The Paradox of Oil: The Cheaper it is, the More it Costs

There will be oil, but at what price? – Chris Nelder and Gregor Macdonald   1. Introduction   It would be fair to say that the timing of the sudden drop in the price of oil since June 2014 took energy and financial analysts by surprise. After averaging around US$110 per barrel since 2011 (IEA, […]

Peak Meaninglessness

Last week’s discussion of externalities—costs of doing business that get dumped onto the economy, the community, or the environment, so that those doing the dumping can make a bigger profit—is, I’m glad to say, not the first time this issue has been raised recently.  The long silence that closed around such things three decades ago […]

Who Controls Our Food?

Sympathy with organic food production is at an all-time high. Perhaps ‘It’s a nice idea, when you can afford it’ sums up the approach of many people. But extending these principles of production to the whole food system? It just doesn’t seem practical. There are an awful lot of people to feed in the world […]

Iraq forces working to encircle ISIL in Tikrit

The Iraqi army has said its strategy for retaking the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group’s stronghold of Tikrit is to surround the city before launching an assault. A senior commander said on Wednesday that operations were currently focused on preventing ISIL from launching more attacks and cutting supply lines to stop […]

Russia’s economy isn’t in tatters

Western politicians and pundits should be more careful with their predictions for the Russian economy: Reports of its demise may prove to be premature. Bashing the Russian economy has lately become a popular pastime. In his state of the nation address last month, U.S. President Barack Obama said it was “in tatters.” And last week, […]

Exxon CEO: Get Used to Lower Oil Prices

Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson expects the price of oil to remain low over the next two years because of ample global supplies and relatively weak economic growth. “People need to kinda settle in for a while,” Tillerson said at the company’s annual investor conference in New York. In a presentation to investors outlining its […]

Saudi Oil Minister: OPEC Is Neither Dead Nor Waging War On Shale Oil

Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi gave a speech in Berlin today. Here’s the full text as provided by the ministry. I’ve highlighted the important bits like where he talks about how Saudi Arabia is not waging a “war on shale” and how OPEC is not dead. Excellenzen, Damen und Herren, guten morgen. It is a […]

Weaving the Community Resilience and New Economy Movements in the US

Transition US is delighted to be part of the second cohort of national Transition hubs (along with Brazil, Mexico, Germany, and Portugal) to be receiving mentoring and support from Transition Network to bring REconomy to our country. We believe REconomy provides an important complement to the diverse, innovative work to build just and regenerative economies […]

Libya declares force majeure on oil fields in central region

 Libya on Wednesday declared a force majeure related to 11 oil fields in the center of country, after a string of attacks against the facilities by the radical group calling itself Islamic State. In a statement posted on its website, state-owned National Oil Co. said it was no longer able to ensure security in the […]

So Much for Hubbert’s Peak Oil Theory: $20 Per Barrel Oil Soon?

All right, the headline might be a tad hasty. Nevertheless, geologist M. King Hubbert famously (and so far) correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. domestic oil production in the lower 48 states would peak around 1970 and begin to decline. In 1969 Hubbert predicted that world oil production would peak around 2000. Hubbert argued that […]

We need food, not ethanol

Last winter, I was in the sub-basement of the library at the University of Minnesota, with two state maps stretching 10 feet across spread out on the table in front of me. One was from the 1990s, the other a century older. Growing up on the Wisconsin border, the Minnesota I knew was nothing but […]

Stranded Assets in Oil and Gas a Reality

Just a few short years ago a friend called me to chat about the possibility of stranded assets in oil and gas due to climate change and the expected legislation and new regulations that would entail. This was an interesting idea coming out of the UK at the time. Since then, the idea has gained […]

A 3D Printed Electric Car

3D Printing is all the rage these days, so it’s no surprise someone has printed a complete and functional electric automobile, appropriately named the Strati (Italian for “layers”). 18 months ago, Phoenix Arizona company Local Motors teamed up with Cincinnati Incorporated to develop a neighborhood electric car. The project is open source; members are encouraged […]

Modern Life Is Probably Screwed by Peak Oil, But It’s Not Too Late to Avoid Mass Starvation

The challenge of feeding 7 or 8 billion people while oil supplies are falling is stupefying. It’ll be even greater if governments keep pretending that it isn’t going to happen. By George Monbiot I don’t know when global oil supplies will start to decline. I do know that another resource has already peaked and gone […]

Saudi king keeps close hand on oil in remodelling strategic team

Saudi Arabia’s subtle change of energy policymaker line-up since the accession of new King Salman in late January appears to give the monarch’s inner circle a firmer hand on the kingdom’s oil strategy than previous rulers have enjoyed. The most notable change was the promotion of the king’s son Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, long a […]

The Gifts Of Grief In A Time Of Endings

As with so many topics in this culture, near-term human extinction (NTHE) has become yet another issue for the debating society of the “cerebesphere”—a term I have coined for living only in the domain of the intellect while disconnected from the body and emotions. It seems that humans would much rather argue about whether they […]

US shale oil growth practically zero in 2017

The International Energy Agency’s Medium Term Oil Market Report 2015 included an interesting graph showing changes in US and Russian oil production for the next 5 years: IEA MTOMR February 2015 Fig 1: US and Russian oil production changes 2009-2020 https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/speeches/150210_MTOMR_slides.pdf The light blue columns show forecasts done in the 3rd quarter 2014, the dark blue […]

If solar has gotten so cheap, why isn’t there more of it?

Why don’t more homes have this sign? Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture/Flickr. Some people who worry about peak oil like to point out that renewable energy won’t save us. That is, given the amount of fossil fuels that the world uses today, it would take an unrealistically large increase in the amount of renewables available […]

What’s America’s Fragility Score?

By this measure, the U.S. scores very poorly: 4 out of a possible 5 on the Fragility Index.   There is a certain logic to the idea that stability is a good predictor for future stability: if a nation’s economy and governance are stable and devoid of disorder, this trajectory of stability will be durable, right? […]

Low Oil Price May Stifle Deepwater Drilling And Oil Sands But Not Fracking

Saudi Arabia and OPEC may have dropped oil prices to stifle production in the U.S. and other competing nations, but they didn’t drop it enough to stifle the U.S. oil and gas boom from fracking, a senior expert with McKinsey and Company said in Chicago. “If the Saudis think they’re going to put U.S. shale players out […]

Could Oil Prices Plummet A Second Time?

Are oil prices heading for a double dip? The surge in shale production has produced a temporary glut in supplies causing oil prices to experience a massive bust. After tanking to a low of $44 per barrel in January, falling rig counts and enormous reductions in exploration budgets have fueled speculation that the market will […]

Fargo mulls fueling buses, garbage trucks with landfill gas

Gas from Fargo’s landfill is already used to generate power and heat, but there’s enough left to fuel the city’s buses and garbage trucks as well. By removing moisture and impurities, the landfill gas can be converted to natural gas suitable for use in specially equipped vehicles. That’s a good thing because fuel is one […]

OPEC Puppets and Canada Give Away Their Oil

The world is running out of oil. Peak Oil is a reality, all that is open to debate is how fast production will drop off, and how quickly the world will simply run out of oil. The lack of certainty is due to the fact that (as with everything else) we can’t trust the “official” […]

Financial collapse leads to war

Scanning the headlines in the western mainstream press, and then peering behind the one-way mirror to compare that to the actual goings-on, one can’t but get the impression that America’s propagandists, and all those who follow in their wake, are struggling with all their might to concoct rationales for military action of one sort or […]

Pakistan: oil supply chain in a shambles

the PSO has been supplying about 17,000 tons a day to the power sector against current payments..—AFP/File ISLAMABAD: About 45 days after the severe petrol shortage, the furnace oil supply chain is in a shambles owing to problems arising out of sloppy strategic planning, non-payments and adverse weather conditions in the Middle East. “We have […]

Middle East in Total Disarray

The Arab world is rife with political turmoil and violence. The Sunni Muslim Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and other jihadi terrorists are continuing their savagery within its boundaries, and Iran’s theocratic terrorist rulers are still exporting and/or solidifying their brand of the Shiite Muslim Islamic Revolution to Arab countries and territories. And the […]

Iraq launches offensive against Isis

  Iraqi security forces and Shia fighters gather in preparation for an attack on Isis strongholds Iraq’s Shia-dominated armed forces, backed by allied militiamen and a handful of Sunni tribesmen, have launched an operation to clear the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis, from former president Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. Thousands […]

Richard Heinberg on Our Renewable Future

Richard Heinberg discusses our renewable future and how to get there. He is the author of eleven books including: – Afterburn (April 2015) – Snake Oil (July 2013) – The End of Growth (August 2011) – Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007) – The Party’s Over: Oil, War & the Fate […]

The European Commission Unveils Its Energy Union Plan

Summary Europe may be on its way to finding long-term relief from dependence on Russian energy. The European Commission on Feb. 25 released its Energy Union Package of proposals designed to continue developing the bloc’s energy market and energy security. The proposals, meant to establish a European Energy Union, are more a continuation of EU […]

Oil and Money

Talking about the “concentration of wealth” is only part of the ”what’s wrong” story. The main part of the story is (1) OVERPOPULATION and (2) the decline in most natural RESOURCES. The world’s POPULATION is 7.2 billion — three times what it was in 1950. According to the UN, the population will rise by at […]

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