What does a year’s worth of crude oil look like?

Right from the beginning the oil story has always been about big numbers. But what do those numbers mean? Imagine a city building that is 1 kilometre square – about half the size of Sydney’s CBD. Now picture it towering 4.5 kilometres into the sky, up amongst the clouds. That is the volume of oil […]

Is Crude Oil Facing Peak Storage?

Crude Oil (WTI) has had a troubling week, as the commodity continues to slide lower as growing over supply concerns point to further falls ahead. In fact, as a veritable conga line of tankers navigate towards the United States, some are now asking at what point “peak storage” have been reached. A range of factors […]

A Human Tsunami of Overshoot

By now, everyone who follows the Collapse blogs knows about the escalating Refugee crisis in Europe, as desperate Syrians and Afghanis attempt to escape War Zones for a new life in the Promised Lands of Sweden and Germany. Already, with barely the first ripple of this wave rolling in, communities from Kos & Lesbos in […]

Promethean Porn and Malthusian Mistakes

Dear Leigh Hello, my name is Mr Puck. I heard about your new book, Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn-Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. Now, a title involving the word ‘porn’ that isn’t actually about, er, porn usually indicates something that’s well worth not reading (yes, reader, I know, I know […]

The roar of the energy midgets: Keshe beats Rossi hands down

We can use “Google Trends” to analyze results of the competition among improbable energy devices. According to the latest available data, Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, inventor of free energy devices who can also cure cancer, is winning hands down against Andrea Rossi, the inventor of the famed nuclear water boiler called the “E-Cat.” Keshe also attracts more attention than […]

It’s Too Early to Assume Peak Oil Demand

“I believe we may not see $100 (oil) ever again,” said Vitol’s Ian Taylor last week in London. His rationale for making such a prediction is the belief that global oil demand will peak in the medium term. “I have begun feeling that… we are coming to peak demand towards 2030,” said Taylor, the CEO […]

IEA Sees No Oil Price Rebound For Years

Oil prices are likely to stay below $80 per barrel for another five years, according to a closely watched energy report. The International Energy Agency released its 2015 World Energy Outlook (WEO), with predictions for energy markets out to 2040. Although there are no shortage of caveats, the IEA projects that oil prices will only […]

Asia Faces Fertility Crisis

China is not alone. The Asian giant recently abandoned its one-child policy. But other Asian countries, seeking to maximize economic growth, are also struggling with population and family-size policies as they cope with lower fertility rates among their population. However, demographers say socioeconomic changes – not government policies – are the fundamental reasons for low […]

IEA sees Radical Shifts, Despite Conservatism

The next 25 years will see a radical shift towards renewables and away from coal, a global energy centre of gravity pivoting towards India and the prospect of Africa leapfrogging dirty energy. These are some of the insights touted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2015, published this week. The annual outlook, […]

Get ready for car-as-a-service (CaaS)

Self-driving cars are expected to take over the roadways in the next two decades, but the vast majority of the fleet will likely be dedicated to services and not owned by individuals, according to a new report by IHS Automotive. Within five years, Google and carmakers are expected to have driverless vehicles on the world’s […]

Kurt Cobb: Money Cannot Manufacture Resources

Author Kurt Cobb writes frequently on energy and the environment and warns that our current economic policy suffers from a fatal degree of magical thinking: sufficient new resources will emerge if the price is high enough. As any fourth grader will tell you, a finite system will not yield unlimited resources. But that perspective is […]

Discovery of New Plasma Confinement State Holds the key to Generate Fusion Energy

A research on high-temperature and high-density plasma confinement by magnetic fields could help achieve fusion energy. Scientists have discovered a new confinement state of plasma which can lead to generate fusion energy. To create magnetic fusion energy, researches on high-temperature and high density plasma confinement using magnetic fields have been carried out all around the […]

Saudi Arabia’s manifesto for change in the face of rumours of coup plots

In rare public statement, advisers to all-powerful Prince Mohammed bin Salman tell Telegraph of plans for opening up country’s economy and society Saudi Arabia has issued a manifesto for change in the face of rumours of coup plots and international pressure, ranging from economic reform to the role of women and allowing human rights groups […]

Why the oil market is behaving normally

FROM John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in the late 1800s, through the Railroad Commission of Texas in 1930, to OPEC since 1960, institutions have long tried to control and stabilise the oil market for their own benefit. Only rarely, says Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Centre on Global Energy Policy, has the oil market behaved […]

Lessons from the Icelandic vs Greek collapse

Greek protesters clash with policemen during riots at a May Day rally in Athens May 1, 2010.  Credit: Joanna CC-BY-SA 2.0 Debt = theft from future generations All economic activity requires energy to perform useful work. Without an increasing flow of net energy to society the economy starts to contract. The extraction of finite fossil […]

The Biggest Threat To Oil Prices: 2-Mile Long Stretch Of Iraq Oil Tankers Headed For The U.S.

After some initial excitement, November has seen crude oil prices collapse back towards cycle lows amid demand doubts (e.g. sllumping China oil imports, overflowing Chinese oil capacity, plunging China Industrial Production) and supply concerns (e.g. inventories soaring). However, an even bigger problem looms that few are talking about. As Iraq – the fastest-growing member of […]

Inside The World’s Largest Apocalypse Shelter

It stands alone in a quiet valley in the Czech Republic, bordered by a magnificent countryside. The estate is surrounded by high walls, and is not visible at ground level. From the air, the compound appears to be a large administration center. This is The Oppidum, a massive 323,000 square foot property with plans for […]

Feeling the Elephant

Most people have heard the Indian tale about the blind men and the elephant. For those that have not, it goes something like this. A group of blind men come across an elephant and, perhaps puzzled by the noise it is making, set out one by one to investigate. The first one feels the elephant’s […]

On the Verge of the Great Unraveling

The figures are staggering. In what looks like a vast population transfer from a disintegrating Greater Middle East, nearly 200,000 refugees passed through Austria in September alone. About half a million desperate refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have arrived in Greece since 2015 began (those, that is, who don’t die at sea), and the […]

China, Mideast Gas Use to Overtake Europe by 2035

Europe won’t return to peak consumption levels seen in 2010 China’s unconventional gas producion growth uncertain China and the Middle East, spurred by lower prices and ample supply, will drive global natural gas demand growth in the next 25 years as consumption in Europe fails to recover to peak levels seen in 2010, according to […]

The Rapidly Rising Cost Of Living Is Killing The Middle Class In America

All over America, the middle class is dying and poverty is on the rise.  One of the primary reasons for this is the rapidly rising cost of living in the United States.  The cost of just about everything that average families shell out money for on a regular basis – food, rent, health insurance, etc. […]

Saudi Arabia Preparing To Fuel Its $100 Billion Oil War With Debt

Saudi Arabia has probably spent around $100 billion of its foreign reserves by now to prosecute its war against American shale and other low-cost oil producers. The oil kingdom’s decision one year ago not to cut production to support oil prices has driven the price of both Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate down below […]

Designing Resilient Communities

AERO [Alternative Energy Resources Organization] asked Max Milton, who presented a terrific community resilience workshop at the 2014 AERO Annual Meeting, to tell us more about how a serious consideration of resilience can inform the work we each do daily, as well as the future direction of AERO. Here are five questions and their thought-provoking answers. What […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Next ‘Keystone’ Debate

Unless a Republican wins the the Presidential election in 2017, the 7-year debate over whether to build the Keystone pipeline is probably over. Gone will be the endless TV and newspaper ads describing the dangers of either building or not building it. Waiting in the wings, however, is another energy/climate debate that will make the […]

The Left should Embrace Degrowth

Degrowth is a frontal attack on the ideology of economic growth. Some call it a critique: a slogan or a ‘missile word’. Others talk of the ‘theory of’ – or the ‘literature on’ – degrowth; or of degrowth policies’. Many see themselves as the ‘degrowth movement’ or claim they live ‘the degrowth way’. What is […]

Oil Supply Outside OPEC to Stagnate by 2020

OPEC’s share of the global oil market will expand from 2020 as prices recover to $80 and supply outside the group stagnates due to spending cuts, according to the International Energy Agency. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ share of global supply will remain steady at 41 percent until 2020 then rise to 44 percent […]

What were the Real Origins of the great oil crisis of the 1970s?

If you happen to be caught in a boat in a major storm, such as in this image by Hokusai, you’ll surely think you experiencing a major shock. However, it is also true that no storm changes the average water level of the oceans. So, the oil storms of the 1970s were perceived as major […]

Rebel Media in an age of crisis

We live in tumultuous times. Our world is wracked by a convergence of destabilizing and devastating wars, soaring levels of inequality, and mass waves of human displacement. Battered by increasingly erratic weather patterns, we are haunted by the terrifying spectre of ecological collapse. Ours is an age of crisis. This crisis takes many forms: from […]

Shale revolution is irreversible

Since 2010, American oil production has grown by about four million barrels per day (almost all of it extracted from shale formations), irreversibly changing our own, and the global, energy landscape. Our daily production now exceeds that of Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer and its key member, now struggling to understand the North American shale […]

5 Stages Of The Oil Industry

It’s Not That Simple In my previous article Why the Bakken Boomed, I discussed the shale oil boom that has had such a dramatic impact in North Dakota’s Williston Basin over the past decade. But throughout the U.S. shale boom there have been those who doubted that the production gains would prove anything other than fleeting. […]

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