Jean Laherrère: Why Cheap Energy Is a Bad Thing

In this tenth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, petroleum geophysicist and author Jean Laherrère explains that we are in the current energy crisis not only because fuel is running out, but because its cost is too cheap. Laherrère, a former TOTAL oil company employee, […]

India’s Widening Energy Deficit

India’s energy crisis is set to deepen as top producers of coal, natural gas and oil recently said their output will grow little in the next few of years – not what the country wants to hear at a time when its thirst for fuel shows no sign of abating. This means more fuel imports […]

Gold, Infinite Debt, and the Problem of Capital Storage: Has The Hotelling Moment Arrived?

One of the reasons that gold retains its competitiveness as a capital-storage unit is the rather slow and plodding rate at which supply is brought to market. Since 1900, compound annual growth of world gold production comes in at 1.163%. That particular rate is below the growth rate for a number of other natural resources. […]

On The Libyan Oil Tank “Time Bomb”

Three weeks ago we first mused about the irrational endgame of it all when we asked: “When Hussein left Kuwait he set the oil wells on fire. Will Ghaddafi?” It now appears that this could well be the endgame, after Al Jazeera reports that “desperate Gaddafi might hit oil facilities in an attempt to fend […]

Our Man-Made Energy Crisis

The unfolding turmoil in Libya has amplified concerns about the reliability of global energy supplies in an era of political uncertainty. Is oil at $200 per barrel inescapable? Is this the beginning of the end so vigorously underscored by peak oil enthusiasts for the last several decades? The short answer is clearly “No.” Yet the […]

Western China the ‘Middle East’ for coal?

Western China’s vast coal reserves could make it the “new Middle East,” a top coal industry official said. In an interview published Tuesday in The Guardian newspaper, Fred Palmer, chairman of the World Coal Association and a key executive at Peabody Energy, the world’s largest privately owned coal company, dismissed the prospect that the world […]

Saudis say shortage not behind oil price jump

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister on Tuesday denied the surge in oil prices reflects a shortage of crude on the market but said the kingdom is committed to tapping excess supplies if needed. The 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has so far held its official output quotas unchanged, even as massive protests across the […]

Michael Klare: How the Petroleum Age Will End

Whatever the outcome of the protests, uprisings, and rebellions now sweeping the Middle East, one thing is guaranteed: the world of oil will be permanently transformed.  Consider everything that’s now happening as just the first tremor of an oilquake that will shake our world to its core. For a century stretching back to the discovery […]

Oman’s unrest may be a domino, not just to suppliers, but also to customers

There are reports that the unrest in the Middle East has spread to the Sultanate of Oman. While at the moment there have been only one or perhaps two deaths, small in number relative to the larger number of fatalities in countries like Libya, such a milepost, nevertheless, is sadly likely to indicate that the situation […]

The Empire Strikes Out

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya… now, children, one of these things is not like the others. That’s right, Libya wasn’t, and to a considerable extent still isn’t, run by a dictator who happens to be a Western stooge. Say what you want about him, Muammar Gaddafi is a phenomenon. Compared to his inimitable, flamboyant persona, Tunisia’s unimpressive […]

Peak Oil and the New Boom-Bust Cycle

Was the near-financial-collapse of 2008 the first crisis of many? Tight oil production and growing oil demand have caused oil prices to rise during the past decade. During late 2008, we also saw what happens to the economy when oil prices pass a threshold beyond which the economy cannot operate: Demand is destroyed, economic growth […]

How much oil is left?

Greenbang CEO Dan Ilett posed a simple question to our team over the weekend: “How much oil is left?” Here’s how our subsequent discussion went: Shirley Siluk Gregory, Senior research analyst: That’s the trillion-dollar question, isn’t it? Here’s what the International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook in 2010 said (see attached IEA graph on […]

The Difference Between Oil Reserves and Supply

In his recent column in the New York Times, Michael C. Lynch shows that he does not grasp the crucial difference between crude oil reserves and supply (”Drilling for an Oil Crisis”, February 24, 2011). Demand and the rising cost of getting oil out of the ground are apparently not important in his “don’t worry […]

The Transition of Elizabeth Kubler – Ross

If there’s one thing the Peak Oil community can agree on, it is the perfect utility of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s iconic meme, the “Five Stages of Death”. In a spasm of over-extended metaphor, it seems like we’ve got five stages of everything right now. In a collapsing world, we see the grieving process everywhere. Who was […]

Kuwaiti protests on Tuesday aim to remove PM

Kuwaiti youth groups will take to the streets on Tuesday to demand the removal of the prime minister and for more political freedom in the Gulf Arab state, the world’s fourth largest oil exporter. The protests, inspired by Arab unrest across the Middle East and North Africa that has toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, […]

World in Collision

Back in 2005, which seems like an eternity ago not quite six years hence, I attended an Energy Conference arranged by Rep Roscoe Bartlett, a conservative Republican from Maryland with a background in science. Bartlett was and is a staunch believer in M King Hubbert’s predictions of Peak Oil. I was able to hear Peak […]

US Food Producers: “Just Get Out of My Way”

Nine billion, that is a figure I heard over and over at the Commodity Classic meeting in Tampa, Florida last week. It is the estimate of the world’s population by the year 2050. Of course all those people are going to want to eat, and most will want to wear clothes and drive cars. Where […]

Oil could hit $200 if Arab unrest spreads to Saudi Arabia

Crude prices will touch $200 a barrel if the Arab revolution spreads to Saudi Arabia, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said on Friday. ‘… the revolutions around the Arab world have pushed up the price of oil which had temporarily stabilised at $116 yesterday. This is 38% above its average level for […]

Oil Heading for Trouble?

“We’re heading for real trouble, I think, on oil, and nobody can be pleased about that, even if you happen to be in the alternative energy business,” Dr Jeremy Leggett, founder and chairman of Solarcentury & UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, said to CNBC. CNBC

White House considers tapping oil reserves

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley said on Sunday the Obama administration is considering tapping into the U.S. strategic oil reserve as one way to help ease soaring oil prices. Speaking on NBC television’s “Meet the Press,” Daley said: “We are looking at the options. The issue of the reserves is one we are […]

Saudi Aramco Raises Crude Oil Prices for Asia, Northwestern Europe, Cuts U.S Price

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil exporter, raised official selling prices for all crude grades for customers in Asia and Northwest Europe for April shipments and cut prices for customers in the U.S. Saudi Arabia’s state-owned producer increased the formula prices for Arab Extra Light, Light and Medium crudes to Asia by 65 cents a […]

Bahrain promises government jobs, protests continue

Plans by Bahrain to create 20,000 jobs in its security apparatus could be a move to open up government jobs to the country’s disgruntled Shi’ites and appease protesters against the Sunni-led government. Bahrain has seen its worst unrest since the 1990s after a nascent youth movement emboldened by similar protests elsewhere in the Arab world […]

Libyan oil sales continuing

Despite sanctions on government, international companies still buying oil from Libya. Libya’s oil sales contribute significantly to the country’s export earnings, making the industry one of Muammar Gaddafi’s main financial pressure points. The international community has been trying to prevent the Libyan leader from obtaining revenue from sales, as his regime’s violent crackdown on protests continue. But the web of international sanctions […]

Israel’s Gas supply fixed?

Israel Electric Corporation continues use of polluting fuel, diesel oil but expected to return to natural gas. After the Yam Tethys conglomerate, which operates the Mari-B natural gas field off Ashdod, said Saturday that a computer glitch was temporarily preventing the gas from coming back onstream, Noble energy, a partner in Yam Tethys and the site’s […]

Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t

As the real economy is being gutted to the bone, the rising markets are nothing but a mirage, a talk-to-the-hand scheme devised by the spin masters who know what all of you like to hear and who feed you exactly that. Until their masters decide the time has come when they can’t squeeze enough money out […]

Prepare For Economic Disaster

It is not just the United States that is headed for an economic collapse.  The truth is that the entire world is heading for a massive economic meltdown and the people of earth need to be warned about the coming economic disaster that is going to sweep the globe.  The current world financial system is […]

Israel’s natural gas supply cut off

Noble Energy, Delek and Isramco performed maintenance work at the reservoir Saturday as part of a plan to increase supply to Israel’s Electric Corp. and other power plants after Egypt’s EMG company postponed the resumption of gas supply. Following the malfunction, the National Infrastructure Ministry ordered the Electric Corp. to increase production at the coal […]

Electric Aviation is the Future of Transport

In the 2011 State of the Union speech, President Obama described the development of clean energy and transport technologies as the Apollo projects of our time. It was disappointing that Obama’s speech did not mention clean aviation. Electric aviation can replace our oil-based transport with a system that is faster, cleaner and cheaper using existing technology. […]

Forget $100 oil. $100 uranium is a real problem.

Just after Christmas, the container ship Altona, bound for China and carrying a load of 770,000 pounds of uranium concentrate (also known as yellowcake, the transportable form of uranium that will eventually be processed into nuclear fuel), ran into a storm in the South Pacific, between Hawaii and the Midway Islands. After three days of […]

World’s sixth mass extinction may be underway

Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a paper released by the science journal Nature. Over the past 540 million years, five mega-wipeouts of species have occurred through naturally-induced events. But the new threat is man-made, inflicted by habitation loss, over-hunting, over-fishing, the spread of germs and viruses […]

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