The Peak Oil Crisis: The Deepwater Horizon

Shell, which is about to start drilling in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, has filed new safety plans for their proposed projects. The administration is obviously going to take a very hard look at drilling in areas that are hundreds or even thousands of miles from help if something should grow wrong. It is one […]

The status quo of electric cars: better batteries, same range

The Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, two electric cars to be introduced on the market in 2010, have exactly the same range as the 1908 Fritchle Model A Victoria: 100 miles (160 kilometres) on a single charge. The “100-mile Fritchle” was a progressive engineering feat for its time, but it was not the only […]

Little Production Of Next-Generation Biofuel Expected

There are more than 30 U.S. companies developing biochemical, thermochemical, and other approaches to produce next-generation fuels. Most of these firms are currently engaged in small-scale production, experimenting with a variety of feedstocks. Most are also focusing on cellulosic ethanol, a fuel identical to corn ethanol—now commonly used as a gasoline additive. Because ethanol provides […]

China Seeks Fourth-Generation Nuclear Plant Partners

China, the world’s second-biggest fuel user, is seeking overseas partners to help build fourth- generation nuclear reactors to meet rising clean-energy demand. China National Nuclear Corp. has started an “experimental program for the fast-reactor technology for commercial use,” Liu Jing, the deputy director of nuclear power at the state-run company, said in an interview in […]

Gas prices rise but don’t always fall ‎

There is absolutely no reason why prices of crude oil and gasoline should be moving in opposite directions this much for this long. If anything, economic trends should be bringing these two prices closer together. For one thing, supplies are plentiful. According to The Wall Street Journal, crude inventories have hit a record high at […]

Obama and the Oil Spill

Sadly, President Obama seems intent on squandering his environmental 9/11 with a Bush-level failure of imagination. So far, the Obama policy is: “Think small and carry a big stick.” He is rightly hammering the oil company executives. But he is offering no big strategy to end our oil addiction. Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman […]

OK, So Now We Know The New Gulf Oil “Fix” Isn’t Doing Jack

So this weekend, BP successfully inserted a catheter into the leak at the Deepwater Horizon, marking the first time there’s been any progress in stemming the disaster. So how much of a success is this? Well, according to a BP exec quoted by Platts, the tube is collecting mover then 1,000 b/d, which probably means […]

China’s Cnooc set for 20 years in Iraq ‎

Cnooc Ltd., the Hong Kong-listed unit of China National Offshore Oil Corp. has partnered with the state-run Turkish Petroleum Corp. (TPAO) to win a contract with Iraq to develop the lucrative Missan oil-field in southern Iraq, marking Cnooc’s first upstream access to Iraqi oil following its two major rivals, CNPC and Sinopec. The deal is […]

Can the world be fed?

Above all else, Pettigrew said technology will play a significant role in the world’s ability to meet expanding food needs. In the past 30 years, agriculture has managed to double food production, and it is important to recognize that it did not just magically happen. Agriculture made it happen, and we have a responsibility to […]

Peak Oil And Peak Debt

The oil trade deficit for any country counts a lot of entry items and output items, in the US case including a rising amount of refined product exports. Invisibles include drilling and seismic services, equipment, financing and other revenue or value items, cutting the “big number” of the apparent deficit, based only on volume – […]

Gulf spill forecast, With light winds, current could push plume westward

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials say ocean models show a west to southwest current flow in the vicinity of the source of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Under those currents, and with light winds expected to be variable over the next few days, the oil plume from the source of the leak at […]

Arctic Drilling

On my trip to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska I got to see the very beginning of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. It’s an impressive project that carries crude oil from the North Slope of Alaska all the way through the state to Valdez, Alaska. For 31 years oil has been coursing through that massive pipe and then shipped […]

Colin Campbell – The History of Fossil Fuel Usage

Colin Campbell discussing the history of fossil fuel usage and a basic explanation of peak oil.

Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit

Clean energy – mainly solar, geothermal, hydro, wind, and unconventional biofuels – is perfectly capable of powering our economy. It can be made reliable, large-scale, and cost-effective. But that’s true only if we commit to build clean energy infrastructure on a scale comparable to the fossil-fuel apparatus built over the past century. That scale is […]

China looking to make more loan-for-oil deals

China’s stockpile of forex reserves, the world’s largest, is estimated to be roughly two-thirds invested in dollar-denominated assets and the government has been attempting to gradually diversify its holdings. Chinese banks have already issued about $60 billion in loan-for-oil deals since the start of 2009. The cash for these loans was obtained through the foreign […]

CNOOC, TPAO Finalize Iraqi Oil Field Deal

CNOOC International, together with Turkish Petroleum (TPAO), have signed a technical service contract for the development and production of the Missan Oil Fields within Iraq. The Missan Oil Fields are located in the southeast of Iraq, about 350 kilometers southeast of Baghdad. The TSC has a contract term of 20 years and the Company has […]

Were Oil Rig Warning Signs Ignored?

There’s plenty of blame to go around. The federal agency in charge of oil rig inspections – the Minerals Management Service – reportedly fell short of its own policy of holding at least one inspection a month. Monday, a top official there announced he’ll retire ahead of schedule – at the end of the month. […]

Tar sands oil extraction spreading rapidly, report warns

The successful development of Canada’s tar sands has triggered a rush by Shell and other oil companies to set up similar operations in Russia, Congo and even Madagascar, a new report reveals. Soaring crude prices and an growing shortage of drilling sites have encouraged the energy industry to look at a series of “unconventional” hydrocarbon […]

MIT Team Unveils Airplane that Uses 70 Percent Less Fuel

NASA is calling this government-funded initiative the “N+3″, signifying that the planes are meant to revolutionize the aircraft industry in three generations. MIT, Boeing, GE Aviation and Northrop Grumman were given the task of rethinking the subsonic commercial aircraft market while teams from Boeing and Lockheed-Martin were entrusted with creating supersonic commercial aircraft — passenger […]

The World Can’t Live Without Deepwater Oil

The majority of new production is assumed to come from the development of existing reserves, such as the offshore and deepwater deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, which currently yield 30% of America’s oil production. Deepwater wells like the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon made up 15% of total U.S. production in 2002 and are expected to […]

Money illusion and “real backwardation” in oil

There are three possible explanations for this strange state of affairs: (a) The market expects oil prices to fall in real terms over the next five years (because supply remains ample or demand is expected to fall as conservation and substitution bite into consumption). In this scenario, peak oil is a myth. Prices will actually […]

Shale: The next energy game changer

The recent shale gas boom has been called a “game changer” in the North American energy picture. It promises to deliver abundant, cheap natural gas for decades to come. Utility companies are counting on it to generate electricity with half the greenhouse emissions of coal, while gas producers are touting it as the truck fuel […]

BP Capturing 1,000 Barrels a Day From Gulf Oil Leak

The well is leaking at an estimated rate of 5,000 barrels day, according to the official estimate by BP, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The estimate was challenged May 14 by U.S. Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, citing analysis by independent researchers that it may be more than […]

Israel plays wargame assuming Iran has nuclear bomb

Though the wargame saw Iran declaring itself a nuclear power in 2011, the ensuing confrontations were by proxy, in Lebanon. In one, emboldened Hezbollah guerrillas fired missiles at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv. That was followed by U.S. and Israeli intelligence findings that Iran had slipped radioactive materials to its Lebanese cohort, to assemble […]

BP Says Siphon Tube In Oil Well Partially Working

In a major step toward containing a massive Gulf of Mexico oil leak, BP said a mile-long tube was finally funneling crude Sunday from a blown well to a tanker ship after three days of wrestling to get the stopgap measure into place on the seafloor.

A Sleeping Giant in the Process of Waking, The Saudi stock exchange

On March 29, the first Saudi exchange-traded fund open to foreigners was launched by local brokerage Falcom Financial Services with great fanfare and public relations razzamatazz. It was heralded as a way for international investors to gain access to one of the most tantalizing emerging markets. But, soon after the launch, it emerged that foreigners […]

Global Warming: A localized pause and then the end of our civilization

The majority of the American population now thinks that global warming probably doesn’t exist. Part of that is the huge amount of money which has been spent on propaganda, but part of it is that the only continent which is not experiencing increased temperatures right now–is North America. If you want to be a climate […]

Tube Catches ‘Some’ Oil From Leak

Engineers successfully inserted a tube into the damaged riser pipe from which some of the oil is spewing, capturing “some amounts of oil and gas” before the tube was dislodged, the announcement said. The tube was inspected and reinserted, BP said. “While not collecting all of the leaking oil, this tool is an important step […]

Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil […]

Media, public, governments unprepared for the End of the World (As We Know It)

Did Global Oil Production Permanently Peak in 2008? Until 2008, world energy forecasters had always assumed global oil production would keep up with economic growth. According to classic economic theory, as world economies grew they would demand more oil, and oil companies would respond by investing in more exploration and development. ”Peak Oil” was considered […]

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