Central Banks’ Balance Sheets, Interest Rates and the Oil Price

In this post I present a more detailed look at developments in central banks’ balance sheets, interest rates and the oil price since mid 2006 and as of recently. Paper and digital money are human inventions. Most people truly believe it is money that powers the society and their lives because they have never had […]

Geology and Markets, not EPA, Waging War on Coal

This post written in collaboration with Leslie Glustrom, founder and former Director of Research and Policy at CEA. With the release of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules limiting carbon pollution from the nation’s electricity sector, you’ve no doubt been hearing a lot of industry outrage about “Obama’s War on Coal.” Don’t believe it. Despite […]

Forecast of oil reserves depletion America

The United States has built a broad economic recovery hopes achieved finally in oil and gas production the Rocky, but these reserves will dry from the third decade of the twenty-first century, to return to dependence on Gulf oil, the International Energy Agency also predicted, she wondered whether the Gulf States are ready to take […]

Summer gas prices

The national average price for regular unleaded gasoline is $3.66 per gallon. This is a penny less than last month and three cents more than last year.

9 Reasons Why Oil Prices May Be Headed For A Bust

Though the U.S. shale oil boom of the past several years has led to a renewed surge of domestic oil production as well as an oil glut, crude oil prices have remained stubbornly high. There are a growing number of reasons, however, why crude oil prices are likely to finally experience a bust in the […]

The world’s population is getting wealthier

The global population is not only growing, its composition is also changing in some very important ways. Over the next few decades, the number of people considered to be in the ‘global middle class’ is projected to more than double, from 430 million in 2000 to 1.2 billion in 2030 (or from 7.6% of the […]

Shell: Only a fraction of Big Gas Export Projects Will Be Built

Only a fraction of the natural gas export projects being developed around the globe will become reality as high costs and weakening gas prices torpedo those that until recently promised huge returns on investment. Large natural gas field discoveries on and offshore have prompted several countries to plan liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, including […]

MIT’s fusion energy experiment is alive and well

Senator Elizabeth Warren placed her hand atop a large red button and pressed firmly, restarting a nuclear experiment that MIT believes could help save the planet — but which the Obama administration considered superfluous and tried to kill year after year. More than 100 scientists, engineers, and technicians — most of whom had, until recently, […]

OPEC Struggles to Cope With Libyan Oil Shortfall

Six months ago, one of OPEC’s concerns was whether a U.S. shale boom might upend crude markets by providing too much oil. Today, the group of some of the world’s largest producers has a more short-term worry: How to compensate for lost Libyan crude at a time of rising demand and tensions between Russia and […]

The World’s Five Most Important Oil Fields

Much has been made about the role that hydraulic fracturing – or fracking — has played in revolutionizing the energy landscape, unlocking vast new reserves of oil trapped in shale rock. This “tight oil” is pouring into the global pool of oil supplies at a crucial time, preventing oil prices from spiking in an age […]

Is Transition political?

Criticising Transition for being explicitly apolitical, and for not engaging in the political system in the conventional way feels, to me, like criticising a spoon for not being very good at cutting bread.  Transition is a tool designed for a specific purpose.  But with the rise of UKIP, the National Front, the Golden Dawn, and […]

US shale boom is over, energy revolution needed to avert blackouts

I hate to say I told you so, but… In 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast that the US would outpace Saudi Arabia in oil production thanks to the shale boom by 2020, becoming a net exporter by 2030. The forecast was seen by many as decisive evidence of the renewal of the oil […]

“This Is A Trend”: Increasingly More Russian Companies Set To Drop Dollar, Switch To Chinese Yuan

As we have been reporting (and forecasting for the past several years), the Eurasian anti-US Dollar axis is rapidly taking shape, with recent events catalyzed and certainly accelerated by US foreign policy in Ukraine, which has merely succeeded in pushing Russia that much closer, and faster, to China. The latest proof of this came overnight […]

Morris A. Adelman Dies at 96; Saw Oil as Inexhaustible

Morris A. Adelman, an energy economist who marshaled free-market principles and hard data in arguing that the world’s oil supply was not running out, died May 8 at his home in Newton, Mass. He was 96. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught and researched for 65 years, announced the death on May 15. […]

When the Wind Doesn’t Blow

Every morning after I wake up, I have a routine. The first thing I do, regardless of how sleepy I might still be, is slip on my shoes and run a mile. This erases the fog of sleep and gets me ready for the day. As an aside, I can highly recommend a quick run […]

Peak Oil: Another Look At Growth

Earlier this year, I offered two posts [here & here] on Perfect Storm – Energy, Finance and the End of Growth, a well-reasoned 2013 report issued by Tullet Prebon, a British financial services firm (in the wholesale financial and energy sectors), authored by its Global Head of Research, Dr. Tim Morgan. I came across a […]

Integrating Ecology and Economics

Attempts to integrate economics and ecology have been based on one of three strategies: (1) economic imperialism; (2) ecological reductionism; (3) steady-state subsystem. Each strategy begins with the picture of the economy as a subsystem of the finite ecosystem. Thus all three recognize limits to growth. The differences concern the way they each treat the […]

Energy Deathmatch: Oil Versus Natural Gas

The media loves to hate on coal right now. And the latest news about Obama wanting to massively cut carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power plants certainly isn’t helping. Don’t listen to the pundits. Coal isn’t going away anytime soon. Not with more than 40% of the world’s energy still being provided from coal generation. […]

Will oil exports cut your energy bill?

As U.S. oil production soars, momentum appears to be building toward lifting the U.S. ban on exporting crude. But a debate over the economics of the issue—namely, whether adding to global supply will result in lower oil and gas prices—remains a sticking point. On the pro-side of the argument, oil producers and free-market champions are […]

Talkin’ trash: Are we literally throwing away energy?

Philipp Schmidt-Pathmann wakes up every day thinking about trash. What got him thinking about it in the first place is how much of it is simply dumped into landfills across America when most of what is not recyclable could instead be turned into energy for homes and businesses everywhere. Schmidt-Pathmann has seen a better approach […]

Pemex, Mexico’s state oil giant, braces for a the country’s new energy landscape

When Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto arrived at the March rally, he was greeted like a rock star. Hundreds of local residents and employees of Petróleos Mexicanos had gathered in the state of Veracruz to celebrate the 1938 expropriation of foreign oil wells and the founding of Pemex. The workers, dressed in white shirts and […]

90% Of Gazprom Clients Have “De-Dollarized”, Will Transact In Euro & Renminbi

Following Obama and Putin’s “caught on tape” meeting Vine’d by the French President, we can’t help but wonder if the Russian leaders comments were something akin to “this is not over yet.” With “De-Dollarization” efforts already broadly under discussion, ITAR-TASS reports that Gazprom had signed additional agreements for clients to switch from dollars to euros […]

Peakoil and pushing on a string

Imagine the economy as a wagon with one string attached to the front and one at the back. When energy is cheap, the wagon is pulled forward by the front string. The string a the rear represents monetary policy. Pulling on the rear string prevents the economy from going too fast. Cheap energy is over. […]

UN pushes sustainable energy

On World Environmental Day, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon underscored that sustainable energy is the golden thread that links poverty eradication, equitable economic growth and a healthy environment. Speaking today (5 June)at the first annual Sustainable Energy for All forum, Ban pointed out three goals for 2030: “universal access to modern energy services. Double […]

The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out of Stones

“The Stone Age didn’t end because humanity ran out of stones.” — Ronald Bailey We used to be afraid of something called Peak Oil. Peak Oil was the idea that oil production had reached its zenith, or would soon, and was poised to plunge; we inevitably faced a drought of the black gunk. In 2007, […]

Canada Aims to Sell Its Oil Beyond US

Last fall, Canadian oil producer Husky Energy Inc. sent a batch of crude on a journey to India. It was just a drop in a sea of global oil transactions, but a step toward reshaping North American energy trading. The million-barrel shipment to Indian Oil Corp. 530965.BY +1.54% , described by Husky as a test […]

Flawed drilling gear still in use after BP oil spill

Design problems with a blowout prevention system contributed to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, and the same equipment is still commonly used in drilling four years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a report issued by the federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. This results in potential safety gaps […]

Tech Talk – what the EPA Plan neglects

One of the problems, I suspect, with predictions of future energy use and production is that physical reality can become entangled in the politics of the day. Thus news that tends to negate the optimistic views of future American oil and natural gas production is subsumed by the need to keep the level of those […]

Modeling Peak Oil and the Geological Constraints on Oil Production

Abstract We propose a model to reconcile the theory of inter-temporal non-renewable resource depletion with well-known stylized facts concerning the exploitation of exhaustible resources such as oil. Our approach introduces geological constraints into a Hotelling type extraction-exploration model. We show that such constraints, in combination with initially small reserves and strictly convex exploration costs, can […]

China president vows to limit population growth of largest cities

Chinese President Xi Jinping today promised to impose strict limits on population growth in the country’s largest cities, state media reported, as authorities seek to push migration towards smaller urban centres. Decades of rapid urbanisation in China have seen the proportion of its urban population swell to more than 50 per cent, creating massive conurbations […]

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