End of Petroleum-Centric World?

Plummeting oil prices may challenge the established geopolitical status-quo and even result in war and turmoil, experts warn. Will the petroleum-centric world of the past half-century be restored again soon? The current slump in oil prices has affected giant oil corporations and the ancillary businesses; it also threatens to undermine economies of major energy-producing countries resulting in a “profound […]

Save Us from the Tyranny of ‘Settled’ Science

In classrooms across the country, high school students are taught the scientific method. It consists of constructing a doubtful hypothesis and designing a series of experiments to test the hypothesis with the observable facts. After a number of tests prove positive. The student can then take the facts and reach a conclusion. When a conclusion […]

Supply? Demand? Emotion? The Future Of Crude Oil Futures Volatility

Many crude oil market observers point to current global inventory levels to explain today’s low prices.  The recent price decline is also attributed to concern about possible future decline in Chinese demand growth. The problem with both of these explanations is that no one can describe with sufficient certainty the causal relationship between current crude […]

Saudi Arabia: A Weak Kingdom On Its Knees?

The great Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – the long-time dictator of crude oil prices for the world – is struggling on all fronts. The Saudis are losing their proxy wars in both Syria and Yemen; their OPEC leadership is under threat; they are not winning the crude oil price war; and its long-running alliance with […]

Yergin: Pressure on Oil Downward

IHS Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin discuss his outlook for the price and production of oil. He speaks on “Bloomberg Markets.” bloomberg

We Might Have Finally Seen Peak Coal

Chinese coal use peaked back in 2013, as Climate Progress first reported in May. Since China was responsible for some 80 percent of the growth in global demand since 2000 — and since the United States and most of the industrialized world have also started cutting coal use — the key remaining question for the […]

China, Oil Show Peril of Faulty Assumptions

National home prices never go down. Eurozone countries don’t default. Saudi Arabia won’t let the price of oil crash. China’s demand for raw materials is infinite. These are some of the most cherished assumptions of investors and policy makers in the past decade, assumptions that have underpinned trillions of dollars of investment and debt. The U.S. housing […]

The Odd Consequences of the Oil Price Crash

In the middle of 2014, oil traded for more than $100 a barrel. Today, it is below $35. Traditionally, there would be numerous positives from low oil prices, but many of these have yet to materialize or may no longer be relevant at all. The U.S. shale boom, one of the great American growth stories, […]

6 predictions for 2016

2015 proved to be an interesting year for energy and climate issues both globally and in the UK. Will 2016 hold more of the same? Forecasting is a dangerous business, but here are six predictions you should keep an eye on. 1) The showdown on oil prices between Saudi Arabia and the US will intensify, and the […]

Oil could crash to $10 a barrel

Petrol prices could fall back to levels last seen in 2009 as major banks say there is no bottom in sight for the world’s lopsided market Oil prices have crashed to below $30-a-barrel amid warnings the rout could reach as low as $10 and bring down petrol prices to levels last seen in 2009. Standard […]

The Woman Shaping Iran’s Oil Future

At Monsoon, a bistro in Tehran that serves sushi, Szechwan beef, and Gouda and calamari on whole wheat toast, the fusion cuisine is an act of defiance. So are the women’s fashions—tight robes, exposed calves, headscarves that barely conceal blond and henna-colored hairstyles. The restaurant, with its rough concrete walls, red countertops, and statues of […]

Obama’s New Energy Economy Relies On Renewables And Natural Gas

President Obama’s glide through the lower chamber on his way to deliver his final State of the Union differed from his very first one seven years ago. In 2009, he was imbued with a confidence and a spirit — one to carry out his message of “Change We Need.” On Tuesday evening, he was self-assured, […]

Inside the Chinese Meltdown Rocking Wall Street

The Skinny on How This Monster Economy Is Losing Steam – and the Worldwide Fallout The Year of the Red Monkey, also known as the Fire Monkey, starts next month in China. According to Chinese astrologers, the year will be a real rollercoaster ride, filled with surprise and mischief. And, they say, it bodes well […]

Humans Innovate Their Way Out of Scarcity

Last week, the World Bank updated its commodity database, which tracks the price of commodities going back to 1960. Over the last 55 years, the world’s population has increased by 143 percent. Over the same time period, real average annual per capita income in the world rose by 163 percent. What happened to the price […]

Michael Klare: The Oil Pricequote

As 2015 drew to a close, many in the global energy industry were praying that the price of oil would bounce back from the abyss, restoring the petroleum-centric world of the past half-century.  All evidence, however, points to a continuing depression in oil prices in 2016 — one that may, in fact, stretch into the […]

Can ISIS Actually Gain Power Over Libya’s Oil?

As it turns out, Syria was merely a springboard for a much larger ISIS plan—replenishing terrorist coffers by taking over oil assets in war-torn Libya. The terror group has largely taken control of the Libyan city of Sirte and its hundreds of miles of coastline, and has ransacked two key oil terminals in an attempt […]

Yes, a New Epoch has Begun

Repeatedly, over hundreds of thousands of years, glaciers expanded south and north from the polar regions, covering much of the Earth with ice sheets several kilometres deep. Twelve thousand years ago, the Earth warmed and the ice retreated — the relatively warm and stable time since then is known to geologists as the Holocene epoch. […]

Oil crashes to $30 a barrel

The dramatic crash in crude oil prices just got even more stunning. Oil plummeted below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since December 2003. The latest wave of selling leaves crude oil down 19% this year alone. It represents an incredible 72% plunge from crude oil’s June 2014 peak of almost $108. […]

Friendly Colonialism

The public’s reaction to Justin Trudeau’s election is reminiscent to Obama’s victory in 2008. But despite the fact that Trudeau voted for the totalitarian, police state-inducing legislation, Bill C-51, and unequivocally supports existing pipeline proposals, and the expansion of the Tar Sands, loads of so-called “progressives” are swooning. Now Trudeau is aiming to co-opt and […]

Robert Rapier: My 2016 Energy Predictions

When I made my annual energy predictions a year ago, I noted that I foresaw a “lot of uncertainty in the energy markets” and indicated that “the direction on several fronts is unclear.” That certainly proved to be the case as numerous pundits – including me – missed on oil price predictions. Unfortunately, the market […]

Father of Koch Brothers Helped Nazis

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families. The book, “Dark Money,” by Jane Mayer, traces the rise of the modern conservative movement through […]

Half of US shale drillers may go bankrupt

Half of U.S. shale oil producers could go bankrupt before the crude market reaches equilibrium, Fadel Gheit, said Monday. The senior oil and gas analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. said the “new normal oil price” could be 50 to 100 percent above current levels. He ultimately sees crude prices stabilizing near $60, but it could […]

Meet Manifa (And Other Giant Oil Projects) That Will Add To The Global Oil Glut

World oil consumption is more than 90 million barrels a day. Between 2009 and 2014 oil was traded for about 110 dollars a barrel; now oil is changing hands for 32 dollars a barrel. Roughly a 7-billion-dollar cash flow a day is vanishing from the global market. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund that has accumulated a […]

Oil at $20 a Barrel?

The turmoil in energy markets may be set to continue. Crude oil is trading at a 12-year low as Morgan Stanley predicts Brent may tumble to $20 a barrel. Bloomberg’s Dan Murtaugh reports on “First Up.”

Your Basic Essentials

“Dish-washing is my balm and poultice.”—Robert Mifflin in The Haunted Bookshop The wind is up outside the windows of my cozy study this morning. I hear tin tumbling across the ground near the wood yard. Something has come loose during the night, hopefully not a roof. A well-attached roof is an essential for living comfortably. […]

Kunstler: Discovery

It looks like 2016 will be the year that humanfolk learn that the stuff they value was not worth as much as they thought it was. It will be a harrowing process because a great many humans are abandoning ownership of things that are rapidly losing value — e.g. stocks on the Shanghai exchange — […]

The REAL Reason Sunni Governments Like Saudi Arabia Are At War Against the Shias

The Shias Are Sitting On All of the Oil and Gas While the Sunnis and Shias have been competing for more than a thousand years, they have largely co-existed peacefully until recently. Why are they involved in an open war across multiple countries now? Much of modern geopolitics is driven by hydrocarbons … i.e. oil […]

Saudi Aramco: Bigger Oil, Bigger Trouble

“Big oil” is really a misnomer. It may not be for long. The largest energy company that investors can easily own is Exxon Mobil. It is by most standards massive, having rivaled Apple for the global market-value crown before the latest commodity swoon. But its proven reserves of 25 billion oil-equivalent barrels pale in comparison with […]

The US Government Is The Most Complete Criminal Organization In Human History

Unique among the countries on earth, the US government insists that its laws and dictates take precedence over the sovereignty of nations. Washington asserts the power of US courts over foreign nationals and claims extra-territorial jurisdiction of US courts over foreign activities of which Washington or American interest groups disapprove. Perhaps the worst results of […]

Arthur Berman: Why The Price Of Oil Must Rise

Geologist Arthur Berman explains why today’s low oil prices are not here to stay, something investors and consumers alike should be very aware of. The crazy-low prices we’re currently experiencing are due to an oversupply created by geopolitics and (historic) easy credit, not by sustainable economics. And when the worm turns, we are more likely […]

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