Petrodollar Alert: Putin Prepares To Announce “Holy Grail” Gas Deal With China

If it was the intent of the West to bring Russia and China together – one a natural resource (if “somewhat” corrupt) superpower and the other a fixed capital / labor output (if “somewhat” capital misallocating and credit bubbleicious) powerhouse – in the process marginalizing the dollar and encouraging Ruble and Renminbi bilateral trade, then […]

The Challenges Facing Saudi Arabia Include More Than Oil

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently issued a call for Saudi Arabia to sustain its current oil output during the upcoming seasonally weak global oil demand period in order to rebuild global crude oil inventories following the harsh winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the uptick in developing country oil needs. The IEA estimates that […]

Will Your Family Be Able to Pay For Gasoline?

Putting aside the Peak Oil implications on basic services, food and retail transport and the financial markets, how much are you spending now vs the future on simply getting around in our car based society?  Let’s break it down and start simple. Do you think this is not going up? Looking at my family only, […]

Peak Oil: Sobering Realities

Expenditures for finding and developing oil fields have tripled in the last decade and the return from these expenditures has not been enough to justify the costs. Nearly all of the major oil companies have announced major reductions in their exploration and drilling programs and several are selling off assets as they are caught in […]

Exxon Mobil Agrees to Report on Plans For Low-Carbon Future

Exxon Mobil Corp. has agreed to publish a report describing its plans for a future in which market forces and stricter climate regulation may leave some of its carbon reserves unburnable. Exxon Mobil is the first oil and gas producer in the U.S. to commit to reporting on its risks of stranded assets due to […]

Merkel Says US Shale Gas Might Help Europe Diversify Energy

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that imports of U.S. shale gas could eventually be an option for European countries seeking to diversify their energy sources but the United States must first build the infrastructure to export. “Many people think that this could be one component, if the United States decided to export shale […]

Energy Crunch: Budgeting for Resilience?

Three things you shouldn’t miss this week The Oil and Gas Weapon Won’t Work – Russia produced 10.6 million barrels per day (mbd), consumed 3.2 mbd, leaving 7.4 mbd available for export. The United States produced 8.9 mbd, consumed 18.5 mbd, and imported 10.5 mbd. Budget 2014: Key climate and energy announcements – Among a few pre-election […]

Imposing ‘High Costs’ on Russia Would be Costly for All Involved

One day after a disputed and widely deemed unlawful referendum in Crimea, the Crimean Parliament declared Crimea’s independence from Ukraine, formally asking Russia to annex it, the New York Times reports. This comes after 96.6% of voters in Crimea support joining Russia. With this, the crisis in the Ukraine hit its peak to date and […]

The Next New Economy

At half past three in the morning, Alec Johnson rolls out of bed, puts on his uniform, and walks a block to one of Nice Ride’s bike sharing stations in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis. He unlocks a neon green bike and pedals down the Midtown Greenway, a former railroad corridor that now features biking and walking paths, to his job as […]

Oil Limits and the Economy: One Story, Not Two

The two big stories of our day are (1) Our economic problems: The inability of economies to grow as rapidly as they would like, add as many jobs as they would like, and raise the standards of living of citizens as much as they would like. Associated with this slow economic growth is a continued […]

World faces ‘water-energy’ crisis

Surging populations and economies in the developing world will cause a double crunch in demand for water and energy in the coming decades, the UN said Friday. In a report published on the eve of World Water Day, it said the cravings for clean water and electricity were intertwined and could badly strain Earth’s limited […]

Doomsaying math whizzes just don’t understand capitalism

Here we go again. A group of mathematicians sponsored by NASA have purportedly proven that humanity is doomed. Ho hum. No queue-jumping, please. Doomsayers are a permanent feature of human existence, but have achieved a veneer of scientific respectability ever since the 19th century’s Thomas Malthus won economics the name “the dismal science” by predicting […]

“Deglobalization” Versus “Inclusive Growth”

The race of globalization is leaving the majority of the world’s population far behind.  According to UNICEF, the richest 20% of the population gets 83% of global income, while the poorest quintile has just 1%.1  This trend is getting worse.  A new UNDP report called “Humanity Divided” estimates that 75% of the world’s population lives […]

The Math of feeding the world

The next time you’re enjoying a meal, take a moment to think about where the food came from. Think about the family farmer or rancher who helped put it on your plate—not only that day but all 365 sunrises a year for you and the other 7 billion and counting people around the world American […]

Oil Industry Enters The New Era Of Austerity

Last week, Chevron (CVX-NYSE), the second largest oil company, held its annual analyst meeting at which time the company’s management laid out its plans for the next five years, including projections for capital spending and oil and gas production growth. The meeting followed on a presentation at the IHS CERA Week conference in Houston by […]

Iraq invasion was about oil

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq War – yet to this day, few media reflections on the conflict accurately explore the extent to which opening up Persian Gulf energy resources to the world economy was a prime driver behind the Anglo-American invasion. The overwhelming narrative has been one of incompetence and failure […]

North American Natural Gas Seeks Markets Overseas

A slew of multibillion-dollar coastal projects compete to ship super-chilled LNG to Asia and Europe. A refrigerated ship designed for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is towed into harbor on the island of Malta in 2013. The vessel was converted into a receiving facility and is now moored off the shore of Italy. North America’s natural […]

John Michael Greer: American Delusionalism, or Why History Matters

One of the things that reliably irritates a certain fraction of this blog’s readers, as I’ve had occasion to comment before, is my habit of using history as a touchstone that can be used to test claims about the future. No matter what the context, no matter how wearily familiar the process under discussion might […]

US Approves Natural Gas Pipeline To Mexico

U.S. energy regulators on Thursday approved a plan by a unit of Energy Transfers Partners LP to build a natural gas pipeline from Texas to Mexico. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a presidential permit to Energy Transfer’s Houston Pipe Line Co, which will allow the company to build the pipeline across the federal […]

Peak Oil: It’s Baaaack

Prospect of Oil Supply Collapse  As an old oil hand, I was seriously disturbed five years ago when it was almost impossible to develop a payback time for shale oil production.  Since then it has continued to go missing as massive amounts of cash was spent on the industry.  This suggests that we now know.  […]

Nigeria decries oil reserves depletion to 35bn barrels

The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has stated that the nation’s oil reserves have depleted to 35 billion barrels The Director, DPR, George Osahon, disclosed this at the ongoing oil and gas conference in Abuja, adding that the Niger Delta region was finally showing signs of maturity. He ,however, revealed that they had started working […]

Overpopulation: An Overlooked Factor in Global Health

New research suggests that population growth is driving numerous global health crises, yet it’s rarely factored into the equation. The world’s population currently stands at 7.15 billion people and has the potential to double in the next 50 years. In the U.S., there’s one birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. With […]

Dmitry Orlov: Collapse and Systemic Failure at All Levels Coming

Dmitry Orlov is a Russian blogger who writes about the parallel between the U.S and the USSR.  Orlov lived through the financial collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, and he thinks the U.S. is on the same trajectory.  Orlov contends, “The trajectory is defined by this sort of incompetent militarism where more […]

If 9 Substations Are Destroyed, The Power Grid Could Be Down For 18 Months

What would you do if the Internet or the power grid went down for over a year?  Our key infrastructure, including the Internet and the power grid, is far more vulnerable than most people would dare to imagine. Image: Power Grid (Wiki Commons). These days, most people simply take for granted that the lights will […]

2nd radiation release at New Mexico nuclear dump

New air sampling data from southeastern New Mexico’s troubled nuclear waste dump indicates there has been another small radiation release. Department of Energy officials say a monitoring station picked up elevated radiation readings around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad on March 11. That’s nearly a month after a Valentine’s Day leak contaminated 17 workers […]

U.S. natural gas to Europe? Not so fast…

European nations are begging the United States to send them natural gas to blunt dependence on Russia, but a lack of infrastructure and market realities are calling into question America’s ability to flex its new muscles as the world’s leading energy power. The crisis in Ukraine is deepening European alarm over reliance on Russian energy, […]

U.S. Crude Production Jumps to Highest Level Since 1988

U.S. crude-oil production rose to the highest level in almost 26 years last week as imports declined, the Energy Information Administration reported. Output increased 33,000 barrels a day in the week ended March 14, or 0.4 percent, to 8.215 million, the most since May 1988, said the EIA, the Energy Department’s statistical arm. Production has […]

Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios

Trendlines Research monitors the major forecasts of peak oil depletion from around the globe.  Updates of the 14 tier-1 scenarios (and consensus avg) are plotted on a graph and each month the Tier-1 presentation is posted to this website.  The 21 others are plotted on a Tier-2 chart.  For purists, a third chart plots the […]

The global Transition tipping point has arrived

Last Friday, I posted an exclusive report about a new NASA-backed scientific research project at the US National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (Sesync) to model the risks of civilisational collapse, based on analysis of the key factors involved in the rise and fall of past civilisations. The story went viral and was quickly picked up by […]

Family farms are best way to feed the world

Family farms offer the greatest potential for meeting the nutritional needs of a growing global population while conserving resources and protecting biodiversity, new research suggests. The food think tank, Food Tank, has produced statistics to show that the world’s 500 million family farms take a less damaging approach to the environment compared to large scale […]

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