Bound by the Chains of Oil: The Need for Energy Innovation

We all know that when the price of oil goes up Americans are negatively affected. High oil prices increase our gasoline expenditures, constricting household budgets, and cause the price of everything that is transported or produced using oil (which is basically everything) to escalate. Nationally, our trade deficit rises and often a recession is close at […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: A Stealth Revolution!

It is nearly a quarter of a century now since two electro-chemists at the University of Utah held a press conference to announce that they had discovered a new way of extracting energy from the nucleus of an atom. For a few weeks the announcement of what was then termed “cold fusion” made headlines as […]

China’s SUV Fleet to Drive Oil Demand Growth

China’s growing fleet of sport utility vehicles will offset gains in fuel efficiency and continue to drive oil-demand growth, according to Sanford C. Bernstein Research. Chinese oil consumption will increase at an average annual pace of 5 percent to reach 12.9 million barrels a day in 2018, from 9.6 million barrels a day in 2012, […]

Energy Return on Investment

This essay comes from the book ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in collaboration with Watershed Media and Post Carbon Institute. Download Energy Return on Investment Post Carbon Institute/Foundation for Deep Ecology

April Saudi Oil Production

The above graph summarizes the data on Saudi oil production (and oil rig count on the right scale).  The feature of most current interest is the large production cut that was implemented in the last months of 2012 (more background here). It appears that in April there was a noticeable uptick in production of around […]

Heinberg: Big Energy’s Misleading Promise of Plenty

Hi readers, This month has been a rush of deadlines as I work to complete the final chapters of my new book ‘SNAKE OIL! How Big Energy’s Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future’. This being the case I have no new writing to offer you this month — I did however give an extended interview, […]

People-Powered Politics at the City Level: Searching for True Citizenship

For the first time in human history, over half of the world’s population live in urban areas. By 2050, that number is projected to reach 70 percent. And yet, cities face huge problems. They are responsible for almost 80 percent of the world’s energy consumption and 67 percent of its greenhouse emissions. In 2005, one […]

Energy bills ‘could overtake mortgages in five years’

Energy bills are rising so steeply that they could overtake mortgage repayments in parts of Britain in just five years’ time, the chief executive of supplier, First Utility, has claimed. Ian McCaig issued the stark warning as he said energy policies must be reviewed to minimise the impact on bills and said consumers should think […]

The Rise of the Suburban Poor

In 2004, a documentary called The End of Suburbia predicted that the suburbs were potentially “destined to become the slums of tomorrow” thanks to the impending threat of peak oil. That didn’t happen–the threat of peak oil has now been replaced by out-of-control climate change–but suburbs are declining, just for a different reason. According to […]

Is peak oil never going to happen?

You can make a coherent, logical argument for cars that don’t burn gasoline without once mentioning global petroleum supply. You can talk about international relations and the power of gasoline exporters (just read the first three paragraphs of this for a bit of history). You can talk about climate change. You can talk about the […]

A Mileage Tax Monitored By GPS For All N.J. Drivers?

It’s a controversial proposal: Paying for every mile you drive to cover road repairs. While some say it’s necessary, others are saying it’s time to put the brakes on the idea, CBS 2’s Christine Sloan reported Tuesday. It’s the one thing New Jersey can boast about – having the fourth-lowest gas tax in the nation. […]

The Coming Collapse Of The Petrodollar System

Authored by Andrew McKillop, PETRODOLLAR WAR The theory of Petrodollar Warfare can be attributed to US analyst and author William R Clarke, and his 2005 book of that title which interpreted the US-UK decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He called this an “oil currency war”, but the concept of the petrodollar system and petrodollar […]

Nuclear Energy Industry Re-Energizing after Fukushima

The Fukushima incident has contributed to the lay belief that nuclear energy is a risk not worth taking. Although, according to the data of the non-profit World Nuclear Association only a very limited number of accidents occurred in over 14,500 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 32 countries. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and […]

Federal mandate boosting biofuels use has unintended consequences

The 2007 energy independence law is proving to be a law of unintended consequences. The intent was to boost the production of ethanol and other biofuels so the country could reduce its growing dependence on imported oil. At the time, President George W. Bush, a former oilman, complained that the nation was “addicted to oil.” […]

Has the EIA Killed Peak Oil?

A number of factors have changed the face of peak oil. Low U.S. growth, increased oil production and more fuel efficient modes of transportation have dampened the effects of rising energy costs. Peak oil is still a real phenomenon, but in the medium term it looks like it will affect the economy through subtle means. US Consumer […]

Forget peak oil—start worrying about peak water

A report released today by the US Geological Survey (USGS) today shows that Americans are sucking dry the aquifers that irrigate their crops and supply their drinking water. Between 1900 and 2008, the US lost 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of groundwater. That’s twice the volume of the water in Lake Erie. It gets […]

Collapse Is The Transition Of Consciousness

“Gary, your website is so dark…do you ever publish positive news?” Well, I’m positive that environmental, energy, and economic systems are collapsing…not just some systems, but virtually all systems are crashing. You’d have to be in total denial not to recognize that everything’s not only about to change, but that it already is changing. There’s […]

The Coming Deluge of Oil

It came without warning: A flood of oil. Just a few years ago we were talking about peak oil, the slow, painful demise of crude. Now there’s talk about a shock wave of new oil supply from North America that’s about to slam into global markets. We’re in the early stages of a new oil […]

Fusion program at MIT is ending; Layoffs predicted; federal funds cut

A long-running Massachusetts Institute of Technology research experiment that explores nuclear fusion as a possible energy source will shut down within a year, as its already diminished federal funding has been cut. Miklos Porkolab, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center where the project is housed, said that unless Congress decides to step in, […]

Energy in China: Construction of Biggest Hydropower Dam Yet to Come

Reuters reported on Wednesday that China’s environmental ministry has okayed the construction of a new hydroelectric dam on the Dadu River in the Sichuan province, which when completed will be the country’s largest. China’s energy mix was 9.4 percent renewable as of 2011, and the Sichuan project is part of the country’s effort to boost […]

The road to a greener America is littered with road-kill

In October 2004, then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rolled up to a pioneering fueling station at Los Angeles International Airport in a hydrogen-powered metallic blue Hummer loaned to him by General Motors Corp. The “California Hydrogen Highway,” Schwarzenegger’s vision to ensure that every Californian would have access to a hydrogen fueling station by the end […]

Peak Oil: Decisions

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Jorge Madrid, Kate Gordon, Tina Ramos: The United States’ prolonged unwillingness to develop a long-term, sustainable energy strategy has left us with a daunting challenge—the need to run a 21st century economy using 20th century energy sources and infrastructure. Our energy choices, or lack thereof due to […]

Wind Energy Growing Faster than Coal in China: False Math

In a recent Slate piece Ramez Naam argues: In almost every way you cut it, China is already taking a much more aggressive approach toward climate change than the United States is. This is a rather bold claim seems perfectly fitted to Carl Sagan’s statement “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Naam’s evidence is extraordinary, unfortunately it is […]

Crushed By Soaring Energy Costs, Japan Prepares To Reactivate Its Nuclear Power Plants

In what was painfully obvious to everyone with half a brain months ago (see here) Japan’s desperate gambit at reflating would backfire massively by sending energy prices soaring in a world in which Japan no longer has access to internally producer, nuclear power plants and is forced to import all of its energy from abroad. […]

U.S. OKs liquefied natural gas exports to Japan, others

The United States said Friday it will allow exports of domestically produced liquefied natural gas to Japan and other countries to which it is not bound by free trade agreements, authorizing a plan to deliver shale and other gases from Texas. Japan hailed the move as it had been asking the United States to lift […]

Predicting the Weather, Corn, Ethanol and Oil Production

News of the future was, in my youth, something that one found by crossing the palm of a lady in a dark tent with a piece or two of silver (or the modern equivalent) at one of the fairs that came to town. Such opportunities still exist, with all the caveats that existed back then […]

Will the International Energy Agency’s oil forecast be wrong again?

The famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr once humorously observed, “Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future.” And so, as the world considers yet another rosy oil supply forecast, this time from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), it is worth reviewing the agency’s record. Back in the year 2000, the IEA divined that by […]

Al-Qaeda takes over oilfields once belonging to Assad…

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing is helping to finance its activities by selling the product of oilfields that once helped to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Up to 380,000 barrels of crude oil were previously produced by wells around the city of Raqqa and in the desert region to its east that are now in […]

The Quiet Triumph Of Oil And Gas In Obama’s Policies

It was announced Friday afternoon, when no one was supposed to pay attention: after years of controversy, heated rhetoric, intense lobbying, and stiff opposition from some unlikely bedfellows, with multinational industrial and chemical companies weighing down one side of the bed, and environmentalists tossing and turning on the other, the Obama Administration decided in favor […]

Forget ExxonMobil. Chevron is new leader in oil.

Although Chevron is smaller, it has eclipsed ExxonMobil as the best-managed international oil company. Chevron’s stock has outperformed ExxonMobil’s, it pays a higher dividend, and the company is reporting a slightly higher profit margin. A decade ago I would have said that ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) was the best-managed oil company among the international oil companies. […]

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