Saudi prince unveils sweeping reform plan for economy

Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced a sweeping reform plan on Monday that he said would transform the kingdom into a global investment power and wean the world’s top oil exporter off crude by 2020. Prince Mohammed, a son of the Saudi king who also serves as defense minister and head of […]

The Rise and Deadly Fall of Islamic State’s Oil Tycoon

Islamic State oil man Abu Sayyaf was riding high a year ago. With little industry experience, he had built a network of traders and wholesalers of Syrian oil that at one point helped triple energy revenues for his terrorist bosses. His days carried challenges familiar to all oil executives—increasing production, improving client relations and dodging directives from […]

Crude power: The oil game uncovered

In an attempt to tackle the global oil crisis, OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers held an extraordinary oil summit in Doha, Qatar’s capital, last week. With the oil price still low and the market heavily oversupplied, 20 oil and energy ministers were trying to find a consensus on a way forward. But they failed to do […]

Saudi Arabia: Nothing But A Lot Of Sand & Hot Air

After three decades of internecine war, Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, allied with the fundamentalist Wahhabist Islamic sect, consolidated the House of Saud’s dominance over Arabia in 1932 with the tacit support of regional imperial power Great Britain. The bedrock of the Saudi Arabian economy, the massive pool of oil in the Al-Hasa region along the Persian […]

The peak is back

An extensive new scientific analysis published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy & Environment says that proved conventional oil reserves as detailed in industry sources are likely “overstated” by half. According to standard sources like the Oil & Gas Journal, BP’s Annual Statistical Review of World Energy, and the US Energy Information Administration, the world contains […]

Market economy, engineers busted oil scarcity myth

Remember “peak oil”? This well-promoted theory was gaining peak notoriety right around the same time it was announced that, when washed through a whole list of “equalizing” adjustments, the Chinese economy had actually usurped the U.S. to become the world’s largest. In hindsight, neither prognostication appears to have been accurate. Imagine that. I’d bet a […]

Russia wants share in Israeli gas

Gazprom’s interest in Israeli gas reservoir Leviathan is a strategic issue for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian press reported at the end of last week that Russia was seeking to enter the Israeli natural gas industry, following a meeting in Russia last Thursday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.It is […]

Is This The End Of The U.S Dollar? Geopolitical Moves “Obliterate U.S Petrodollar Hegemony “

It seems the end really is nigh for the U.S. dollar. And the mudfight for global dominance and currency war couldn’t be more ugly or dramatic. The Saudis are now openly threatening to take down the U.S. economy in the ongoing fallout over collapsing oil prices and tense geopolitical events involving the 9/11 cover-up. The […]

How Much Oil is Left?

In 2005, 60% of world oil production came from just 500 of the giant oil fields of the world, nearly all discovered over 40 years ago (the rest from about 49,000 smaller fields). Therefore, future world oil production depends on the fate of these giant oil fields, because they represent roughly 65% of the global […]

New York Denies Critical Permit for Natural Gas Pipeline

New York environmental regulators have rejected a critical permit needed for a major natural gas pipeline project, saying the project fails to meet standards that protect hundreds of streams, wetlands and other water resources in its path. The Department of Environmental Conservation said Friday it won’t issue a water quality permit for the 124-mile Constitution […]

We are Bacteria in a Petri Dish

  In a previous post, I speculated that a thermodynamic system such our industrial economy is completely dependent from its “outside”. As it grows and incorporates this “outside”, it is obliged to store high entropy inside itself. Possibly, the epidemic diffusion of riots in the very heart of the global system is an indicator of this […]

Harold Hamm endorses Trump for president

Harold Hamm, chief executive of shale oil producer Continental Resources Inc and Mitt Romney’s 2012 energy adviser, endorsed U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday, saying he has the “fortitude to make tough decisions.” Hamm, who had previously donated to U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, called the real estate mogul a “business leader’s candidate” […]

The oil industry is facing ‘a full-scale’ crisis

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the oil industry is in some serious trouble. Prices have plummeted due to a global oversupply and many companies are facing mountains of debt, loads of expenses, and cratering profits. If you’re looking for some good news on the industry, you should look elsewhere. Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard […]

Earth Day predictions from 1970 never came true

Environmentalists truly believed and predicted during the first Earth Day in 1970 that the planet was doomed unless drastic actions were taken. Humanity never quite got around to that drastic action, but environmentalists still recall the first Earth Day fondly and hold many of the predictions in high regard. So this Earth Day, The Daily […]

We Could Be Witnessing the Death of the Fossil Fuel Industry—Will It Take the Rest of the Economy Down With It?

In just two decades, the total value of the energy being produced via fossil fuel extraction has plummeted by more than half. Now $3 trillion of debt is at risk. It’s not looking good for the global fossil fuel industry. Although the world remains heavily dependent on oil, coal and natural gas—which today supply around […]

Fusion Reactor Still in Works

All today’s nuclear power plants make energy by thge splitting of uranium atoms — which creates a lot of useful heat but also a lot of dangerous and deadly nuclear waste. The opposite process — fusion — also creates heat but with hardly any pesky radiation. The problem is that fusion is way more difficult […]

Exit from the Megamachine

Opening a newspaper or listening to the radio news exposes us to a flood of catastrophic messages: devastating droughts, failing states, terrorist attacks, and financial crashes. You can look at all those incidents as unconnected singular phenomena, which is exactly what the common presentation of news suggests. From another angle, however, they appear as symptoms […]

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 4

I’ve mentioned in the prior posts of this series that there were two articles posted online a number of weeks ago *  which caught my attention for reasons which at first puzzled me. No disrespect intended either author, but the contents of each were fairly routine offerings by those who clearly have not accepted the […]

This Earth Day, Let’s Look at How Much Energy We’ve Been Using

Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970, and that got us thinking about how households used energy back then. What did they use it for? Do we follow the same conventional wisdom for saving energy in our homes today, even though there are some obvious differences in the types of devices we use now? We […]

Oil Megaprojects Dreamed Up A Decade Ago Thrive Amid Price Slump

Oil production in some of the riskiest, highest-cost regions of North America is still thriving, even as the worst slump in a generation takes a bite out of U.S. shale. Onshore U.S. output is poised to drop 22 percent from last year through 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration. However, new volumes coming on […]

On Earth Day, Reflect, Celebrate and Push Forward

By Elizabeth Beardsley, Senior Policy Counsel U.S. Green Building Council Earth Day 2016 will be a truly historic event. At the United Nations in New York City, more than 150 countries will sign the Paris Agreement that was forged at COP21. The signing by so many, this quickly, is unprecedented. By signing the agreement, countries […]

Venezuelan Oil Minister: US Sabotaged Doha Meeting

Venezuelan Oil and Mining Minister Euologio del Pino has accused the US government of deliberately scuppering the efforts of major oil-producing countries to put a cap on global production levels amidst a historic slump in oil prices. Referring to a major meeting convened between an array of 18 OPEC and non-OPEC countries in Doha on […]

The $2 Trillion Project to Get Saudi Arabia’s Economy Off Oil

Early last year, at a royal encampment in the oasis of Rawdat Khuraim, Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia visited his uncle, King Abdullah, in the monarch’s final days before entering a hospital. Unbeknown to anyone outside the House of Saud, the two men, separated in age by 59 years, had a rocky history […]

Energy at any cost?

If all else is uncertain, how can growing demand for energy be guaranteed? A review of Vaclav Smil’s Natural Gas. Near the end of his 2015 book Natural Gas: Fuel for the 21st Century, Vaclav Smil makes two statements which are curious in juxtaposition. On page 211, he writes: I will adhere to my steadfast […]

Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years

A report commissioned on behalf of a cross-party group of British MPs authored by a former UK government advisor, the first of its kind, says that industrial civilisation is currently on track to experience “an eventual collapse of production and living standards” in the next few decades if business-as-usual continues. The report published by the […]

How Non-Violence Protects The State

Debates of “violence VS non-violence” sprout up every time there’s a convergence or a new movement, such as “Occupy” or #Nuit Debout” This is why we decided to dust off this interview with Peter Gelderloos author of “How Non-Violence Protects the State”

A Kick-Ass Era to Be Alive

These are turbulent times. Extreme weather events indiscriminately wreak havoc around the world. Floods and landslides wash away entire communities in minutes. Rising urban air pollution cause millions of deaths every year. 200 million youth are unemployed. 1 billion live in urban slums. Political instability, conflict and terror has severely deteriorated the global security situation […]

Limits to Growth: Policies to Steer the Economy away from Disaster

Ed.note: This article was based on a longer paper which can be found here. If the rich nations in the world keep growing their economies by 2% each year and by 2050 the poorest nations catch up, the global economy of more than 9 billion people will be around 15 times larger than it is […]

Chernobyl and Fukushima: lessons not learned

Around 8,000 km and 25 years separate the catastrophic Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters. There are clear differences between the Ukraine and Japan-based catastrophes, but what are some of the more subtle distinctions? And how were they similar? Both power stations opened in the 1970s; Fukushima in 1971 and Chernobyl six years later. The Japanese […]

Saudi Arabia is a Cancer on the World

Saudi Arabia is a cancer on the world. Saudi Arabia is the worst country in the world, bar none. If it disappeared off the map tomorrow, the planet would hold the biggest party you’ve ever seen. So why does Obama bow to Saudi royals like he’s their house bitch every time he visits?

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