Establishment and Marketing of New Oil Benchmarks in the Structure of Global Oil and Oil Products Mercantile Trade: the Russian Case

The organization of oil and oil products stock trading that requires for independent national price indicators establishment, will promote the formation of a fair prices for energy commodities, the extension of influence of the national currency on the global market and the decrease of impact of external fluctuations of global economy. In this article, the authors review the possibility of inclusion of new oil benchmarks in the structure of the global oil and oil products mercantile trade. In particular, the Russian case is the major research subject, and the assessment is made for the purpose of strengthening the country's leverage over free market prices and in the interests of the state budget and national companies. Special attention is also given to the analysis of the contemporary contract structure of the global oil market and imposed risks. The authors develop the methodological framework for oil and oil products price indicators calculation and the suggestions about the promotion and marketing of Russian oil benchmark on the international level. Keywords: oil, oil products, mercantile exchange, benchmark, global oil market, international relations JEL Classifications: F13, N70, O24, Q4

Attosecond angular streaking and tunnelling time in atomic hydrogen

Tunnelling, one of the key features of quantum mechanics, ignited an ongoing debate about the value, meaning and interpretation of 'tunnelling time'. Until recently the debate was purely theoretical, with the process considered to be instantaneous for all practical purposes. This changed with the development of ultrafast lasers and in particular, the 'attoclock' technique that is used to probe the attosecond dynamics of electrons. Although the initial attoclock measurements hinted at instantaneous tunnelling, later experiments contradicted those findings, claiming to have measured finite tunnelling times. In each case these measurements were performed with multi-electron atoms. Atomic hydrogen (H), the simplest atomic system with a single electron, can be 'exactly' (subject only to numerical limitations) modelled using numerical solutions of the 3D-TDSE with measured experimental parameters and acts as a convenient benchmark for both accurate experimental measurements and calculations. Here we report the first attoclock experiment performed on H and find that our experimentally determined offset angles are in excellent agreement with accurate 3D-TDSE simulations performed using our experimental pulse parameters. The same simulations with a short-range Yukawa potential result in zero offset angles for all intensities. We conclude that the offset angle measured in the attoclock experiments originates entirely from electron scattering by the long-range Coulomb potential with no contribution from tunnelling time delay. That conclusion is supported by empirical observation that the electron offset angles follow closely the simple formula for the deflection angle of electrons undergoing classical Rutherford scattering by the Coulomb potential. Thus we confirm that, in H, tunnelling is instantaneous (with an upperbound of 1.8 as) within our experimental and numerical uncertainty.Comment: 7 figure

Measurement of laser intensities approaching 10 15 W/cm 2 with an accuracy of 1%

Accurate knowledge of the intensity of focused ultrashort laser pulses is crucial to the correct interpretation of experimental results in strong-field physics. We have developed a technique to measure laser intensities approaching 1015W/cm2 with an accu

Evaluation of World Energy Scenarios

What are the future global systems developments? It remains one the biggest unknown, especially in terms of energy, as it is globally considered as both cause and solution for multiple problems of the humanity. Therefore, nowadays a number of experts are exploring driving forces, critical uncertainties and unknowns that have an influence on future energy systems development. This article aims at providing a brief investigation of existing world energy scenarios that cover the range of plausible outcomes of future global energy system development. Those are represented by International Energy Agency, World Energy Council, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and others. The analysis covers both qualitative and quantitative indicators of the world energy system development that provide for future worldview formation. The article looks into various approaches to energy system development forecasting and scenario building employed by the abovementioned organisations, and discovers the motives for making assumptions as the means of attaining internal targets and the consequences of the distinction of individual attitude to the development trends within the expert community. The current assessment implies grouping of the most advanced of the existing energy system development models, identification their advantages and disadvantages, and shows differences in modeling approaches used in a number of specialized international organisations

Oil Production, Refining and Transportation in Canada

The article deals with fuel and energy complex of Canada as one of the largest manufacturers of primary energy in the world, which provides up to 6 percent of the world energy supply. Only the Russian Federation, PRC, the United States of America and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have larger production volumes. However, oil plays the most significant role in Canada's energy exports. It is estimated that its proven reserves are sufficient to meet the demand for 140 years at current production rate. The relevance of the study, including the analysis of fuel and energy complex of Canada, is due to the fact that such comparison and synthesis of data on the amount of recoverable oil reserves, the volume of its production, imports, exports and transit of oil and oil products, the distribution of oil for transportation (via pipelines, rail, sea, road), strategic oil field, refining and transportation of oil and oil products development projects, as well as implementation of Canada's best practices in the Russian Federation, is being developed for the first time. In addition, the data given in previously published articles on the subject, due to the dynamic development of the industry, are obsolete and do not reflect the real situation

Global Refining Industry in Retrospect, and Evaluation of Russia-EU Petroleum Products' Trade Perspectives

Oil-refining industry plays a significant role in the development of the world fuel and energy complex. In the meantime, at the current stage of this industry's development quality changes are taking place in it. Taking into account the traditional siting of refinery capacity close to consumption centers, many countries consider the possibility of building their own oil refineries to satisfy the growing domestic demand for oil products. Other countries consider the possibility of developing refineries not only for the national market, but also for export of petroleum products. Such a tendency can be observed in Russia. The article deals with current state and relevant issues of development of oil refining industry on the global scale, with the latter being largely driven by consumer demand changes. Particular attention is given to Baltic Sea region countries that are considered as potential markets for diesel fuel exports in the context of the capacity increase of oil refining in Russia. Keywords: Russia, oil, petroleum products, diesel, refining, international trade, EU, energy market JEL Classifications: F16, F63, O52, R12, L16, L7

Measuring laser carrier-envelope-phase effects in the noble gases with an atomic hydrogen calibration standard

We present accurate measurements of carrier-envelope-phase effects on ionization of the noble gases with few-cycle laser pulses. The experimental apparatus is calibrated by using atomic hydrogen data to remove any systematic offsets and thereby obtain accurate CEP data on other generally used noble gases such as Ar, Kr, and Xe. Experimental results for H are well supported by exact time-dependent Schrödinger equation theoretical simulations; however, significant differences are observed in the case of the noble gases

Transverse electron momentum distribution in tunneling and over the barrier ionization by laser pulses with varying ellipticity

We study transverse electron momentum distribution in strong field atomic ionization driven by laser pulses with varying ellipticity. We show, both experimentally and theoretically, that the transverse electron momentum distribution in the tunneling and over the barrier ionization regimes evolves in a qualitatively different way when the ellipticity parameter describing polarization state of the driving laser pulse increases