Squandered oil bonanza may bring down Iranian President

Oil at nearly $100 a barrel cannot keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad safe in the presidency of Iran for ever. Finally, it seems as if his breathtaking economic mismanagement, squandering an unprecedented bonanza, may prise him from office. His critics have been predicting from his election in June 2005 that his wilful ignorance of economics would lead […]

Venezuela energy clients subject to Chavez whims

CARACAS, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Venezuela’s decision to halt asphalt exports and unilaterally change oil payment terms are new signs that the OPEC nation’s energy deals can at any moment be upended by the whims of leftist President Hugo Chavez. The former soldier on Sunday said Venezuela would cut all asphalt exports to improve domestic […]

Biofuels ‘are not a magic bullet’

Biofuels may play a role in curbing climate change, says Britain’s Royal Society, but may create environmental problems unless implemented with care. In a new report, the Society suggests current EU and UK policies are not guaranteed to reduce emissions. It advocates more research into all aspects of biofuel production and use. The report says […]

Virgin Atlantic to fly a 747 plane on biofuel

February test flight to measure carbon output LONDON – Virgin Atlantic said Monday it would fly one of its Boeing 747 planes on biofuel during a demonstration flight from London to Amsterdam next month. Virgin Atlantic Chairman Richard Branson said the test flight, which he called the first of its kind, would yield crucial information […]

Shell: Force majeure on Nigeria Forcados exports

LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell has declared a force majeure on crude shipments from its Forcados export terminal in Nigeria after last week’s pipeline attack, a spokesman said on Monday. Exports have been halted since Friday due to sabotage at two of its pipelines connected to the Forcados export terminal. Production has […]

Bush visits Saudi Arabia, delivers $20 billion arms deal

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia Coinciding with Bush’s trip, the Bush administration in Washington notified Congress on today that it will offer Saudi Arabia the chance to buy sophisticated Joint Direct Attack Munitions

How to handle carbon dioxide? Lock it in rock

Underground storage could provide solution to keep gas from atmosphere Escalating carbon dioxide levels tied to global warming have increasingly forced world leaders to grapple with environmental costs of delaying reduction efforts versus economic costs of implementing tighter regulations. But therein lies a key dilemma: How can future power plants meet a projected spike in […]

Economic Collapse and Global Ecology

Given widespread failure to pursue policies sufficient to reverse deterioration of the biosphere and avoid ecological collapse, the best we can hope for may be that the growth-based economic system crashes sooner rather than later. CounterCurrents.org

Time’s up for petrol cars, says GM chief

THE world’s biggest car maker, General Motors, believes global oil supply has peaked and a switch to electric cars is inevitable. In a stunning announcement at the opening of the Detroit motor show, Rick Wagoner, GM’s chairman and chief executive, also said ethanol was an “important interim solution” to the world’s demand for oil, until […]

Kunstler: Disarray

… A reader sent me a passle of recent clippings last week from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It contained one story after another about the perceived need to build more highways in order to maintain “economic growth” (and incidentally about the “foolishness” of public transit). I understood that to mean the need to keep the suburban […]

Repsol Confirms Natural-Gas Find in Peruvian Jungle

(Bloomberg) — Repsol YPF SA , Spain’s largest oil producer, confirmed an “important” natural-gas discovery in Peru’s southeastern jungle, Peru’s President Alan Garcia said. Repsol, based in Madrid, and partner Petroleo Brasileiro SA, which announced the find last month, discovered more than 2 trillion cubic feet of gas in Block 57 bordering the Camisea gas […]

Death Rates and Food Prices

…It still seems to me that a sustained increase in food prices by factors of several fold, and that lasts for years, has the potential to deprive a material fraction of the global poor of enough food to live. This would be a much worse food crisis than the 1970s food crisis. Whether biofuels have […]

Toyota Will Offer a Plug-In Hybrid by 2010

DETROIT Katsuaki Watanabe, the president of Toyota, announced the company

Oil prices rise on production fears

VIENNA, Austria – Oil prices rose sharply Monday as rising political tension in the Middle East appeared to outweigh worries that a possible U.S. recession could curb oil demand. After opening lower, light, sweet crude for February delivery rose $1.23 to $93.92 a barrel by afternoon in European electronic trading on the New York Mercantile […]

Americans Cut Back Sharply on Spending

Strong evidence is emerging that consumer spending, a bulwark against recession over the last year even as energy prices surged and the housing market sputtered, has begun to slow sharply at every level of the American economy, from the working class to the wealthy. …The big exception is gasoline. American Express and the Consumer Federation […]

Get ready for $400-a-barrel oil

GRAND FORKS – Last week, the price of oil reached $100 a barrel. This came as a surprise to some people, but it should not have done so. The world is running out of oil, and no amount of wishful thinking can change this fact. A recent book by David Strahan predicts the price will […]

Iran warns Turkmenistan to resume gas supplies soon

Tehran: Iran will stop buying Turkmen gas altogether if its neighbour does not resume supplies cut off two weeks ago, oil minister Gholamhossein Nozari was quoted as saying on Sunday. Nozari spoke to Iran’s Fars News Agency as a state-owned television station and a leading member of parliament said that Turkmenistan wanted to double the […]

China eyes energy, environment ministries in March

BEIJING, Jan 14 (Reuters) – China will likely get an energy ministry in March and upgrade its environment watchdog to ministry status, sources said on Monday, as it aims to boost fuel security with oil at $100 a barrel and cut back on pollution. If the massive shift in China’s unwieldy bureaucracy goes ahead, it […]

EADS chief looks to US to avoid euro ‘torture’

…Mr Gallois can be thankful that the first A380s are at last flying Asian skies. The assembly lines are running smoothly, if two years late. Yet Airbus still has only 177 firm orders. The break-even level is 420. Bad luck has played its part. Oil at $100 a barrel has given an edge to Boeing’s […]

Streetcar plan has money and desire (Arlington, VA)

Plans to build a Northern Virginia streetcar network, once considered fanciful, received a major boost last week, when officials unanimously voted to give the project its first big infusion of funding. “It is one of the most important things we can do to move people in Northern Virginia and deal with air pollution and global […]

EU emission limits could drive industries out of Europe

The European commission will set out new laws next week to impose swingeing limits on greenhouse gas emissions from EU heavy industries in a move that could prompt some of these to relocate lock, stock and barrel overseas. Draft legislative proposals, due to be published on January 23 and seen by the Guardian, would cut […]

Antarctic is losing ice

The rate of annual ice loss in the Antarctic has increased by almost 80 billion tonnes in a decade, a study has found. Measurements using satellite radar readings revealed that in parts of the continent the rate of loss has speeded up by 140 per cent since 1996. Global warming is thought to be among […]

Bin Laden turns heat on Saudi Arabia

If bin Laden’s assertions are true, and Saudi Arabia’s Afghanistan-like intervention in Iraq continues to prevent the mujahideen unity bin Laden advocates, the al-Qaeda chief and his shura (consultative) council may soon confront the very unpalatable necessity of having to break with their traditional grand strategy and move to try to destroy the Saudi regime. […]

Swedish Alliance Party Calls for Nuclear Rethink

Sweden should rethink its commitment to phase out nuclear power and build four new atomic plants in the next few years, the leader of one of its ruling, centre-right alliance parties said on Friday. The call for a rethink follows hot on the heels of Britain’s decision to invest in new nuclear power stations and […]

China still building ”energy-guzzling” buildings

China’s developers are still building “energy-guzzling” buildings, flying in the face of sustainability pledges made during their design, state media reported on Monday. China, facing an uphill battle to secure energy and resources to feed its booming economy, has set targets to make new buildings 50 percent more energy efficient by 2010.But only 53 percent […]

Should cars eat our food?

It is not sinful to fuel autos with the help of renewable crops, as Cuban dictator Fidel Castro claims. But it is unacceptable to make food scarcer and more expensive because of a headlong race by businessmen to make higher profits with such a programme. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, who studies poverty issues on a macro […]

EU admits biofuel target problems

The European Commission is re-thinking draft rules on reaching the EU’s target to boost biofuels amid strong criticism by green campaign groups and development NGOs that the goal could lead to environmental damage and social dislocation. The commission is due on 23 January to publish legislation on the production of biofuels, aimed at promoting the […]

Rethink biofuel, says Nobel laureate

A Nobel laureate has cautioned the government against rushing into biofuel development because there’s little energy to be gained from it. Dr. Hartmut Michel, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, who was in Manila last week for a talk, said investing in biofuel development was “counterproductive.”“When you calculate how much of the sun’s energy […]

Malaysia’s palm oil inventory to fall further as output drops, demand increases

Malaysia’s palm oil inventory will drop further over the next few months after a slight fall in December as severe flooding hits key producing states, analysts said Monday.‘We believe inventory levels could ease further in the next one to two months even if demand is stagnant as production is expected to decline further,’ said Alvin […]

Largest oil producers have passed their peak

Of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have passed their peak of production and are now in decline, including the USA in 1970/1, Indonesia in 1997, Australia in 2000, the North Sea in 2001, and Mexico in 2004. What is Peak Oil. Know all about it here:What is peak […]

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