is what happened when Focus protypes were shown to consumer panels in Europe, the USA and Asia, with a good impression created in all 3 markets. Aligning the US and European tastes was easier, China was a bit harder and the yellow leather interior popular in Shanghai had to be crossed out. Another challenge that had to be met in adisciplined manner was the varying safety rules and emissions around the world. For example European designers liked to have the windshield further forward, and Ford's global small car chief had to tell his engineers to move it back to meet US crumple zone standards. Similiar challenges had to be met in purchasing by global purchasing chief, Tony Brown, with a massive coordination effort needed to be done globally. And plastic trim from Michigan has to fit perfectly with sheet metal stamped in Michigan, and Ford used a virtual manufacturing system that allows the car to be built in cyberspace, and the bugs taken out at that early virtual build stage. The entire change is part of a metamorphosis at Ford, a change of culture and mastering a new discipline in coordinated effort worldwide for "One Ford." One year ago the Wayne Truck plant here in Detroit made the Navigator and the Expedition large vehicles.. With a $550 million investment this plant will make the Ford Focus a year from now. ...

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Canadian tar sands oil production from Alberta faces increasing competition from production by Bakken oil fields in N. Dakota. The increasing production from Bakken fields in the U.S. and the lack of pipeline space to bring oil from Alberta to the U.S. is putting the more costly projects on hold. The costlier projects have costs of about $100 a barrel with crude prices dropping below $90 in the U.S. Projects using steam to get bitumen to the surface are viable at $50 a barrel, other projects that require mining the bitumen to make synthetic crude have costs upwards of $100 a barrel. Costs are rising quickly with the cost of geoscientists going up 14.5% in 2012 and salaries over 200,000. Production workers make $35-$39 an hour and can make about $170,000 a year. The boom has pushed costs higher each year. Suncor Energy, the largst producer, is reviewing the viability of large planned multibillion upgrading and mining projects and cutting capital spending in 2012 by 11%. By 2020 oil sands output is forecast to double from the 2011 figure of 1.6 million barrels a day, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. In 2012 about 50% of production is from the costlier mining operations....

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Revised auto fuel efficiency standards win the support of GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda and Hyundai. These standards would lower the average fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, a decline from the initial target of 56.2 mpg. The revised proposal calls for a 5% average annual increase in fuel economy for cars and a 3.5% increase for light trucks through 2021. After 2021 both cars and trucks have to meet a 5% annual increase. Useful innovation in the new standards is to provide credits for hybrid pickup trucks, and give credits for technological advances that improve fuel economy but don't show up in EPA tests such as the one that shuts of the engine when a car is idling. Other credits would be offered for solar roof panels on electric vehicles. It includes incentives for "promoting early market penetration of tailpipe CO2/fuel consumption reducing technologies." This comes after a long period in which the U.S. lagged behind other countries in fuel economy. It could be one of the main achievements of the Obama administration, and help build a new auto industry around new technologies....

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Controversy about whether bringing back a revamped Ford Explorer is a good idea. Ford's Farley thinks Americans might still consider an Explorer with high fuel economy, getting it up to 28 mpg from 15 mpg. But the evidence is that Americans have soured on SUV's. Consider that during the cash-for-clunkers program more Explorers were scrapped, and by a large margin, than any other model. Sales are down from 450,000 at one time to 52,000 today. To get buyers to look at the Explorer Ford is trying to change the looks from boxy to sleeker car-based crossover , and add high tech features. In fact it is going to be built not as an SUV, but on the same architectural base as the Taurus.

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The critical exchange between oil companies and auto companies about who is at fault for the energy crisis. In one ad that ran last year, Chevron argued that "if automakers improved fuel economy across the board by just 5 mpg, we'd save over 22 billion gallons of gasoline a year." The criticism is also sparked by the high price of oil which is hurting sales of pickups and large SUV's that the automakers depend on for profits. One ad by Exxon Mobil shows a cartoon of a large SUV filling up at a gas station and hints that the problem rests with the automakers who have failed to build the kind of highly fuel efficient vehicles that are needed. The ad says that the average fuel economy of new U.S. autos has not gone up much in two decades, the small gains have been offset by the increases in the size and weight of vehicles.

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Car size shrinks as the Focus, Spark, Aveo, Cruze small cars attract attention at the 2010 International Auto Show in Detroit. The big change is that these small cars are following the European small car in being refined and sophisticated, with a lot of features. This isn't the Chevette that Americans knew in the sixties and seventies, and the perception of what is the right size and comfort is changing completely as a new generation of buyers brought up in a world of pc's, i-phones, and globalized cultures is in the driver seat.

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International Energy Agency estimates show the U.S. surpassing Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2020 because of the boom in shale oil production. The estimates are for 11.1 million barrels a day from the U.S. in 2020.

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The Japan Automobile Dealer's Association says Toyota's Prius hybrid was No. 1 in sales in Japan in 2009 with 209,000 sales, three times the sales in 2008. This shows the high popularity of green cars in Japan and a sign of future trends. Hybrid sales made up 10% of new vehicle sales in Japan in 2009. By comparison hybrid sales in the U.S. were 2.8%. Second in car sales in Japan was the Honda Fit, third the Toyota Vitz, both small fuel efficient cars. About 1.6 million Prius cars were sold worldwide from 1997 to 2009, according to Toyota. Toyota has kept the price of the Prius affordable by pricing it at around $22,000.

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An intimate biographical account of new Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his connections with Muscatine Iowa, where he visited as a head of a Chinese farm delegation in 1985. Xi Jinping remembers the trip vivdly and plans to spend time with friends from that visit during a visit to the U.S. in 2012. He spent two nights during that visit in the bedroom of two college age boys of the Dvorchak family. This revealing account of Jinping's life shows that the actual story of his life is quite different from the title of "princelings" or privileged sons of former communist leaders that is suggested by this reference in the media. Because of the volatile nature of Chinese politics, his father Xi Zhongxun, who led communist partisans in the struggle of the pre World War II years, was rehabilitated twice after falling out of favor. The first period was in 1962 and it was not till 1979 when he was fully rehabilitated. During this period which coincides with the growing up period of Xi from 9-26 years of age, Xi experienced many hardships. During the years of the Cultural revoultion Xi was sent at age 15 to Shanxi province where his father had led partisans. He lived there for 7 years in a traditional cave dwelling in the village of Liangjahe doing farm work. He was denied admission to Tsinghua University twice before being accepted in 1974. There he graduated with a degree in organic chemistry. This was followed by three years working as an assistant to Geng Biao, defense minister and a partisan who was a colleague of his father. The next job was deputy Communist party chief of Zhengding county in Hebei province. Iowa Governor Branstad visited Hebei in 1984, and Branstad played host to a animal-feed delegation led by Jinping in 1985- the visit to Muscatine was part of this trip and which Jinping has told others he enjoyed more than his visits to Oregon or California that year. The second time Xinping's father went out of favor was after his criticism of the crackdown of protests at Tienanmen Square. These experiences have given Xinping a confidence and experience in different situations that other Chinese leaders including the current leaders lacked. If Jinping has inherited some characteristics from his father he may also have the courage to take China in a new direction, and make the kind of changes China needs as it shifts away from an export based economy. At the same time rule in China is by consensus of leaders on the communist party's standing committee. His father helped initiate the special economic zone in Guangdong province in 1978, and Xi Xinping held senior posts in the provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang and in Shanghai, giving him close ties with industry and local government in areas that led the export based economy. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore puts Jinping in the" class of Nelson Mandela type leaders, who has great emotional stability to not let his personal misfortunes and sufferings cloud his personal judgement." Of political positions Jinping has a certain wariness. He once responded to mention of him as the potential leader with the words: "Are you trying to give me a fright."...

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The constructive contribution made by the G-20 meetings of leaders towards building agreement on economic and other policies for peace and progress in the global economy. The meetings were especially useful for coordinating policy and addressing issues arising in the global economy after the 2008 financial crisis. Here Li Baodong, China's vice minister for international organizations and conferences, international economic affairs, describes the path ahead: IMF reforms implementation, better coordination of macroeconomic policies, pursuing the anti-protectionist and free trade policies with further support to the WTO and ministerial MC9 meeting in Bali in Dec. 2013, and infrastructure financing proposals for developing countries on the agenda at the St Petersburg, Russia, G-2- meeting in Sept. 2013. Baodong says the mechanism called the Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth as part of the G-20 meetings is a major achievement. Each G-20 economy submits it macroeconomic policy plan for a Mutual Assessment Process under this arrangement. The progress from the Bretton Woods financial architecture to the new arrangement- from the G-6 to the G-20 to include developing countries from India to Mexico and Brazil- is another major achievement, not fully recognized by the public, says Baodong. Interestingly Baodong makes particular mention to global rebalancing, rather than pushing what he calls the impossible task of increasing demand to get growth. This is a realization coming to China's economic policymakers under the new Jinping-Keqiang administration after the overly aggressive effort to stimulate demand in the 2009-2011 Stimulus, and the ensuing financial problems in the banking and credit system. It is indicative of the policy shift and its implementation underway in China in 2013-2015....