Our energy future: “They’ll think of something”

With oil prices hovering near historic highs and coal, natural gas and uranium prices yo-yoing during the last several years, concerns about the future of fossil fuel and uranium supplies often elicit the response: “They’ll think of something. They always do.” This kind of thinking is usually premised on the idea that the future will […]

Future offers no guarantee that population will stabilize

Is it true that human overpopulation isn’t such a big issue anymore as numbers are expected to start declining in a few decades? — Melinda Mason, Boone, Iowa Ever since Thomas Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798, positing incorrectly that humans’ proclivity for procreation would exhaust the global food supply […]

IEA Sankey Diagrams

The International Energy Agency has taken its share of abuse from The Oil Drum over the years for its rather optimistic forecasts. But it deserves a hearty shout-out for an invaluable resource it has on its web site: Interactive Sankey Diagrams for the World.   Sankey Diagram showing world energy flows (Click for larger view) […]

Core Labs CEO thinks we may have arrived at peak oil

Every year in August there is a weeklong event — “The Oil & Gas Conference” in Denver, and it draws an international audience. By most accounts, EnerCom is the best on the schedule. This year 107 companies made presentations. If I were only allowed to hear one presentation and attend one breakout session, it would […]

India: Ready for peak oil?

As cities expand and markets keep fuel prices high, Indians are demanding better public transport. The States must deliver, but they are only inching ahead. In the chorus of angry voices against the horrific gang rape of a paramedic student on a moving bus in the national capital on December 16 last, one issue that […]

Kunstler: Returning to the ‘Real’

A paradox of life in these times is the inverse relationship between technological wizardry and the satisfactions of being a live organism in a real place (i.e., on the planet Earth).  It probably boils down to a proposition that the American public is not ready to entertain: that the virtual is not an adequate substitute […]

IEA Says Energy Map Must Evolve to Become Sustainable

The foundations of the energy system are shifting, and one of the biggest changes is in how oil and gas demand is moving away from countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and toward developing countries. During the 2013 Offshore Energy Conference in Aberdeen this week, Capella Festa, senior energy analyst […]

The Giant Sucking Sound: Why Is Oil Leaving Cushing’s Tanks So Fast?

In the last two months, traders and oil companies have been moving their crude oil out of the giant tanks in Cushing, Okla., faster than at any time in recent memory. Since late June, crude inventories at the country’s biggest oil storage hub have plunged some 40 percent, from about 50 million barrels to 34 […]

Will Syria bring an oil shock?

Is the Middle East about to deliver another oil shock to the global economy? The U.S. military has targets picked out in Syria and President Obama is trying to convince Congress that America needs to intervene. If the U.S. does go ahead with tactical strikes against the Assad regime, oil markets will be caught in […]

US Exempts EU Nations From Iran Oil Sanctions

The U.S. granted exemption from Iran sanctions to 10 European countries and Japan on Friday because all of them have significantly reduced or halted oil imports from the Islamic Republic. Japan continues to import oil from Iran but all European Union countries halted them a year ago. American sanctions are designed to pressure Iran to […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Labor Day 2013

While awaiting further developments in the Syrian poison gas crisis, it is good time to review the general deterioration going on across the Middle East and the outlook for oil production from the region. Hardly a month goes by without some new Middle Eastern crisis arising with implications for the region’s oil exports. Last week […]

Peak Oil Denial: From WAY Out in Left Field

We don’t like bad news, particularly when it has very long term implications. Individually and collectively we tend to slip into denial mode, focus on diversions, become numbed to the reality of the situation, cling to anyone willing to assure us it just ain’t so, that things are going to get better. You can’t live […]

The Real Population Problem

Sometimes considered a taboo subject, the issue of population runs as an undercurrent in virtually all discussions of modern challenges. Naturally, resource use, environmental pressures, climate change, food and water supply, and the health of the world’s fish and wildlife populations would all be non-issues if Earth enjoyed a human population of 100 million or […]

Households Gained $1,200 Thanks to Surging U.S. Oil Production

About $1,200 a year. That’s what the average American household gained in disposable income in 2012 as a result of surging U.S. oil and natural gas production in unconventional energy plays, according to research firm IHS. IHS reaches its conclusion by calculating lower bills for natural gas and electricity — thanks to swelling supplies of […]

The interconnected Syria-oil ties, and the price of a barrel

Smoke is rising from violent hot spots across the Middle East and North Africa – most notably in Syria, Egypt and and Libya. But while there’s no smoke without fire, have these political conflagrations already set global oil markets ablaze? Bank of America Merrill Lynch argues that they have. In a report last week entitled, […]

Necessary And Unnecessary Wars

As I write this article the United States is moving toward a military strike on the nation of Syria. This article is not about the finer geo-political aspects of this decision, thorny and poorly-contrived as they may be. I assume that most readers of these words are well aware that we live in an empire […]

The exploding supply of NGLs: can this stuff be called oil?

If The Oil Drum were still around, the contributors would certainly be talking about a new ESAI study. The Boston-based consultancy put out a press release today, touting a new report it has produced that says by 2023, NGL production will account for more than one-quarter of the world’s liquids output. To which the peak […]

On This Day In History, Crude Oil Has Never Been More Expensive

We are sure this is just a ‘transitory’ storm-in-a-teacup, but for those who ‘use’ energy, the price of the most important raw material in the world has never been higher on this day of the year than it is today… must be all this growth? But of course, there’s still plenty of ‘absolute’ uspide… Seemorerocks

Africa to lead world in population growth

Africa, the world’s poorest region, will record the largest amount of population growth of any world region between now and 2050. Africa’s population is expected to more than double, rising from 1.1 billion today to at least 2.4 billion by 2050. Nearly all of that growth will be in the 51 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, […]

America’s Oil Boom Won’t Make It Energy-Independent From Middle East Madness

If the U.S. does strike Syria, the price of oil — already at $115 and rising in the Brent index, largely because of political disruptions in Libya, a major producer — is likely to spike. It’s not that Syria is a major oil producer — even before the war its exports were modest by Middle East standards, […]

Crash Course by Chris Martenson

Gold was always considered as solid and save instrument. Many Countries currency was based on Gold reserves. People loved to make investment in Gold. But now this Gold is in crisis. These Gold crisis are linked with economic, financial, debt and currency crisis. Anyhow, too much dependence on one instrument always brings down fall. This […]

China: Military strike against Syria would hurt global economy

Zhu said estimates from the International Monetary Fund indicate that a military strike would lead to a $10 jump in the price of a barrel of oil, which in turn would cut global economic growth by 0.25%. A senior Chinese official, backing Russia in opposing a U.S.-led military strike in Syria, warned that such action […]

Terrorists Launch Rocket Attack at Commercial Ship in Suez Canal

An Islamist terror group has taken responsibility for a Saturday rocket propelled grenade (RPG) attack on a merchant ship transiting the Suez Canal, USNI News has learned. A video posted on YouTube Wednesday — alleged to have been issued by the group Al-Furqan along with a letter of responsibility — show two men with rocket […]

Oettinger aims to get ITER back on track

Discussions planned on the project’s continuing financing and its organisational woes. Günther Oettinger, European commissioner for energy, has summoned representatives of the seven countries investing in the ITER nuclear-fusion project for a meeting on Friday (6 September) to discuss the project’s continuing financing and its organisational woes. The EU and its member states contribute more […]

Peak Oil and the Future of Energy

Full Documentary

Peak Oil Crisis: The Middle East in Context

While awaiting further developments in the Syrian poison gas crisis, it is a good time to review the general deterioration going on across the Middle East and the outlook for oil production from the region. Hardly a month goes by without some new Middle Eastern crisis arising with implications for the region’s oil exports. Last […]

The Last Drumbeat

Is the idea of peak oil a false projection or impending reality? The world has recently been exposed to many optimistic estimates on the future of oil production and the media has eagerly picked up these projections. International Energy Agency estimates that by 2020, the USA is projected to become the largest global oil producer, […]

New projection of Peak Phosphorus

In 2007, we published one of the first papers on peak phosophorus, and since then have monitored coverage of the subject. Now a detailed projection of phosphorus production by two Australian researchers  indicates that world phosphate rock production will most likely peak in 2027. Below is a summary of  the paper, Projections of Future Phosphorus […]

The Next Ten Billion Years

Earlier this week, I was trying to think of ways to talk about the gap between notions about the future we’ve all absorbed from the last three hundred years of fossil-fueled progress, on the one hand, and the ways of thinking about what’s ahead that might actually help us make sense of our predicament and […]

Arab countries offered to pay for invasion

Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday’s hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily. “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes,” Kerry said. “They have. That offer […]

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