DALLAS - (Business Wire) Groundbreaking reporting on energy by Ed Wallace, an award-winning business journalist and broadcaster in Dallas-Fort Worth, has thrust Wallace into the forefront of the national discussion over oil supplies and skyrocketing gasoline prices.
In two April columns for BusinessWeek magazine*, Wallace was the first to challenge Washington and the media’s contention that prices for gasoline and crude oil are rising because of a decline in global inventories and stronger demand.
In reality, Wallace reported, speculators have largely driven the price for oil on the futures market to record levels. In addition, he wrote, demand for oil and gasoline is actually falling, and on April 1, U.S. gasoline reserves are at their highest levels since late 1992—all during a time when refinery production had been intentionally cut to force up the price of gasoline.
In a related story published in the British Telegraph on April 24, Lehman Brothers affirmed Wallace’s analysis, stating that energy supply is outpacing demand growth as the world economy cools.
Wallace’s BusinessWeek columns, which appeared on April 1 and April 23, struck an immediate chord with readers. The first article drew more than 430,000 page views and more than 800 comments, staying among the Top Five most-read articles for almost three weeks.
The analyst and broadcaster’s conclusion that oil and gas prices are being driven by speculation—not market fundamentals—isn’t the first where Wallace has challenged the conventional wisdom on energy or automotive issues. In another BusinessWeek article in April 2006, he sharply criticized corn-derived ethanol as a gasoline substitute, calling ethanol an economic boondoggle that would lead to higher food prices and deteriorating air quality. The ethanol article was the most e-mailed story worldwide in the weekend after it was published.
Wallace has gained a reputation in the automotive and energy industries for taking controversial stands which prove to be true over time. In the 1990s he wrote other groundbreaking stories on energy and transportation issues for media outlets. Among them was a 1993 article about the harmful effects on the environment of MTBE, the controversial gasoline additive. Wallace was responsible for finding the flaws in the federal government database on the Ford Firestone issue – reporting which later drew praise from Tire Review magazine.
More recently, Wallace was honored after speaking at the Scona 53 conference on energy at Texas A&M University in February. Appearing with a number of experts including Azerbaijan Ambassador Yashar Aliyev, former Virginia Sen. George Allen, and ExxonMobil Senior Vice President Mark Albers, Wallace was given the Olin Teague Award for the conference’s best presentation.
A disciple of the pioneering writer and business consultant Peter Drucker, Wallace approaches his work single-mindedly. “I try to find the obscure and overlooked story that denotes a permanent change in an economic or business paradigm,” he says, “and then draw out its impact to a logical conclusion.”
Based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Wallace holds a Gerald R. Loeb Award for exceptional business journalism from the Anderson School of Business at UCLA. His column heads the Sunday Drive section in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and he is a member of the American Historical Society. The automotive expert for KDFW Fox4 in Dallas, Wallace also hosts the top-rated talk show, Wheels, for 570 KLIF-AM in Dallas-Fort Worth, and has one of the most viewed web sites (www.insideautomotive.com) for information and breaking news in the automotive industry.
For more information or to schedule an interview on automotive or energy issues with Mr. Wallace, please phone 214.763.8076 or e-mail wheels570@sbcglobal.net.
* Articles are available on www.insideautomotive.com.
for Ed Wallace
Jeanne Prejean, 214-729-6444
JEPrejean@aol.com
