Oil Companies Secretly Got Paid Twice For Cleaning Up Toxic Fuel Leaks

A pioneer in cleaning up toxic messes, Thomas Schruben long suspected major oil companies of being paid twice for dealing with leaks from underground fuel storage tanks – once from government funds and again, secretly, from insurance companies. Schruben, a detail-oriented Maryland environmental engineer who helped draft government pollution rules going back 30 years, looked […]

Iranian warships heading to USA

Iranian warships headed to the U.S. coast pose little danger to the United States but could be a dry run for the future, according to former U.S. military and security officials. The mission shows the danger Iran would pose if it possessed nuclear weapons, says John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations […]

Crash on Demand with David Holmgren and Nicole Foss

Do we need to break the system to save the climate? Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren says “yes”, in rare radio interview. Then Nicole Foss replies. Plus Alex’s climate music. Last week on Radio Ecoshock we looked at a growing group of activists, authors and scientists who say only a serious economic crash could save us […]

Renewables Growth: Ignoring The Whole Equation

When discussing the growth of renewable energy there are two rather common mistakes. First, thinking that the capacity of a renewable power plant is directly comparable with that of a fossil fuel or nuclear power plant. Second, thinking that energy consumption and electricity consumption are the same thing. The first mistake can lead to incredibly […]

What Would Chinese Hegemony Look Like?

East Asia is becoming, in the language of international relations theory, “bipolar.” That metaphor, from magnetism, suggests two large states with overlapping spheres of influence competing for regional leadership. The Cold War was a famous global example of bipolarity. Most states in the world tilted toward the United States or the Soviet Union in a […]

Orlov: “American” exceptionalism

The term “American exceptionalism” has been receiving more than its fair share of play recently. It was pressed into service in the vapid banter that passes for political discourse in the US, with the Republicans accusing Obama of not believing in it. More recently, it surfaced as a term in international relations, when Russian president […]

Pakistan committed to gas project with Iran

Pakistani Ambassador to Tehran Noor Mohammad Jadmani has reaffirmed Islamabad’s commitment to completing a multi-billion-dollar pipeline projected to carry natural gas from Iran to Pakistan. Jadmani rejected media reports about Islamabad’s reluctance to continue cooperation for the completion of the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project under Western pressure, stressing that Islamabad remains committed to advancing […]

Peak Oil Denial: Nonsense Keeps Rolling Along # 8

At the risk of starting a cat fight where truth may too quickly become a casualty, why don’t we more forcefully challenge those who deny peak oil (and global warming) and who do so for reasons that generally ignore reality in favor of narrowly-defined interests? Those motivations will ultimately do nothing but promote more eventual […]

Drought forces tough decisions

  While recent rains may have city dwellers bundling up and heading for cover, the much-needed precipitation is a godsend for farmers, as California faces its worst drought in decades. Ranchers, who require green pasture to feed their livestock, have been among the hardest hit by the lack of rain this winter. Many have had […]

Oil and Gas: A Flawed Prediction?

One of the comments I quite often get at external events is that “The oil and gas industry has only got 20 years”. This doesn’t just come from enthusiastic climate campaigners, but from thoughtful, very well educated people in a number of disciplines related to the climate issue. A report by WWF a few years […]

Ecological Agriculture and Sixteen Wonderful Farms that Point the Way

Ben Falk’s Vermont farm “If we don’t get sustainability right in agriculture first, it won’t happen anywhere.”  — Wes Jackson, http://www.landinstitute.org/ “We’ve got examples [of agricultural sustainability], but you’re not under any obligation to be an optimist. And you’re not under any obligation to construct a hope for the whole human race. What you are […]

Gas Prices Set to Rise

AAA warned gas prices are set to rise this spring, after winter weather across many parts of the country kept demand low and provided a slight reprieve in recent weeks. Prices typically climb higher during the spring when refineries cut production to do seasonal maintenance. A regulated switch to summer-blend gasoline can also limit supplies, […]

PetroChina Makes Huge Gas Find in Sichuan Basin

PetroChina, Asia’s largest oil and gas producer, has found 308.2 billion cubic metres of technically recoverable gas in southwest China’s Sichuan basin, according to parent CNPC, one of China’s largest gas discoveries in more than a decade. China, the top energy user and fourth-largest consumer of gas, is racing to increase supply of the cleaner-burning […]

Iran to introduce ‘new generation’ of oil contracts

Iran’s Petroleum Minister says it plans to introduce by June a new generation of oil contracts that are more attractive to investors. Mahdi Hosseini, head of the contract revision committee in the ministry, told reporters Sunday that sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear activities drove the revisions. He said the new contracts are designed […]

The Oil Boom Doesn’t Care if Your Chickens Are Freezing to Death

Propane tank car/Wikipedia Propane is a byproduct of both natural gas production and crude oil refining. Just in the past year, its production has spiked by 15 percent, and a good chunk of that new production is considered surplus, to be exported from brand new fuel terminals. In fact, just since 2012, propane exports have […]

Peak oil isn’t dead; it just smells that way

Energy analyst Chris Nelder fires back at the latest fact-free commentary on peak oil.   The Oil Drum, a Web site dedicated to informed discussions about peak oil and energy, announced on July 3 that it is closing down. (For a brief primer on peak oil, see my conversation with Brad Plumer in the Washington Post.) […]

Record Number of Wind Energy Projects Under Construction

For American wind power, 2013 was the best of times, and the worst of times. On one hand, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that 1.084 gigawatts (GW) of wind power came online in 2013, down fully 92 percent from the 13.131 GW of new capacity brought online in 2012. Not surprisingly, we can […]

Here’s What It Looks Like When Your Country’s Economy Collapses

Argentina is a country re-entering crisis territory it knows too well. The country has defaulted on its sovereign debt three times in the past 32 years and looks poised to do so again soon. Its currency, the peso, devalued by more than 20% in January alone. Inflation is currently running at 25%. Argentina’s budget deficit […]

Remembering where we live: Physics vs. biology

It is awe-inspiring to view images of galaxies and nebulas brought to us by high-powered, space-based telescopes. And, it is even more amazing to see depictions of such phenomena as if we, the viewers, are suspended in space a long, long way from Earth. In fact, in modern science fiction movies and television shows we […]

Unlimited oil from sunlight and slime changes the energy game

It is ironic that, just as we are finally saying goodnight and farewell to Peak Oil theory, scientists are poised to bring unlimited quantities of the finest sweet crude oil to market, courtesy of algae and sunlight. Moreover, the algae route to creating oil is said to generate 95% fewer greenhouse gasses than the conventional […]

Iran to Offer Oil Investors Better Terms Than Iraq

Iran, bound by economic sanctions and seeking investment to help develop its oil and natural gas, plans to offer international energy companies more attractive contracts than neighboring Iraq, an Oil Ministry adviser said. The Islamic republic is developing a new type of contract that’s “in line” with international practice and law, Mehdi Hosseini, who leads […]

Iran Sends Warships to US Maritime Borders

“The Iranian Army’s naval fleets have already started their voyage towards the Atlantic Ocean via the waters near South Africa,” Commander of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad announced on Saturday. The admiral, who is also the commander of the Iranian Army’s 4th Naval Zone said, “Iran’s military fleet is approaching the United […]

One of the world’s great investment thinkers is convinced fracking is causing earthquakes

  “To me at least the connection is clear and statistically certain… far more certain than anything I ever see in the stock market or the economy.” + That’s Jeremy Grantham, the highly-regarded co-founder of the $117 billion investment fund GMO, who predicted both the dot com crash of the late 1990s and the subprime […]

California’s Nightmare Comes True … There’s No More Water

It’s finally happening. The world is running out of fresh water…or at least in the state of California.  The Golden State has been experiencing one of its worst droughts ever.  It’s so severe that state officials issued a press release announcing that residents and farmers will be receiving less water in an attempt to conserve […]

Climate Change, Peak Oil and Renewable Resources

Climate change is the reality we are living in. It is not going away; it has been clearly established as a fact, IOMCO — or immediately obvious to the most casual observer. The weather is simply becoming more extreme. More tornados, more flooding, more drought, stronger hurricanes and other extreme weather events are only the […]

PNNL makes crude oil from algae

Science doesn’t smell sweet in the lab used by Douglas Elliott at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. It has the odor that might be expected from a combination of rotting eggs, dirty socks and burning wood. In Elliott’s lab, a bucket of dark green algae slurry is pumped into a chemical reactor that reaches […]

A Bridge Made of Natural Gas Is a Shaky Thing

When will we start to manage our natural gas resources? For the last half century, domestic natural gas policy has looked something like this: Natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels. It is versatile and economical. So, let’s pull it out of the ground and use it as fast as we can. In […]

North Dakota Bakken/Three Forks Scenarios

Figure 1 A recent post at Peak Oil Barrel by Jean Laherrere suggested an ultimate recoverable resource(URR) for the North Dakota Bakken/Three Forks of about 2.5 Gb based on Hubbert Linearization.  This conflicts with a recent (April 2013) USGS mean (F50) estimate of 8.4 Gb.  I decided to update my scenarios based on the range of […]

Japan makes first oil payment to Iran in a year

Japan this week became the first of Iran’s oil buyers to make a payment for crude imports under an interim nuclear deal, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, as the West eased a year-long stranglehold on revenues that has crippled the Iranian economy. Tough international sanctions over the past two years have cut Iran’s oil exports […]

When Conventional Success Is No Longer Possible, Degrowth And The Black Market Beckon

“Phantom economies tend to give rise to gray and black markets in proportion to the deviance of the phantom economy from reality.” College graduates around the world are discovering that getting a university diploma no longer guarantees the conventional success story of a secure job and a life of ever-rising consumption. Doing all the things that […]

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