Venezuela moves on petrochemical, gas firms

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela is preparing to nationalize petrochemical projects and on Thursday said it seized property of a U.S. gas service company as President Hugo Chavez steps up a drive to put key industries in state hands. The national assembly is currently reading a proposed law to put all petrochemical activity under state control, […]

New clean energy 2009 investment seen sharply down

LONDON (Reuters) – New investment in clean energy will total $95 to $115 billion in 2009, representing a drop of 26-39 percent from last year’s total of $155 billion, data published by research group New Energy Finance showed on Friday. The clean energy sector including wind and solar power enjoyed more than fourthfold growth in […]

Big oil watches Iran vote, but investment distant

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran’s presidential election on June 12 may mark a small step toward the return of big oil’s cash to the country’s energy sector, but it could be years before investment flows freely. Iran sits on the world’s second-largest oil and gas reserves, a mouth-watering prospect for international firms starved of access to […]

New device can make ethanol at home

Company will deliver raw material as needed SACRAMENTO This is how it will work: Interested motorists will buy the microfueler and keep it at home, probably in the garage. A normal wall socket and water supply are all that’s needed to churn the waste into ethanol. GreenHouse Energy will supply the liquid waste at no […]

Coal, Oil and the Difficulty of Grasping Long Duration Problems

In the mid 19th Century, William Stanley Jevons patiently tried to explain to his fellow countrymen that the rich energy content in coal was not a marginal but a pervasive influence on nearly every aspect of the British economy. He warned that coal production would inevitably migrate away from the easy, near-surface deposits to the […]

Why low oil prices now may mean higher oil prices later

WASHINGTON, D.C.: What until recently was a steep drop in global crude oil prices has sparked delays and cancellations of major energy projects across the globe. Experts fear that this pullback could provoke costly supply shortages just over the horizon. “Energy investment worldwide is plunging in the face of a tougher financing environment, weakening final […]

Experts: Bat fungus causing wildlife threat

‘White-nose syndrome’ affects creatures in nine states, and is spreading WASHINGTON – A mysterious fungus attacking America’s bats could spread nationwide within years and represents the most serious threat to wildlife in a century, experts warned Congress Thursday. Displaying pictures of bats speckled with the white fungus that gave the disease its name As a […]

Clean energy depends on wider economy growth

LONDON (Reuters) – Clean energy has strong guaranteed government backing in long-term subsidies but its future growth hinges on wider economic recovery and European targets are in doubt, senior energy executives told Reuters Energy Summit. The big picture for renewables is a sector which may emerge from recession as fast or faster than the wider […]

Shell's Van der Veer sees global oil demand now stabilized

St Petersburg, Russia (Platts) – Shell’s outgoing CEO Jeroen van der Veer said Friday he believes that global oil demand has now stabilized, but warned that industry costs must fall further in order for Shell to revive its delayed oil sands projects in Canada. “So far we saw a decline in demand in Europe and […]

Mid-term oil production outlook down by 500,000 barrels a day

Over the next 11 years, Canada’s oil industry is likely to produce 500,000 barrels a day less than was forecast a year ago, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) said Friday. The forecast for the oilsands has dropped even further, the industry group said in an annual report on expected future production. Even under […]

Carbon capture no 'silver bullet'

Minister acknowledges what critics have said all along: Technology has limited use in bitumen mining The much-touted carbon capture and storage technology is not the answer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands projects in northeastern Alberta, Environment Minister Jim Prentice says. While Ottawa and Alberta are spending billions of dollars on CCS demonstration […]

Russia warns on output from high loan rates

Russia warned today oil could soar to $150 a barrel if the global economic crisis continued to curb investment in capacity by top producers. Moscow’s top energy policy official also warned output from Russia could be hit unless borrowing costs fell for its energy giants and called for a move away from trading oil only […]

Oil industry seeks to adjust to changing landscape

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil’s race towards $70 a barrel in the last few months has stirred a debate on whether prices have run ahead of fundamentals, or if the market has bottomed and the time is now for a comeback in investments. Near-term overcapacity, relatively lower oil prices and caution in committing to new large-scale […]

On American sustainability: anatomy of societal collapse

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Panarchy: Insights Into Our Civilization

As valuable as Dr. Buzz Holling’s notion of panarchy theory is in helping us understand the cyclical changes in forests — the way they move through continuous phases of regeneration, growth, increasing connectivity, and then rigidity, crisis, collapse and regeneration again — his thinking is much more valuable in helping us identify and correct the […]

Africa: Biofuels And Neo-Colonialism

We are currently witnessing a new and massive land-grabbing scramble in Africa, unprecedented since the fall of colonialism. The ‘justification’ for this land-grabbing is supposedly that global climate change is threatening the entire world and that therefore huge tracts of land are required for the planting of biological crops which produce ‘biofuels’ which should replace […]

The decline of the American Empire

Perhaps you have noticed a common theme in my recent columns. Each policy proposed to solve our economic, oil or climate problems I have examined has a fatal flaw, and often more than one. New initiatives always seem dead on arrival. Cap & Trade is not likely to be enacted but if it is, the […]

BlackRock

(Bloomberg) — Daniel Rice, whose BlackRock Energy & Resources Fund rose more than any U.S. equity mutual fund in the past decade, said oil-company stocks may double within three years as crude prices climb toward $90 a barrel. The global recession didn Rice

From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy

This past week was the United States Society for Ecological Economics bi-annual conference (at American University near Washington DC). Herman Daly was honored for his many and longstanding contributions. He also gave an amazing speech which he has graciously allowed us to reproduce as a guest post on theoildrum. In it he outlines 10 prescriptions […]

Jeff Rubin: High oil prices may mean more jobs

Like it or not, your world is about to get a whole lot smaller. According to Jeff Rubin, former chief economist of CIBC World Markets, when the price of a barrel of oil soars into triple digits, everything from travel to food to cars will be much more expensive leaving cities no choice but to […]

The Business Case for Climate Protection

Hunter Lovins, co-author of the acclaimed book Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution and president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, makes the economic case for moving aggressively to solve such challenges as global warming, peak oil, the vulnerability of our energy infrastructure and others.This presentation covers how climate protection, energy efficiency, renewable energy […]

World oil supply has peaked: expert

An energy expert says the world has already reached peak oil supply. Professor Kjell Aleklatt heads an energy research group at Uppsala University in Sweden. His team has found oil production will fall 25 per cent below a level widely accepted by policy makers and economists by 2030. Professor Aleklatt says all governments must act […]

Sell the Banks, Buy Oil Stocks

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Oil Stored On Tankers Is Up 71% Since April

The volume of refined fuel stored on ships floating at sea has jumped nearly 71 percent since early April, industry sources said on Thursday. About 41 million barrels of gas oil and jet fuel were being stored in tankers mostly off Europe’s coast, up from around 24 million barrels in April, sources said. Crude has […]

Oil jumps on bullish Goldman Sachs forecast

OIL has jumped to a seven-month high, after a leading forecaster described recent gains as only the “prologue” to a bigger rally. Light, sweet crude for July delivery settled $US2.69, or 4.1 per cent, higher at $US68.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. July Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange settled $US2.83, […]

'World's cheapest car' coming to US

India’s Tata Motors hopes to offer the Nano, which costs $2,300, to Americans within two years. NEW YORK (Reuters) — India’s Tata Motors hopes to offer the Nano, dubbed the world’s cheapest car, in the United States within two years, its chairman said. “It will need to meet all emission and crash standards and so […]

Petrobras confirms potential Tupi oil reserves

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras said on Thursday a third well in the Tupi area has confirmed estimates of a potential of between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of recoverable light oil and natural gas in the field, in the subsalt cluster. “The third well, 4-BRSA-711-RJS, indicated similar oil type […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Watching a Mega-Crisis

We, in America, are deep in the midst of a four-sided crisis. The first side is an economic slump; second, surprisingly, is our government’s panicky efforts to stabilize the situation; third, the imminent peaking of fossil fuels and numerous other resources that seems to be in abeyance for the moment; and fourth, global warming which […]

China Begins Its Transition to a Clean-Energy Economy

A common refrain from climate action naysayers is that, Critics fairly point to the fact that 80 percent of China

Pickens left indelible mark on Obama

(AP:OKLAHOMA CITY) With a black Sharpie marker, T. Boone Pickens mapped out for Barack Obama the way to U.S. energy independence _ right there on a white tablecloth. It was a demonstration he wouldn’t soon forget. After Pickens’ wife encountered Obama at a function this week in Las Vegas, she relayed word that the president […]

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