How the Elite Control the World

All governments past and present, regardless of their formal organization, involve the rule of the many by the few. In other words, all governments are fundamentally oligarchic. The reasons are twofold. First, governments are nonproductive organizations and can only subsist by extracting goods and services from the productive class in their territorial domain. Thus the […]

US Government Oil Forecasts “Wildly Optimistic”

We would do well to pause, and ponder both the data and implications presented in the Post Carbon Institute’s latest report, released a few days before Halloween, “Drilling Deeper: A Reality Check On U.S. Government Forecasts for a Lasting Tight Oil & Shale Gas Boom”. The PCI’s new report exposes current oil industry & Energy […]

India Must Spend $250B by 2019 to Meet Its Power Needs

If India is going to provide power to its more than 1 billion people over the next five years, it will need to invest about $250 billion during that time, according to Reuters. The country’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, speaking at the World Economic Forum conference in New Delhi this week, noted that most of […]

US Oil Consumption and the US Tight Oil Boom

In part 1 of a series of articles on the impact of US tight (shale) oil we examine the impact on US oil consumption. Fig 1: US crude oil production with tight oil from Texas and North Dakota  Data from: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_a.htm In 2013, an additional 2.3 mb/d of tight oil was produced from wells in Texas […]

If Everything Is Just Fine, Why Are So Many Really Smart People Forecasting Economic Disaster?

The parallels between the false prosperity of 2007 and the false prosperity of 2014 are rather striking.  If we go back and look at the numbers in the fall of 2007, we find that the Dow set an all-time high in October, margin debt on Wall Street had spiked to record levels, the unemployment rate […]

Petrodollar Panic? China Signs Currency Swap Deal With Qatar & Canada

The march of global de-dollarization continues. In the last few days, China has signed direct currency agreements with Canada becoming North America’s first offshore RMB hub, which CBC reports analysts suggest “could double maybe even triple the level of Canadian trade between Canada and China,” impacting the need for Dollars.But that is not the week’s […]

The Hummer is back. Thank falling oil prices

The military-style Hummer H1, more tank than truck, disappeared from the new car lots long ago, killed off by General Motors for the sin of guzzling a gallon of gas every 10 to 12 miles. And as the cost of gas hung above $3.50 for four years, even used Hummers languished on used lots, too. […]

Putin builds China links as ties with west fray

When Vladimir Putin met China’s president Xi Jinping, a memorandum of understanding for a second massive gas supply deal caught most of the attention. For the Russian president, the deal may be less appealing for its commercial benefits than its ability to advance the larger goal of cementing ties with its eastern neighbour. According to […]

Oil at $80 Is No Bar for BP, Total on Exploring for More Crude

Oil at $80 a barrel won’t stop BP Plc (BP/) or Total SA (FP) from exploring and developing crude deposits. Oil has dropped into a bear market this year, with prices falling as much as 26 percent since June amid a global glut. OPEC won’t cut its collective output when it meets this month and […]

An Oil Price ‘Cold War’ With Saudi Arabia?

Some analysts contend that Saudi Arabia’s latest price cut targets U.S. producers. Others argue it’s aimed at other exporters It’s an oil-wrestling match – but it might only be as real as the WWE. Last week, Saudi Arabia slashed its crude oil prices for the second month in a row – and unlike the last […]

Efficiency as a Vise

In modern economic thought, efficiency is paramount. The goal of economic systems, and entities within those systems, is to maximize efficiency. Policymakers are supposed to remove impediments that are making markets inefficient, and cut government inefficiency. Even those that claim not to buy into such thinking often still do without realizing it. There have been […]

Oil Mogul Harold Hamm to Pay Wife $995 Million in Divorce

An Oklahoma County judge has ordered oil magnate and Continental Resources Chief Executive Officer Harold Hamm to pay nearly $1 billion in a divorce judgment, according to a court filing made public on Monday. Special Judge Howard Haralson found that Hamm should pay his ex-wife Sue Ann Hamm a total of $995.5 million, with about […]

Chokepoint: How to stop a pipeline

For the past four years we have visiting the Unist’ot’en camp and since then, we just can’t shut up about them. Why? Because their form of protest is beyond words and it’s manifested in direct action. They have created a real physical wall of opposition to all the proposed pipelines that could bring oil from […]

What plummeting oil prices mean for renewable energy

Lower fossil fuel prices have historically thrashed solar, wind and biomass markets. So why are clean energy companies unconcerned about the current trend? The price of west Texas crude oil last week traded below $80 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the first time in five years. Tuesday’s low of $75.84 per […]

China Has Refined Taste for Oil

Crude-oil investors have reasons to like China these days. Oil refiners aren’t so enamored. According to trade data out Saturday, the world’s second-largest consumer of oil after the U.S. imported 18% more crude in October from the year before, faster than its 9% growth so far this year. As crude gets cheaper, China is on […]

The oil price collapse just claimed the world’s biggest shipping oil company

“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett once quipped in one of his folksy shareholder letters. In other words, sharp, unexpected market downturns have a way of revealing less-than-top-notch market practices. Such a vertiginous drop is now playing out in the global oil markets, as a resurgent dollar, slowing […]

Russian primary industry cannot withstand this roller coaster.

Katarina Lagervall DN called me last Friday and we had a long and interesting conversation about oil and the global economy. A summary of our conversation is now available at dn.se [in Swedish] under “Russian primary industry cannot withstand this roller coaster.” (I have added some clarifications with parentheses) (Published 2014-11-07 13:17) Falling oil prices […]

Sapping the sweet spots: How long will US energy boom last?

In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said that the U.S. had a supply of natural gas “that can last America nearly 100 years.” But that unbridled optimism, shared by the natural gas industry as well as politicians who want to see the U.S. become more energy independent, is worrying a […]

Drawing a Line in the Tar Sands

Of all possible futures, the least likely is one in which business as usual continues unabated. Peoples’ movements will either succeed in transforming our economic and political systems to build a new world, or we will burn with the old one. Our title invokes a metaphor of uncompromising resistance because the tar sands are an […]

Regenerative Agriculture: The Transition

In the face of peak oil and in order to curb carbon emissions, methods of farming that depend less on oil and natural gas, respectively to run machinery and to make synthetic fertilizers, must be sought. Such options are to be found within the framework of regenerative agriculture, but the transition from current industrialised agriculture […]

Iraqi army ‘reaches centre’ of oil city Beiji

Reports that army has entered northern city, near oil refinery where troops have been under siege by ISIL for months. Iraqi military forces have reached the centre of the northern oil city of Beiji to try to break a siege by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on the country’s biggest refinery, […]

U.S. Oil Exports Hit 57 Year High

The accelerating United States energy boom allowed America to record its highest level of oil exports in 57 years and its second highest level since 1920 in the month of July. After becoming the world’s largest producer of natural gas in 2010, the United States also became the world’s largest producer of petroleum last month. […]

China, Russia sign second mega gas deal

China and Russia on Sunday signed new agreements to boost energy cooperation, including a deal to develop a second route to supply 30 billion of natural gas to the energy-hungry Communist giant. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin witnessed the signing of a series of bilateral cooperation agreements, including an MoU […]

The EIA’s International Energy Statistics

The EIA, a few days ago posted their International Energy Statistics. They publish lots of statistics here but on monthly basis I only follow their  production of world Crude Oil including Lease Condensate. The data on all charts below is Crude + Condensate production through July 2104 and is in thousand barrels per day. World C+C […]

Peak Cheap Oil

Energy is the lifeblood of any economy.  But when an economy is based on an exponential debt-based money system and that is based on exponentially increasing energy supplies, the supply of that energy therefore deserves our very highest attention. But we need to be careful here because it’s a mistake to lump all types of energy together because they […]

Saudi Arabia Takes Action After Shiites Are Attacked

Saudi Arabian security officials moved aggressively on Tuesday to crush an outbreak of anti-Shiite violence, arresting 15 people in six cities and killing two others in connection with what the Interior Ministry called a terrorist ambush on mosque worshipers in a minority Shiite community. At least two security officers were killed and two wounded in […]

Trading Oil for Coal

Obama has dragged his feet on approving or rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, but it could be a good chit to trade for protecting new EPA regulations from the GOP Senate. Rapid climate change sparks tornados and floods, battering the world and throwing Americans into a new era of fear. That’s the apocalyptic premise of […]

Qatar’s investment programme sustainable $67 a barrel

Qatar has the capacity to finance its infrastructure investment programme although the oil price has fallen 30% since June, QNB has said in a report. Based on the 2013 data, QNB estimates that the fiscal breakeven price—the oil price at which government expenditure would equal government revenue—was $67 a barrel. The bank’s estimates are based […]

China Unlikely to Become Shale Gas Superpower

China is estimated to hold the largest technically recoverable shale gas reserves globally, yet extracting it is too complicated and costly to replicate the US shale gas revolution. China, the largest energy consumer in the world, hopes to become less dependent on energy imports. However, Beijing needs to increase its domestic volumes of energy resources […]

The rise of Irish Wind power

With all the talk of the German energy transition are we missing another countries change, that is Irish wind power?  There are now a whole heap of websites where you can look at what’s happening on the grid in real time.  Yesterday looking for something else I found one and was very surprised to see […]

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