White House says OPEC production cut ”anti-market”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Friday criticized OPEC’s move to cut its oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day as an anti-market decision. “It has always been our view that the value of commodities, including oil, should be determined in open, competitive markets, and not by these kinds of anti-market production decisions,” […]

Khurais Oil Field on Stream in Mid-2009

Saudi Arabia will bring on stream its 1.2 million barrel a day Khurais oil field development in mid-2009, the country’s oil minister Ali Naimi said Friday. State-run Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco, is also working on plans to develop and add capacity at other oil fields including at the onshore Nuayyim and […]

A 21st-century battle we must win for all the world’s sake

From the current financial turmoil must emerge a new and fairer global economic order IF THE 1930s are any guide, the seismic shock hitting the global economy has a long way to go. First came the plummeting stocks on Wall Street, then the social trauma of mass unemployment, soup kitchens and skid row. But they […]

Who says Americans won’t ride mass transit?

With gas prices through the roof, our car-crazy nation showed the love for buses and trains. But there’s a glitch. …The rise in mass transit ridership should be great news. Not since the OPEC oil embargo and energy crisis in the ’70s have famously car-centric Americans been so eager to shell out for a bus […]

The Carbonate Question

According to one view, planet Earth has two energy super-provinces The New World super-province reaches from northern Alaska and the Beaufort Sea through Alberta

Heating Oil Distributors Fear Tough Winter Amid Credit Freeze

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The tight credit market is forcing weak links in the heating oil supply chain, from wholesale suppliers to homeowners, into the cold. Borrowed cash infuses nearly every step of the supply networks that bring heating oil from refiners to individual homeowners and businesses. For wholesale suppliers and door-to-door distributors, loans cover the […]

The Matrix Overloaded: Clean Energy Will Depend on a New, ‘Smart’ Grid

Wind turbines and solar panels have become the icons of renewable energy. But renewable energy is only as effective as the infrastructure that moves it around: the electrical grid. Cool devices to harness pollution-free energy won’t do much to lessen the country’s fossil-fuel dependence unless aging and unsophisticated infrastructure is vastly updated to transmit it. […]

New legal battle for prominent McCain fundraiser

A prominent fundraiser for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is facing a new legal challenge over a lucrative Pentagon contract that involved shipping oil to military forces in Iraq. A competing firm filed a federal suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act this week against the fundraiser, Harry Sargeant III, and his […]

Depressed economy wallops states

Staggered by turbulent financial markets and anxious about a rapidly slumping economy, many state governments are slashing their budgets, frantically trying to stay afloat. After two years free of major fiscal worries, state policymakers in 2008 were hit by a triple-whammy: a Wall Street meltdown that made it more difficult and costly to borrow; a […]

Nuclear Power May Be in Early Stages of a Revival

WASHINGTON But now, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 21 companies say they will seek permission to build 34 power plants, from New York to Texas. Factories are springing up in Indiana and Louisiana to build reactor parts. Workers are clearing a site in Georgia to put in reactors. Starting in January, millions of electric […]

The Failure of Networked Systems: The Repercussions of Systematic Risk

There are those among the Peak Oil community who suspect that we could be facing a failure of our interdependent society that may be sudden, profound, and complete. I have repeatedly said that I am not numbered among them. My opinion is that our way of life will have to change significantly, but slowly. I […]

Oil price slide is an emergency for OPEC nations

…”That’s when OPEC members started to realize two very important things,” said Simmons, an investment banker who wrote the bestselling book Twilight In The Desert, which argues production from some major Middle East oil reserves is declining faster than most people realize. “They realized everything they’d been told by the economists, that $40 oil would […]

Mexico Senate passes legislation to overhaul oil industry

Rival political parties back measures they hope would streamline the state oil company and boost production. Critics fear the bill could lead to privatization. Reporting from Mexico City — The Mexican Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved an energy reform package designed to modernize the state-owned oil monopoly and boost declining production. The seven measures, watered […]

Eco-horror films shocking us into action

CNN — There’s a new wave of horror films stalking the box office. You can forget the torture porn of “Saw” and “Hostel” – in fact these new films are marked by a distinct lack of blood and guts. But there is no doubting their ability to chill audiences to the core: Welcome to the […]

OPEC output cut by 1.5M

VIENNA (AP) The size of the OPEC cut reflected concerns within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which accounts for 40% of global oil supply, that the bottom appears to be falling out of the market. Crude is selling for 50% less than this year’s historic heights because the worldwide economic crisis has put a […]

40 Australian scientists sign on to 350 target

The Earth Recent developments in the state of the Earth

UK: Pensioners cutting back on heating risk death, warns expert

As many as 20,000 more pensioners could die this winter as they try to cut back on heating following the sharp rise in energy prices, new research warned. The large rises in heating costs has pushed an extra 750,000 pensioners into fuel poverty But after this year’s price hikes, it is feared thousands more could […]

Official: Russia’s oil output may drop this year

MOSCOW (AP) -Russia may see its first drop in oil output for a decade in 2008 as the country’s West Siberian oil fields mature, a top energy official said Thursday. Vitaly Karaganov, head of Energy Ministry’s department for oil and gas industries, was the first official to say that Russia’s oil production may go down, […]

Africa’s Potential to Sate World’s Oil Demand Dims

The petroleum potential of Africa, a key contributor of oil barrels to thirsty markets, is beginning to look dimmer because of the credit crunch and a host of endemic challenges. Certainly, Big Oil’s continental land grab will continue. Countries such as Angola and those around the Gulf of Guinea continue to lease tantalizing exploration blocks […]

Suncor Energy CEO Predicts Failure of Some U.S. Oil Refiners

(Bloomberg) — Some U.S. refiners may be forced to shut plants and go out of business in coming months as declining demand aggravates narrowing fuel-production margins, said Suncor Energy Inc. Chief Executive Officer Rick George. U.S. oil refiners will also sell facilities, George said today during a conference call with investors and analysts. “There will […]

LSE Dissertation on Transition Initiatives Now Available

Richard O’Rourke has recently had the unenviable task of writing about peak oil and potential solutions to it as part of a Masters at the London School of Economics, that great bastion of Flat Earth economists. His dissertation, entitled “Transition Towns: Ecotopia Emerging? The role of Civil Society in escaping Carbon Lock-In” examines the Transition […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: In the Eye of the Storm

While waiting to find out how many million barrels of daily oil production OPEC says it will cut, it’s a good time to review the financial-energy situation as the two are now inextricably linked. As is well known, the most prominent features of the landscape for the last few months have been plummeting oil prices […]

He Called the Peak in Oil, Now Bleier Sees $50 Crude in Early ‘09

Or so declared Scott Bleier, president of CreateCapital.com, on July 18. What sounded like an outrageous prediction then turned out to be too conservative as commodities, led by oil and gold, have crashed.

Today, Bleier predicts oil will fall to as low as $50 a barrel in early 2009, and, short of turning off the spigots entirely, he doesn’t think OPEC — which is meeting in Vienna this week — can do much about it.

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Earth as a magic pudding

Cornucopians – those who believe the Earth An example of this would be digging large gold nuggets out of riverbanks in the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s or mining phosphate-rich guano on the Pacific island of Nauru by simply scooping it up and bagging it. However, as you probably know, the alluvial gold of Victoria […]

Canada in 2020 – Oil: Crude awakening

… It

As store shelves go bare, Kremlin whitewashes credit crisis

Moscow – Nothing could be a more visual throwback to the scarcity of Soviet days then the yawning bare shelves at some of Moscow’s small grocery chains this week. Kremlin critics have even voiced hope that such – so far limited – signs of economic crisis could turn the populace against former president-turned-premier Vladimir Putin. […]

Some Regret Locking In Price for Oil

After the rapid run-up in oil and gas prices over the past two years, many consumers have been happy to see them subside in recent weeks. But then there are those who tried to outsmart the market by signing contracts this summer Barbara Daley, who is 76 and lives on Long Island, signed up in […]

The passing of peak oil?

Back in July, a barrel of crude cost $147. Fast forward three months and it is back under $70, amid fears of a global recession coupled with a significant slump in demand. So what does the drop mean for Gulf producers? When a Goldman Sachs analyst predicted that oil prices could reach $200 a barrel […]

OPEC Should Cut Output 2 Million Barrels, Iran’s Minister Says

(Bloomberg) — OPEC should cut crude oil production by 2 million barrels a day after prices tumbled, Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said. Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ministers are arriving in Vienna today for a meeting tomorrow. The group’s president, Chakib Khelil, said that the group will “most probably” cut production and prices between […]

Spain’s ex-prime minister blasts ‘new religion’ of climate change

MADRID (AFP) – Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar Wednesday dismissed climate change as a “new religion” that is drawing hundreds of billions of euros at a time of economic crisis. Aznar made the remarks at the presentation of a book by Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”, in which he […]

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