“Disaster Made In Japan”: Whitewash v. Reality, Still

On July 5, Japan brought its first nuclear reactor back on line, after having been nuclear-power free for two months. Its 50 functional reactors had been taken off line for maintenance but were not restarted due to a groundswell of opposition. The trailblazer is reactor number 3 at the Oi power plant owned by Kansai […]

Another critique of Monbiot

Many within the fossil fuel industry are sounding alarms. Society ignores such warnings – and listens to potential bubble-backers like Monbiot – at its peril In the run-up to credit crunch of 2007, whistleblowers were warning that an incumbency, the financial-services sector, had its asset assessment fundamentally wrong. The incumbency poured scorn on this, many […]

No Future We Want Without the Ocean

When South Korea, one of Asia’s rising economic powerhouses, decided to host the international exhibition Expo 2012 in the coastal town of Yeosu, it picked a theme high on the agenda of the just-concluded Rio+20 summit on sustainable development: the living ocean. The entire focus of Expo 2012, which completes its three month run Aug. […]

Half of Libya’s oil exports hit by protests

Around half of Libya’s oil exporting capacity has been shut down and production reduced by about 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) because of protests by groups demanding greater autonomy for eastern Libya, shippers and officials said on Friday. At least three major oil exporting terminals were closed the previous evening and by Friday the first […]

Energy Quest and ‘Britain’s Atlantis’

A couple of fascinating reports detail discoveries at the bottom of the North Sea that some scientists say indicate the existence of “Doggerland,” an area that connected modern-day Great Britain to continental Europe until about 7,000 years ago. CBS News reports that fossilized evidence of mammoths and other large game, harpoons, flint tools and suspected […]

Peak theories ‘trashed’

PEAK theories – peak phosphorus, peak oil, peak potassium – are, in the words of Mick Keogh, being “trashed by the cold, hard and ruthless rules of economics”. In a blog post, the Australian Farm Institute’s executive director argued that these peaks were projected on questionable statistics, “and ignore some some basic economics”. “A number […]

North Sea Production Falls; Decline Set to Continue

The North Sea oil and gas industry was last year hit by its biggest ever fall in production with another slide in output forecast for 2012. A further fall would be a blow to the UK government as lower oil and gas production took its toll on industrial output in the first three months of […]

The bizarre case of the gallon of a petroleum liquid that costs less than a US nickel

There is a hydrocarbon out there that you can buy for less than three pennies per gallon. But that’s something that has just happened in the past few days. And while the decline in the price of ethane-propane mix in Conway, Kansas is in a very minor niche market, it’s still like nothing anybody has […]

Can China Follow U.S. Shift from Coal to Gas?

  Here’s an effort to look ahead from a promising American environmental trend to a prospect for the same in China, starting with two observations. First, the combination of abundant and cheap natural gas and tightening regulations on coal-burning power plants in the United States — along with a general intensification of efforts to conserve […]

Fukushima nuclear disaster report blames ‘collusion’ ‎: Flaws in US General Electric Reactors

The particular model used at Fukushima had inherent design flaws in the containment structure from the outset and engineers predicted the exact scenario that happened at Fukushima. The General Electric Corporation began constructing the Mark-1 BWR reactors in the 1960s, claiming that they were cheaper and easier to build in part because they used a […]

Apocalyptic Thinking / Collapse of the Dollar

In the first half of the show, media strategist Mathew Gross talked about the rise of apocalyptic thinking in America, and how it has become part of mainstream cultural dialogue both on the left and the right. While many Christians believe in the events foretold in the book of Revelation, a lot of secular Americans […]

Gail Tverberg: The Growing Part of the World in Charts

Some parts of the world pretty much sailed through the 2008-2009 recession, while other parts of the world had huge problems. The part that sailed through the recession is what I call the “Growing Part of the World.” I thought it would be interesting to see how the countries in the “Growing Part of the […]

System for Predicting Wave Energy Could Double Wave Power Generation

EcoGeek has a post on research into optimising wave power generation – System for Predicting Wave Energy Could Double Wave Power Generation. As part of a new study on wave power, the University of Exeter and Tel Aviv University have come up with a system that predicts the power of waves in order to maximize […]

Investigation reveals true hazards of piping tar sands across America

America has a new word to learn: Dilbit. Dilbit, short for diluted bitumen, is a combination of tar sands crude (bitumen) and dangerous liquid chemicals like benzene (the dilutant) used to thin crude so it can be piped to refineries. And there is a lot of it being piped into America — in some cases […]

Oil focus shifts to the North Sea

While tensions seem to be easing over Iran after their temper tantrum in the Straits of Hormuz, the oil market now is focused on growing tensions in the North Sea. These tensions do not involve a conflict between countries but a conflict between Norway’s Statoil and Norway’s oil labor union the oil industry association. While […]

Americathon (1979) John Ritter & Harvey Korman

Americathon (also known as Americathon 1998) is a 1979 American comedy film starring John Ritter, Fred Willard, Peter Riegert, Harvey Korman, and Nancy Morgan, with narration by George Carlin, based on a play by Firesign Theatre alumni Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman. Others credited in the film include Jay Leno, Meat Loaf, Tommy Lasorda, and […]

Rising Energy Output/Input Ratio for US Oil and Gas

I discovered something interesting while poking around this morning on the website of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (the agency that produces GDP statistics for the United States).  It turns out they have a spreadsheet with estimates of the amount of energy inputs to different industries.  Since they also have estimates of the outputs of […]

Heinberg: Blowing in the Wind

Economic contraction and social claustrophobia The social dimensions of the end of growth are coming into clearer focus with each passing month—from last year’s Occupy uprisings, to the recent NATO demonstrations in Chicago, to mass demonstrations in Spain, and on and on. Also clearer is the desperate strategy of the powerful, which consists primarily of […]

On position limits, trading industry pushes hard against proposal for which it had pushed hard

Late last week, some of the world’s largest energy industry lobbying groups sent lengthy, detailed letters to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission outlining the numerous problems they had with the agency’s proposed changes to its position limits rule. The letters were nothing out of the ordinary for industry groups which have fought the CFTC on […]

In the valley of the shadow of peak oil

In 1956 Texan geochemist Marion King Hubbert [3] made a presentation to the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Texas. King Hubbert (as he was known to many) made a bold prediction, that in every geographical area, from a single oil field to the entire planet, the rate of petroleum production […]

US sends ships, planes to Persian Gulf

The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear programescalates. The deployments are part of a […]

Weaning off Middle East Oil Means Less Than you Think

One expects the crazy talk to come out during an election season, but reports that the US is close to being weaned off Middle Eastern oil and set to become “independent” purposefully fail to consider the fact that as long as America is dependent on oil it will be dependent on Middle Eastern supplies because […]

Demography is Destiny

The human population of planet Earth is expected to approach 10 billion sometime between 2050 and 2100. The number itself is not nearly so disturbing as the places where the greatest population growth is expected to occur.   As seen on the graphic above, most of the growth within the 10 most populous nations, is […]

Our Liberation: A Crashing Empire

The Empire is crashing! Hooray!!!! The exploding population has met the dwindling resources. For many centuries we of the “civilized” world have been the physical and mental captives of elite groups within our societies that control us physically and feed us mentally. Those who have always assembled themselves around the emperors for six thousand years; […]

No, Natural Gas Is Not America’s Future

In Thomas Friedman’s latest column, he praises Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts because he “took one for the country.” Friedman sees that “America today is poised for a great renewal” if only it can get some “big, centrist, statesmanlike leadership.” Logically, there would be some renewable (energy) in America’s renewal, right? Wrong. Here’s Friedman’s […]

Enough fossil fuels to fry us all

George Monbiot said in a recent article that “We were wrong about peak oil. There is enough to fry us all”. He is wrong on peak oil, but right with his general conclusion. There are enough fossil fuels to fry us all. Will peak oil save us from global warming? Can it be that the […]

The Godmother Ran Out Of Luck: Saudi And Global Oil

In a recent (29 June) Market Oracle article, Andrew Butter writes: “One suspects that behind the Saudi rhetoric about keeping oil prices fair for the sake of the world economy and world peace…like a modern day fairy-godmother-of-last-resort, there is the thought that if prices stay above $120 or so for long then some serious E&P […]

US Crude Production by State

The above chart shows US crude oil production by month from Jan 1981 through April 2012.  I have broken out all the states producing more than 100 kbd (thousand barrels/day) by the end.  The original peak level of the total came in November 1970 at 10.044mbd, but the per-state data doesn’t go back that far […]

Susan Krumdieck: Getting a city to adopt a Peak Oil Plan

Susan Krumdieck gives an enthralling talk on getting Dundedin to adopt a Peak Oil Plan.

Iran says can destroy US bases “minutes after attack”

Iran has threatened to destroy U.S. military bases across the Middle East and target Israel within minutes of being attacked, Iranian media reported on Wednesday, as Revolutionary Guards extended test-firing of ballistic missiles into a third day. Israel has hinted it may attack Iran if diplomacy fails to secure a halt to its disputed nuclear […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy