Oil well in Cuba comes up dry, raises questions about future exploration

Cuba’s dreams of an oil bonanza suffered a tough but possibly temporary setback Friday when the Spanish Repsol company confirmed it hit a dry hole when it drilled a well off the island’s northwest coast. The dry well will put more pressure on Cuba’s dependence on Venezuelan oil and means the government of Raúl Castro […]

Iran Wants Sanctions Lifted

Iran on Saturday said sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme should be lifted in talks with world powers next week in Baghdad, but maintained the punitive measures would not compel it to abandon its atomic “rights.” Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told the government daily Iran that the lifting of sanctions would display “the first […]

Obama may tap Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Despite the recent fall in oil prices, analysts say President Obama may tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as sanctions on Iran take hold. While oil prices have fallen from over $110 a barrel to near $90 in recent weeks, tougher sanctions on Iran begin to take effect at the end of June. That could mean […]

Dump the pump: could peak oil be voluntary?

People have fretted about when the world’s oil will start to run out ever since M. King Hubbert came up with the idea of “peak oil” back in the 1950s. The American geologist, who worked for Shell, pointed out that we are destined to reach a moment when oil production stops rising and goes into […]

The Art of PV War

The U.S. Department of Commerce today handed down it’s preliminary report on alleged dumping by Chinese solar manufacturers in the US market. The landmark findings handed down concluded that Chinese manufacturers were guilty of dumping solar cells and panels into the U.S. market, and imposed preliminary margins of 31.14 % for Trina, 31.22 % for Suntech, 31.18 % […]

Why Are Gas Prices Going Up When Demand Is Going Down?

The price of crude oil—and more importantly, gasoline—has climbed to painful levels once again. As of early April, the quote for Brent crude, the international yardstick, was about $126 per barrel—only some $16 below the $142 peak seen in the summer of 2008. But domestic West Texas Intermediate crude is only getting $107 per barrel—a […]

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

Several articles in the international media in recent months have claimed that worries about peak oil – the peak and decline in yearly world oil production – are unfounded because vast new reserves of unconventional oil are coming on stream. But a closer look at these new sources of oil casts doubt on this assertion. […]

Forget Peak Oil, Time To Worry About Peak Oil Labor

In a recent working paper, researchers at the the IMF (International Monetary Fund) attempt to reconcile the Peak Oil debate that whether resource constraints will dictate the future of oil output and prices, or advance in technology motivated by high oil price would eventually provide a solution to more production, as well as higher oil prices. […]

Australia Seen a Decade Away From Large-Scale Shale Production

Australian shale explorers may be a decade away from producing oil and gas on a large scale because of obstacles ranging from a lack of drilling equipment to higher labor and infrastructure costs, Wood Mackenzie Ltd. said. “The only factor that could change that significantly is if there’s a liquids-rich play that really drove the […]

Japan trades nuclear power for fossil fuels

Energy is the lifeblood of modern economies and there’s no more amazingly useful form of energy than electricity. That’s why I was initially startled to read the recent news that the last of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants has been shut down, a turn of events that makes Japan the first major economy of this […]

How The U.S. Dollar Will Be Replaced

After being immersed in the world of alternative economic analysis for several years, it sometimes becomes easy to forget that most people do not track forex markets, or debt to GDP ratio, or true unemployment, or hunch over IMF white-papers highlighting subsections which expose the trappings of the globalist ideology.  Sometimes, you just assume the […]

John Michael Greer: The Twilight of Protest

Over the last four months or so, as this blog has sketched out the trajectory of empires in general, and then traced the intricate history of America’s empire in particular, I’ve been avoiding a specific issue.  That avoidance hasn’t come from any lack of awareness on my part, and if it had been, comments and […]

Peak Oil Denial: The Liberal’s Dilemma (Pt 6)

[NOTE: This is the sixth and final installment of a subset of my ongoing series entitled Looking Left and Right (which began here; see Category sidebar for all links). This is about Peak Oil, but addresses the considerations and potential solutions from a different perspective than purely fact-based and/or he-said—she-said ones which too often dominate […]

Resilience or death: Preparing our farms for the end of agriculture (…as we know it)

“[G]lobal food production is hitting an array of ecological constraints, while population growth and changing diets are driving up demand. …[C]urrent food production is massively subsidised through fossil fuel inputs, and…as those inputs become less available, and people become poorer due to economic contraction, food productivity and access will be undermined. …In totality, we are […]

Gulf of Mexico site chosen for first US floating LNG plant

Excelerate Energy LP, Houston, will develop the first US floating natural gas liquefaction plant for Port Lavaca, between Galveston and Corpus Christi, Tex. The Lavaca Bay LNG project will be designed to export LNG by 2017. The company said it selected Port Lavaca because of its direct access to the “highly liquid South Texas natural […]

U.S. Ambassador to Israel: Plan to Attack Iran “Ready”

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shaprio, told a closed conference in Tel Aviv that the United States has completed preparations for a military strike on Iran. His comments were recorded by a reporter and aired on Israel’s Channel 2 TV on Wednesday night. “It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically, and through the […]

Energy delusions aggravate European economic problems

Political revolt against fiscal austerity underscores laws governing energy and money to which European leaders should pay more heed: Neither can be created from nothing. No one, not even politicians, can create energy. All people can do is make available energy useful. People can, in a sense, create money. Individuals and corporations can earn profits. […]

Saudis, soaring costs may keep oil above $100

Oil industry executives and bankers are assuming oil prices will stay above $100 a barrel in the year ahead, despite mounting economic worries, as any fall below that level would trigger a cut in Saudi Arabia’s output and force closures at high-cost projects around the world. A straw poll by Reuters of oil executives, traders, […]

A new solution for our plastic waste?

Polyester polyurethane is unappetizing to most living things – including the sea creatures who encounter it in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where recent news shows insects are starting to lay their eggs on pieces of plastic. What will we do with all the plastic we make – and the oil that we use to make […]

Technology can unlock new fields, curb fears of peak oil

Technology advancements in the energy sector can boost oil and gas production, improve safety and curb fears that fossil fuels are rapidly running out, a Chevron official said today. During the opening session of a Houston energy conference this morning, Jay Pryor, Chevron’s vice president for business development, touted a number of technology advancements that […]

US Leads Largest military exercises in Middle East in 10 years

The United States is leading what it described as the “largest military exercises in the Middle East in 10 years” in Jordan on Tuesday. Eager Lion 2012 “is the largest exercise held in the region in the past ten years,” Major General Ken Tovo, head of the US Special Operations Forces, told reporters in Amman. […]

Iran Seen Losing 500000 Barrels of Oil Shipments Daily

Iran’s oil exports have the potential to fall another 300,000 to 500,000 barrels a day or more when the European Union’s embargo takes effect in July, according to Barclays Plc. The decline will extend existing losses of 500,000 barrels a day, Barclays analysts led by Helima Croft in London said in an e-mailed report yesterday. […]

Free energy does not occur in nature

[F]ree energy does not occur in nature… There’s one thing about that Orlov quote that has struck me over the years: how it applies more broadly than he originally meant it. It’s not just that what we generally think of as free energy doesn’t occur in nature, but also that free energy does occur in […]

Stuart Staniford: Feeling my Inner Kunstler

I’m currently in Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast of Australia in order to give a talk for work.  If you are in a bad mood when you frame the photo, the place looks like the above.  Or like this if you try to make it look good (say be capturing the sunrise from your […]

Medical Records Could Yield Answers On Fracking

A proposed study of people in northern Pennsylvania could help resolve a national debate about whether the natural gas boom is making people sick. The study would look at detailed health histories on hundreds of thousands of people who live near the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation in which energy companies have already drilled about […]

At Least One Million Will Die From Fukushima Radiation

Fukushima Video by The Japanese College of Intravenous Therapy The government of Japan has failed to protect its people and is hiding the dangers of radiation from Fukushima. There are options for radio-protection that have not been disclosed. When people cannot avoid radioactive contamination there are safe radioprotectants that can help prevent the damage.

Acknowledging The Arrival Of Peak Government

Most informed people are familiar with the concept of Peak Oil, but fewer are aware that we’re also entering the era of Peak Government. The central misconception of Peak Oil — that it’s not about “running out of oil,” it’s about running out of cheap, easy-to-access oil — can also be applied to Peak Government: It’s […]

Tom Murphy: Time to be honest with ourselves about our looming energy risks

Chris Martenson:  Hello. Welcome to another ChrisMartenson.com podcast. I am your host, of course; Chris Martenson. And today we have the very good fortune of speaking with Tom Murphy, Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, and an avid writer on energy and growth-related matters on his website, Do The Math, […]

India will cut oil imports from Iran by 11%

A week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged New Delhi to reduce its engagement with Tehran, India said it would cut Iranian oil imports by 11 percent in the coming year. The promised cut could constitute a significant step for India toward securing a waiver from U.S. sanctions before a June deadline — although […]

U.S. coal generation drops 19 percent in one year, leaving coal with 36 percent share of electricity

Power generation from coal is falling quickly. According to new figuresfrom the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 36 percent of U.S. electricity in the first quarter of 2012 — down from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011. That stunning drop, which represented almost a 20 percent decline in coal generation over […]

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