Focus: As Credit Woes Hit Main St, Oil Bulls Unmoved…for Now

LONDON – A run by depositors on one of Britain’s largest mortgage lenders has stoked fears of a broader economic slowdown but so far there is little to indicate that will hamper surging oil prices, which climbed to a new record Tuesday. Oil exporting nations, government officials and traders have closely watched for signs in […]

Week in Petroleum: At the crossroads

With the Labor Day weekend behind us, along with peak summer gasoline demand, retail gasoline prices would be expected to soften As refiners were preparing for the summer gasoline season during spring of this year, retail gasoline and diesel prices stood at virtual parity, with only a penny separating their respective average monthly prices at […]

Iran: We’ll fight with oil and nukes

TEHRAN – Iran, responding to Western debate about the possibility of war over its nuclear plans, said yesterday that it would use any means to defend itself if attacked and could bomb Israel if the Jewish state launched a strike. Its latest swipes came despite French efforts to row back from a comment by its […]

China Freezes Some Prices in Move to Contain Inflation

BEIJING (AP) — China’s government has ordered some prices frozen and told officials to closely monitor others in its most drastic step yet to contain a surge in inflation. The order, issued late Wednesday, came after inflation rose to 6.5 percent in August — its highest monthly rate in 11 years — propelled by a […]

Russians say soil samples prove Arctic is theirs

MOSCOW – Samples of earth taken by Russians who planted a flag on the seabed below the North Pole last month show beyond doubt the Arctic is Russian, its natural resources ministry said on Thursday. The Arctic 2007 expedition was the first to plant a flag on the seabed directly below the North Pole and […]

Iran OPEC Gov: High Oil Price Unsustainable, Could Hit $100/Bbl

TEHRAN -(Dow Jones)- Iran would benefit from rising international crude oil prices that could even hit $100 a barrel, but high oil prices aren’t sustainable in the long run, said Iran’s Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries governor, Hussein Kazempour Ardebili, in remarks aired by state radio Thursday. Asked about the factors causing soaring oil prices, […]

New Queensland Sustainability Minister on the future with less oil

Queensland’s newly appointed Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation talks with GPM’s Andi Hazelwood about his robust new portfolio (with double the previous environmental budget), the impending public release of his government-commissioned report on “Queensland’s Vulnerability to Oil Prices,” and the importance of relocalisation in the face of oil depletion.“There’s no question whatsoever that […]

Power switch

The wisest energy strategy for the United States, and indeed other countries facing similar challenges, is to move away from their reliance on large-scale centralized coal and nuclear plants, and instead, invest in renewable energy systems and small scale decentralized generation technologies. According to Benjamin Sovacool from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, these […]

NASA researchers find snowmelt in Antarctica creeping inland

On the world’s coldest continent of Antarctica, the landscape is so vast and varied that only satellites can fully capture the extent of changes in the snow melting across its valleys, mountains, glaciers and ice shelves. In a new NASA study, researchers using 20 years of data from space-based sensors have confirmed that Antarctic snow […]

Oil firms pull U.S. Gulf workers

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Oil companies removed nonessential workers from offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday due to the threat of a gathering storm, with only a small amount of production stopped so far. Exxon Mobil said late Wednesday it shut 1,000 barrels of daily crude oil production along with 55 thousand cubic […]

$50 or $100? Experts mull next big oil milestone

NEW YORK But analysts are debating whether oil prices have much upside left after quadrupling since 2002, with bulls arguing that strong economic growth means a supply squeeze is imminent and bears saying a seasonal demand drop will deflate prices.

Guerrilla band wages war in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — Edmundo Reyes is a slight, unassuming man of 55 who loves baseball and children’s literature. Until recently, he sold candy and soft drinks from his family’s corner grocery store in this city’s Nezahualcoyotl district. In May, he left to visit relatives in the state of Oaxaca and never returned. His disappearance might […]

Solving Fermi’s Paradox

…First proposed by nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950, this points out that there Fermi pointed out that an intelligent species that developed the sort of technology we have today, and kept on progressing, could be expected eventually to work out a way to travel from one star system to another; they would also leave […]

The Four Day Work Week: 16 Reasons Why This Might Be a Good Idea

The notion of our standard work week here in America has remained largely the same since 1938. That was the year the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, standardizing the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week. Each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday workers all over the country wake up, get […]

Canada facing legal challenge for breaking federal global warming law

(Ottawa, Canada, September 20, 2007) The Government of Canada is once again facing a legal challenge for failing to take action on global warming — this time for refusing to respect a federal law that requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Late yesterday an Application for Judicial Review was filed with the Federal Court seeking […]

World Energy Council predicts oil peak in 10-20 years

In a sign of just how rapidly peak oil is moving into the mainstream, a report from the World Energy Council has forecast that conventional oil production will peak in the next ten to twenty years. But in an interview with Lastoilshock.com, WEC Secretary General Gerald Doucet insisted that the transition would be The WEC […]

Renewable Energy conference: peak oil and climate change

…”The success of our societies has been built on cheap oil. That in turn – in terms of the consumption of fossil fuel, and not just oil but coal and gas and so on – has led to the climate change we’re currently experiencing. It’s led to the water shortages, the whole thing is linked.” […]

Climate change worse than feared: Australian expert

SYDNEY (AFP) – Global warming is occurring at a faster rate than the worst-case scenario envisaged by experts just six years ago, Australia’s top climate change scientist said Thursday. Tim Flannery, named the 2007 Australian of the Year for his work in alerting the public to the dangers of global warming, said the issue was […]

Collectors make a mint from Arctic mammoths

One day, climate change could cost the earth. For now, it is a nice little earner for Russian hunter Alexander Vatagin. In Siberia’s northernmost reaches, high up in the Arctic Circle, the changing temperature is thawing out the permafrost to reveal the bones of prehistoric animals such as mammoths, woolly rhinos and lions that have […]

The rise and fall of Iraq’s oil law

The draft Iraqi petroleum law, which is meant to create the framework for nationwide distribution of the country’s immense oil wealth and structure foreign investment, is bringing divisiveness instead of reconciliation. This agreement, which included all major ethnic and sectarian power blocs, initially revealed an unprecedented level of cooperation, particularly with regard to governance of […]

China’s biodiversity takes a beating

China has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world, yet its number of species is declining at a frightening rate. The Swiss-based IUCN picked out mainland China, along with Mexico, Brazil and Australia, as being homes to “particularly large numbers of threatened” animals and plants. Worldwide, it listed 16,306 species as being […]

China Faltering on Support For Solar Power – Report

Solar panels could generate over 10 percent of China’s power by the middle of the century, but only if Beijing steps up support for pioneering generating plants and sets more ambitious targets, a report said on Wednesday. Although it is the world’s No. 3 producer of photovoltaic (PV) cells that convert sunlight into electricity, China […]

US Biofuel Production and Global Hunger: Is there a Connection?

While U.S. ethanol production will likely not cause people to go hungry in other countries, structural changes in global agriculture and trade systems are badly needed, according to a new paper by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). “Food versus Fuel in the United States: Can Both Win in the Era of Ethanol,” […]

EasyJet sceptical over current-generation biofuel

UK budget operator EasyJet is sceptical about the value of the current generation of biofuels, suggesting that further research and development is necessary before a genuinely useful product is likely to emerge. Chief executive Andrew Harrison expressed doubts about biofuel technology at the World Low Cost Airlines Congress in London, during which the carrier started […]

Energy farming worsens global warming

Corporations — especially those manufacturing cars, selling petroleum and industrializing agriculture — hype farm fuels to confuse the public about global warming. They even persuade the political classes of the world to subsidize them. In 2007, the subsidies for ethanol and crop diesel in the United States rose to more than $7 billion. But these […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Virginia’s Energy Plan

So far, gasoline prices, which are the major concern to most, have not risen very much. This is attributed to the drop in demand which takes place after Labor Day and the transition to cheaper-to-produce winter gasoline which goes on the market in September. This situation is unlikely to last much longer. Many knowledgeable observers […]

Oil demand unsated, even at $82

Sharply higher oil prices – which hit another record yesterday – have failed to drive down demand or encourage new sources of supply, leaving global consumers increasingly dependent on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. From a brief low of $50 (U.S.) a barrel touched last January, crude prices have climbed steadily to hit a […]

White Sugar Gains Most in a Year as Record Oil Spurs Buying

White sugar climbed the most in more than a year in London as investors speculated that record oil prices will spur demand for alternative fuels such as ethanol, which can be made from the sweetener. Crude oil rose to a record $82.51 a barrel in New York after a government report showed a larger-than-expected U.S. […]

Oil companies to reap handsome profits

As crude oil price surges, the oil and gas (O&G) industry is also seeing some increase in operating costs but analysts expect the sector to remain profitable. The average extraction cost of crude oil has risen as much as 50% to about US$15 per barrel compared with US$10 two or three years ago. However, with […]

OPEC drives up oil prices in a new way

The oil-producing nations’ fast-growing, subsidized economies and soaring consumption of petroleum are big reasons the rest of world is paying more for its crude. …I fully expect oil prices to keep rising for the rest of 2007 and into 2008. The only thing likely to stop oil from climbing to $85 a barrel is profit-taking […]

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