Peak oil is real and it’s here, suggests new research

The fear that we have reached peak oil seems to have abated in recent years as the US and other countries began extraction of shale oil. But that doesn’t mean we should think that this problem has gone away. According to UPI.com, new research published by the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions A suggests that the […]

Turkey finds oil near Iran, Iraq border

A state-run oil company in Turkey said Tuesday it discovered oil while working in what it described as tough conditions near the borders with Iraq and Iran. State-run Turkey Petroleum Co., known by its Turkish initials TPAO, said it discovered oil while working in Sirnak province near the southern border with Iraq and Iran. Gokhan […]

Coming ‘oil glut’ may push global economy into deflation

OPEC spare capacity set to reach levels last seen in the depths of the financial crisis in 2009, analysts say One piece of the jigsaw puzzle is missing to complete the deflation landscape across the West: a slide in oil prices. This is becoming more likely each month. Turmoil across the Middle East and parts […]

TransCanada Will Look At Rail If Keystone Rejected

The chief executive of TransCanada said Wednesday if the Obama administration doesn’t approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline his company will look to the more dangerous alternative of building build rail terminals in Alberta and Oklahoma. President Barack Obama is expected to decide early this year on Keystone XL, which is under review at the […]

Robert Rapier: Grading My 2013 Energy Predictions

Normally I would have had this out two weeks ago, but the 60 Minutes story has thrown me behind schedule. I continue to get lots of comments and questions about Vinod Khosla and now his righteous indignation over how the 60 Minutes story was portrayed (especially since that was the only part of my interview […]

China’s natural gas demand slows oil consumption

Growth in China’s oil consumption slowed to an annualized rate of 1.7 percent in 2013 as stricter requirements on environmental protection drove natural gas demand, according to a report released on Wednesday. The country’s total consumption of oil reached 498 million tonnes last year. The 1.7-percent increase marked a decline of 2.8 percentage points compared […]

Federal Reserve: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Is What Scares Us About Banks In Physical Commodities

The Federal Reserve took a potential step Tuesday to limit big banks’ activities in physical commodities, publicly outlining concerns with bank investments in ventures that can lead to deadly oil spills, pipeline ruptures and natural gas explosions. The expected move comes after months of criticism by U.S. lawmakers that large banks’ recent expansion into businesses […]

Syria: Half population urgently need aid

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says that half of Syria’s population, some 9.3 million people, now “urgently need humanitarian aid”. He was speaking at a donor conference in Kuwait launching the UN’s biggest ever appeal for a single crisis. The UN is seeking $6.5bn (£4bn) – it raised $2.4bn by the end of Wednesday. Meanwhile, […]

Tech Talk – Coal mining continues to produce

Sadly I was away from home last week to attend a family funeral in Northumberland where, for the past nine generations including mine, our family have been miners. The funeral was for my father’s sister, Linda, who had documented early life in the mining village of Ashington in her books “A Tune for Bears to […]

Norway Sees Crude Production Growing for First Time in 14 Years

Norway, western Europe’s largest oil producer, expects output to rise 0.7 percent this year, ending a 13-year decline as new fields offset dwindling production from aging North Sea deposits. Total petroleum production will rise to 215 million cubic meters from 213.7 million cubic meters last year, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said today. Oil production will […]

Arab world is moving backward

We are facing a shameful reality in the Arab world today. We are reaping what we have sowed with political splits, division of states, and threats against the concept of the state. This is a destructive, not creative chaos. The religious conflict is the worst of all. It is being employed in a political manner […]

Earth May Already Be Running Out of Grain

We have all heard of peak oil, but peak grains? A study released by the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests we may be heading in that direction — if we’re not already there. The UNL study indicates that about 30% of major global cereal crops — including rice, […]

Collapse? Maybe not.

It’s all a matter of perspective. In a previous post I argued that economic contraction is necessary and in fact underway.  Is this “Collapse” — that scary term that so many authors love to throw around? I find the C word to be counterproductive.  Depending on where you are standing as the grand cascade of […]

The Revolution Won’t Be Distributed

If you read the environmental press, clean tech media, or even the New York Times, you might conclude that America is on the cusp of a distributed generation (DG) revolution. “Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model to the ground,” wrote leading environmental […]

Fears of global oil crisis aired at Transatlantic Energy Security Dialogue

Jeremy Leggett column in Recharge magazine: “We are betting our entire national economic life on the hope — indeed the expectation — that the fracking boom will continue until well into the 2020s, and that, at a rate and cost we desire, significant amounts of ‘yet to be discovered’ oil will somehow be found to […]

Collapsing Consciously

A collection of probing essays and weekly meditations, this book addresses how to prepare emotionally and spiritually for the impending collapse of industrial civilization. Author Carolyn Baker offers wisdom, inspiration, and a sense of spiritual purpose for anyone who is concerned about the daunting future humankind has created. The author’s introduction to Collapsing Consciously articulates […]

Dmitry Orlov: In Praise of Nomads

For the past couple of months we have been living with a tent pitched over our boat. It is what most people who live on boats in northern climates choose to do. When the weather starts turning cold, people erect frames, usually consisting of a ridge pole that runs the length of the boat, sloping […]

Albert Bates: Charting Collapseniks

“Rather than spurning financial system terrorists, Holmgren urges activists to become “terra-ists”; to directly bring down the system by thousands of acts of economic disobedience.“ A ferment in the environmental movement, brewing for many years, has now bubbled up into the blogosphere. We are dipping our ladle in here to take a little taste of […]

Holmgren’s ‘Crash on Demand’: be careful what you wish for

It is a rare occurence that I disagree with David Holmgren.  One of my heroes, and the co-founder of permaculture, I generally find his intellect formidable, his insights on permaculture revelatory, and his take on the wider patterns and scenarios unfolding around us to be deeply insightful.  But while there is much insight in his […]

Israel To Become Major Exporter of Natural Gas

As someone who grew up on heavy gassy Jewish food, it is no surprise that Israel is developing into a natural gas exporter. The gas finds have been developed by Noble Energy which has been operating in the Mediterranean Sea, offshore Israel, since 1998. They have a 47 percent interest in the Mari-B field, the […]

India keen on buying oil, LNG from Canada on long-term basis

Eager to diversify its energy sources, India is keen on buying crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Canada on long-term contracts to meet its vast growing energy needs. Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily used the sidelines of the Petrotech 2014 conference to court energy ministers of hydrocarbon rich nations of UAE, Bahrain, Canada, […]

Qatari Energy Minister al-Sada downplays U.S. shale production

Qatar’s energy minister said the increase in gas production from U.S. shale deposits posed no long-term threat to his country’s stake in the global market. “We do not consider the U.S. shale gas revolution to be a game changer,” Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada said in a Monday interview in London with the Daily Telegraph. The […]

US has concerns about Iran-Russia oil-for-goods swap

The White House said on Monday it was concerned about a recent report that Iran and Russia are negotiating an oil-for-goods swap worth $1.5 billion a month, a deal a spokeswoman said could trigger U.S. sanctions. Such a deal would significantly boost Iran’s oil exports, which have been slashed by more than half to about […]

Here’s another reason why renewables are at an unfair disadvantage

Recently, a new pipeline started pumping fracked natural gas from the Marcellus Shale to Manhattan. It’s a critical reminder of the importance of infrastructure in determining our energy future — and of how lopsided our infrastructure policy is. Burdensome regulations governing infrastructure are hampering renewable energy expansion, while natural gas is facing no such obstacles. […]

Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong

What is correct way to model the future course of energy and the economy? There are clearly huge amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground.  With different approaches, researchers can obtain vastly different indications. I will show that the real issue is most researchers are modeling the wrong limit. Most researchers assume […]

The Rumored Death of Peak Oil Was Greatly Exaggerated

From Earth Insight by Nafeez Ahmed, hosted by the Guardian, Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will ‘break economies’: Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among […]

Living in a world we can’t understand

What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent.                          –Friedrich Nietzsche As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the […]

Hope In The Face Of Disaster – Creating A Sustainable, Viable, Future Path For Civilisation

The Illusion of Progress There was a small village located in the centre of a large rainforest. Over time, the people decided that they would like to voyage out of the forest and to make their way to the sea, which they knew was close by. To do this they consulted the wise people in […]

The Challenges Presented By Global Population Growth

As we embark on a new year, it’s important to keep the really big elements of our global predicament squarely in mind. To that end, we’re surfacing this excellent discussion on population growth that Chris recorded in 2012 with Bill Ryerson of the Population Institute At the heart of the resource depletion story that we […]

Iran nuclear deal to take effect on January 20

A deal between Iran and six major powers intended to pave the way to a solution to a long standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions will come into force on January 20, the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the European Union said on Sunday. Shortly after the interim accord takes effect, an Iranian official added, Tehran and […]

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