More War for Oil?

The “no blood for oil” crowd has piped up with surprising speed and noisiness in the short hours since President Obama recommitted U.S. forces to the fight in Iraq. Steve Coll, a writer for the New Yorker, suggests in a piece posted on the magazine’s website that “Kurdish oil greed,” whose partner Mr. Obama now […]

Michael Lynch: Peak Shale Gas Proves As Wrong As Peak Oil

Since the beginning of the shale gas boom, there have been skeptics and uncertainties, which is hardly surprising for a new type of production. How much could be recovered, what were the costs, could processes be transferred from one shale to another, and especially, what impact would high production decline rates have. Quite a bit […]

Sprawling From Grace

For as long as most Americans can remember the car has been the embodiment of the American dream. But with more than 250 million cars and trucks on the road, Americans have become slaves to this freedom. How can we reverse the ravages of suburban sprawl?

The REAL Reason for New U.S. and French Military Involvement In Iraq

Why We’re Bombing to Protect Erbil Why is Obama now re-committing the U.S. military to Iraq? Why is France strongly backing military action? Obama says it’s to protect minorities.    That’s nothing new.  Obama is the fourth president in a row to bomb Iraq … while claiming it is for humanitarian purposes. But the architects of […]

Heinberg: Blame the Environmentalists

The US energy revolution is starting to unravel, even while policymakers continue to believe the hype. This month’s Museletter looks at the reality behind the hype. First up is a look at the ballooning debt behind energy companies struggle to keep the hamster wheel of oil production going. Part two is a short essay revealing […]

Peak Oil is back with a Vengence

One of the most misleading tropes of recent years is that ‘peak oil is dead‘, underlined by the closing of the Oil Drum blog.  Fracking seemed to supply endless cheap gas to the US, poil production in the US increased in the US for the first time in decades, fracking was on the ascended as was […]

Mexico Opens Gas, Oil to Foreign, Private Firms

President Enrique Pena Nieto signed into law on Monday new rules governing a historic opening of Mexico’s state-run oil, gas and electricity industries to foreign and private companies. Pena Nieto said the government will let potential investors know by Wednesday which blocks of gas and oil fields will be open for them. The state-owned oil […]

Oil and Erbil

To the defense of Erbil: this was the main cause that drew President Obama back to combat in Iraq last week, two and a half years after he fulfilled a campaign pledge and pulled the last troops out. After Mazar-i-Sharif, Nasiriyah, Kandahar, Mosul, Benghazi, and a score of other sites of American military intervention—cities whose […]

The Untold Story about the Health Impacts of Fracking

The health impacts of fracking get a lot of attention but, unfortunately, most of it consists of anecdotes and speculation. There is, nevertheless, plenty of evidence regarding the health impacts of fracking – it’s an untold story. Everyone knows shale gas causes pollution right? That’s what the big debate is all about and the biggest questions […]

Kunstler: Global Nausea

Any American influence left in Iraq should focus on rebuilding the credibility of national institutions. – Editorial, The New York Times Gosh, isn’t that what we spent eight years, 4,500 lives, and $1.7 trillion doing? And how did that work out? The Iraq war is just like the US financial system. The people in charge […]

Three ways that oil matters for the crisis in Iraq

For months now, Sunni militants from the Islamic State (better known as ISIS) have been seizing control of large swathes of Iraq. ISIS is now threatening a major oil-producing region of Iraq But it wasn’t until they encroached into semi-autonomous Kurdish territory and near the Kurdish capital of Erbil — an oil boomtown full of Western […]

Counting up all the battles in the Middle East

As the old saying goes, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. So in this week’s Oilgram News column New Frontiers, Tamsin Carlisle does just that, skipping through the Middle East to summarize the hot battles, and the cold ones, impacting oil across the region. —————————- The Middle East and North Africa region has […]

Tech Talk – Rig Counts in the Middle East

In recent posts about the situation in the Middle East, I have noted the need for Aramco to increase the number of drilling rigs that it must use, since it is now looking for natural gas in their tight sand deposits rather than finding the large reserves that they had hoped in the shale reservoirs. […]

World Bank President Dr. Kim, Renewable Energy Is the Future

In the 21st century, it’s hard to take anyone seriously who thinks coal, not clean energy, is the future for dynamic, emerging economies. But that’s exactly what Dr. Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, did this week during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Dr. Kim disparaged clean energy as incapable of powering development and […]

Peak Oil: Written on Tombstones

Not too long, another in the endless procession of skate-past-facts-we-don’t like articles made its way into publication via a piece entitled “Here’s The Statistic That Will Be Written On The Tombstones Of Peak Energy Believers” Those concerned about the peak in oil production have apparently earned themselves a promotion! Now we are peak “energy” advocates. […]

OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin + MOMR

The August OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out with the OPEC production numbers for July 2014. There were no big surprises and only small revisions in the June data. The OPEC 12 was up  166,000 barrels per day. The increase was due to some Libyan oil coming back on line. Libyan crude only was up […]

Our Overcrowded Planet – A Failure of Family Planning & A Grim Sustainable Future Warning

  The UN World Population Prospects projections forecast: that the world will reach nearly 11 billion people by 2100 presents an unsettling prospect of an unfolding population growth related humanitarian tragedy, one that reflects a collective failure to provide women world wide with safe, effective ways to avoid pregnancies they neither intend nor want. It […]

Three Nails in the Coffin of Peak Oil

This post was first published on The Oil Drum one year ago. This post is based on a talk I gave as an “undistinguished speaker” to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) oil finders lunch in Aberdeen a few weeks ago. This will be one of my last posts on The Oil Drum. There […]

Washington Threatens The World

The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil. The various sects that lived in peace under the rule of Saddam Hussein, […]

Japan Prepares To Release Thousands Of Tons Of Fukushima Groundwater Into The Pacific

A few days ago, with over a three year delay, Japan finally admitted what was clear to most from day one: the consequences of the Fukushima disaster have been far, far worse than officials had reported, and not only is the containment effort out of control, but that more nuclear fuel had melted at the […]

Kurds say oil production unaffected by Islamic State incursion

Oil production from Iraqi Kurdistan remains unaffected despite an incursion by Islamic State militants along the autonomous region’s border, its Ministry of Natural Resources said in a statement on Saturday. The United States launched airstrikes in northern Iraq after Islamic State militants advanced to within a 30 minute drive from the regional capital Arbil, prompting […]

De-Dollarization Accelerates – China/Russia Complete Currency Swap Agreement

The last 3 months have seen Russia’s “de-dollarization” plans accelerate. First Gazprom clients shift to Euros and Renminbi, then the UK signs currency swap agreements with China, then NATO ally Turkey cuts ties and mulls de-dollarization, Switzerland jumps in the currency swap agreements, and BRICS create their own non-US-based funding vehicle, and then finally this week, Russia’s oligarchs have shifted cash holdings […]

SUV Back in Vogue

SUV redux Until the second half of the 2000s, big SUVs were undisputed road royalty in the United States. But then Katrina and her sisters made gas prices spike by destroying oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Financial Crisis made the economy tank, forcing a lot of people to downsize. Add […]

Running on Waste Heat

This image shows the inside of GMZ Energy’s TEG module. When waste heat enters the top of the module, and moves through the semiconductor material (shown here as P and N) to the cooler side, the resulting temperature difference creates a voltage that’s extracted as electricity. Screenshot from a video by GMZ Energy. Gang Chen’s […]

Exxon Drilling Russian Arctic Shows Sanction Lack Bite

Sanctions, what sanctions? Exxon Mobil Corp. will start drilling a $700 million well in the Arctic Ocean tomorrow, Russia’s government said, showing that for all the talk of action against Vladimir Putin’s oil industry, the largest U.S. energy company is undeterred. As Russia’s relations with Europe and the U.S. deteriorated to the lowest point since […]

The Effect of Overpopulation on Public Health

Share this infographic on your site! <a href=”http://www.mphonline.org/overpopulation-public-health/”><img src=”http://www.mphonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Overpopulation.jpg” alt=”Overpopulation” width=”500″  border=”0″ /></a><br />Source: <a href=”http://www.mphonline.org/”>MPHOnline.org</a> The Effect of Overpopulation on Public Health The world population is growing at an alarming rate. But overpopulation is seldom discussed as a public health issue. Just how many of us are there and how is our rising population […]

While U.S. Defends The Kurds With Airstrikes, It’s Choking Off Needed Oil Revenue

A leading Democratic voice on foreign affairs called Friday for the White House to drop U.S. opposition to allowing the Kurdistan Regional Government to sell its own oil. On Thursday night, President Barack Obama declared that the United States would defend the Kurds, who are facing an onslaught from the militant forces of the Islamic […]

How The Destruction Of The Dollar Threatens The Global Economy

The following book excerpt is adapted from Chapter One of Money: How The Destruction of the Dollar Threatens The Global Economy – and What We Can Do About It, by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames The failure to understand money is shared by all nations and transcends politics and parties. The destructive monetary expansion undertaken […]

Peak Driving

Pundits have talked about peak oil and peak water, and peak nearly every finite resource. A peak in certain behavior is suggestive of a potential social shift. Paul Kedrosky at Bloomberg tweeted this Great Graphic from dshort.com.   It shows the change in miles driven by Americans adjusted for population.  It peaked in June 2005, and […]

Solar Power Installations Jump to a New Annual Record

The year 2013 saw record-breaking growth for solar electricity generation as the photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) markets continued to grow. With over 39 gigawatts installed worldwide, the PV solar market represented one third of all newly-added renewable energy capacity, write Worldwatch’s Max Lander and Climate and Energy Intern Xiangyu Wu in […]

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