World population becoming more urbanized

By 2050, the world population is expected to increase by 2.3 billion to 9.3 billion, according to the United Nations Population Division. But the size of the rural population is forecast to decline over the next 40 years as the world’s population becomes more urban. By 2050, the number of people living in urban areas […]

‘Incredible Increase’ in Oil, Gas in East Africa

East Africa is in the middle of an incredible energy boom that is likely to last decades, according to energy industry executives who gathered this week in Kenya’s capital in a sign of the region’s growing prominence. The last couple of years have seen significant oil and gas discoveries in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique. […]

Rosneft to Send $60 Billion Worth of Oil to China

The Russian state oil company, Rosneft, intends to sign a major contract to supply China with more than $60 billion of crude oil, a deal that could signal a small shift away from Western Europe toward Asia. Russia has been gradually opening its oil spigot to China in recent years. While the overall volume of […]

Chris Martenson: Everything Is Being Sold

Global financial markets are now in a very perilous state, and there is a much higher than normal chance of a crash. Bernanke’s recent statement revealed just how large a role speculation had played in the prices of nearly everything, and now there is a mad dash for cash taking place all over the world. […]

Shale gas won’t stop peak oil, but could create an economic crisis

A new report out last week from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has doubled estimates of “technically recoverable” oil and gas resources available globally. The report says that shale-based resources potentially increase the world’s total oil supplies by 11 per cent. Acknowledging fault-lines in its new study, contracted to energy consulting firm Advanced Resources […]

Upset About the Price of Gasoline? Get Some Perspective Here

Think gasoline is expensive? It’s all relative. The cost of filling up the 39-gallon tank of a Chevrolet Suburban in Turkey is $389.22, while in the U.S. it’s $137. In Venezuela, it’s just $1.56. The price of gas is one of the most universal complaints — whether it’s teeth gnashing at the water cooler or […]

Natural gas in ‘golden age’

The International Energy Agency said on Thursday that natural gas was enjoying “a golden age” even if the growth in output over the next five years will be a lower-than-expected 2.4 percent instead of 2.7 percent forecast earlier. The IEA’s Medium-Term Gas Market Report pointed out that shale discoveries in North America and China’s attempts […]

The Story of More: Richard Heinberg

What if we aren’t about to return to economic growth? What if the economic growth era is actually behind us? Richard Heinberg’s latest landmark work, The End of Growth, goes to the heart of the ongoing financial crisis, explaining how and why it occurred, and what we must do to avert the worst potential outcomes. […]

China’s Arctic Strategy

China has certainly been busy since it won observer status at the May Arctic Council summit in Kiruna, Sweden. First, Yu Zhengasheng, Chairman of China’s Political Consultative Conference, visited Finland, Sweden and Denmark with an eye to boosting general trade and cooperation, particularly in the Arctic. China then announced an expanded research and scientific polar […]

The US Wants Syrian Oil, Not Democracy

“… the Persian Gulf, the critical oil and natural gas-producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protect our economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices.” –John Bolton, George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations   ll the hubbub over […]

Latest Estimates of Global Fossil Fuel Resources and Reserves, as of June 2013

Table 1. Summary Fossil fuel Unit 2011 production Reserves Reserves-to- production ratio (years) Recoverable resources Crude oil million barrels 31,875 1,642,354 52 3,356,964 Wet natural gas trillion cubic feet 124 6,839 55 22,882 Coal million tonnes 7,710 1,037,552 135 22,308,986 Hard coal 6,640 754,595 114 17,873,677 Lignite 1,070 282,957 264 4,435,309 Sources: Andruleit et al. (2012); […]

We will not run out of fossil fuels

Fossil fuels are formed from the remains of plants and animals that died hundreds of millions of years ago, buried and transformed by heat and pressure. Since these fuels require millions of years to form, for human purposes, the supply of fossil fuels on Earth is effectively fixed. This has led to predictions — such […]

Apartment Energy Use Drops Nearly 40 Percent

If you live in an apartment building with five or more units, you probably use significantly less energy than your friends living in single-family homes. Maybe you have suspected this, because your apartment is so much tinier than most people’s houses (which is certainly the case for this reporter) and therefore uses less energy. Or […]

Peak Oil: Bottom Line

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Chris Nelder. [T]here is no intellectually honest way to believe that the world can continue its near-total reliance on fossil fuels for much more than another decade — a paltry window of opportunity. We also know that we cannot wait until they go into decline before reaching […]

Growth in crop yields inadequate to feed the world by 2050

If the world is to grow enough food for the projected global population in 2050, agricultural productivity will have to rise by at least 60%, and may need to more than double, according to researchers who have studied global crop yields. They say that productivity is not rising fast enough at present to meet the […]

How Long Before America Hits ‘Peak Car’ For Real?

Economists, scientists and titans of industry often talk about “peak oil,” the idea that one day we’ll reach a point where oil supplies begin to decrease and will never rise again. But what about “peak car”? A new study argues that while the peak in cars on U.S. roads may be temporary, the peak in […]

Statoil Makes Canada Oil Discovery Off Newfoundland

Statoil says it has discovered light, high-quality oil in the Flemish Pass basin 500 kilometres northeast of St. John’s, raising hopes for an as-yet-untapped part of the Newfoundland offshore. “It is positive that we have found oil in this second major structure in the Flemish area,” Geir Richardsen, Statoil’s vice-president of exploration, told CBC News. […]

Surviving the Next Gulf Oil Spill

DOWN here on the Gulf of Mexico, the air is heavy with expectation as we await the arrival of billions of dollars in fines from companies involved in the BP oil-well blowout, which spewed millions of gallons of oil into the gulf over three months in 2010. The Restore Act, signed by President Obama last […]

Club Of Rome Founder Proposed “Global Matrix” Of Manufactured Consent

Environmental think tank aspired to global matrix of manufactured consent Recently unearthed documents from the private collection of former diplomat and Bilderberg regular George C. McGhee have revealed (among other things) that the Club of Rome in 1970 wanted to create a “global matrix approach”, or G-Matrix approach, as a means of bringing people into an […]

Japan finds highly toxic strontium-90 in Fukushima groundwater

High levels of a toxic substance called strontium-90 have been found in groundwater at the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, the utility that operates the facility said on Wednesday. Strontium-90 is a by-product of the fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear reactors as well as nuclear weapons, according to the website of […]

The US Is No Longer The King Of Shale Oil & Gas

If you thought the US was the king of shale, we are sorry to burst your bubble… it no longer wears the crown. China has more proven oil reserves than the US. As the following chart shows – from the EIA’s 730-page report, which assesses the shale formations of 41 countries – the global race […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Middle Eastern Turmoil

Some 24 million barrels of oil per day or 27 percent of the world’s daily production comes from countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Until recently the oil markets have paid remarkably little attention to the deteriorating political and security situation in the region. With the intervention of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia on […]

More Evidence We’ve Reached the Era of Peak Cars

The recession knocked down the urge to buy cars in the United States, but that actually masked a longer-term trend that points to a less motorized future. We’ve all heard of peak oil, which the gallant knight Sir Fracking has slain for the time being. But in the United States, perhaps for all the rich […]

The Next New Economy

At half past three in the morning, Alec Johnson rolls out of bed, puts on his Metro Transit uniform, and walks a block to one of Nice Ride’s bike sharing stations in the Seward neighborhood. He unlocks a neon green bike and pedals down the Midtown Greenway, a former railroad corridor in Minneapolis that now […]

Extreme Energy, Extreme Implications: Interview with Michael Klare

If oil and gas is a profoundly dynamic phenomenon, then so too must be environmental risk and conflicts over natural resources—and we are not getting the full picture from the mainstream media, according to Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, TomDispatch blogger, and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking […]

Delaying Peak-Oil With Nanoparticles

When petroleum companies abandon an oil well, more than half the reservoir’s oil is usually left behind as too difficult to recover. Now, however, much of the residual oil can be recovered with the help of nanoparticles and a simple law of physics. Oil to be recovered is confined in tiny pores within rock, often […]

We Will Not Run Out of Fossil Fuels

Jeffrey Rissman, policy analyst at Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, contributed this article to LiveScience’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Fossil fuels are formed from the remains of plants and animals that died hundreds of millions of years ago, buried and transformed by heat and pressure. Since these fuels require millions of years to form, […]

China’s Military Buildup Worrisome

China’s “spectacularly active” naval posture and “massive” military buildup in Asia are part of a pattern of belligerent behavior toward Japan and other neighbors over maritime disputes, according to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. Speaking at a Bloomberg Government breakfast in Washington yesterday, Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Kenichiro Sasae described China’s increasingly frequent forays […]

Iraq excludes Kurds from ambitious 2014 oil output target

Iraq aims to ramp up oil production by nearly 45 percent by the end of next year – without any input from its autonomous Kurdistan region – which suggests a lasting compromise in their long-running oil feud may be a way off. Baghdad’s ambitious 4.5 million barrels per day (bpd) target specifically excludes output from […]

Did Global Oil Consumption Slow in 2012?

I hate the phrase “Innocent until proven guilty.” When serial killer Ted Bundy killed his first victim, he wasn’t innocent just because a court had yet to convict him. The correct phrasing — which practically nobody uses — is “Presumed innocent until proven guilty.” Yet nearly everyone says that a person is innocent until proven […]

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