Britain heading back to the dark ages

The UK is facing a tipping point over the next few years in its ability to generate enough power to satisfy an ever-increasing demand. When California was hit with a spate of crippling power cuts eight years ago, it was not simply the fault of an unscrupulous energy supplier called Enron manipulating prices. The power […]

Why $200 Oil Is Just Around the Corner (Jeff Rubin)

…While he states that high oil prices do cause the demise of demand, he sees the subsequent recession as a temporary setback for oil’s race to higher prices. In fact, Rubin predicts that the price of oil will surpass the $100 mark and head to $200 per barrel within the next few years. “We will […]

Easy oil is never far from the cutting edge

Fly out by helicopter 300 kilometres over the Gulf of Mexico. The water here is more than a kilometre deep, and hurricanes like 2005 Tiber is reported to hold some 4 to 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent, of which a third or more might be recoverable. That makes it bigger than BP

Is There a Climate-Change Tipping Point?

…Researchers from Wageningen University, the University of Wisconsin and Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that an assortment of systems they studied all had critical thresholds that could trigger change from one state to another In an ecological system like a forest, for example, squealing might look like an alternation between two stable states

UK official says oil was part of Lockerbie talks

LONDON — Trade and oil considerations played a major role in the decision to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya, a senior British official said in an interview published Saturday. Justice Secretary Jack Straw said trade, particularly a deal for oil company BP PLC, was “a very big […]

Peak Oil and the IEA (What they don't want you to know…)

…On the 26th of November 2008, I sent an interview request to Dr. Birol, in order to discuss how Peak Oil would affect International Relations (my degree’s dissertation topic). While he was first “delighted” to meet with me (as reported by his assistant), he then cancelled the meeting. Nevertheless, Dr. Birol asked me to meet […]

Nuclear Energy Becomes Part of China-U.S. Talks, Official Says

Talks between the U.S. and China, the biggest producers of greenhouse gases, are evolving to include sharing expertise in nuclear-energy technology. Atomic reactors, which discharge far fewer heat-trapping gases that conventional power plants, will become a “very important” part of the negotiations on energy and climate change, said David Sandalow, the U.S. Department of Energy’s […]

Talk of China's green revolution belies its voracious energy grab

All the talk is about China’s green revolution at the moment, but everywhere I turn it seems to be gobbling up another multi-billion pound gas contract or oil company. Officials may be making all the environmentally-correct noises ahead of the G20 summit later this month, but out of an estimated $46.5bn (Its latest purchase this […]

Oil expertise from Venezuela gives Colombia's industry a boost

Until recently in a free fall because of terrorist attacks that scared off wildcat drillers, Colombia’s oil production is staging a surprisingly robust rebound, boosted in no small part by the arrival of oil industry executives and engineers banished by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Increased production in Colombia, a close U.S. ally, is important for […]

Oil and the minds of men

The great petroleum geologist Wallace Pratt famously said that “Oil is found in the minds of men.” Discoveries depend on visionary theory, technical innovation and commitment to risky drilling. Plus luck. Peak Oil theory, by contrast -which asserts that global oil production has, or soon will, peak, and that this has powerful policy implications — […]

Oil scarcity leads us to electric cars which leads us to Neodymium scarcity

Peak Neodymium? A recent Reuters article quotes Jack Lifton, an independent commodities consultant and strategic metals expert, as raising an alarm about the use of rare earth materials (like Neodymium) in hybrid and electric cars like the Prius. The article raises the specter of running out of these rare earth materials dooming the possibility of […]

Africa May Veto Climate Change Deal: Ethiopian PM

Africa will veto any climate change deal that does not meet its demand for money from rich nations to cut the impact of global warming on the continent, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Thursday. “We will use our numbers to delegitimize any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position,” Meles told […]

Try nature, not tech, to fix economic woes -UNEP

The world is waking up to huge economic benefits of investing in nature, from forests to coral reefs, after one of the “great oversights” of the 20th century, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme said on Friday. Achim Steiner told Reuters that governments had long placed too much faith in technology to fix problems […]

China faces massive bill for clean coal

Western governments pushing China to use clean-coal technology may need to lower their expectations for the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. Costs will total as much as $US400 billion ($474 billion) over 30 years to install systems to capture carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks in China and bury it underground, said Richard Morse, […]

Matthew Simmons: Oil Spin

Ignore the optimists. Peak oil is real. Last week, four of the world’s most outspoken oil aficionados waded into the controversy of peak oil, publishing articles packed with myth and distortion. This “Gang of Four” all claimed the issue was silly, moot, or simply a myth. The four pieces were Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin’s […]

China and the Buzz of a Pending Bank Default

Let …Some of the State Owned Enterprises that stated their potential intentions to default were Air China. China Eastern and Cosco. Mainly in part because they took major derivatives losses over the past year but also, concerns are arising that the derivatives that they were sold by these foreign institutions are garbage, underwater and may […]

ANALYSIS – After record August, can Russia pump more oil in 2009?

LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Official opinion conflicts with analysts’ views over whether production from Russia’s new oil fields can replace the fall from older deposits after record August output. Analysts say the recent uptick might not be enough to offset stagnating western Siberia deposits, and it could be decades before sufficient infrastructure is in place to […]

Mexico energy ministry unhappy with Pemex results

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s energy minister said on Friday she is concerned about state-run oil company Pemex’s poor financial results and the company’s board is reviewing possible actions to halt the decline. The minister’s comments about Pemex, led by Chief Executive Officer Jesus Reyes Heroles, come as President Felipe Calderon is promising a shake-up […]

Supertankers May Halt Oil Trading, Frontline Says

(Bloomberg) — Supertanker owners may start refusing cargoes within the next three months unless rates return to a profitable level, said Frontline Ltd., the biggest operator of the ships which carry almost half the world

Organic or local?

ST. PAUL, MN …The researchers found that consumers’ willingness to pay for organic produce was about the same as they would pay for local produce. But the frequency of purchases was different for organic and local produce. Participants were asked “When you buy fruits and vegetables, how often do you buy locally grown (or organically […]

Call for White Papers

The National Institute of Standards and Technology In this call for white papers, TIP is seeking information in all areas of critical national need, but also seeks information to assist TIP in further defining several topic areas under development. White papers may discuss any area of critical national need of interest to the submitter, or […]

Hundreds March in Chinese City Hit by Riots in July

BEIJING — Hundreds of Chinese protested deteriorating public safety Thursday after a series of mysterious syringe attacks further unnerved residents in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, where ethnic rioting in July killed nearly 200 people. People living near the city center reached by telephone said hundreds, possibly thousands, of members of China’s Han majority […]

IEA to Cut 2030 Emissions Forecast on Recession

(Bloomberg) — The International Energy Agency plans to cut its forecast for carbon-dioxide emissions in 2030 after the recession slowed energy consumption and reduced pollution, Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said today. The projection The IEA

Former CIA Official Urges Curbs on Oil Firms Supplying Iran

(Bloomberg) — A former CIA director says companies that sell Iran refined petroleum products must be punished as the country gets closer to making a nuclear bomb.

American Power and the Fall of Modernity (Part III)

…This is not a world of tariff-based deglobalization like the 1930s. It is a world of true global decompression. Global networks will continue, but only for those who manage to …But why is it already too late? The fact remains that developing the rest of humanity requires untold sources of energy and a benign environment. […]

Saudi prince urges U.S. to recognize oil dependency

MILAN (Reuters) In the article translated into Italian and published by Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Turki said energy independence was an unrealistic, groundless and harmful concept which was likely to re-emerge once economic recovery pushed oil prices up. “There is no technology on the horizon which can replace oil to satisfy colossal needs […]

Long-term Cooling Trend Reverses, Signaling Potential For Sea Rise

ScienceDaily To track Arctic temperatures 2,000 years into the past, the research team analyzed natural signals recorded in lake sediments, tree rings and ice cores. The natural archives are so detailed the team was able to reconstruct past Arctic temperatures decade by decade. As part of a 21,000-year cycle, the Arctic has been getting progressively […]

Oil sands output to double by 2013: report

Output from Canada’s oil sands will double and profits in the oil business will triple by 2013 as rising crude prices kick-start mega-projects delayed by the economic downturn, the Conference Board of Canada said yesterday. The board’s summer outlook for the Canadian oil-extraction business forecasts that crude prices driven south by the economic downturn will […]

UNC professor makes progress on new peak oil class

I checked in today with UNC physics professor Gerald Cecil, who I interviewed last year for a series of stories I wrote on the peak oil concept. Cecil and professors from four other departments are moving forward with the scheduling of a Spring 2010 freshman seminar course called “Energy and Environmental Crises.” Up to 125 […]

The promise and limits of local food

EATING LOCAL is all the rage. As someone who dropped out to become a community farmer in the 1970s, and still farms, I am delighted. As someone who later dropped back into academia to become an environmental historian, I have my doubts about how much we can grow in New England. Watching some of my […]

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