Shell’s Arctic Oil Drilling Window Closing As Permits Awaited

The short window for Royal Dutch Shell PLC to drill exploratory wells off Alaska’s Arctic coast is rapidly narrowing as the company still hasn’t completed the retrofit of its vital oil spill response vessel or received final permits for its use. Shell initially planned to begin exploration activities in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in […]

Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Why are peak oil-ers like Jehovah’s Witnesses? Answer: When the definitive JW prediction of the ‘Day of Wrath’ failed in 1914, they did what false prophets have done in every generation: shifted the goalposts (to 1975 in the case of JW’s—and wrong again). It’s what false prophets do to save face, enabling them to keep […]

Automation key to supply and demand

Last month I succeeded in provoking considerable discussion around the notion that the power industry needs to wring efficiencies from the grid, not just hector customers to change their behavior – “rationing,” as one of my colleagues has put it. And I suggested that one way to do that is by deploying advanced sensors and […]

Community Resilience, Ecosystems and Sustainable Economics

Contemplate, if you will, the concept of “resilience in complex adaptive systems.” “What’s that all about? ” you might well ask. “And what’s it got to do with me?” I’ll answer the second question first. In recent columns I have pointed out that humanity is living in a state of environmental overshoot. We are using […]

A Few Insights Regarding Today’s Nuclear Situation

The issue of nuclear electricity is a complex one. In this post, I offer a few insights into the nuclear electric situation based on recent reports and statistical data. Nuclear Electric Production Is Already Declining Figure 1. World nuclear electric production split by major producing countries, based on BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy. […]

The Population Boom: 10 Billion by the End of the Century

There has been a highly successful run at the Royal Court Theatre, in London, not of a play in the usual form, but of a lecture by Professor Stephen Emmott, who leads Microsoft’s Computational Science Laboratory in Cambridge and is Professor of Computational Science at Oxford University. The title, “10 Billion” refers to the human […]

Environmentalists warn of risk of oil production in the Russian Arctic

Environmental activists warned Tuesday that drilling for oil in the Russian Arctic could have disastrous consequences because of a lack of technology and infrastructure to deal with a possible spill in a remote region with massive icebergs and heavy storms. Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund unveiled a report assessing the risks of an oil […]

32 Mexico coal mines shuttered for safety reasons

Mexico City, Aug 11 (IANS/EFE) Mexico’s government said 32 small coal mines in the northern state of Coahuila have been closed due to safety concerns, a move taken after 13 miners were killed in that region in less than a month. In a press conference Thursday, Labor and Social Welfare Secretary Rosalinda Velez announced the […]

The Chinese Are Coming! The Chinese Are Coming!

In a bold move on Monday, July 23, the China National Oil Company, CNOOC, announced an agreement to purchase Canadian-based explorer Nexen for $15.1 billion in cash. The C$27.50 per share purchase price represented a 61% premium to the closing share price of the prior Friday. The news of the transaction sent Nexen’s share price […]

BP Selling Gulf of Mexico Fields

BP Plc (BP/) is seeking as much as $7.9 billion before tax payments for a group of Gulf of Mexico oilfields as it unloads assets following its 2010 spill in the region, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The oil producer, Europe’s biggest after Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA), has prepared preliminary information […]

IEA trims 2013 oil demand outlook

  Based on weaker economic growth assumptions, the International Energy Agency has reduced its outlook for 2013 worldwide oil demand by 150,000 b/d from its month-ago forecast. Oil demand growth now is pegged at 870,000 b/d in 2012 and 830,000 b/d in 2013, according to the Paris-based agency’s latest oil market report. Oil demand among […]

Gail Tverberg: An Energy/GDP Forecast to 2050

We talk about the possibility of reducing fossil fuel use by 80% by 2050 and ramping up renewables at the same time, to help prevent climate change. If we did this, what would such a change mean for GDP, based on historical Energy and GDP relationships back to 1820? Back in March, I showed you […]

Robert Rapier: How to Acquire Accurate Energy Data and Statistics

Making good investment decisions requires access to timely, reliable data. There are a number of good sources of data, each with particular strengths and weaknesses. Here I discuss three that I frequently use. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is the statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). They have been providing data and […]

Fascination for Death

We are a peculiar culture. We are extremely reluctant to accept the possibility that our civilization might decline and fall, like all those which have preceded us, yet consider the idea of utterly trashing the biosphere with a fascination which would have made an early twentieth century symbolist uneasy. We have had another example of […]

Kunstler: Pure Americana

At the core of the manifold paradoxes swirling around American governance is the harsh reality that we just can’t keep running our shit the way it has evolved to run. Neither candidate for president is honest enough to spell this out and indeed both act as though easy work-arounds exist for sustaining the unsustainable.   […]

$115/b Oil: The Edge Of Abyss

Oil prices hit a staggering $115/b yesterday, an amazing number given Chinese growth fears, abject German failures in the euro zone, and flat-lining growth in the US. The core reason prices hit a three month high, is not because of fundamentals, but because oil traders erroneously believe that Israel will go to war with Iran […]

Venezuela boosts oil sales to China

Venezuela has increased oil sales to China to 640,000 barrels a day, the Andean nation’s energy minister said. “Before, we never sold a single barrel of petroleum to China and now we sell them 640,000 (bpd) … at a better price than … in the U.S. market,” Rafael Ramirez said in an interview with El […]

China Admits It Has A Food Inflation Problem, Releases Corn, Rice From Reserves

Last week we wrote an article that to many was anathema: namely an explanation why everyone is deluding themselves in their expectation that the PBOC would ease, soft, hard, or just right landing notwithstanding. The reason? The threat that food inflation is about to read its ugly head which is “Why The Fate Of The […]

Dozens Of Underwater Drones Deployed To The Waters Of Iran

What to do when international talks begin falling apart? Send a fleet of unmanned submersibles in preparation for a waterway showdown. As US talks with Iran over their nuclear program began to sour and the possibility of sanctions against the country rose, Iran responded by threatening to cut off the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow […]

Ahmadinejad arrives in Saudi for Islamic summit

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived on Monday in Saudi Arabia ahead of an extraordinary summit in Mecca expected to focus on the Syria conflict, on which Tehran and Riyadh have taken opposing sides. Ahmadinejad arrived in the Muslim holy city of Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, SPA state news agency said, adding that he visited […]

US Interior to Open More of National Petroleum Reserve for O&G Development

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Monday outlined a proposed plan to open additional acreage in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) for oil and gas development. The proposed plan would make approximately 11.8 million acres available for leasing. Salazar said the move would make the vast majority of projected oil resources in […]

China: The Biggest Loser in Green Energy?

China is losing a lot of money on solar — even more than Obama lost betting on the intermittent unreliable form of energy! China’s top ten photovoltaic makers have accumulated a combined debt of 17.5 billion U.S. dollars so far, leading the whole industry to the brink of bankruptcy, data from U.S. investment agency Maxim […]

Jean Laherrère: Comments on BP Statistical Review 2012

Digest The BP Statistical Review has the merit to release every year free and convenient updated historical data on energy. These data are recopied from what is reported by national agencies, avoiding diplomatic conflicts. Despite the heterogeneity of the data, the report displays a ridiculous high number of digits, in contradiction with the real accuracy […]

Asian oil buyers help Iran move away sanctions

Asia’s major crude buyers are finding ways around tough U.S. and EU sanctions to maintain imports from Iran, suggesting that, for now, the sanctions may be over for the OPEC producer. China, India, Japan and South Korea buy most of the one million barrels per day of crude Iran is able to export despite financial, […]

US Navy ship collides with oil tanker in Gulf

A U.S. Navyguided missile destroyer was left with a gaping hole on one side after it collided with an oil tanker early Sunday just outside the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The collision left a breach about 10 feet by 10 feet (three by three meters) in the starboard side of USS Porter. No one was injured […]

Iraq Daily Oil Output Reaches 3.2 Million Barrels

Iraq’s crude-oil production has risen to 3.2 million barrels a day and will increase as planned to 3.4 million barrels a day by year’s end Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Affairs Hussain al-Shahristani said. The country’s output has now surpassed that of Iran and Kuwait, al-Shahristani told reporters today in Baghdad. The figure would be […]

Opportunity after the disaster: new nuclear regulatory body

Japan’s energy policy is now at its most critical juncture since the inception of nuclear power in 1966. Nearly 16 months after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station — the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl — Japan’s nuclear policy has finally started to transform. After much delay, on June 20 the […]

World Fresh Water Maps

Fresh water is a fixed quantity.  Population and water usage per capita are rising quantities.  When the demand exceeds supply, various forces come into play:  allocation by price and affordability, efficiency changes, investment in desalination, legal disputes and at some point wars. Total world consumption of fresh water currently exceeds the replenished amount.  The difference […]

Who Wants The Highest Crude Oil Price? Presenting The OPEC Cost Curve

With the presidential elections fast approaching, the last thing the incumbent wants is for the one thing that can spoil the party – a surge in oil, and thus gas prices – to happen. Which is why despite a sharp return in Iran/Syria war rhetoric, we doubt that the trade off between a “wag the […]

Kunstler: That Old Martial Spirit

A great orgasm shuddered through the money world last week when Mario Draghi paused between scamorza con arugulatidbits to remark that the European Central Bank (ECB) would stop at nothing to keep the financial blood of Europe circulating. Of course you wonder how many pony glasses of Campari he knocked back before that whopper came […]

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