Saudi Arabia Won’t Let Oil Prices Stay Over $40

Saudi Arabia faces a stark choice: either let markets crush American frackers or watch American frackers crush markets. After testing the upper twenties for a couple times, oil prices have staged a huge rally lately, trading above the $40 mark. Energy companies have rallied along, helping major Wall Street averages race towards new highs. But […]

Peak Oil Returns: Why Demand Will Likely Peak By 2030

Think Progress has a post on the “peak oil demand” theory that seems to have come into vogue to replace traditional peak oil theory based on supply depletion – Peak Oil Returns: Why Demand Will Likely Peak By 2030. Is it possible that the world is actually going to follow the path of the “Transport […]

How the greatest technology ever developed backfired on us

Natural selection was probably the factor that led the Irish Elk to develop oversized antlers: they were a beneficial feature for the males in the sexual competition game. However, the weight of the antlers was also a burden and it has been argued that it was one of the reasons, perhaps the main one, that led […]

Villageness

“Before you reach carrying capacity you start to make bad, short-term, expedient decisions.” Towards the end of our two-week Permaculture Design Course at Maya Mountain — their 11th as a host and our personal 50th as a teacher — we sallied out into the Maya world with Chris Nesbitt in search of a turkey for […]

The Rise Of Electric Vehicles

Mother Jones has a look at research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) into the future of electric vehicles – The Bright Future Ahead for Electric Vehicles, in 4 Charts. Last month, Elon Musk predicted that the electric vehicle industry will “definitely suffer” from low oil prices—a barrel of crude is about $33 today, down […]

Peak Oil Revisited: Did I get anything right?

In 2014 I wrote on the arrival of peak oil. That now appears at best premature. So what did I get wrong, and what (if anything) did I get right? In my initial post I made two key assumptions. The first was that fracking would not be that important, because it remained a high-cost method […]

The Government Actually Has A Zombie Apocalypse Plan

A few years ago, the Center for Disease Control launched a zombie preparedness initiative that drew significant attention. The Department of Defense followed suit and developed an entire training course intended for the Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES). The complete response plan, called CONPLAN888, was recently declassified, and it’s just as weird and creepy as you […]

Major Production Projects Start Up Around The World

Production start-ups have occurred all over the globe within the first few months of this year, with considerable increases in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Several additional projects across the latter two regions are expected in the near future, and a variety of recent developments in East Asia are expected to ramp-up their outputs […]

What Happened to Peak Oil?

Peak oil is the point at which global oil production peaks and can only go down. M. King Hubbert developed the theory of peak oil after observing this pattern in individual oil fields and then extrapolating these trends to the U.S., accurately predicting a peak in U.S. production by 1970. But in the last few […]

Why the big run for oil is setting off alarm bells again

It’s been a huge week for markets. Soaring oil helped turn the Dow industrials DJIA, +0.69%  positive for the year on Thursday, and the S&P 500 SPX, +0.44%  has a shot at the green too, if markets behave Friday. Oil settled at a new high for 2016 above $40 a barrel, and is hanging in […]

How Africa Could Leapfrog Fossil Fuels to Clean Energy Alternatives

Revolutions are, as a rule, rare and momentous processes. But across the African continent the potential is ripe for a clean energy revolution that upsets and leapfrogs the old fossil-fuel order. Globally, clean energy technology has developed at a rapid pace, and costs have plummeted – so much so that a predominately clean energy future that […]

An Empirical Model For Oil Prices and Some Implications

This is a guest post by Ian Schindler (Schinzy). The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Ron Patterson or Dennis Coyne. Introduction This work is preliminary. It is a preview of part of a paper I am writing with Aude Illig. There are three main reasons I am making this post. The […]

It’s the Food Economy, Stupid!

I believe Rod MacRae (shown here) is one of a handful of experts to develop a critique of today’s food system based on its bad business case and its failure to do proper scenario planning. If you don’t like reading arithmetic, you will find his writings tough going, but as soon as you subtract that problem, […]

IEA warns consumers of spike in oil prices

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is warning consumers not to let cheap oil lull them into a false sense of security amid forecasts of a price spike by 2021. In a report, the IEA said it expects prices to start recovering in 2017. But it forecasts that will be followed by a sharp jump in […]

Art Berman Clarifies Whatever Happened to Peak Oil

Arthur E. Berman is a petroleum geologist with 37 years of oil and gas industry experience. He is an expert on U.S. shale plays and is currently consulting for several E&P companies and capital groups in the energy sector. Berman has published more than 100 articles on oil and gas plays and trends. He has […]

Russia has less than three decades of oil remaining

“Our recoverable oil reserves are about 29 billion tons. These are the ones that could theoretically be extracted from the subsoil. Crude oil production (without condensate) preliminarily amounted to about 505 million tons in 2015. Such reserves will last for 57 years,” the head of the ministry Sergey Donskoy told Rg.ru. “However, the volume of proved […]

Is This The Rationale Behind Russia’s Withdrawal From Syria?

As reported around the world, Russia’s decision to greatly reduce its military presence in Syria, coming as it did with little warning, has left the world struggling for explanations. After having rescued the Syrian Government’s position in Syria from certain defeat and securing a partial truce along with the onset of an imminent peace conference, […]

Saudi Aramco, Shell to Break Up 18-Year U.S. Refining Marriage

Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Saudi Arabian Oil Co. are ending an 18-year refining partnership as the Anglo-Dutch titan prepares to sell billions of dollars of assets and the Middle East nation’s state oil company weighs an initial public offering. Shell will assume control of two Louisiana refineries operated by the Motiva Enterprises LLC joint venture, as […]

The future of the world’s groundwater

As California grinds into what is likely to be a fifth drought year, awareness of the importance – and poor management – of California’s groundwater is growing. For complex historical and political reasons, the state has acted as though groundwater is separate and isolated from water in our rivers, streams, and reservoirs even though all […]

Our economic growth system is reaching limits in a strange way

Economic growth never seems to be as high as those making forecasts would like it to be. This is a record of recent forecasts by the International Monetary Fund: Figure 1. World GDP Forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. Figure 2 shows world economic growth on  a different basis–a basis that appears to me to […]

China’s nuclear fusion breakthrough produces ‘artificial sun’

While the world is looking at renewable energy as a solution to its energy woes, nuclear fusion has always been considered an alternate. A nuclear fusion experiment conducted by the Hefei Institute of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Science has seen a breakthrough in this field, IANS reports. Their Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak […]

Heinberg: 100% Renewable Energy: What We Can Do in 10 Years

If our transition to renewable energy is successful, we will achieve savings in the ongoing energy expenditures needed for economic production. We will be rewarded with a quality of life that is acceptable—and, perhaps, preferable to our current one (even though, for most Americans, material consumption will be scaled back from its current unsustainable level). […]

When Will The Oil Market Rebalance?

Some observers believe the market must rebalance before oil prices bottom. But that is not necessarily true for futures prices, which are based on price expectations. Projections show the world rebalancing in the second half of 2017. At that point, oil inventories will be much higher, and oil companies will draw them down if prices […]

A Big Win for the Arctic Ocean

President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau announced an ambitious, broad array of initiatives that herald a new day in our cross-border partnership to combat dangerous climate change, transition to a cleaner and more prosperous economy, and protect our shared Arctic environment while supporting the indigenous communities who call it home. For the Arctic Ocean, the […]

A New American Dream

Jeremiah (my partner) and I don’t dream of getting rich, or owning a big house with a white picket fence and a two-car garage, or driving a fancy car. Rather, we dream of a world where our children will have a decent chance of survival and good quality of life – a world with drinkable […]

Devastating photos show lakes vanishing around the world

Warm temperatures and lower snowfall rates are causing several lakes, like Lake Poopó in Bolivia, to vanish. Here are some troubling images of lakes around the world that are vanishing.

Hydraulic Fracturing Accounts for About Half of Current U.S. Crude Oil Production

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, IHS Global Insight, and DrillingInfo Even though hydraulic fracturing has been in use for more than six decades, it has only recently been used to produce a significant portion of crude oil in the United States. This technique, often used in combination with horizontal drilling, has allowed the United States […]

The Oil Price – Some (Mar-16) Observations and Thoughts

In this post I present some selected parameters I monitor which may help understand near term (2-3 years) oil price movements and levels. It has been my understanding for some time that the formulations of fiscal and monetary policies also affects the commodities markets. Changes to total global debt has and will continue to affect […]

Simplicity Has Its Disadvantages

Few of us appreciate just how much we rely upon inexpensive, readily-available supplies of energy to live our lives. [W]hat future awaits us if we cannot be courageous and honest enough to plan for that future with the full range and understanding of all the facts now at our disposal? [1] While there’s surely some […]

The implications of peak energy

Our current society is one based on whim. Whatever we want can be had if we have the money. Not only can we have what we want any time we want it, it’s the done thing to throw it away and buy something else when it breaks or the latest upgrade comes out. We are […]

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