Hungry Crowds Spell Trouble For World Leaders

Is it not said ‘A hungry man is an angry man’?” commented Simon Nkwenti, head of a teachers’ union in Cameroon, after riots that killed dozens of people in the central African country. It is a proverb world leaders might do well to bear in mind as their impoverished populations struggle with food costs driven […]

World cooling on biofuel solution to climate change

Once a golden promise in the fight against climate change, biofuels are fast losing their lustre as high demand for essential crops drives land clearing and pushes up the price of food. Biofuels made from food crops such as corn, sugar, soybeans and oil palm burn cleaner than fossil fuels, but experts say high demand […]

Aus: Not enough ‘green energy’ to meet carbon emission targets

The Commonwealth Government has committed to cutting emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, mirroring a commitment made last year by the ACT Government. However John Mackay, the chief executive of Canberra’s power supplier ACTEW AGL, says given the current state of the industry, there is little chance of meeting the target. “I don’t think […]

Pemex’s woes may clear way for Brazil to help

The Pemex crisis that critics have warned about for the past decade has arrived: Production at the company’s largest oil field, Cantarell, fell 18 percent last year, and Pemex has little petroleum lined up to replace it. Yet the government of President Felipe Calderon finds itself unable to act to prevent what could be a […]

Australia: CO2 plant ‘a step towards’ clean coal

The opening of Australia’s first carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration plant in Victoria has been hailed as a major step toward making “clean coal” viable. The Otway Basin Project in south-west Victoria will see up to 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide captured from natural gas injected 2km underground in a depleted gas reservoir.During the […]

Thailand: Oil-rich gulf waters to be negotiated

Thailand expects to start negotiations with Cambodia on April 21 in Bangkok on offshore petroleum fields in the disputed waters in the Gulf of Thailand, according to Songpop Polachan, deputy director-general of the Department of Mineral Fuels. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would host the first official negotiations between the two countries in the hope […]

Shell CEO: Easy-to-produce oil, gas to peak in next decade

Royal Dutch Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer said Tuesday he expected easy-to-produce oil and gas would likely peak in the next 10 years. Van der Veer said while depletion of maturing conventional resources would certainly play a key role in peak production, lack of access to remaining large reserves, such as in Saudi Arabia, […]

People driving their cars to the end of the oil age

Gasoline-powered cars are driving humanity to the end of the oil age, leaving electric vehicles as the best weapon against global warming. This is the major conclusion in a dramatic international report written by a former Exxon insider and released Tuesday to Canwest News Service.“Sometime during the year 2008, humanity will probably pass the point […]

Wind Power That Floats

Advances in floating platforms could take wind farms far from coasts, reducing costs and skirting controversy.Offshore wind-farm developers would love to build in deep water more than 32 kilometers from shore, where stronger and steadier winds prevail and complaints about marred scenery are less likely. But building foundations to support wind turbines in water deeper […]

With crude at $100 a barrel, Big Oil needs no tax breaks

Beating up energy executives is no policy, but at least end the giveaways. Congress is rarely more indignant than when gasoline prices are high and a committee has managed to drag a group of Big Oil executives up to Capitol Hill. The sessions generally produce more heat than light, more blame-shifting than fact-finding, and so […]

Opposing view: Don’t blame oil companies

Tax hikes would take away income that could be reinvested in oil, gas. These days, frustrated consumers often blame high prices at the pump on the nation’s oil companies. And the common elixir proposed by some policymakers is to impose additional taxes to benefit alternative energy on the very companies being called upon to invest […]

Faster, Maybe. Cheaper, No. But Driving Has Its Fans.

…In his administration

Gas stations look in stores for profits

NEW YORK – Gas prices may be sitting near record levels, but the owner of your local gas station quite likely is struggling. Profit margins on gasoline sales are razor thin. Indeed, some gas stations are losing money on credit card sales, once the fees are factored in. How do they stay in business? More […]

Congress has big questions for Big Oil

WASHINGTON – Top executives of the five biggest U.S. oil companies were pressed Tuesday to explain the soaring fuel prices amid huge industry profits and why they weren’t investing more to develop renewable energy source such as wind and solar. The executives, peppered with questions from skeptical lawmakers, said they understood that high energy costs […]

The Accidental Environmentalist

An oil man reconsiders the future of black gold. Matthew Simmons, head of the Houston-based investment firm Simmons and Company, has made a fortune by investing billions of dollars in the oil and gas industry. Increasingly, though, Simmons has been telling the industry what it doesn GOOD: You

Eco-towns? Britons say no thanks

STOUGHTON, England: The British may be among Europeans most concerned by climate change, but few people in this tiny village in the English Midlands want to be part of their government’s latest proposal for a low-carbon future: an initiative called eco-towns. Stoughton is one of about 60 areas under consideration for new eco-town developments, so-called […]

ANALYSIS: Iraq crackdown strengthens radical cleric and Iran

Cairo – When Iraq’s Prime Minister launched an unprecedented offensive to assert his government’s control over southern oil-rich Basra last week, he certainly was not planning what came about. Nuri al-Maliki, his ministers and generals vowed, and still do, to go after militias and ‘outlaws’ to the end. The main target of the offensive, though […]

Heinberg on ‘resilient communities: paths for powering down’

…He gave an overview of the emerging responses, the bottom up approaches such as Transition Initiatives, Relocalisation Outposts, and so on, and of the top down responses, such as Post Carbon cities and local government plans such as the Oakland Peak Oil Task force, of which he is a member. Richard then unveiled a concept […]

Mexico: Output to fall 1.8Mb/d at existing fields by 2021

Mexico will see oil production decline by roughly 1.8Mb/d by 2021 from existing fields, energy minister Georgina Kessel said. Crude output last year averaged 2.94Mb/d. Output has fallen consistently over the past three years, preventing state oil firm Pemex from bringing in an additional US$10bn/y in revenues, Kessel said. Kessel made the announcement at the […]

India Beckons

India’s New Exploration Licensing Policy reflects the reform and liberalization of the countryThe seventh round of NELP will likely be the most successful yet. On April 11, companies from around the world will submit bids on 57 exploration blocks

Fuel dealers say customers can’t pay bills, lawmaker proposes bill

HARTFORD (AP) – More than 60 days delinquent in paying her oil bill, a desperate Middletown woman recently called Peterson Oil Co., asking for help. Jim Meehan, president of the Portland-based home heating oil company, said he has other customers who are more than 90 days late in paying their bills. Given the rising price […]

China: A stimulated diesel shortage

Diesel shortages are striking across China from southern Guangdong to the northern Tianjian. Long queues of trucks and cars stretching over one kilometer long have appeared at some gas stations; and at one point, diesel was rationed to 300 yuan (US＄42.58) for cash sales – enough for a family car but too small a portion […]

OPEC To Hold Informal April Meeting In Rome

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will hold an informal meeting on the sidelines of an oil producer-consumer conference in Rome later this month to discuss whether current oil market developments warrant calling a special session to consider adjusting output, OPEC sources said Tuesday. OPEC ministers, when they last met in Vienna in early March, […]

UAE studies dollar peg as Gulf grapples with inflation

BEIJING/ABU DHABI, April 1 (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates said on Tuesday it was studying its peg to the weak U.S. dollar as states across the world’s biggest oil-exporting region face soaring inflation. Rifts are growing among Gulf Arab states preparing for monetary union on how to tackle inflation at a 27-year peak of […]

Why EROI Matters

Society usually makes its economic decisions, at least those not predicated by personal greed at the expense of others or strictly political considerations, on economic analysis and most explicitly via either non government market decisions or governmentally-administered cost-benefit analysis. Probably most decisions are made by people in the financial markets who seek to gain the […]

Life in the ‘Burbs: Heavy Costs for Families, Climate

Millions of Americans have moved to the suburbs in the past 60 years, drawn by the lure of larger houses and cheaper prices. But until recently, few were aware of the impact those choices had on the environment. Outside metropolitan Atlanta, one of the nation’s most congested cities, Michelle Carvalho’s dreamhouse is 3,000 square feet. […]

Food price hikes changing U.S. eating habits

…Steadily rising food costs aren’t just causing grocery shoppers to do a double-take at the checkout line Record-high energy, corn and wheat prices in the past year have led to sticker shock in the grocery aisles. At $1.32, the average price of a loaf of bread has increased 32 percent since January 2005. In the […]

Dmitry Orlov: The Collapse Party platform

If the entire country were to embrace the notion that collapse is inevitable and that it must prepare for it, a new political party might be formed: the Collapse Party. If this party were to succeed in upending the two-party monopoly and forming a majority government, this government would then want to implement a crash […]

New Zealand: Locals raise awareness of looming peak oil

“WE are the peak generation and we cannot ignore the signs.” We must also prepare for a post-carbon future, said educator Lisa Talbot and Green Party spokesman John Milnes, who were at Wanganui’s Majestic Square yesterday to coincide with the global Fossil Fools (Fuels) Day. Ms Talbot said about 50 percent of the people they […]

Pennsylvania truckers take fuel price protest convoy to state Capitol

HARRISBURG, Pa.: Scores of truckers took to the highways and streets around the Capitol on Monday and blasted their horns to protest rising fuel prices. As the protest convoy circled the block, about 100 people gathered on the Capitol steps to urge state lawmakers and Gov. Ed Rendell to eliminate Pennsylvania’s highest-in-the-nation diesel fuel tax […]

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