Goldman Caught Manipulating Brent/WTI Spread: Penalty: $40,340

For all those who believed that it was only JP Morgan who is manipulating the Brent-WTI spread, we regretfully have to inform you that the squid is once again front and center, having now been caught red-handed by none other than the ICE exchange, aka the home of Brent trading. From a just disclosed complaint: […]

IAEA: Hearings on Fukushima closed to public

The United Nations nuclear agency’s decision to hold talks about the Fukushima disaster behind closed doors this week ignores the “blindingly obvious” need for greater transparency, said a former official in the U.K. atomic industry. “People deserve openness from the industry and its regulators,” Malcolm Grimston, a former information officer at the U.K.’s Atomic Energy […]

Just How Safe Is ‘Fracking’ of Natural Gas?

New technologies for freeing natural gas from underground shale formations have led to a hydraulic fracturing boom across the U.S. that is now spreading to other countries. Depending on your point of view, hydraulic fracturing of natural gas is either a blessing that will help provide new sources of energy for the coming century, or […]

Strike Forces Power Cuts in Greece

Greece’s state-owned electric utility, Public Power Corp. SA, Monday began limited power cuts to selected towns across Greece as a strike by workers forced nearly a third of the company’s generating capacity offline. “We have started to implement selective power cuts because of the shortage in our available output,” a PPC official said. “Right now, […]

Kunstler: Man Down

Last week, in an incident that didn’t get much attention in the national news, a man named Tom Ball set himself on fire in front of the county courthouse in Keene, NH. He left a fifteen-page suicide note explaining his actions. He was angry at the state child protection bureaucracy and the courts after a […]

Record Food Prices Linked to Biofuels

Reports from the WTO and USDA show that corn supplies are influenced by biofuel subsidies and mandates. The biofuels industry is being blamed for record food prices and high price volatility. Earlier this month a report from the World Trade Organization and other international agencies recommended that governments cut support for biofuels to ease that […]

Aviation Biofuels About to Take Off

An extraordinary convergence of recent events seems poised shortly to make aviation biofuels the belle of the investor’s ball. The first is that on 8 June the follows the international standards certifying body ASTM International announcing its approval of its BIO SPK Fuel Standard, to be made official later in the year, of the use […]

Russia ‘invited to join energy agency’

LONDON — The International Energy Agency (IEA), which represents consumer countries, has invited Russia and other producer nations to join it, Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said in a newspaper interview on Sunday. The Observer weekly said the move was a desperate attempt to broker a deal between buyers and sellers over soaring crude prices. “We […]

Russian officials: numerous shortcomings at nuclear plants near Finland

Inspections of Russian nuclear power plants have revealed serious shortcomings in the safety of the plants – particularly in the preparations for earthquakes and other natural disasters. The difficulties emerge in a report by the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, which was acquired by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. The paper wrote on Sunday that […]

Robert Rapier: Media Misinformation Promotes Dysfunctional Energy Policy

Over the years I have had some enlightening interactions with the news media. I have gradually developed the view that many in the media believe their role is more to entertain than to inform. My naive younger self believed that the media generally presents objective information, which is important to ensure that a well-informed general […]

Europe needs to acknowledge peak oil scenario – and plan accordingly

If the European Union does not sufficiently prepare for tomorrow’s new energy challenges, then it will lose out in the long-term to more creative economies, a conference in Brussels has been told. According to one MEP, the inability to acknowledge limits to conventional oil exploration will not only mean losing out to more innovative economies, […]

The Power Of Community

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half — and food by 80 percent — people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. […]

Solar storms, EMP and the future of the grid

In late August 1859 the most severe solar storm ever witnessed began and lasted through the first few days of September. It produced vivid auroras in the night sky as far south as Cuba and was so bright campers in the Rocky Mountains got up in the middle of the night thinking daylight had arrived. […]

Learning from the community of the land

While recently shoveling aged horse manure around the berry vines on my small organic farm to fertilize them, which gives me great pleasure, I thought about what I have learned about the community of the land by farming over the last two decades. For example, I noticed how spreading brown gold–to which I add the […]

Denial of Peak Oil Grows Dangerous

Does it seem like we’ve been here before? A barrel of Brent Crude (the truest indicator of worldwide oil scarcity) sits at $118, up from $75 per barrel in July 2010 – a 57% increase in 11 months. In the U.S., the average price of gasoline is $3.69 per gallon this week, up 37% in […]

Twilight of the Antipodes Video

Green Life Eco Fest – May 22, 2011 from Dmitry Orlov on Vimeo.

Can it be our survival that’s really at steak?

Last week, the United Nations Environment Program recommended we all move toward a vegan diet to fight global warming. Meat-eating and milk-drinking, it said, are endangering the planet because of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions needed to sustain global beef and dairy farming. That such a proposal would come from the UN is both […]

DECC Report on the risks and impacts of a potential future decline in oil production

A DECC report summarising the main outputs of an internal project undertaken in 2007 by then BERR officials on the issues surrounding peak oil. ASPO Ireland

Jim Jackson on Peak Oil

Jim Jackson, Adjunct Professor in the Geology Department at Portland State University, gives a slide presentation on Peak Oil, at the Yachats Commons, April 22 2011. Sponsored by the Yachats Academy of Arts and Sciences.

US oil and gas reserves grew in 2010

According to Ernst & Young’s 4th annual US exploration and production benchmark study, oil reserves grew by 11% to 17.8 billion barrels in 2010 and natural gas by 12% to 174.3 trillion cu. ft., the strongest oil and gas reserve growth in the last five years. The report examined the US exploration and production results […]

35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown

U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate. While the United States spends billions on medical care, as of 2006, the US ranked 28th in the world in infant mortality, more than twice that of the lowest ranked countries.  (DHHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics.  Health United States 2010, Table 20, p. 131, February 2011.) […]

Heinberg: Post-Growth Geopolitics

As nations compete for currency advantages, they are also eyeing the world’s diminishing resources—fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water. Resource wars have been fought since the dawn of history, but today the competition is entering a new phase. Nations need increasing amounts of energy and materials to produce economic growth, but—as we have seen—the […]

Europe Braces for Serious Crop Losses and Blackouts

One of the driest spring seasons on record in northern Europe has sucked soils dry and sharply reduced river levels to the point that governments are starting to fear crop losses and France, in particular, is bracing for blackouts as its river-cooled nuclear power plants may be forced to shut down. French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le […]

“Human-free drilling” — is it possible or even desirable?

In an age of extreme safety-consciousness following the Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, minimizing hazards is a top industry priority. Accordingly, the International Association of Drilling Contractors’ World Drilling 2011 conference prominently featured a segment on its first day of the two-day annual gathering on what it called “human-free drilling”: automation of as many […]

John Michael Greer: Profligacies of Scale

The logic applied in last week’s post to photovoltaic solar power can be applied more generally to a fairly wide range of technologies that can, under the right circumstances, provide a modest supply of electricity to power those things for which electricity is really the most sensible power source. I want to talk about a […]

Fukushima: It’s much worse than you think

“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. Japan’s 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen […]

Nuclear Twilight in Europe

It is becoming evident to many that the March nuclear catastrophe at Japan’s six reactor Daichi Fukushima complex has dealt a huge, possibly fatal, blow to the nuclear industry’s hopes of a revival. A year ago even global warming enthusiasts reluctantly embraced nuclear power as a carbon-free energy generating system, and the industry was ramping […]

Could We See A Summer Oil Shortage? This Economist Says Yes.

Oil prices might be high, but there’s no shortages around the world, right? Think again, says Anas Alhajji, chief economist at NGP Energy Capital Management in Dallas. The U.S. might be getting all the oil it demands, but the story is different in places like China and Iraq, where because of electric power shortages governments […]

Waters roil in the South China Sea

MANILA – Escalating tensions between China and Southeast Asian claimants to the Spratly Islands threaten to spill over into a full-blown conflict. The Philippines and Vietnam are at particular loggerheads with Beijing after a series of provocations that some believe show China is taking a more assertive stance on its claims in the potentially oil […]

Will the Russian economy rid itself of its dependence on oil?

To ask whether the Russian economy will rid itself of its “dependence on oil” is to ask whether ideology will trump economics. Many people in Russia—including President Medvedev—seem to believe Russia should de-emphasize the role of oil, gas, and other commodities because they are “primitive.” Relying on them, they argue, is “degrading.” From the economic […]

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