India: Power cuts to be longer

The AP Transco has announced enhanced duration of power cuts for domestic consumers and others following tripping of three thermal units and closure of a hydel plant, resulting in an abrupt loss of 1,076 MW of installed capacity to the grid which is equivalent to 20 million units per day. Two units of Rayalaseema Thermal […]

Obama Aide Says Using Petroleum Reserve Is an ‘Option’

The Obama administration is monitoring oil markets and a release from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve remains “an option that is on the table” if prices rise or supply is disrupted, said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman. “The administration does carefully monitor the global oil market” because of its impact on the economy, Earnest […]

Nuclear Radiation On San Francisco’s Treasure Island: We Don’t Need To Know, Apparently

“That amount of radium found to date cannot be explained by gauges, deck markers, and decontamination activities,” wrote Stephen Woods, an environmental cleanup manager at the California Department of Public Health, about Treasure Island, the rectilinear speck of land in the San Francisco Bay two-and-a-half miles of white caps from our kitchen window. It summed […]

Running on empty: big airlines in big trouble

I have a joke with a friend of mine that airline pilots are nothing but glorified bus drivers. As cynical as this may be, for the majority of us with regular jobs who fly economy air travel is increasingly becoming like its land-based cousin: cramped, overcrowded and at times downright unpleasant. Most people living in […]

US considers release from reserves

The price of oil headed higher for a fourth straight day Friday on fresh signs U.S. consumers are gaining some confidence in the economy. Benchmark oil rose 34 cents to $95.94 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It has gained three percent this week on positive economic data and a drop in […]

What Would Happen If The Entire World Lived Like Americans?

After making an infographic depicting how much space would be needed to house the entire world’s population based on the densities of various global cities, Tim De Chant of Per Square Mile got to thinking about the land resources it takes to support those same cities. “Just looking at a city’s geographic extents ignores its […]

Global Oil Production Fell 1mbd in June/July

I’ve been commenting for a few months that global liquid fuel production doesn’t seem to have continued increasing in 2012.  I’ve now updated my graph above with the latest data.  OPEC has revised down their numbers for June significantly and both the IEA and OPEC show very slight increases in July relatively to June.  The […]

Oil Prices Need to Double in a Decade

Michael Kumhof explains the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Research Department’s new, strikingly more accurate, oil supply/price/demand prediction model, and says that according to the model oil prices will need to double in a decade to grow world oil production by 0.9%, in line with published EIA predictions*. The world economy could not cope with a […]

Matthew Simmons Interview on CNN (2005)

Matthew Simmons Interview on CNN (2006)

Natural gas exports likely unprofitable for decades

While discussion of exporting liquefied natural gas has focused on the effect on domestic prices, a new study finds that international prices will be the limiting factor. In fact, not much U.S. gas is likely to find a market overseas through at least 2040, according to “U.S. LNG Exports: Truth and Consequence,” published Aug. 10 […]

White House “Dusting Off” Plans For Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release

It must be election season because moment ago Reuters just reported that the White House is “dusting off old plans on a potential SPR release as prices rise” according to a source with knowledge of the situation. This too, just like the earlier Corzine news, should not be a surprise. Obama made it expressly clear […]

How to Line a Thermonuclear Reactor

One of the biggest question marks hanging over the ITER fusion reactor project—a giant international collaboration currently under construction in France—is over what material to use for coating its interior wall. After all, the reactor has to withstand temperatures of 100,000°C and an intense particle bombardment. Researchers have now answered that question by refitting the […]

Israeli minister warns of 30-day war with Iran

Matan Vilnai, who is stepping down as home front defence minister to become ambassador to China, said the country was “ready as never before”. “The assessments are for a war that will last 30 days on a number of fronts,” he told the Maariv newspaper. “It could be that there will be less fatalities, but […]

An Ever Darker Outlook for Coal

It’s been roughly a month since InvestorPlace took a look at beleaguered U.S. coal industry. At that time, Appalachian miner Patriot Coal(PINK:PCXCQ[1]) had filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to improve its long-term prospects. Patriot became the industry’s first major casualty[2] as it succumbed to the mounting pressures facing coal. Those pressures include the […]

U.S. Takes 9th Place in Energy Efficiency! (Out of 12).

A new report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy(ACEEE) ranked the energy efficiency of the world’s 12 largest economies. The U.S., unfortunately, ranked 9 out of 12. So while we were out dominating at the Olympics, we were quietly slipping behind on a metric that, if improved, would yield a substantial benefit […]

You say you want a revolution, shale gas?

The US shale revolution, which flooded the domestic market with both natural gas and opposition to the hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, now needs to stage its own public relations uprising, speakers said this week at an industry event in Denver. From Reagan to Twitter, the industry needs to use a variety of campaign tools if it […]

US: 200,000 GW of solar could be installed

PV Magazine has a look at the latest NREL study of solar power potential in the US – US: 200,000 GW of solar could be installed (via Cryptogon). According to a new study released by NREL, the technical potential of photovoltaics and concentrating solar power (CSP) in the U.S. amounts to just under 200,000 GW, […]

Food Activists See Portents of New and Deeper Hunger Crisis

Food rights activists from around the world will descend on the coastal U.S. state of Florida next week to protest homelessness and hunger facing millions of people in the United States and across the globe. The Aug. 20-26 protests in Tampa were organised to draw attention to the Republican Party’s aggressive stance on tax cuts […]

2012 May Be Most Expensive Year for Gasoline

When it comes to gas prices, the “all-time high” is one record that drivers hope won’t be broken anytime soon. Last year proved to be the priciest ever for gasoline, with an overall national average of $3.53 per gallon, and now it looks like this year will surpass 2011′s mark and take the unfortunate title. […]

UK: Population growth in every region

The Government has a bigger job to do than delivering the Olympics because of the need to provide more housing, schools, health and transport facilities for a growing population, a leading union has said. Research for the GMB showed that the population increased in every region of the country between 2001 and 2011, placing extra […]

The Roman Style Collapse of Western Civilization

As America’s engineered economic implosion accelerates, the parallels with how the Roman empire fell are staggering. It is now abundantly clear that the ruling class is preparing for a planned economic implosion after which they will declare themselves the saviors.

Offshore US Oil Rule Disappoints Environmentalists

The U.S. issued a final rule on offshore drilling safety that the Obama administration said will reduce the risk of blowouts such as the 2010 one in the Gulf of Mexico, while environmentalists said the regulations don’t go far enough. The Interior Department said the rule, issued yesterday, will cost the industry $130.7 million a […]

Cynicism is Intellectual Cowardice … a Cop-Out to Rationalize Fear and Laziness

Preface: Obviously, giving up cynicism and getting active doesn’t mean adopting phony hopium.  It means abandoning both fear and laziness – on the one hand – and false hope on the other. In other words, question authority and be cynical of those in power. But don’t be cynical of the desirability – and necessity – of acting to challenge […]

Natural Gas And The Brutal Dethroning Of King Coal

It’s been tough for natural gas drillers. The boom in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that gave access to enormous gas-rich shale formations around the nation led to record production. Prices crashed. Drilling activity collapsed: rig count, down 45% from last year, hit the lowest level since July 1999. Producers are writing down their natural […]

Saudi Aramco says virus shuts down its computer network

Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Saudi Aramco) said its computer systems had been shut down by a virus late on Wednesday, but it added that production had not been affected. “An official source of Saudi Aramco confirmed that it had isolated electronic systems for the entire company today and cut off external access as an early […]

John Michael Greer: The specter of military defeat

I’ve come to think that the single greatest obstacle that stands in the way of a clear understanding of the predicament of our age is the insistence that the past has nothing to teach the present. You might think that after the recent crescendo of speculative bubbles, the phrase “it’s different this time” would have […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Another Disruptive Technology?

The August doldrums are a good time to note that there is yet another “disruptive technology” under development, and possibly close to market, which has the potential to make radical changes in the way we obtain and use energy. This time it is not anomalous heat observed when hydrogen is loaded into nickel, but is […]

Estimated 2012 US Corn Yield

The USDA has published an early estimate of what they think this year’s United States average corn yield will be – a much depressed 123.4 bushels/acre due to the current record-breaking heat and drought in the US. Since they also maintain statistics for average yields back to 1866 (!!), I made the graph above showing the […]

Water shortages hit US power supply

As the United States’ extended heat wave and drought threaten to raise global food prices, energy production is also feeling the pressure. Across the nation, power plants are becoming overheated and shutting down or running at lower capacity; drilling operations struggle to get the water they need, and crops that would become biofuel are withering. […]

Malaysia: Our children and the population

‘Drug companies now have superior, improved pharmacology resulting in a safer, more effective pill since half a century ago.’ I HAVE four children. The first was Oona, our only girl; three years later came Andy and 13 months after, Mikey. Danny arrived seven years later. Of course, the perceptive reader will surmise that we used […]

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