The World is Running Out of Water — Now What?

Last weekend, Jessica Yu’s new water documentary “Last Call at the Oasis” took us on tour of the impacts water scarcity is creating around the globe, from the parched pastures of Australia’s farmlands to the sewage-polluted banks of the Jordan River. This film shines a much-needed light on the various water challenges we all now […]

Saudi Arabia breaks new ground — trading oil

* Saudi opens new oil products trading company * Aramco Trading to move 1.5 million bpd * Deals in physical oil, paper and derivatives trading Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has long been a dominant force in the oil market – but has never been an oil trader. That’s changing now as Riyadh […]

IEA: Global oil demand growth accelerating

After posting near-zero annual growth in the fourth quarter of 2011, global oil demand growth will gradually accelerate throughout 2012, culminating in an increase of 1.2 million b/d by this year’s final quarter, the International Energy Agency said in its latest monthly oil market report. Global oil consumption is set to rise by 800,000 b/d […]

Oil will bring downfall of Sudan government: Turabi

Sudan’s loss of billions of dollars of oil revenues will bring down the government as inflation soars, the economy buckles and people grow hungrier, opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi said in an interview. Oil once accounted for 90 percent of exports, but Sudan’s economy took a beating when South Sudan gained independence in July and took […]

Japan to Nationalize Fukushima Utility

Japanis ready to nationalize Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, under a 1 trillion yen ($12.5 billion) bailout plan that was approved on Wednesday. The Japanese government has been scrambling to keep the utility company from collapsing so it can meet the billions of dollars in compensation claims […]

Cesium in Fukushima Prefecture 122 Times Higher than in Belarus Evacuation Zone

The Fukushima Diary reports today that Koichi Oyama, a member of the city council of Minamisoma in the prefecture of Fukushima, has measured unusually high levels of cesium 134 and 137 in the soil of his city. Soil samples were analyzed by the Minamisoma government and found to be 122 times more contaminated than the mandatory […]

OPEC oil production climbs to 31.71 million barrels per day in April

The latest Platts’ monthly survey of OPEC production shows two highly significant trends: sanctions are starting to pinch Iranian output, and other OPEC countries are stepping in to fill the gap. Crude oil output from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) climbed 320,000 barrels per day (b/d) to 31.71 million b/d in April […]

Jeff Everson Radio Interview on Peak Oil

The long View – Sustainability Radio, On WUML FM 91.5s “Thinking Out loud” Dr. Jeff Everson speaks on Peak Oil: what is it and what does the future hold without citizen and Government intervention. We know that Clean Renewable Energy (CRE) is what we need to protect the remaining health of the planet. Can we organize […]

Saudi Arabia Plans $109 Billion Boost for Solar Power

Saudi Arabia is seeking investors in a $109 billion plan to create a solar industry that generates a third of the nation’s electricity within two decades, according to officials at the government agency developing the plan. The world’s largest crude oil exporter aims to have 41,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2032, said Maher al-Odan, […]

Chris Martenson: PEAK OIL: A Fact? Life As We Know It WILL Change

This is Part 1 of my 2-part interview with author & researcher Chris Martenson. Buckle up, peak oil has arrived and Chris says it’s a fact – our lives are about to change forever.

Michael Klare: Oil Wars On The Horizon

Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time.  Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or so since World War I, and smaller engagements have erupted every few years; a flare-up or two in 2012, then, would be part of the normal scheme […]

An Argentine Perspective on Degrowth

The controversial concept of degrowth receives little press coverage in a region like Latin America. But the idea of a way of life that is not aimed exclusively at GDP growth does have its proponents in Argentina. As in other countries of the region, the Argentine perspective on degrowth differs somewhat from that of academics […]

Heinberg: Visualize Gasoline

Next time you find yourself in traffic, try this nifty thought exercise. Ignore the cars within your field of vision and imagine instead the contents of their fuel tanks. Visualize gasoline flowing up and down the highway. Let’s assume the typical American car carries seven gallons of refined petroleum product in its tank at any […]

Iran Finds ‘Vast’ Crude Oil Reserves in Caspian Sea

Iran discovered “vast” crude oil reserves in the Caspian Sea, the state-run Mehr news agency reported, without citing anyone. The National Iranian Oil Co. found the reserves after completing part of its exploration studies of the Sardar Jangal natural-gas field in the Caspian, the agency said. The Oil Ministry will announce details of the new […]

Peak Oil Denial: The Liberal’s Dilemma (Pt 5)

Individuals can be expected to give dispositive empirical information the weight that it is due in a rational decision-making calculus only if they recognize sound information when they see it. The phenomenon of cultural cognition suggests they won’t. The same psychological and social processes that induce individuals to form factual beliefs consistent with their cultural […]

Is Natural Gas Really the Next Big Thing?

Is natural gas the new next big thing? It is called a revolution in energy and a game-changer. Daniel Yergin claims that “the rapidity and sheer scale of the shale breakthrough—and its effects on markets—qualified it as the most significant innovation in energy so far since the start of the twenty-first century.” The President has proclaimed that […]

John Michael Greer: The descent into stasis

Last weeks’ post attempted, with the help of the ancient Greek philosopher Polybius, to trace out the trajectory that democracies—and in particular the United States—tend to follow across time. The pattern that Polybius outlined, and that American politics has cycled through three times so far in the course of its history, begins with most of […]

Ethanol: Growing Food, Feed, Fiber, and Fuel?

Most analysts agree that we are rapidly approaching “peak oil,” the point when the volume of global oil production begins to decline. In response, Farm Bill programs have promoted a shift to liquid “biofuels” and “biomass” energy derived from farms. The Renewable Fuels Standard of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, for instance, […]

The IMF and Hubbert

The IMF just published a working paper with an eye-catching title The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology. To my knowledge, this is is the first time a peak oil scenario, in the form of a Hubbert Linearization, is explicitly  injected into a econometric model. Based on the work of Hubbert, Deffeyes and Campbell, available […]

China to cut fuel prices 3 pct but little boost to demand

China will cut gasoline and diesel prices by about 3 percent from Thursday in response to declines in international crude oil prices, although the moderate cut is unlikely to be sufficient to stimulate demand much in the world’s second-largest oil consumer. The cuts – 330 yuan ($52.3) per tonne for gasoline and 310 yuan per […]

Norwegian Crude Oil Reserves and Production as of 12/31/2011

In this post I present an updated view on Norwegian crude oil exploration, sanctioned developments, discoveries, production, reserves and what these now suggest for the future of Norwegian crude oil production. The content for this post was originally published in Norwegian here and here. Figure 01: The chart above shows a forecast for crude oil […]

Not a Drop to Drink: The Global Water Crisis

The recent UN alert that drought in the Sahel threatens 15 million lives is a harbinger of things to come. In the next twenty years, global demand for fresh water will vastly outstrip reliable supply in many parts of the world. Thanks to population growth and agricultural intensification, humanity is drawing more heavily than ever […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Perspective

While waiting to see how the Iranian nuclear confrontation and the various Eurozone crises sort themselves out, there is time to step back and look at the interaction of the major forces that will shape our future. While the problems of oil depletion are already upon us, shrinking resources are only a part of global […]

Vermont to be first state to outlaw fracking

Vermont will be the first state to outlaw a controversial oil and gas drilling method known as fracking when Governor Peter Shumlin signs a bill banning the practice, a largely symbolic move given the state’s apparent lack of energy reserves. Hydraulic fracturing has helped companies tap potentially decades of gas supply and huge amounts of […]

Will Producing More Food Only Add to the Population Problem?

The idea behind Copenhagen Consensus 2012 is to prioritize some of the world’s most important spending, with the latest economic analysis providing us with an input. In a series of articles, I am drawing on new research papers that present the costs and benefits of the smartest ways to respond to global challenges. Each article […]

Breathing New Life into Aging Fields in the North Sea

As new technology emerges, operators are turning their focus to redeveloping mature fields, creating a new focus for oil and gas companies. This growing demand has pressed companies in the service sector to broaden their skills and address a wider range of reservoir and production problems. Problems that are typical of aging fields are: wellstream […]

How May People Can the World Support? It Depends…

Along the coast where I live, at almost any time of year I love to experience the energies of various migrations of birds and of fish and whales. I think of it as the real world, as natural. But can we distinguish real from artificial when the world has become so human-dominated that some geologists […]

Orlov: Shale gas the view from Russia

The official shale gas story goes something like this: recent technological breakthroughs by US energy companies have made it possible to tap an abundant but previously inaccessible source of clean, environmentally friendly natural gas. This has enabled the US to become the world leader in natural gas production, overtaking Russia, and getting ready to end […]

Your Regularly Scheduled Peak Oil Doomsday Has Been Postponed Several Decades to Allow Humans to Convert to Advanced Nuclear Power

Massive Hydrocarbon Resources Beginning to UnfoldHumans have been unexpectedly handed several decades in which to convert their power infrastructure from a dependency on combustion energy to the use of advanced nuclear power. The explosion in the available natural gas resource — from the shale gas bonanza to the coming gas hydrates boom and beyond — […]

Kuwait minister says oil price fair at $100

An oil price of $100 a barrel is fair, and Kuwait is producing around 3.1 million barrels of crude a day, the country’s oil minister said in comments published on Tuesday. “The fundamentals of supply and demand indicate that $100 a barrel is a fair price,” Hani Hussein told newspaper al-Rai in an interview, adding […]

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