Forget Facebook, Did Peak Oil Bring Down Mubarak?

Let me start by saying what I’m not saying: I am not making the blanket case here that peak oil brought down Mubarak. I also don’t want to rain on the truly joyous and historic events taking place in Egypt. It was an astonishing example of the power of the people, a type of broad-based, […]

Understanding Peak Oil – “When Giants Run Dry” From Jim Puplava

I came across an article that explains the concept of peak oil production much better than I ever could. The article was written by Jim Puplava who I’ve previously listened to on webcasts interviewing other Peak Oil Cassandras like Matt Simmons, Robert Hirsch and Jeff Rubin. I think the key things to pay attention to […]

Kurt Kobb: The week of the game changer in oil, or was it?

This past week was supposedly the week of the game changer in the world of oil. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia called into question the ability of the globe’s largest oil exporter to raise production to satisfy a world increasingly thirsty for petroleum. In the United States a technique called hydraulic fracturing–which has […]

Shale Gas Potential

My man T. Boone appeared on the Daily Show a few nights ago… But none of the juicy details appeared in the 7-minute segment appearing on television. To get the good stuff, you had to check out the video on the Web. I’ve been covering the Pickens Plan in these pages since early 2008. His […]

The Weather Isn’t Getting Weirder

Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds […]

Whatever Happens in Egypt, Oil Will Hit $300 by 2020

The oil market breathed a small sigh of relief Friday after Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt, sending prices to a 10-week low. But Charles T. Maxwell, an analyst who’s been toiling in the energy business since 1957, all but shrugged off the toppling of the dictator. He’s sticking with a bold prediction: Prices […]

Peak oil will have an adverse effect on all economies

The modern global economy has been built on cheap oil and its abundant availability. In spite of oil crises in the past, the world has so far survived unscathed. But what will happen to the world economy and to the Thai economy in particular in the aftermath of “peak oil”? WikiLeaks cables, as reported widely […]

Have Saudis Overstated How Much Oil Is Left?

While the world remains transfixed by the Egyptian revolt, a crisis with equally profound global consequences is quietly brewing elsewhere in the Middle East: WikiLeaks this week released U.S. diplomatic cables suggesting that Saudi Arabia may have vastly overstated its oil reserves — if true, that could dramatically accelerate the arrival of the long-feared “peak […]

Egypt’s Warning: Are You Listening?

One day, a fruit and vegetable seller was arrested in Tunisia, sparking social unrest, and a few weeks later the government of Egypt was set to topple. Such is the nature of complex, chaotic, and unpredictable systems. The stresses build for years and years, and nothing really seems to be happening, but then everything suddenly […]

Brazil Set to Become a Top Oil Producer

Brazil has a sunken treasure off its shores… though not the type Jack Sparrow might seek. Instead, it is stashed beneath miles of water, rock and layers of salt beneath the ocean’s floor. And these so-called “pre-salt” oil fields make for the biggest oil discovery in the Americas since the 1970s. Brazil’s oil regulator estimates […]

Collapse of Complex Societies by Dr. Joseph Tainter

The collapse of complex societies of the past can inform the present on the risks of collapse. Dr. Joseph Tainter, author of the book The Collapse of Complex societies, and featured in Leonardo Dicaprio’s film The Eleventh Hour, details the factors that led to the collapse of past civilizations including the Roman Empire. This is […]

Democracy protests bring down Egypt’s Mubarak

Fireworks burst over Tahrir Square and Egypt exploded with joy and tears of relief after pro-democracy protesters brought down President Hosni Mubarak with a momentous march on his palaces and state TV. Mubarak, who until the end seemed unable to grasp the depth of resentment over his three decades of authoritarian rule, finally resigned Friday […]

High-speed rail is BS, but I love it anyway

The Dept. of Transportation proposed high-speed rail corridors in 2009. Now the White House wants to revive the plan. Does it have a snowball’s chance? The Obama administration has re-started its campaign for high-speed rail this week. I want to believe in it. I love all trains, and especially fast ones with aero nosecones like […]

Food Crisis 2011: The Global Food Shortage Has Already Begun

Will 2011 be the year that we point to as the beginning of the great global food crisis?  Food prices are soaring, supplies are very tight and already we have seen some very intense food protests flare up around the globe this year.  When people don’t have enough to eat, they tend to become very […]

JUST AROUND THE CORNER…Youth look at Peak Oil & Global Warming

Filmed in 2006, 2 groups of teens talk to people involved with solutions to possible impacts of Peak Oil and rapid Climate Change. This is the full version of the pilot shown in schools and teen centers.

Environmental and Demographic Forces Threaten State Failure

Uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and across the Middle East at the start of 2011 have reminded the world just how politically fragile some countries are. But the focus of international politics has been shifting for some time now. After a half-century of forming new states from former colonies and from the breakup of the Soviet […]

‘Peak oil’ revolutions?

Mexico Will Follow Egypt Into Collapse Bill James, Seeking Alpha Mexico seems likely follow Egypt into collapse within two years based on falling oil revenue and rising food prices: Mexicans spend about 22% of their disposable income on food. In 2010 corn prices increased 52% and wheat 47%. With the floods in Australia, ethanol in […]

Massive New US Oil Supply—’Peak Oil’ Fears Overblown?

New drilling techniques may open up “vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil” in the United States—and cut our dependence on foreign oil in half within a decade. Ed Morse, the head of commodities research at Credit Suisse, predicts that oil imports could be cut by 60 percent—driven by the kind of news announced today—including the […]

Peak oil: We are asleep at the wheel

John Vidal’s report on US diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia raises the spectre of premature peak oil: an unexpected deline in global oil production in an oil-dependent world. The US government is among many administrations that routinely reassure the public that supplies of oil can go on growing far into the future. But in private, […]

China, Saudi Arabia break ranks on Egypt

China today told the US it should not interfere in Egypt’s domestic affairs. Saudi Arabia told President Barack Obama that it would prop up Hosni Mubarak if the US withheld aid. And Egypt’s foreign minister told EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who is planning a visit to Cairo, that he had “no time” to […]

Man, Stop Producing! How Promoting Reproductive Freedom Will Solve Earth’s Environmental Problems

United Nations calculations show that if global fertility settles at 1.4 children per women within a few decades, down from today’s average of 2.6, our planet’s rapid population growth could completely halt by 2045, at just over 8 billion. That is only 34 years away. Yes, those are cries of joy you hear. They come […]

China’s innovation goals for 2020: Fusion

Innovation 2020 will initiate pilot projects in 7 key areas in 2011: nuclear fusion and nuclear-waste management; stem cells and regenerative medicine; calculating the flux of carbon between land, oceans and atmosphere; materials science; information technology; public health and the environment. The academy would set up a series of research centers, including a space science […]

More Never-Ending Efforts To Skate Past The Facts Of Peak Oil

In a recent post (here), I indicated that there were two more recent articles unseriously attempting to persuade readers that all is well in oil-production world. I’ll discuss the second piece today. (There are always more, of course, but these two jumped out at me as “better” examples of misguided attempts to deny that we […]

Food: What’s really behind the unrest in Egypt

It’s more than coincidence the Arab world is convulsing with social unrest just as the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization’s widely watched price index recently soared past the previous food price peak set in the summer of 2008. After all, didn’t those same prices ignite food riots throughout the world only three summers ago? […]

Digging out the truth about Saudi oil

A senior Saudi Arabian oil official said in 2007 that the kingdom has 388 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves, about 45 percent more than official public estimates. But about the same time, a retired Saudi Aramco executive met with U.S. diplomats in Dhahran, and asserted that Saudi figures in general are wildly overblown, […]

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax’

In this sixth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky talks about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and other business lobbies enthusiastically carrying out campaigns “to try and convince the population that global warming […]

Oil sands project inventory

Although much maligned by some as dirty oil, projects are moving ahead in Alberta to recover the billions of barrels of bitumen contained in the oil sands found in the Athabasca, Peace River, and Cold Lake regions. In its December 2010 inventory of major oil sands projects, the Alberta government lists 55 projects in various […]

All The Guardian Saudi Oil Cables

At present, I have found five Wikileaks cables that the Guardian has published which concern Saudi Arabian oil production and reserves. Here are links to each one, in chronological order, and a short excerpt to give the flavor: 2007-09-19: TOO DARN HOT: SAUDI EP BOOM REACHING LIMITS? With temperatures reaching 115 degrees, the Eastern Province […]

Saudi Oil Production and Reserves – Reasons Behind Wikileaks Concerns

Saudi Arabia tells us that they have lots of oil, but if we look at graphs of their historical production, there is nothing that looks like an upward trend. In fact, recent production is lower than it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This is a graph of Saudi oil production, consumption, and […]

World LNG prices are breaking free from oil

How to price world gas remains a tricky subject. Two recent developments, the second one coming with a bit of self-promotion; hope you don’t mind. First, as we move toward the annual CERA conference, we’re reminded how that very gas-dominated meeting of 2010 focused often on how natural gas was going to be priced in international […]

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