WSJ Gets it Wrong on “Why Peak Oil Predictions Haven’t Come True”

by Gail Tverberg On Monday, September 29, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a story called “Why Peak Oil Predictions Haven’t Come True.” The story is written as if there are only two possible outcomes: The Peak Oil version of what to expect from oil limits is correct, or Diminishing Returns can and are being […]

Uganda: Dangers of fracking

As I previously predicted Uganda has now found a substantial reservoir of natural gas and the government will be looking at a development plan to fully utilise such a find.  Therefore It now seems a good time to return to the controversial issue of fracking. In the UK, the North Sea natural gas reserves are […]

Disclosures from railroads on crude oil to be made public

Five months after the government ordered railroads to give states information on shipments of potentially explosive crude oil across borders, Pennsylvania and some counties have not released the disclosures to the public. The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency signed confidentiality agreements with Norfolk Southern Railway Co. and CSX Transportation Inc., and told counties to do the […]

Oil Scandal Mucks Up Brazil’s Elections

When Brazil announced a massive discovery of deep sea oil in 2007, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva compared the find to a winning “lottery ticket.” Cashing it in was another story. Standing between Brazil’s oil cache and fortune were at least four miles of seawater, rock, sand and salt, plus a policy sinkhole and […]

The future of oil, renewables and EVs

The report asks ‘If I gave you $100B to spend, and your goal was to make energy to propel cars, would you go drill/frack for tight oil, refine it and put it conventional vehicles, or would you build RE tech and power EVs’? The answer they come up with was that onshore wind+EV blew away […]

Is Current Oil Glut Symptomatic of Long-Term Consumption Depletion

As the short-term oil price scenario continued a post-Labor Day swoon, well into the latter part of September, questions began to be raised as to whether an inverted supply/demand direction was in store for the fourth quarter of 2014. The current commodity surplus, which has also affected copper, steel, iron ore, and assorted agricultural products, […]

Fukushima risk of 26-meter tsunami

Tokyo Electric Power Co. has warned its stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant could be hit by tsunami as high as 26.3 meters. The deluge would likely cause seawater to mingle with the radiation-tainted water accumulating in the basements of the reactor buildings at the six-unit plant, allowing 100 trillion becquerels of cesium to escape, […]

Yergin gets award named after peak oil realist Schlesinger

Where is George Orwell when you need him? It is a supreme irony that cornucopian oil industry mouthpiece and consultant Daniel Yergin should receive America’s first medal for energy security named after James Schlesinger, the first U.S. energy secretary. For those not familiar with the late Dr. Schlesinger’s views, in a keynote speech he told […]

Can 11 billion people survive on this planet?

By 2100, there could be an extra four billion people roaming the planet – making it difficult to discern whether Earth will have enough resources to support the birth of practically another planet-worth of people. (Earth hit four billion in 1974). That’s 11 billion people total, according to a new study by the University of […]

World on the brink of oil war as Opec bickers over price

A secretive group of the world’s most powerful oil ministers will soon gather in Vienna to take arguably one of the most important decisions that could affect the still fragile world economy: whether to cut production of crude to defend prices at $100 per barrel, or keep open the spigots as winter looms among the […]

U.S. Will Never Stop Importing Oil, but We May Start Exporting

Horizontal drilling and fracking have opened new opportunities for investing in domestic energy, whether for pure-play explorers in developing shales, producers in mature areas, or service companies opening up the monster wells. Oil and Gas Investor Editor-in-Chief Leslie Haines has been following the revolution for nine years, and agreed to share with readers of The […]

Rosneft CEO Says He’ll Develop Arctic Oil With or Without Exxon

Bloomberg News interview with Igor Sechin, chief executive officer of OAO Rosneft, the world’s largest publicly traded oil producer by output, conducted Sept. 26 on a research vessel on the Kara Sea. On exploration in Russia’s Arctic Kara Sea: “The drilling at the structure Universitetskaya-1 is of exceptional significance, showing that Western Siberian deposits continue […]

Energy Use of a 100-Watt Light Bulb per Year by Source

Lighting “consumes about 19% of the world’s electric power, more than all nuclear and hydroelectric plants can produce together (which is about 15% in total),” according to Grant Feller of the World Economic Forum. With significant future projected power demand and over a billion people without proper access to electricity (see Breaking Energy ‘energy poverty’ […]

Earth Changes: Eruptions, Adjustments, And Love

When hope is used to reject reality, this is called denial, and denial usually has a darker side than the (fertile and therefore rejuvenating) darkness it initially resisted. When we accept the dark and difficult side of side of life, the experiences that are not rosy and peaceful, we give ourselves an opportunity to undergo […]

Thirsty Land, Hungry People

Gazing out over the parched earth of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, one might think these farmlands have not seen water in years. In fact, this is not too far from the truth. The World Food Programme (WFP) last month allocated 2.5 million dollars to assist hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans in the throes of […]

Brent crude oil now has the biggest chunk of the GSCI

The S&P GSCI 2015 Rebalance Preview marks a historic shift in the benchmark renowned for its world production weight. According to this announcement of pro-forma weights, Brent crude oil is targeted take over WTI‘s status as the leading oil benchmark and the most heavily weighted commodity in the S&P GSCI. This is the first time […]

Brent Crude Heads For Bear Market Amid Swelling Supply

Brent crude moved closer to a bear market on speculation rising global supplies will be more than enough to meet slowing demand. West Texas Intermediate ended below $90. Brent fell 4.9 percent this week, the worst performance since the five days ended April 5, 2013. OPEC September oil production rose to a one-year high and […]

Matt Simmons: Peak Oil Now, Oil Perhaps to $300

Matthew Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co. International in Houston, talked yesterday with Bloomberg’s Rhonda Schaffler about the need to address energy use, his view that global supply has peaked and the likelihood oil prices could reach as much as $300 a barrel.

In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation: a dystopian survivalist novel

Scientists, pundits, and self-appointed prophets paint the impact of climate change with brushstrokes of extreme weather, upended economies, and pandemic disease. It’s up to writers and artists to imagine the effects of these changes on human relationships. More and more writers are examining the possibilities and dangers of life in a warming world, including Jennifer […]

EIA’s International Energy Statistics

The EIA updated their International Energy Statistics on Monday September 29. However there was an error in their data which I caught right away. They had Kazakhstan increasing C+C production by 856,000 barrels per day. Above is their C+C data, January through June. I emailed Patrica Smith, the EIA employee who posts these stats. She emailed […]

America: You’ve got three more years to drive normally! – Part 2

Part 1 of this series stirred up a lot of interest with Rag Blog readers, and it was reposted by Resilience.org where it was also popular. I imagine the article’s somewhat alarming title struck a nerve, calling attention to the repressed fears that challenge our suburban, car-centric American culture. Fears that stem from our culture of denial in response to […]

Oil Prices Continue Decline, Pressured by Saudi Action to Defend Market Share

Crude oil prices continued their decline on Thursday, with the American benchmark dropping below $90 a barrel during the day and its main international equivalent falling as well. Now at their lowest levels since 2012, crude prices have been under pressure in recent months. The increase in global demand for oil this year is turning […]

The Sources Of America’s Political & Financial Dysfunction

The way to preserve great wealth is to buy political protection of that wealth. The way to protect great political leverage is to grease the machinery of governance with cash. I confess that reading Francis Fukuyama’s latest cri du coeur in Foreign Affairs,America in Decay: The Sources of Political Dysfunction made me think Mr. Fukuyama has either been reading […]

The World’s 10 Biggest Energy Gluttons

Next time you get into your car and drive to the supermarket, think about how much energy you consume on an annual basis. It is widely assumed that Westerners are some of the world’s worst energy pigs. While Americans make up just 5 percent of the global population, they use 20 percent of its energy, […]

The Great Natural Gas Grab

Any power utility executive will tell you that the industry has been burned by unexpected natural gas price spikes a number of times over the past 10 years. In some cases, regulators refused to allow the utility to pass on the fuel cost to ratepayers, and investors took the hit in the form of lower […]

Russia-Europe Gas Game Heats Up as Winter Looms

A cat and mouse game is on between Europe and Russia over gas supplies as the continent switches into the winter heating season. Since September, Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom has sent less-than-requested deliveries to Poland, Slovakia, Austria and Hungary — after the European Union began sending gas to Ukraine — in a clear warning from Moscow ahead of the winter heating season which officially starts on Oct. 1, when the industry switches to higher […]

Study links natural gas wells with hospital visits

The more natural gas wells in an area, the more of its residents end up in the hospital. So indicate the results of an unreleased study revealed at a state Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing at King’s College on Wednesday on the subject of tracking, reporting and acting on public health concerns related to natural […]

Cheap oil ‘a mirage’ and heading to $140

Don’t bank on cheap oil, MercBloc President Dan Dicker said Wednesday. Brent crude oil prices this week dropped 2.4 percent to $94.83 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate saw a 3.6 percent decline to $91.16 a barrel. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar hit a four-year high. On CNBC’s “Halftime Report,” Dicker called cheap oil prices “a […]

Peak Shit! How Oil Spilled the Economy

As I said last time, my exposure to Peak Oil made me realise a few things: – We are approaching the ‘Limits to Growth’ – Growth is dead – Oil will be gone – The world is going to come to a grinding halt. None of this happened, I repeatedly made a fool of myself, […]

John Michael Greer: The Buffalo Wind

I’ve talked more than once in these essays about the challenge of discussing the fall of civilizations when the current example is picking up speed right outside the window.  In a calmer time, it might be possible to treat the theory of catabolic collapse as a pure abstraction, and contemplate the relationship between the maintenance […]

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