Tight Oil Reality Check

Much of the cost-benefit debate over fracking has come down to the perception of just how much domestic oil and gas it can produce and at what cost. To answer this question, policymakers, the media, and the general public have typically turned to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), which every year publishes its Annual […]

800 Ways Taxpayer Money Supports Fossil Fuel Industries

As world leaders converge on New York for a United Nations gathering that’s expected to have a strong emphasis on climate change, the OECD is pointing out 800 ways rich industrial nations support fossil fuels with taxpayer money, along with a handful of countries that are catching up quickly. The measures were worth $167 billion last […]

Cold Fusion: History 1869 to 2015

Last week in Part I of this three column series, I discussed the science of cold fusion. I had been considering writing about cold fusion for some time. Then last month the U.S. patent office issued a patent for a fluid heater to Italian inventor Andrea Rossi that, as we will discuss further below, purports […]

Kunstler: Fed Cred Dead

The economy is a two-headed monster. One head is the trade in real goods and real services. The other head is the financialized traffic in swindles and frauds that surrounds banking. There is some deception and overlap about which is which. For instance so-called health care might be perceived as a real service. In fact, […]

OPEC Sees a Return to $80 Oil

The short-term outlook for oil remains murky, with calls ranging for oil to be anywhere between $20 and $70 a barrel before year-end. However, longer term the picture for crude is starting to come into clearer focus as two very distinct trends emerge: Demand is rising while supplies are falling. This has OPEC starting to […]

Fracking Productivity Doubling Every Two Years

From fewer than 50 barrels a day in 2009 to 400 barrels today, fracking technology has advanced at a pace that has doubled oil well production every 2 years. That pace of productivity improvement is almost identical to the computer industry’s Moore’s Law, which expects the speed of processing chip to double every 2 years. […]

Russian Government Readies for $30 Oil

Russia’s government has been discussing ways to tackle the tough economic environment if oil falls to as low as $30 per barrel next year, RBC daily reported on Monday, citing government sources. That scenario was discussed at a government meeting chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev earlier this month, the newspaper cited two unnamed government sources as saying. […]

Oil-Dollar Breakdown

There is an almost dogmatic belief that the price of oil and the dollar have an inverse relationship. While in recent years, the dollar/oil inverse correlation has been very tight, throughout history that has not always been the case. In fact in the oil market and that of other commodities, we may be on the […]

Simple, cheap living is possible for those who don’t consume by reflex

I enjoy living simply and healthy on less than half the United States poverty level and less than half the federal income taxable level for me as a single person — to boycott the U.S. empire’s greed and wars. I lived well in 2014 on $4,923 for my total expenses — rent, food, etc. I […]

What happened to peak oil? The cycle of a meme and of its antimemes

The result of a Google Trends search for the term “Peak Oil”. The fading out of the concept may be due not so much to reasons related to the validity (or non validity) of the concept but, rather, to a memetic phenomenon equivalent to the development of an immune response in the human body. Not […]

How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem

Usually, we don’t stop to think about how the whole economy works together. A major reason is that we have been lacking data to see long-term relationships. In this post, I show some longer-term time series relating to energy growth, GDP growth, and debt growth–going back to 1820 in some cases–that help us understand our […]

The Dragon Ships Are Coming

Something exciting is happening and it involves dragon ships that will transport Marcellus Shale gas to European markets as an alternative to Russian gas. Range Resources and INEOS have partnered to export Ethane from Marcellus Shale across the Atlantic Ocean, to European Countries, via ship. At 2:43 in the video following they show the Markwest cracker […]

Russia’s ultimate lethal weapon

Let’s start with some classic Russian politics. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov is drawing up Russia’s economic strategy for 2016, including the government budget. Siluanov – essentially a liberal, in favor of foreign investment – will present his proposals to the Kremlin by the end of this month. So far, nothing spectacular. But then, a few […]

You Call this Progress?

One of the prevailing narratives of our time is that we are innovating our way into the future at break-neck speed. It’s just dizzying how quickly the world around us is changing. Technology is this juggernaut that gets ever bigger, ever faster, and all we need to do is hold on for the wild ride […]

Recent Statistical Revisions Suggest Higher Historical Coal Consumption in China

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, China National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Note: Revised data from or implied by China Statistical Abstract 2015; previously reported data from China Statistical Yearbook 2014. The values for coal reflect its lower heating value. New preliminary data from the China Statistical Abstract 2015 (CSA2015) show an upward revision to China’s […]

Michael Lynch: What Did You Do In The Oil War, Daddy?

The past decade with its commodity supercycle and growing environmental concerns has revived fears that some combination of resource scarcity and environmental degradation will or has increased the likelihood of military conflict. Thomas Friedman in the New York Times argues that the current flood of refugees into Europe reflects three big factors, one of which […]

U.S. oil waits out decline

West Texas Intermediate crude oil has dropped in price more than 50 percent this year. The International Energy Agency, meanwhile, reports rising oil inventories. Whether the dramatic fall in oil prices indicates a short term dip or a permanent deterioration, oil companies are cutting back — even borrowing — to maintain dividends and keep shares […]

This is what the future of the US Army will look like

On September 17, I had the privilege of testifying before the Congressionally-mandated Commission on the Future of the Army. Its members include retired Army generals Carter Ham, Larry Ellis, JD Thurman, and Jack Stultz, former Pentagon officials Robert Hale, Thomas Lamont, and Kathleen Hicks, and former Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler III. It […]

Saudis Winning Oil Market Share Wars Despite Fiscal Pain

Saudi Arabia appears to be winning the oil exporters tussle for market share, even if it is denting the country’s coffers. Anecdotal and empirical evidence doing the industry rounds was backed up by US Energy Information Administration’s recent research pointing to the OPEC heavyweight maintaining its crude oil market share among Asian customers, where much […]

In a Mideast upset by cheap oil, more crude may enter market

Across a Mideast fueled by oil production, low global prices have some countries running on empty and scrambling to cover shortfalls, even as more regional crude is on tap to enter the market. While some Gulf nations rest on ample reserve funds, embattled Iraq is desperate to scrounge up more money for its fight against […]

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson on Energy

Charlie Rose, March 8 2013: ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson discusses the difficulties with algae to fuels technology.

The Population Control Conspiracy

Does the world need population control, or does it need corporation control? According to Jim Marrs in his new book Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us, corporate owners, the one-percenters, are killing us, and it may be intentional. Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III, who is suspected by some of being one of the […]

Is This The End Of The U.S Shale Gas Revolution

While everyone is watching the oil bust, there is another bust going on – one for natural gas. Before there was a boom in oil production in the United States, there was the “shale gas revolution.” That is where we all became familiar with terms like “fracking.” And the Marcellus, Haynesville, and Barnett Shales were […]

Decades-Long “Megadrought” Looms For Entire US As Lake Powell Runs Dry, NASA Warns

With the number of people living in the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains, and the volume of water they need, having increased rapidly over recent decades – and, with NASA scientists expecting these trends to continue for years to come – the current severe drought combined with the tapping of the Lake Powell’s water at […]

Robert Rapier: Peak Oil is a Function of Oil Price

The Origins of Peak Oil Awareness The scientific study of peak oil began in the 1950′s, when Shell geophysicist M. King Hubbert reported on the evolution of production rates in oil and gas fields. In a 1956 paper Hubbert suggested that oil production in a particular region would approximate a bell curve, increasing exponentially during […]

Saudi Aramco says Amin Nasser appointed as CEO

The world’s biggest oil firm Saudi Aramco has picked a career petroleum engineer who oversaw its biggest projects of the past decade, Amin Nasser, to lead it through a price downturn and a market share battle. The announcement from the Saudi Arabian state company ends five months of uncertainty about the new boss at the […]

Another World is Inevitable

I don’t normally comment in these essays on the political affairs of other countries. As I’ve noted more than once here, the last thing the rest of the world needs is one more clueless American telling everyone else on the planet what to do.  What’s more, as the United States busies itself flailing blindly and […]

From Saudi Skyscrapers to Turkish Tunnels

What do the world’s tallest skyscraper in Saudi Arabia, a sea-water-desalination system in Cyprus, and an underwater tunnel in Turkey all have in common? They all represent challenges that growing cities face, and in all these projects, BASF has helped to meet these challenges. It is estimated that more than 70 percent of the world’s […]

Nuclear fusion could work – but only if we cough up some money

This December, world leaders will gather in Paris for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where they will attempt – yet again – to hammer out a global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Despite the inevitable sense of déjà vu that will arise as negotiators struggle to reach a compromise, they must not give up. […]

Kuwait To Start Offshore Oil Exploration

Kuwait plans to start an offshore oil exploration programme within two years, state news agency KUNA on Wednesday cited a Kuwait Oil Co (KOC) executive as saying, part of plans to boost oil output capacity. In comments suggesting Kuwait will maintain energy investments despite plunging oil prices, KOC’s manager of planning, Bader Al-Attar, was quoted […]

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