‘Top Kill’ Effort Seems to Be Working

After days of delays and testing — and the weighing of several options — BP began shooting as much as 50,000 barrels of heavy drilling fluids into the drill pipes and hoses above the well at 1 p.m. Central time. The procedure has worked around the world to stop leaking wells, but never at the […]

Geothermal Power: Warming to a Global Opportunity

However, it’s not just oil prices that have played a part in the resurgence of deep geothermal exploration. From a technical standpoint, deep geothermal systems have been taking on minor roles as pilot or research projects over the last 20 years, and over the last five years global interest has significantly increased. The Massachusetts Institute […]

The Oil Spill Is Now 29,000 Square Miles

All together, slicks and sheen are possibly covering as much as 28,958 square miles (75,000 km2). That’s an area as big as the state of South Carolina. It’s Day 36 of this fatal incident. Our estimated spill rate of 1.1 million gallons (26,500 barrels) per day, now on the conservative end of the scientific estimates, […]

Further Evidence of Sixth Great Extinction

Earth’s Five Great Extinctions 65 million years ago (mya) Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T extinction). Did for the dinosaurs. May have been caused by a meteorite hitting what is now Yucatan, Mexico; 75 per cent of species disappeared. 205 mya Triassic-Jurassic extinction. Did away with competition for the dinosaurs. 251mya Permian-Triassic (the worst of all). Known as “The […]

Kunstler: Out of Darkness

Among other things, the most forward-looking leaders in the New Urbanist movement now recognize that we have to reorganize the landscape for local food production, because industrial agriculture will be one of the prime victims of our oil predicament. The successful places in the future will be places that have a meaningful relationship with growing […]

UK adjustment to oil production drops is a success story so far

It has also meant that the country is much more tightly connected to international gas markets: both the continental European market – which is heavily influenced by pipeline supplies from Russia, Norway and Algeria – and the global LNG market – which is shaped by demand in the US and Asia. So far, this integration […]

No global climate pact this year

A global, comprehensive and legally-binding agreement on climate change that was expected to have been finalised in Copenhagen in December last year is unlikely to be delivered in the next climate change conference as well. The outgoing head of the UN climate body, Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Yvo de Boer said on Tuesday […]

Peak Water: the three peaks

“In the same way that peak oil has meant the end of cheap, easy-to-access sources of petroleum, peak water means we are going to have to go further, spend more, and expect less in the realm of freshwater. Peak water reminds us that water, which we used to think was widely available and inexpensive, can […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: After the Spill

Deepwater wells which may be providing the bulk of whatever oil production is left in the next decade are another matter. This week the President is scheduled to announce a new series of regulations for offshore drilling – how these regulations are accepted by the industry and how they are enforced will tell us much […]

BP warns of ‘top kill’ failure; ‘junk shot’ next option

British Petroleum warned that its latest attempt to stop the Gulf oil leak is not guaranteed to work. The top kill method consists of mud and cement being forced don the broken well in an effort to stop the flow of oil. It has a 60- to 70-percent chance of working, as the method has […]

Energy Security and Oil Substitution

For the last several years, US energy policy has been operating on the assumption that energy security and climate change were pretty much two sides of the same coin, in terms of motivating changes in our energy production and consumption. The Gulf Coast oil spill and some of the proposals for addressing the vulnerabilities it […]

Shale Gas Costing 2/3 Less Than OPEC Oil

Shale gas proponents, led by 91-year-old oil patch billionaire George Mitchell, who invented the process to extract it, say the U.S. should plumb all forms of natural gas. That would help unhook the nation from coal and foreign petroleum. Gas is about two-thirds cheaper than oil and greener too. It produces 117 pounds (53 kilograms) […]

SPILL CAM, oil release gets darker

In case you haven’t seen the LIVE SPILL CAM in a while, it’s now much darker. This means a higher oil / gas ratio. We can’t stop the spill, but we can watch it on a live webcam. Direct from BP

EIA: World Energy Use Up 49% By 2035

Global energy consumption will rise 49% between 2007 and 2035, led by economic growth in developing nations, the US Energy Information Administration said Tuesday. While use of renewable fuels will grow rapidly in the period, “fossil fuels are still set to meet more than three-fourths of total energy needs in 2035, assuming current policies are […]

Depopulate or perish

Launching himself as a green campaigner, actor Jeremy Irons has revealed plans to make a documentary about sustainability and waste disposal, likening himself to controversial filmmaker Michael Moore, though “not as silly”. The increasing global population would put an intolerable strain on the world’s resources, he says, and the gulf between developing countries and Westerners […]

Study links climate with mass extinction

A Danish-led international team of scientists has linked climate change with the mass extinction of mammals during the late quaternary era 50,000 years ago. “Between 50,000 and 3,000 years before present 65 percent of mammal species weighing over (97 pounds) went extinct, together with a lower proportion of small mammals,” said University of Copenhagen researcher […]

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Poised to Win Large Energy Contracts

But the Guards, who have established significant control over Iran’s economy under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insisted in April that they were capable of replacing Western companies in major gas projects. Khatam-ol Anbiya is also in talks with Iran’s National Gas Company to build a gas pipeline stretching 600 kilometers (375 miles) in northeastern Iran under […]

Rocky Mountain Institute: Fuel Without Fear

We are engaging powerful partners across four key sectors—buildings, transportation, industrial design and electricity—to understand and vault the barriers to shifting from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables. Although that transition will take decades to complete, and not all its details can be fully foreseen, big gains can start now. Building on our 2004 synthesis […]

Kuwait Says OPEC ‘Not Yet’ Concerned By Oil Below $70

OPEC agreed in March to uphold output quotas for a fifth time. The group’s members slashed their production quotas at a meeting in December 2008, after global energy demand fell amid the worst recession since World War II. Crude oil prices slumped from a record $147 a barrel in July of that year to $32 […]

China Plans World’s Largest Dam in Tibet

China is well known for its massive projects from ancient to modern times and is now planning the world’s largest dam in Tibet. This newly planned megastructure will be larger than the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam, recently completed. That dam holds enough water to slightly change the spin of the Earth. Tibet is a mountainous […]

New Urbanism for the Apocalypse

Agrarian urbanism, he explained, is different from both “urban agriculture” (“cities that are retrofitted to grow food”) and “agricultural urbanism” (“when an intentional community is built that is associated with a farm).” He was thinking bigger: “Agrarian urbanism is a society involved with the growing of food.” America abounds with intentional communities, he pointed out […]

US Congress proposes to quadruple tax on oil

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund has about $1.5 billion available. Under current law, only $1 billion can be spent from the fund on a single incident. The bill would increase the spending limit to $5 billion. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the tax increase was hastily put together, without adequate study, to help […]

British Columbia Energy Minister acknowledges peak oil

Peak oil is the point when global oil production will start going down because of diminishing global supplies. Lekstrom replied that staff are following the peak oil debate. “There are people that think we have plateaued or peaked, and there are others that don’t,” he said, according to Hansard. “So it’s an ongoing debate, and […]

Saudi Arab wants large jump in renewable output by 2020

Reuters reported that top oil exporter Saudi Arabia believes renewable sources could account for up to 10% of its power output by 2020 with prices coming down and a regulatory framework in place. Mr Ahmad Al Khowaiter director of the new business evaluation department at Aramco said that “The proposed target is between 7% and […]

Food in the Land of Peak Oil

Believe it or not, Cuba’s perhaps the world’s leading model of the agricultural system of the future. When the USSR fell, Cuba entered what they call the “Special Period.” But it wasn’t special in a good way. Between 1990-1994, Cubans lost a lot of weight and babies born in those years still show signs of […]

BP’s Crimes And Obama’s Lack Of Leadership

The first signs of active and organized public protest have come in the form of a candlelight vigil in New Orleans, marking the 30th day of the oil leak. Much like the leak stoppage and oil recovery efforts, as well as the wildlife protection and general disaster management efforts, the federal government was notable uninvolved. […]

Kuwait: Global oil demand to increase by five million bpd

Global oil demand will increase by five million barrels per day in the next five years, and China and India will lead the growth in emerging markets, the Kuwaiti oil minister said at the opening ceremony of the 18th Middle East Oil and Gas Conference here Monday. “The fastest growth will be in Asia, where […]

Oil leaking into the Gulf could sink ships

The mysteries that lie beneath the ocean have always been part of the allure of the sea. Think of Texas A&M – Galveston marine biologist Dr. Gil Rowe as an undersea detective. He is on the case of a haunting new tale. “It is just amazing to me that they haven’t been able to get […]

Where should we be putting our mitigation priorities?

Some people put more emphasis on (1) Approaches that would allow our current system to continue, perhaps at a lower level. Various readers will have different views as to how long we will really be able to maintain our current system, and that may explain a big part of the difference in views on this […]

Drought leaves 8 million people short of food

The seeds of rice, tobacco and corn that she planted this spring have failed to germinate because of the drought, she said. In the past, she earned 5,000 yuan each year by selling corn, tobacco and tea. This would be enough to buy rice to feed the family until September. “But the crops have failed, […]

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