US Military Doubles Down on Energy Efficiency

If actions speak louder than words, then the United States government is proving how devoted its military is to reducing its carbon footprint, and doing so aggressively. The Obama Administration has been steadfast in its efforts to restructure the energy output of numerous military energy efficiency initiatives throughout the country. And as the president begins […]

Give Up the Shale Gas Fantasy and Profit When the Bubble Bursts

Bill Powers is an independent analyst, private investor and author of the book “Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth.” Powers is the former editor of Powers Energy Investor, Canadian Energy Viewpoint and U.S. Energy Investor. He has published investment research on the oil and gas industry since 2002 and […]

The Rise Of ‘Plateau Oil’ In Four Charts

Peak oil is dead. As we and others have written, the combination of the U.S. shale boom and flagging demand are going to start pushing markets sideways. We recently got four new charts that elaborate on this phenomenon, which one might call plateau oil and gas. It’s way better than peak oil, we’d argue, because […]

Author Jeff Rubin on Energy Independence and Peak Oil

In his new book The End of Growth, the straight-talking Jeff Rubin, bestselling author and former chief economist of CIBC World Markets, paints a grim picture. He argues that triple-digit oil prices are here to stay, making it impossible for developed nations to return to the days of rapid growth built on cheap energy. In […]

Colorado flooding triggers oil spills

Colorado’s flooding shut down hundreds of natural gas and oil wells in the state’s main petroleum-producing region and triggered at least two spills, temporarily suspending a multibillion-dollar drilling frenzy and sending inspectors into the field to gauge the extent of pollution. Besides the possible environmental impact, flood damage to roads, railroads and other infrastructure will […]

Gulf Of Mexico Production and the EIA’s Prediction

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, BSEE, tracks all US Gulf of Mexico production. And here is what it looks like through May in kb/d. The huge spikes downward were hurricanes in the Gulf. But the EIA is predicting an increase in GOM production. The chart below is actual crude only production as reported […]

Heinberg: “Peak Oil Demand” = Peak Oil

A new phrase has entered our energy lexicon—peak oil demand. The essential idea: prophets of doom who warned about a looming global petroleum shortfall (“peak oil”) were wrong; instead of a downturn in supply, we’re instead seeing the shrinkage of demand for oil. A non-problem just solved itself! Nothing to see, folks; move along. What’s […]

Tech Talk – changes in South American exports

One of the large concerns that came up repeatedly over the years of discussions, both of the articles and of Drumbeat at The Oil Drum (TOD) was the subject of growth in domestic demand from some of the larger suppliers of oil and natural gas. This growth would be to the cost of the export […]

Extreme Energy Extraction Roadtrip — The Scary Ways We’re Ruining the Country to Get Fossil Fuels

The view from a Cessna reveals some dirty secrets. Flying at 2,000 feet above the forests of Appalachia I can see what the steep, tree-fringed roads fail to show: unnatural flat tops, seams of coal exposed like black-topped runways, impoundments of foul water perched above homes and schools. A naked honesty is revealed. This is […]

Discontinuity Ahead – Oil Limits will Adversely Affect the Economy

What will the world economy be like ten years from now? Or fifty years from now? Is it something that we can forecast by looking at the past, assuming that past tends will continue? Figure 1 Most economists today seem to think we can rely heavily on past patterns. If we can really assume that […]

Peak Oil: What’s Going On?

A recent spate of articles [with facts and everything!] discussing some of the problems encountered by the major oil companies all seem to be [more than just] hinting at some related issues. Might we be having a problem or two with maintaining levels of oil production? Shocking! Many of the oil industry’s big players wrote […]

Food Security Raises the Obvious: Can We Feed 9.6 Billion by 2050?

World Population Day 2013 came and went with little fanfare this year. There were no organized efforts to draw attention to the annual United Nations observance, which underscores population issues. The sole article I saw on the subject matter-of-factly noted that “global population is growing faster than expected” as U.N. demographers revised their projections upwards […]

What Would Be the Impacts of Shutting Down All Fracking?

Hydraulic Fracturing or what some refer to as ‘fracking’ is strongly opposed by a number of individuals, organizations and politicians. Opposition to the fracking technology used to recover natural gas from shale formations is due to concerns or fear of adverse environmental impacts.  Possible environmental impacts include ground water contamination, methane greenhouse gas fugitive emissions, […]

Will the U.S. Squander Its Energy Bounty?

Almost every aspect of the U.S. energy landscape is changing drastically — except government policy. Consider: The global price of oil has soared to more than $100 today from $30 a barrel in 2004. As a result, the U.S.’s annual bill for oil imports has risen to $365 billion, even though domestic oil production has […]

Heinberg: Ten Years After

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of my book The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, which has seen two editions and many printings, translations into eight languages, and sales of roughly 50,000 copies in North America. The end of The Party’s Over’s first decade coincides with a […]

Compressed Air Energy Storage Makes a Comeback

IEEE Spectrum has an article on a new CAES technique being piloted in the US – Compressed Air Energy Storage Makes a Comeback. The last time a compressed air energy storage (CAES) plant was commissioned was in 1991. This week, SustainX is bringing the technology back to the U.S. electricity grid, albeit in a vastly […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Update on ‘Cold Fusion’

The “cold fusion” story which has been creeping along at a snail’s pace for nearly 25 years seems to be picking up steam. For those of you who are coming late to this story, which admittedly has had close to zero play in the mainstream media, there are now three companies who say they are […]

The next ten billion years: Ugo Bardi

Discussing the next ten billion years at the “Doomstead Diner“. A follow up of my previous posts on the subject (first one and second one).

The American Myth of Cheap Oil and Gas

In recent years, U.S. business and political leaders have giddily talked of a “Saudi America” gurgling with domestic oil and gas. It’s true that the U.S. now has access to abundant supplies of cheap domestic gas capable of transforming the U.S. economy. Too bad these same leaders are about to give away a vast chunk […]

Factory Food From Above: Satellite Images of Industrial Farms

View as gallery Tascosa Feedyard, Texas (detail) Tascosa Feedyard, Texas (2013) Coronado Feeders, Dalhart, Texas (2013) Coronado Feeders, Dalhart, Texas (detail) Randall County Feedyard, Amarillo, Texas (2013) Randall County Feedyard, Amarillo, Texas (detail) View as gallery Seen from a satellite, an industrial feedlot has a sort of abstract beauty. The washes of colors, the juxtaposition […]

Approaching a Steady State Economy, Part 2 — Clean Clothes

To get a sense of how the broader economy works, it’s useful to analyze one particular sector. In trying to answer the question of how a non-growing economy could work, Part 1 of this article considered methods (categorized as “economizing” and “innovating”) for achieving a sustainable transportation sector. But the transportation sector is complex enough that […]

Europe’s largest tidal power array surges forward

The UK’s fledgling tidal power sector is set to take a major step forward today, as the Scottish government awards planning consent to the Europe’s largest tidal array, located in the Pentland Firth. Meygen, a group led by Morgan Stanley, International Power, tidal technology provider Atlantis and GDF Suez, is planning to deploy up to […]

Energy Projects Seem Less Urgent in A Post-Energy-Crisis World

Rather than being another component of an ongoing energy crisis, opposition to various energy projects points to the alleviation of a decades-long string of US energy crises. The audience for concerns about pipelines and fracking would be much smaller if oil were still at $145 per barrel and natural gas over $10 per million BTUs. […]

From Linsanity to RINsanity, how an unknown can wreak havoc in the market

A year and a half ago, the New York Knicks thrust a complete unknown named Jeremy Lin into their lineup. He put up Michael Jordan-esque numbers for longer than expected, wreaked havoc with opposing game plans and became a global phenomenon known as “Linsanity.” That same pattern of a sudden rise of an unknown has […]

EIA Crude Oil Predictions in 2013

Saw this article published in the Montgomery Advertiser and written by Winston Porter, former assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Bold mine. Support domestic oil production North American oil production grew by 1.8 million barrels per day in the last two years and the International Energy Agency expects that production to grow by another 3.9 million […]

Kazakhstan Has The Largest Oil Field Outside The Middle East

From time to time, huge oil reserves are discovered, and are added to global supply reserves. In this regard, we find that the large-scale production of oil in the Middle East began shortly after WWII, though some mega fields had been discovered in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran before the war. In the North Sea, […]

Transition and Solidarity

It all began with Emilio. He’s a Transition film maker from Andalucia, living in Totnes, and ever since we met, it seems, the conversation has inevitably turned to building bridges between these two cultures – Transition cultures and, ojala, cultures in transition. After many, many such conversations – over coffees, over beers and breakfasts, long […]

US Navy Triples Funding For Clean Energy In Hawaii

The US Navy has just pumped $30 million into the Energy Excelerator, a funding agency for renewable energy start-ups in Hawaii. That triples the agency’s operating funding over the past three years, and it gives the ol’ Bronx cheer to certain legislators in Congress who have tried to cut funding for the Navy’s ambitious alternative […]

The Travesty of the Anti-Commons

In his 1968 essay “The tragedy of the commons,” Garrett Hardin argued that unrestricted access to resources held in common, and, likewise, unrestricted ability to dump waste, inexorably leads to the destruction of the commons. At the time, he may not have suspected that the term would become a formidable propaganda weapon in the hands […]

Post Peak Reflections

“At US$25 per barrel — the historic average — 90 million barrels would be US$2.25 billion every day on oil expenditure. At US$105 per barrel, that amounts to US$9.45 billion per day. This is a difference of US$7.2 billion every day, an extra cost to the global economy which is primarily a result of crude […]

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