The Currency Wars Reignite

Via Mark J. Grant, author of Out of the Box, “Always remember, your focus determines your reality.”                   -George Lucas Our reality has changed in the last twenty-four hours. The Bank of England and the European Central Bank have re-affirmed their old positions since the Fed has changed tacks. The initial reactions will be a […]

Broke, crowded & hot: Top 3 reasons to flee big cities

Don’t worry, it’s just a movie. Scene from the 2010 film “The Book of Eli.” Photo: Warner Bros. It’s a staple of summer disaster flicks: the scene of a panicked populace trying to get the hell out of Dodge. Or, after the bomb is dropped, a band of bedraggled survivors picking their way out of […]

Shale Truth Interviews Arthur Berman segment #2 Profitability

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network is producing a series of interviews with experts discussing the environmental and economic impacts of shale gas extraction. In this segment Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum asks energy industry expert Arthur Berman about the profitability of the shale gas industry.

Kunstler: Out On a Limb

       There is one supreme and universal law of human relations in all its manifestations, social, political, economic, cultural: people create no end of mischief in the hours when they are not sleeping. Any vision of history-yet-to-come must be predicated on this principle.       A correspondent of mine objected to the […]

Are America’s Youth Falling Out of Love With the Car?

  Between 2001 and 2009 car travel by American youth declined 23%! That isn’t a typo, it’s an outlier.  Like solar panel prices dropping by 80% in five years, or Indian grid losses being 25% of total generation. Sure, there was the great recession and gasoline prices have tripled, but 23% is massive.  That is […]

Peak Oil is not Synchronous

This morning, I took the oil consumption page of the BP spreadsheet, and applied a mechanical test to each country: was 2010 the highest year of consumption over the range 1990-2010?  If this is true, let’s call the country an “advancer”, and if not, let’s call it a “decliner”.  Here are all the advancers: On […]

US oil industry wins fight against revealing foreign payments

In a fitting move during the week of US Independence Day, a District of Columbia court took sides with the oil industry and shot down a rule that oil companies said would violate their First Amendment rights. The Securities and Exchange Commission rule that was tossed out was the Cardin-Lugar amendment which was slipped, rather […]

Gulf Arabs welcome ouster of Egypt’s president

Gulf Arab states welcomed the Egyptian army’s ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi on Wednesday following days of unrest in a country once seen by Gulf Arabs as an instrumental ally against rival power Iran. The rise of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 has unsettled most […]

Randy Udall, RIP

Randy Udall died last week while on a backpacking trip in the Wind River Range of Wyoming.  His body has just been found after an extensive search. Randy was a co-founder of ASPO-USA.  I certainly didn’t know him well enough to attempt a proper obituary, but I will say that he was a regular reader […]

The Probe Into BP Oil-Spill Payouts Could Be Bigger Than You Think

Louis Freeh’s investigation of the BP-claims mess could reveal major legal funny business in the Big Easy. In a recent Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, I explained how the private-claims process following BP’s (BP) 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill devolved into a plaintiffs’-lawyer feeding frenzy. On July 2, I reported that the New Orleans federal […]

Egypt Military suspends constitution, replaces president…

The head of the constitutional court has been sworn in as Egypt’s interim president, a day after the overthrow of the country’s first democratically elected leader, Mohamed Morsi. Adli Mansour took his oath of office under an army transition plan in a ceremony that was broadcast live on state television. Above Tahrir Square, for days […]

Obama Plan to Electrify Africa Offers a “New Model” of Aid

During an eight-day trip to Africa, President Barack Obama unveiled an ambitious plan to improve access to electricity across the continent, a move the White House says is designed to lift Sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty and help the region develop a stable middle class. While the initiative may appear to be a generous increase […]

The End of the Oil Drum

Rembrandt Koppelaar has announced today that the Oil Drum will cease to be an active site with the end of July 2013. After eight years of activity, TOD is closing down. I would like first to thank all the members of the TOD group, of which I have been a member up from 2008 up […]

Egypt crisis boosts oil prices

Oil prices pushed closer to $102 a barrel on Wednesday — the highest level in over a year — as embattled Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi vowed not to resign hours before a deadline to yield to the demands of millions of protesters. Benchmark crude oil for August delivery was up $2.07 to $101.67 a barrel […]

Our Energy Slaves Are In Recession

Charts of energy consumption are screaming “recession.” To get a feel for how many energy slaves you have, imagine hiring 40 people to drag you and your car down the street at 3 miles per hour. Replacing the energy in a gallon of gasoline with human labor is imperfect, of course, because the people you hire […]

Population Growth and Pollution: the Facts Continue to be Ignored

Humans are the real threat to the planet, Stephen Emmott informs us in this week’s Observer. This may be so, but unfortunately Emmott writes like a 19th century thinker who has just got his hands on an early print of Thomas Malthus. His views on population growth are not only highly inaccurate, but dangerously so. […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: China at a Turning Point

This spring, I spend three weeks traveling around China and needless to say I, along with every other visitor, was impressed by the economic progress the Chinese have made in the years since the Cultural Revolution. Tens of millions have been moved from rural villages into megacities of gleaming skyscrapers, apartments, modern subways, and traffic […]

Peak Oil and the New Carbon Boom

In the past year, the United States appears to have entered a new age of energy abundance. The extraction of gas and oil from shale formations has led to the most rapid increase in new energy supplies in the country’s history.1 Political leaders and the news media present this sudden reversing of a thirty-five-year decline […]

UAE court jails scores of Emiratis in coup plot trial

A United Arab Emirates court on Tuesday convicted and jailed most of 94 Emiratis accused of plotting a coup, Abu Dhabi television said, at the end of trial analysts said reflected official mistrust of Islamist groups following the Arab Spring. The television said that the Federal Supreme Court sentenced 56 suspects to prison sentences ranging […]

Veolia to Build Saudi Desalination Plant on Petrochemical Demand

Veolia Environnement, Europe’s biggest water company, won a contract to build a desalination plant in Saudi Arabia that will supply a petrochemicals factory. The design and construction will generate $310 million in revenue, and operations will deliver $92 million over 10 years, the Paris-based company said today in a statement. The order, awarded by Saudi […]

Iran importing missile-grade ore from Germany, France

* Alumina ore has sensitive military applications – experts * Documents show Iran has been keen to master alumina for years * Alumina exports not yet included in EU sanctions on Iran By Maytaal Angel and Jonathan Saul LONDON, July 2 (Reuters) – Exploiting a loophole in Western sanctions, Iran is importing a high grade […]

Morsi rejects ultimatum from army

President Mohamed Morsi has rebuffed an army ultimatum to find a resolution to Egypt’s political crisis, saying that he has not been consulted and will pursue his own plans for national reconciliation. Morsi described the 48-hour deadline, set on Monday by the head of the armed forces for him to agree on a common platform […]

Don’t Get Carried Away By The Shale Oil Boom

North American crude oil has been in the news on several fronts this week, including some rapid price moves and an unexpected intervention by President Obama. Despite the publication of a new report projecting a much more rapid rate of tight oil supply growth than is generally expected and the entire Buffet-Railroad-Traffic-Pipeline meme relying on […]

Yes Virginia, US Oil Production Can Influence Global Prices

A truism, tacked on to the end of any respectable article, blog post or research memo on US Oil Production, is that the US only produces a small fraction of the World’s Oil Supply and that as such it can’t influence prices. Ben Casselman’s post at the Wall Street Journal is a sterling example of […]

Ugo Bardi on “Plundering the Planet” – Part IV

The control of noble metals was a key to ancient and modern empires. Soldiers were paid with gold or silver coins, so they were able to extent the empire and conquer more mines to pay more soldiers. Modern empires like the British Empire were built on coal – which went down with the end of […]

Inflation, Deflation, or Discontinuity?

A question that seems to come up quite often is, “Are we going to have inflation or deflation?” People want to figure out how to invest. Because of this, they want to know whether to expect a rise in prices, or a fall in prices, either in general, or in commodities, in the future. The […]

Fracking’s Threats to Drinking Water Call for a Precautionary Approach

At least one aspect of fracking’s risks to drinking water became a little clearer this week. A study led by Rob Jackson of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that drinking water wells located within 1 kilometer of a shale gas well in a […]

Has SolarCity Created the Amazon 1-Click for Energy Efficiency?

After SolarCity shifted its energy efficiency strategy and pulled back from doing residential retrofits in-house, the solar services behemoth is moving straight into intelligent efficiency. GTM’s Eric Wesoff recently reported on SolarCity’s evolving business plan and the resulting changes that company executives say will scale residential efficiency in the same way solar services have scaled residential solar. But […]

Agricultural Provider view: demand is growing fast

Demand for agricultural resources, products and technologies is set to rise significantly, driven by a fast-developing global population. Against this backdrop, the investment case for agricultural equities continues to be driven by sustainable global demand on one side and the instability and inadequacy of supply on the other. As such, the business of feeding the […]

India, China Energy War Heats Up

While the 16th round two-day India-China border talks concluded in Beijing Saturday seeking to resolve the vexed boundary disputes, some of which dates back prior to the establishment of either an independent India or the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, but both the Asian giants have pitched themselves in the deep waters of […]

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