End of Suburbia

Peak Oil and the Future of Energy

Total CEO to Yergin: “peak capacity”

Oil industry costs are spiraling out of control, and it’s time to rein them in, Total CEO Christophe de Margerie insisted Tuesday. “Excellence cannot be an excuse for doing anything at any price,” de Margerie told oil and gas industry executives gathered at the IHS CERAWeek energy summit in Houston. “We cannot continue to swallow […]

Energy Risks of the Ukraine Crisis

Russia’s intervention in the Crimean Peninsula poses few risks to Europe’s energy supplies, but escalation or Western sanctions could change that assessment. If the crisis expanded to mainland Ukraine, the integrity of that country’s pipelines and the natural gas they carry to EU members would be the most immediate energy concern. Although Ukraine’s energy assets don’t […]

Save the Ukraine By Exporting Natural Gas

A prescient House Energy and Commerce Committee report released last month, just in time for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggested that “by becoming a natural gas exporter, the U.S. can supplant the influence of other exporters like Russia and Iran while strengthening ties with our allies and trading partners around the world.” President Obama does […]

Spilled Wind: An Update on China’s Wind Integration Challenges

According to tallies by the National Energy Administration, China added 14 gigawatts (GW) of grid-connected wind power capacity in 2013, now the fifth consecutive year with installs of over 10 GW (here, at a glance, is China’s grid in 2013). Over the same time period, wind curtailment – or, spilled wind, which is when the […]

Peak oil demand: maybe here, but not there

For years, meaning until the arrival of U.S. shale production, much ink was spilled on the concept of “peak oil” — the argument that the world was fast approaching an absolute maximum of crude oil that can be produced on a  daily basis. Shale production has put the kabosh on that for the time being, […]

More On Peak Demand

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Mark Lewis (links in original): Oil market commentators increasingly dismiss the very idea of supply-side constraints on the oil market, pointing to the recent surge in light-tight oil production from US shale deposits and the existence of vast shale formations elsewhere in the world…. But does this […]

Tech Talk – Coal prospects

Last week was the annual Society of Mining Engineers annual meeting, this year in Salt Lake City, with the title “Leadership in Uncertain Times.” To illustrate the point it had some 6,000 members or more in attendance, as I hear and was quite successful from that point of view. However, through the grapevine I also […]

Jam the Pipeline

#NoKXL

Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending

Steve Kopits recently gave a presentation [link to presentation at resilience.org] explaining our current predicament: the cost of oil extraction has been rising rapidly (10.9% per year) but oil prices have been flat. Major oil companies are finding their profits squeezed, and have recently announced plans to sell off part of their assets in order to have funds […]

Trying to spend a pile of oil-driven cash in Colombia

Managing Colombia’s rising tide of oil dollars is a problem any government would love to have. And Mauricio Cardenas, a UC-Berkeley PhD and former think tanker who has been the country’s finance minister since September 2012, admits he is only too happy getting his feet wet. What a tsunami it’s been. Export sales of Colombian […]

Gazprom Threatens to Disrupt Gas Supplies to Europe

Russian-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom has threatened to disrupt gas supplies to Europe following warnings by John Kerry and others that harsh economic sanctions could be imposed on Moscow, as the Ukraine crisis threatens to spiral into a trade war. “Simmering political tensions in Ukraine, that are aggravated by inadequate economic conditions, may cause disruptions […]

Kunstler: Let’s You and Him Fight

So, now we are threatening to start World War Three because Russia is trying to control the chaos in a failed state on its border — a state that our own government spooks provoked into failure? The last time I checked, there was a list of countries that the USA had sent troops, armed ships, […]

Energy: Thriving On Five Percent?

In Sharing Energy In The City, EDF and the the French National Research Agency (ANR) have challenged designers to rethink the production, harvesting, distribution, use, exchange and consumption of energy in our everyday life. They asked me to submit this text as fuel for the discussion. The modern city has been shaped by the availability […]

Natural Gas Vehicles to Boom Over Next Decade

New research from Navigant Consulting finds that the number of vehicles using natural gas will double over the next decade to 39.8 million. Much of that growth will occur in Europe and China, although the market in the United States will also grow due to low-priced natural gas. Natural gas vehicles will still only be a niche […]

Russia’s Energy Minister Cancels CERA Amid Tensions in Ukraine

Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak has canceled his appearance at IHS CERAWeek, as his country invades Ukraine. Novak was slated to speak Tuesday as part of a panel at the annual Houston conference, but pulled out Saturday, the day after Russian troops moved into Crimea, CNBC reports. A new panel of speakers who are experts […]

Checking In On Peak Oil

In last week’s column, The Case of the Missing Propane, I explained how the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of shale oil deposits since 2008 has led to a 30% increase in the production of crude petroleum in the United States. While that statistic makes for snappy headlines, it is not particularly meaningful to […]

U.S. asking Israel to stop assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Sept. 30, 2013. AFP/Getty Images As Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flies to Washington – due to arrive on Sunday (March 2), to prepare for talks with President Barack Obama at the White House […]

20 Years After Doomsday Predictions, China Is Feeding Itself, But Global Impacts Remain Unclear

How has China managed to feed nearly one-quarter of the world’s population with only seven percent of the world’s arable land? In 1995, Lester Brown forecasted doom and gloom for China’s ability to produce enough grain for its people, in his popular book, Who Will Feed China? He hypothesized that China would be forced to […]

The Energy Crisis

Like many others who preceded us, our “civilisation” faces an Energy Crisis of megawattic proportions, which threatens to bring an end to our brief joyride. But our dirty little secret is seldom mentioned in the news, let alone connected to economic instability or to environmental effects on our planet. It falls to Robert Foster to […]

Sharecropping 2.0

Institutional investors eyeing US farmland. Beginning farmers often priced out. There’s a global land rush underway. While human population continues to grow, the amount of arable farmland on the planet is essentially a fixed resource, and in recent years worries about long-term food security have spurred a drive to snatch up agricultural lands. Enterprising journalists […]

Peak Oil Denial: Oil Embargo Nonsense

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 […]

The well is running dry for big oil

Last week, I mused on the death of cars and big-picture factors working against the auto industry, including urbanization and declining driving rates in younger Americans. Now, I’ll trot out my crystal ball again and offer you another prediction: This is the beginning of the end for Big Oil, too. Now before you jump down […]

Half of the Reactors Operating Today In The US Do Not Meet NRC Regulations

… a Third Of The Reactors In The United States Aren’t Protected Against Flooding If An Upstream Dam Were To Fail … Another 27 Reactors Are Not Protected Against Earthquake Hazards” The risk of a nuclear meltdown in the United States is even greater than it was at Fukushima. Yet the U.S. Nuclear regulatory Commission […]

The energy transition tipping point is here

The economic foundations supporting fossil fuels investments are collapsing quickly, as the business case for renewables such as solar and wind finds a new center of balance. I have waited a long time—decades, really—for a tipping point in the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables beyond which there can be no turning back. Fresh […]

Post peak countries: the collapse of Yemen

Image from “Our Finite World” When I saw for the first time the data about oil production in Yemen, I was so impressed that I wanted to know more. I found a news source in English – the “Yemen Times” and I placed the link in my feed. For several months, by now, I have […]

How Ukraine Crisis Threatens Natural Gas, Oil

Kent Moors, executive chair at Global Energy Symposium, discusses the impact of the Ukraine crisis on global natural gas and oil markets on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse.”

Global riot epidemic due to demise of cheap fossil fuels

If anyone had hoped that the Arab Spring and Occupy protests a few years back were one-off episodes that would soon give way to more stability, they have another thing coming. The hope was that ongoing economic recovery would return to pre-crash levels of growth, alleviating the grievances fueling the fires of civil unrest, stoked […]

New Spy Technology to Spawn Oil Revolution

The future of oil exploration lies in new technology–from massive data-processing supercomputers to 4D seismic to early-phase airborne spy technology that can pinpoint prospective reservoirs. Oil and gas is getting bigger, deeper, faster and more efficient, with new technology chipping away at “peak oil” concerns. Hydraulic fracturing has caught mainstream attention, other high-tech developments in […]

Yuan to supersede dollar as top reserve currency

The tightly controlled Chinese yuan will eventually supersede the dollar as the top international reserve currency, according to a new poll of institutional investors. The survey of 200 institutional investors – 100 headquartered in mainland China and 100 outside of it – published by State Street and the Economist Intelligence Unit on Thursday found 53 […]

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