Producers are boiling in cheap oil

For oil producing companies and states struggling under the burden of low prices, it is hard to think of any news that could have been worse. Early last month, the number of rigs drilling for oil in America started to increase. The rise was small compared with the steep declines over the previous seven months, […]

The Saudi Oil Price War Is Backfiring

Saudi Arabia has long enjoyed the status of being the top crude oil exporter in the world. With record production of 10.564 million barrels per day in June 2015, Saudi Arabia has been one of the major driving forces behind the current oil price slump.  The Saudis have kept their production levels high since last […]

India, Russia And Thailand Prepare For Currency War

When China sneezes, the world catches a cold. Alternatively, when China devalues, the rest of the (exporting) world scrambles to not be the last (exporting) nation standing, and to do so next, before everyone else does. Case in point, at least three major emerging market nations announced they are bracing for currency war. First India, […]

Are the chickens coming home to roost?

Forget quantitative easing and low base rates, the REAL great global stimulus—tumbling prices in commodities and, most importantly, oil— continues and it’s hard to see what’s going to change any time soon. This huge transfer of wealth from commodity producers to consumers has shown little sign of abating despite a brief spring rally off the […]

US Shale Declining and OPEC Still Climbing

There is new data out today. The EIA published their International Petroleum Statistics yesterday. The EIA also published their Drilling Productivity Report which gave their expected shale oil and gas production through September. Then this morning OPEC published their Monthly Oil Marketing Report with OPEC crude only production numbers through July. First the Drilling Productivity […]

China devaluation heralds currency war

China’s surprise 2 percent devaluation of the yuan on Tuesday pushed the dollar higher and raised the prospect of a new round of currency wars, just as Greece reached a new deal to contain its debt crisis. Stocks fell in Asia and Europe as investors worried about the implications of the move to support China’s […]

The Earth’s Battery Is Running Low

In the quiet of summer, a couple of U.S. scientists argued in the pages of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that modern civilization has drained the Earth — an ancient battery of stored chemical energy — to a dangerous low. Although the battery metaphor made headlines in leading newspapers in China, India […]

How Economic Growth Fails

We all know generally how today’s economy works: Our economy is a networked system. I have illustrated it as being similar to a child’s building toy. Ever-larger structures can be built by adding more businesses and consumers, and by using resources of various kinds to produce an increasing quantity of goods and services. There is […]

The Secret of the Seven Sisters

On August 28, 1928, in the Scottish highlands, began the secret story of oil. Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle – a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman. The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship […]

The Game of Chicken Behind Low Oil Prices

Oil prices are now near a six-year low, moving down earlier today to about $44 a barrel. Friday’s decline came on the back of an upbeat jobs report, which strengthened the dollar, lowering oil prices. The fall has been precipitous: Only a year ago, crude oil was more than $100 a barrel. Two major indicators […]

Oil companies need to resurrect stalled projects

Are we in an oil bust worse than the famous crash of 1986? The investment bank Morgan Stanley thinks so. Oil companies have scrambled to cut costs and shore up their financial positions, and the industry has adopted the mantra that prices will be “lower for longer”. But with no consensus about how much lower […]

Scotland to ban genetically modified crops

Scottish ministers are planning to formally ban genetically modified crops from being grown in Scotland, widening a policy divide with the Conservative government in London. Ministers in Edinburgh are to apply to use recent EU powers that allow devolved administrations to opt out of a more relaxed regime, which is expected to increase commercial use […]

TSHTF Podcast with Nicole Foss, Raul Ilargi Meijer & RE

Recently, Nicole Foss of The Automatic Earth returned to blogging after taking something of a hiatus over the last year.  I caught one of her recent pieces on the situation in China, and her partner Raul Meijer has been covering the situation in Greece extensively. Besides the two ongoing clusterfucks of China & Greece, there’s […]

The Devastation in Global Commodity Currencies Is Far From Over

A bounce in crude oil and other commodity prices Tuesday halted a plunge in currencies of countries linked to natural-resource exports. The respite will be short-lived, according to OppenheimerFunds Inc. The Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollars are off to the worst start to a year since the financial crisis. The nations are grappling with […]

Why Oil Will Never Be Replaced

Summary With an ongoing oil glut, it seems that many people believe that the oil industry is at the start of a long term downturn, due to oil eventually being replaced. Many believe that technological improvements in drilling, newly discovered oil reserves outpacing consumption, and reduced consumption due to electric vehicles will eventually kill the […]

A robotic future for nuclear fusion

In May, it was announced that Amec Foster Wheeler will develop a remote handling system for the ITER fusion reactor in France. The seven-year robotics contract will focus on a system that can handle hazardous and sensitive materials remotely, all with the aim of demonstrating the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a future power source. […]

Seven Books You Must Read If You Want to Understand Oil

Here is some light reading on light crude with a tilt to history, science, and talking your way out of a business meeting on various and sundry hydrocarbons. Read 1,000 pages, and you too can catch the commodity knife in the dark. The rite of passage. What is sick is how this Daniel Yergin required […]

With Iran’s Help, India Eludes China in Race for Gas Riches

Anyone looking for the biggest immediate impact from Iran’s nuclear deal may want to turn away from the Middle East and toward the Indian subcontinent. With U.S. sanctions easing, India is racing to build a port in Iran that will get around the fact that its land access to energy-rich former Soviet republics in Central […]

Venezuela farmers ordered to turn over their food to the government

As Venezuela’s economy continues to worsen — its currency having entered “free fall mode,” according to the Financial Times — the desperate Maduro government has taken the extreme measure of nationalizing the nation’s food industry. Venezuelan farmers and food producers are now required to sell anywhere from 30 percent to 100 percent of their products […]

International Rig Count Still Falling

The Baker Hughes International Rig Count is out. I have decided to try something new with the charts. That is to compare the current year’s rig count with the previous two years count and to insert, within the charts, the percent change for this year as compared to last year. Also, this is the total […]

Reshuffling Eurasia’s energy deck — Iran, China and Pipelineistan

Pipelineistan – the prime Eurasian energy chessboard — never sleeps. Recently, it’s Russia that has scored big on all fronts; two monster gas deals sealed with China last year; the launch of Turk Stream replacing South Stream; and the doubling of Nord Stream to Germany. Now, with the possibility of sanctions on Iran finally vanishing by […]

Peak Oil and what our response should be

Peak Oil will change the way the world works and our long-held assumptions about the world around us is going to be overturned. Peak oil will render millions of people jobless. Those who depend on food made thousands of kms away from where they stay will find food very expensive. That includes all of us […]

Russia’s Energy Giant Implodes

It was not too long ago that Gazprom, the state-controlled energy conglomerate, was one of the Kremlin’s most potent geopolitical weapons. But those days now seem like a distant memory: Gazprom is a financial shadow of its former self. The speed of Gazprom’s decline is breathtaking. At its peak in May 2008, the company’s market […]

Global Oil Supply More Fragile Than You Think

Many oil companies had trimmed their budgets heading into 2015 to deal with lower oil prices. But the rebound in April and May to $60 per barrel from the mid-$40s suggested that the severe drop was merely temporary. But the collapse of prices in July – owing to the Iran nuclear deal, an ongoing production […]

$1 Natural Gas: Crazy Town?

If you take a look at natural gas pricing in the Northeast not every price metric is depressed. We ask Bloomberg Intelligence energy expert Vincent Piazza to talk us through the pricing. “When you think of the Appalachian area,” Vince says, “Think of the Northeast Marcellus and then the Southwestern section of the Marcellus.” There is some imbalance between […]

Are we heading for a world of 11 billion people?

The world population is growing at a slower rate than it was 10 years ago – from 1.24% a decade ago to 1.18% today – according to the United Nations’ latest projections. But that still means we’re adding an extra 83 million people annually. If the projections are accurate, the world population will reach 9.7 […]

Saudi Arabia Might Just Have Blinked In the Oil War

Kenny Rogers is probably not well known in Saudi Arabia but if recent speculation about the kingdom resorting to the international debt market is correct then the words of The Gambler should be called, loudly, from every minaret in Riyadh. If you don’t know Kenny’s signature song it’s the one which includes the refrain: “You’ve […]

How Driverless Cars Could Turn Parking Lots into City Parks

Traffic jams aren’t exactly Zen. People are anxious about getting somewhere else instead of being happy about where they are. To make matters more frustrating: In many cases, the cars clogging roadways are often already at their destination—and just circling the blocks looking for parking. There’s plenty of research showing that a surprisingly large number […]

Pentagon announces deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan

The Pentagon announced the deployment of three more Army units to Iraq and Afghanistan Wednesday, as part of the upcoming rotation of forces scheduled for late summer and early fall. Approximately 1,250 soldiers from the 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, stationed at Fort Drum, New York, will deploy to Iraq, where there are approximately 3,500 […]

15 Things the World Is Running Out of

We live in an era of limited resources—peak oil, peak phosphorous, peak everything. With the world population at nearly 7.4 billion and people living increasingly energy-intensive lifestyles, there has never been a more pressing need to conserve natural resources and develop renewable energy sources. A recent report from James Hansen and 16 other leading climate experts found […]

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