Energy, Economy and the Impending Rite of Passage

It’s the economy, stupid! Bill Clinton’s campaign used this phrase to defeat incumbent President George H. W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election. Bush had the misfortune of being president during the beginning of a recession, and Clinton’s campaign didn’t let him, or American voters, forget it; Clinton convinced enough Americans that he could turn things […]

Unconventional Oil is NOT a Game Changer

National Photo Co. Fossil Fuel 1920 Washington, D.C. “Penn Oil and truck.” Oil prices have been falling.   This is no surprise to us here at The Automatic Earth, as our position is that the 2008 price peak will stand for a very long time, and that the rise from the 2009 low has been […]

In the energy debate, is there hope for a “rational middle?”

The Kid’s Page in the July 3 Washington Post features a story with an intriguing headline: “Where does electricity come from? Hint: Not from that switch on your wall.” Documentary film maker Gregory Kallenberg, maker of the 2009 film “Haynesville,” found while promoting the movie that many adults were equally in the dark about vital […]

Arctic Drilling Gets Serious

Shell made headlines in May when the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) approved its oil response plan for its exploratory program in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Shell awaits drilling permits from the BSEE to start drilling for oil. While waiting for approval, Shell has been testing its new oil spill containment system. […]

Peak Blame

KMO welcomes Mark Robinowitz of OilEmpire.us back to the C-Realm Podcast to discuss why both the mainstream political left as well as the right in the United States cannot address the demands of Peak Oil in a realistic way. Republicans have rebuked Navy Secretary Ray Mabus for attempting to ween the Navy off of fossil […]

Harvard Senior Fellow: Peak Oil Is History

With the publication of his careful study, “Oil: The Next Revolution,” internationally respected economist and senior fellow at Harvard University Leonardo Maugeri has persuasively buried the theory of “peak oil” beneath 75 pages of evidence to the contrary. He wrote: Contrary to what most people believe, oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an […]

Oil’s Long Goodbye and a Species’ Quest for Self Control

Mick Womersley, a professor of human ecology at Unity College in Maine, has offered a provocative and powerful reaction to my post on new work pointing to the abundance of oil now that new methods have been developed to extract it from deposits that were previously too costly to tap. You can read his “Your […]

10 sobering realizations the Eastern U.S. power grid failure is teaching us about a real collapse

In the wake of violent storms, the power remains out today for millions of Americans across several U.S. states. Governors of Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio have declared a state of emergency. Over a dozen people are now confirmed dead, and millions are sweltering in blistering temperatures while having no air conditioning or refrigeration. As […]

More Views on the Gas Rush and Hydraulic Fracturing

Here are a couple of reactions to my exchange with “Gasland” filmmaker Josh Fox after signals emerged that New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is poised to end a state moratorium on gas drilling using hydraulic fracturing. (In a related development, North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat who does not flatly oppose hydraulic fracturing, […]

Smoke From Fukushima Reactor 6 Turbine Bldg

Another minor incident at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, this time in the basement of the turbine building for Reactor 6, one of the only two reactors at Fukushima that remain in cold shutdown in the true sense (not the definition by the Noda administration) after the accident. (Reactor 4 did not have the fuel […]

Grinding Energy Shortage Takes Toll on India’s Growth

India is facing an energy crisis that is slowing economic growth in the world’s largest democracy. At stake is India’s ability to bring electricity to 400 million rural residents—a third of the population—as well as keep the lights on at corporate office towers and provide enough fuel for 1.5 million new vehicles added to the […]

Peak Oil Anonymous

Vancouver Peak Oil is a group of citizens concerned with creating awareness and action plans to prepare for the coming of oil depletion. This project was created during the class BIG IDEA, Term03 at Vancouver Film School. My role was Interactive designer. I also helped with type animation for the motion piece. The objective of […]

Orlov: The Movement for Involuntary Complexity

Year after year, the Addbusters Magazine propagandizes “Buy Nothing Day”: On Nov 25/26th we escape the mayhem and unease of the biggest shopping day in North America and put the breaks on rabid consumerism for 24 hours. Flash mobs, consumer fasts, mall sit-ins, community events, credit card-ups, whirly-marts and jams, jams, jams! The idea, I […]

Iran Threatens to Block Tankers in Response to Oil Import Embargo

Following a European Union embargo on Iranian oil imports that came into effect on Sunday, the Iranian parliament today drafted a bill to block oil shipments to countries cooperating in punitive sanctions against the country. Around 17 million barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq move through the Strait […]

The ‘Green’ Premium: 620%

As the squeeze-fest from Friday’s oil-spike wears off a little, it is perhaps worth noting just how astronomically insane the world gets when the terrible triumvirate of ‘green’ energy needs, defense spending, and government largesse come together. Why should we worry about 5c or 10c on a gallon of fuel down the local gas station […]

Can The Military Lead the Way to Smarter Energy?

The U.S. military has deep resources, incentives to innovate, and a history of developing groundbreaking technologies that have spilled over into market-changing private sector applications. What can be learned from the Department of Defense when it comes to developing smarter, more renewable energy solutions? Do military ideas or technologies exist that can provide important lessons […]

ExxonMobil Interested in Exploring for Oil in Afghanistan

Exxon Mobil Corp. told Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines it is interested in bidding on the right to explore for oil and gas in the country. A spokesman for the Irving, Texas-based energy giant said Monday a unit of the company, Esso Exploration International Ltd., filed an “expression of interest” in the Afghan-Tajik Basin over the […]

Comparing Costs of Energy Production

RCE Summary of James Conca at Forbes The editors of Real Clear Energytook a look at a recent attempt to compare lifetime costs for different electrical power sources: [James] Conca differentiates between lifetime costs and other ways of comparing costs, specifically overnight costs and levelized costs: “By life-cycle costs, I mean the total costs of […]

Mapping out China’s South China Sea Oil Claims

It’s one thing to read of the disputed claims in the South China Sea involving China and every other country that lines the edges of this Asiatic body of water, and it’s another thing entirely to see a map that starkly demonstrates just how boldly and aggressively China is pushing its claims. Reading about the […]

Kjell Aleklett: The Autumn Agenda for ASPO International’s President

  At the ASPO meeting in Vienna I was elected anew to be president of ASPO for an additional two years. Now autumn’s agenda has begun to fill with conferences where I will represent ASPO and Uppsala University. First there are four conferences in China in the middle of September of which ”The 2nd International […]

US House approves sweeping package of energy bills

The US House approved a sweeping energy legislative package that supporters said would facilitate development of more domestic oil and gas, and opponents said would seriously gut environmental protections. HR 4480 passed by 248 to 163 votes, and its sponsor, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), urged the US Senate to take it up promptly. “These bipartisan […]

Natural gas liquids

According to the Energy Information Administration, in March the United States produced a “total oil supply” of 10.8 million barrels per day, which was 2.1 mb/d more than in January 2005. But if you just rely on those aggregate numbers, you’ll miss some very important trends. The EIA’s definition of total oil supply represents the […]

Peak Plastic: One Generation’s Trash Is Another Generation’s Treasure

In 1956, M. King Hubbert laid out a prediction for how oil production in a nation increases, peaks, and then quickly falls down. Since then many analysts have extended this logic and said that global oil production will soon max out—a point called “peak oil“—which could throw the world economy into turmoil. I’m a materials […]

Dramatic socio-economic paradigm shift is ahead: Interview with Nathan Hagen, ASPO-Vienna 2012

The current period can be undoubtedly characterized as an economical, ecological, cultural, political, but also moral crisis. The solution seems to be as far off as ever and problems seem to be getting worse by the day everywhere. Why is that, what can we expect in the future and what are the safe outcomes from […]

Oil sands, conventional growth will double Canada’s oil output by 2030

Production of crude oil will more than double to 6.2 million b/d by 2030, largely from oil sands, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Production last year was 3 million b/d, of which 1.1 million b/d came from conventional resources in Western Canada, 1.6 million b/d from oil sands, and 300,000 b/d from […]

Is Peak Oil Dead?

“If we don’t change our course, we’ll end up where we’re headed,” says an ancient Chinese proverb. From the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota, and many places in between, the production of oil and gas in the United States has greatly increased over recent years through the […]

Kunstler: Hostage Racket

     Not to put too fine a point on it, but didn’t that cunning rogue Chief Justice John Roberts pour a jug of Karo syrup into the gas tank of America’s twelve trillion cylinder engine? Or, put another way (forgive the metaphor juke), didn’t he just give President Obama enough rope to hang himself? […]

New views of oil supply

en years ago, analysts ran fevers over expectations about global oil consumption. A forecast would appear from, say, the US Energy Information Administration indicating oil demand in 2020 at 119.6 million b/d, and many of them would pop their safety valves. They’d see no way to meet demand of 120 million b/d of oil when […]

Heinberg: Peak Denial

There is nothing but “Sad News for Peak Oil Disciples” these days, according to the Financial Post. The latest example: Leonardo Maugeri, a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs—and a long-time critic of Peak Oil analysis—has just published a new report, “Oil: The […]

UN Asks: How Many People Could Live on Planet Earth?

The Tellus Institute , a non-profit sustainability research organization, created “sophisticated human population models” with their PoleStar project (PSP). Using data provided to them by the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank (WB), they analyzed parameters such as energy consumption, land use and pollution. The PSP predicts simulated outcomes that are being used to […]

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