The Whisper of the Shutoff Valve

Last week’s post on the impending decline and fall of the internet fielded a great many responses. That was no surprise, to be sure; nor was I startled in the least to find that many of them rejected the thesis of the post with some heat. Contemporary pop culture’s strident insistence that technological progress is […]

California Adopts “Unprecedented” Restrictions On Water Use As Drought Worsens

Early last month we warned that California’s drought was approaching historic proportions and that if climatologists were to be believed, the country may see a repeat of The Dirty Thirties as experts cite “Dust Bowl” conditions. Governor Jerry Brown has called for statewide water restrictions aimed at reducing consumption by 25%. Now, the conservation calls […]

Hedge funds are in love with crude oil

Hedge funds love crude oil. Oil prices are recovering from the crash, and hedge funds have made big bets that oil prices will keep rallying. According to a report from Societe Generale, hedge funds are most bullish on crude oil among major commodities, or betting that the price of oil will rise. Overall, hedge funds […]

What the Future of Oil Drilling Will Look Like

The future of the U.S. oil industry may well be taking shape north of this town on 15 square miles of windswept prairie above the Bakken Shale. It’s about as far from the industry’s wildcatting heritage as is thinkable. “Our idea was to build the world’s greatest oil factory,” says Chris Wright, the chief executive […]

Cuba Insists It Has Oil; US Still Uninterested

Cuba unveiled new data on Wednesday it said confirmed there were billions of barrels of oil beneath its Gulf of Mexico waters but admitted there was little interest in new exploration even with the thaw in U.S. relations. The United States and Cuba have vowed to restore diplomatic relations after more than 50 years of […]

World heading to grave food crisis

Natural disasters in food exporting countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, have aggravated the situation Essa Al Ghurair speaking at the conference. -Supplied photo Ras Al Khaimah – The world is heading towards a serious global food crisis particularly as the food exporting countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, have been hit with massive natural […]

The Future of Food: Production, Innovation, and Technology

For the next six months (May 1 to October 15, 2015), the world will be focused on a very important topic: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.”  This is the theme of Expo Milano 2015 (also known as the “World’s Fair”), which is taking place in Milan, Italy, and will be the world’s largest, most […]

Doomsaying Falls on Ears Deafened by Latest Oil Rally

  Money manager David Einhorn’s doomsday outlook for shale oil drillers so far is failing to resonate with investors. A pessimistic assessment of the industry by the president of Greenlight Capital Inc. on Monday briefly shook the stock of the companies Einhorn targeted, dropping EOG Resources Inc. by as much as 2.8 percent after he […]

King Salman consolidates family grip on Saudi power and Aramco

King Salman’s double shake-up of Saudi Arabia’s power structure and the kingdom’s key petroleum sector could have major implications for oil supply. Since his January 23 accession to the Saudi throne, Salman has moved quickly to influence how power will be transferred to the next generation of rulers. Three months later he took the unprecedented […]

Is United States Energy Independence in Sight?

The data analysis arm of the US Department of Energy is forecasting that despite low oil prices, the US will become energy independent within a decade.  That result depends on frugality as much as resource abundance, and it includes substantial volumes of energy trade with the rest of the world. The US Energy Information Administration’s latest […]

Conversation with Clark Strand

Conversation with Clark Strand, author of Waking Up to the Dark – Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age. A former Buddhist monk, Clark Strand poses the question: has electric lighting compromised our humanness, damaged our spirits, and foreclosed our future? Does it represent much of what has gone wrong with modernity. We explore this and […]

A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto

Critique Summary Authors and Endorsers: Jeremy Caradonna, Iris Borowy, Tom Green, Peter A. Victor, Maurie Cohen, Andrew Gow, Anna Ignatyeva, Matthias Schmelzer, Philip Vergragt, Josefin Wangel, Jessica Dempsey, Robert Orzanna, Sylvia Lorek, Julian Axmann, Rob Duncan, Richard B. Norgaard, Halina S. Brown, Richard Heinberg Read the full document A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto Office […]

The Return Of Peak Oil – Worrying Signs From US And Russia

Since around 2005 many countries have increased their oil production but more have decreased. But the combined production of the United States and Russia have kept the world on a slight uptrend since that time. World oil production jumped in 2011, hardly moved at all in 2013 but it was up by more than 1.5 […]

There Will Be No 25-Year Depression

Today, we have bad news and good news. The good news is that there will be no 25-year recession. Nor will there be a depression that will last the rest of our lifetimes. The bad news: It will be much worse than that. On Monday, the Dow rose another 43 points. Gold seems to be […]

Why the World’s Appetite for Oil Will Peak Soon

  The result, in my opinion, is as startling as it is world-changing: Global oil demand will peak within the next two decades. A less potent weapon The geopolitical and economic implications of peaking demand will be huge. The fall in the importance of Saudi Arabia is already palpable, with all the major powers from […]

‘Beyond petroleum’ – fracking’s collapse heralds the arrival of peak oil

The ‘death of peak oil’ has been much exaggerated, writes Paul Mobbs. Take out high-cost ‘unconventional’ oil and production peaked ten years ago, and even North America’s fracking and tar sands boom has failed to open up new resources both big enough to make good the shortfall, and cheap enough to reward investors. We really […]

Beneath Antarctica, a wonderland of oil awaits

A report in The New York Times published on Monday revealed that the Chinese are aggressively engaged in securing the country’s energy future overseas. The People’s Republic is courting Latin American governments, securing its ties to African strongmen, is building up a military presence in the South China Sea, and has sent hundreds of advisors […]

The Devastation of Energy Poverty

The McKinsey Company has recently issued a report, Powering Africa.  The first sentence makes a statement that is obvious—“There is a direct correlation between economic growth and electricity supply”.  It goes on to state that “if sub-Saharan Africa is to fulfill its promise, it needs power—and lots of it”.  The sub-Saharan region is starved for […]

Those with money will continue to make the rules

THE tectonic shifts in the distribution of global economic activity and the consequential reallocation of geo-political power require either technical, managerial and political change in traditional development banks, starting with the World Bank, or the emergence of new development banks. If these changes are not forthcoming, the traditional development banks will be marginalised and their […]

Dmitry Orlov Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union

Dmitry Orlov Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union

Iraq army hunts ISIL fighters after Tikrit breakthrough

Iraqi forces battled the last Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in Tikrit to seal a victory the government described as a milestone in efforts to rid the country of armed group. Iraqi fighters picked their way through the rubble-strewn streets of the city on Wednesday, wary of any last-ditch attack from […]

Ford F-150 propane, natural gas options

Ford is expected to announce today plans to offer the 2016 F-150 full-size pickup with a package that prepares it to be powered by propane or compressed natural gas, an option that appeals to fleet buyers. The announcement is to be made in Dallas at the Alternative Clean Transportation Expo. The $315 factory-installed package would […]

US shale oil drillers move rigs to more productive areas

In an attempt to increase productivity, shale oil drillers in the United States have begun moving rigs to more productive areas of the Permian and Eagle Ford basins, analysts at Goldman Sachs said. Data from oil services firm Baker Hughes Inc showed on Friday that the fall in U.S. oil rig count slowed last week, […]

California Crops raised with oil field water

Here in California’s thirsty farm belt, where pumpjacks nod amid neat rows of crops, it’s a proposition that seems to make sense: using treated oil field wastewater to irrigate crops. Oil giant Chevron recycles 21 million gallons of that water each day and sells it to farmers who use it on about 45,000 acres of […]

Saudi Arabia Tapping Wealth Fund to Maintain Low Oil Prices

  The low prices for crude are costing Saudi Arabia some serious cash. The Saudi central bank reported last week that its net foreign assets fell 4.7% year-over-year in March to about $691 billion, their lowest level since July 2013. The Saudis nicked their savings account to the tune of $36 billion in the last […]

There Is No Solution To The Crisis

A long ,long time ago… it was the 16 September 1992, Black Wednesday, when the British Government was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism(ERM) after it was unable to keep the pound above its agreed lower limit in the ERM.  A certain Mr.Soros, made over £1 billion profit by […]

Changes to Total Global Debt Affects The Oil Price

In some posts on Fractional Flow I have presented some of my explorations of any relations between the oil price, changes to global total debt and interest rates. My objective has been to gain and share some of my insights of how I see the economic undertows that also influences the price formation for crude […]

The Great Oil Game: Resource Crisis in Russia?

Weekly pageviews of “Resource Crisis.” My blog seems to be having a remarkable success in Russia, but do the Russians understand the problem of resource depletion? Complex structures, such as states and empires, are always prone to collapse and they usually give little or no previous warnings. The collapse of the Soviet Union, indeed, had […]

‘An Ecomodernist Manifesto’: Truth and confusion in the same breath

I really do want to applaud the Breakthrough Institute’s recently released paper called “An Ecomodernist Manifesto.” It speaks with candor about the possible catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change. It recognizes the large footprint of humankind in the biosphere. It wants to address both, and it wants to do so in a way that offers a positive vision for […]

Canada is North America’s Great Oil Security Blanket

    The Keystone XL pipeline debate that unfortunately continues to drag on has pushed Canada’s oil production potential into the spotlight. Canada is our neighbor and leading trade partner, with U.S. goods and private services trade with Canada totaling around $750 billion a year, interestingly equal parts imports and exports. More oil connections are […]

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