Nationalised oil can deliver output growth

Venezuela’s oil minister stood up in public this week and denounced the man beside him as “predatory” and a peddler of “the colonialist high-handedness which has done so much harm to the world”. His unfortunate neighbour on the conference podium was the boss of U.S. oil firm ConocoPhillips, which is claiming billions of dollars in […]

Population Explosion Strains World Resources

The UK’s Royal Society has announced that population and consumption must be addressed at the Rio+20 environmental summit. They say past failures on these issues threaten the natural world and prospects for future generations. “The overall message is that we need a renewed focus on both population and consumption – it’s not enough to look […]

Iran’s Nuclear Scientists Killers Arrested

Iran’s intelligence ministry has announced the capture of main elements behind the assassination of the country’s nuclear scientists. “The key perpetrators of the assassinations of Majid Shahriari, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan (two of the slain nuclear scientists) and Reza Qashqaei (the driver) were identified and, in a series of rapid and authoritative operations, were arrested and […]

Scientists Urge Earth Summit to Act on Population Growth

Joint report by 105 institutions urges negotiators to drop political inhibitions and confront rising global population and consumption The Rio+20 Earth summit must take decisive action on population and consumption regardless of political taboos or it will struggle to tackle the alarming decline of the global environment, the world’s leading scientific academies warned on Thursday. […]

Byron King on Peak Oil, Natural Gas and Rare Earths

Welcome to Capital Account. Brent and WTI crude oil prices have been close to an eight-month low as OPEC meets to talk about production quotas. Word is the group will not cut output a broader weakening of the global economy. This is despite some calls for supply cuts to curb the price slide. BUT is […]

You and Your Slaves

“A low-energy policy allows for a wide choice of lifestyles and cultures. If, on the other hand, a society opts for high energy consumption, its social relations must be dictated by technocracy and will be equally degrading whether labeled capitalist or socialist.” — Ivan Illich In 2009 a British family living in a four-bedroom house […]

Energy Return on (Energy) Invested (EROI), Oil Prices, and Energy Transitions

The economical and sustainable provision of energy to run modern economies and meet human development goals is one of the Grand Challenges facing the world today. There is increasing evidence that the physical scarcity of fossil fuels is a serious possibility to reckon with. An important question to ask is whether price signals of physical […]

Obama speaks with Saudi King amid Syria, Iran concerns

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Thursday amid concerns about escalating violence in Syria and plans to widen sanctions on Iran. The White House gave no details of the conversation, but the telephone discussion came as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to hold production limits – despite […]

Venezuela Overtakes Saudis for Largest Oil Reserves

Venezuela surpassed Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest holder of proven oil reserves, a resource that President Hugo Chavez promises to tap if he gets re-elected in October. The South American country’s deposits were at 296.5 billion barrels at the end of last year, data from BP Plc (BP/) show. Saudi Arabia held 265.4 […]

US shale gas going nowhere fast as LNG

The idea that a wave of LNG produced from US shale gas fields is ready to crash over Asian consumer markets, disrupting traditional supply routes and oil-linked pricing mechanisms doesn’t hold much water with producers in the Middle East, Australia and Southeast Asia. “Reality says that there will be a finite amount of gas out […]

Peak oil: Why we’ll never run out of oil

Remember the term “peak oil”? What happened to it? The notion that world oil production had reached its summit and would soon begin a decline — bringing with it shortages, economic collapse, resource wars, and general ruination — was in vogue not so long ago. “Is global oil production reaching a peak?” asked the BBC […]

John Michael Greer: The parting of the ways

Chalk it up to an adolescence spent reading such cheerful books as The Limits to Growth and The Coming Dark Age, but it takes quite a bit to make me fret about the future. Even now, as industrial civilization begins to sink down the far side of Hubbert’s curve, and facts and figures come rolling […]

The Saudi Oil Problem, by Tam Hunt

Tam Hunt is an attorney specializing in renewable energy law. He is the owner of Community Renewable Solutions LLC, a consulting firm based in Santa Barbara, California. Tam recently offered another informative essay on the reality of Peak Oil, touching on the too-infrequently discussed topic of net oil exports—specifically those from Saudi Arabia. I first […]

Peak Oil and Price Incentives

Here I describe some interesting new research on modifying Hubbert’s model of peak oil to take into account the incentives for additional production that higher oil prices would be expected to bring. A recent IMF Working paper by Jaromir Benes, Marcelle Chauvet, Ondra Kamenik, Michael Kumhof, Douglas Laxton, Susanna Mursula and Jack Selody begins by […]

America’s love affair with the motor car is running on empty

America’s love of driving is iconic. The open road is a central manifestation of America the free. During the 20th century, the total movement of cars and trucks on our national roads and highways grew as fast as our economy, or faster. Movement – measured by total vehicle miles travelled (VMT) – was considered an […]

BP Review 2012: Coal Use Expanding Faster than Crude Oil

The 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy is now available for download. It reveals that worldwide demand for coal is growing significantly faster than worldwide demand for crude oil. And that is just the beginning. BP via GCC   Oil demand grew by less than 1%—the slowest rate amongst fossil fuels—while gas grew by […]

World oil reserves up 8 pct, supply fears persist

The world’s store of oil and gas jumped 8.3 percent last year, as exploration rose and record crude prices made marginal projects commercially viable, yet supplies will struggle to meet demand due to political factors, oil giant BP said on Wednesday. BP said in its annual calculation of global oil and gas reserves – considered […]

Jeremy Rifkin – The Third Industrial Revolution

Writer and thinker Jeremy Rivkin delivers this address to the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) in London on the critical need to develop our economies into a post carbon Third Industrial Revolution, or else we’ll spiral into a “dangerous endgame”. Rivkin is the president of the Foundation of Economic Trends and the author of […]

Estimating the Potential Impact of Failure of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 Spent Fuel Pool

Dr. Paul Gailey sent me the following email: Because so many claims were flying around with regard to Fukushima’s spent fuel pool number 4, we performed a technical analysis of the situation to gain some perspective on the parameters of the crisis. If you are interested, there is a link to our Special Report on […]

When Energy Begins to Flow Long Distance

With rising energy prices and stringent requirements for producing a higher proportion of energy from renewable sources in the near future, long-distance electricity cables are increasingly thought of as a viable option for providing electricity.   The cables, or interconnectors to give them their proper name, transmit energy by way of High Voltage Direct Current […]

Why We Need Expensive Oil

To some it can seem a joke, but the new definition of “expensive oil” is about $75 a barrel. Even worse fol oil producers, $75 a barrel is rapidly becoming the base price for financially feasible oil production development strategies. Above all, the old paradigm of extreme high oil prices is long dead. It was […]

Sad news for peak oil disciples

Whenever oil prices surpass US$100 per barrel, a certain group of well-known economists and investment banks re-emerge to tout their dire warnings that oil will soon top US$200 or more because of peaking oil supplies. Several bestselling books have been written warning that the world’s supply of oil has peaked and we had better prepare […]

Ultra-Efficient Solar

Technology review has a look at Semprium’s approach to high efficiency solar cells using concentrating lenses and gallium arsenide cells – Ultra-Efficient Solar. This past winter, a startup called Semprius set an important record for solar energy: it showed that its solar panels can convert nearly 34 percent of the light that hits them into […]

Charles Hugh Smith and Gordon T Long: Peak Everything

Charles Hugh Smith and Gordon T Long discuss how the financial markets are showing a multitude of signs of clear peaks. Peaks across the board that are linked by cause and effect. Altogether, they can best be described as “PEAK EVERYTHING”. Charles Hugh Smith and Gordon T Long run out of time in this 21 […]

EIA cuts 2012 world oil demand growth forecast, raises non-OPEC output

OPEC and the U.S. government agreed o n Tuesday that global oil markets could loosen further in the second half of the year, with prospects for demand dimming while non-OPEC supply races ahead more quickly than expected. In its monthly report on market fundamentals, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, cut its forecast for […]

World seen better at handling hikes in the price of oil

The world has increased its resilience to increases in the price of oil, according to a researcher at the International Monetary Fund. Writing in IMF Survey Magazine, Jorg Decressin says “fundamental changes in the workings of the global economy and the use of macroeconomic policy” have enabled the world to absorb a quadrupling of oil […]

All-of-the-above energy strategy needs more-of-the-below

The Obama administration’s stated all-of-the-above energy strategy favors alternative and renewable sources and discourages fossil fuels, a US House committee chairman charged. “It’s actually simple: Any energy made above ground counts. Any made underground doesn’t,” Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa (R-Calif.) said as the committee began a May 31 hearing on […]

China Tells U.S. What It Can Do With Its Iran Oil Import Sanctions

While the US magnanimously decided to exempt several nations from U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil imports, it appears the Chinese government has indicated it has no plans to change its position on oil purchases from Iran. As Voice of America reports, China’s FinMin spokesman Liu Weimin said the purchases are necessary, because of its economic […]

It Only Took a Global Depression to Reduce Gas Prices by 40 Cents

You can’t watch the mainstream media propaganda channels for more than ten minutes without a talking head breathlessly announcing that gas prices have dropped for the 24th day in a row and are now back to $3.55 a gallon. Wall Street oil analysts, who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to tell […]

Fouling our world

Man’s consumption is driving unprecedented environmental damage. POPULATION growth and unsustainable consumption are driving Earth towards “unprecedented” environmental destruction, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned. Of 90 key goals to protect the environment, only four have seen good progress, it said in a planetary assessment issued only every five years. “If current trends […]

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