Introducing Turn 21

As part of Launch Turn21, we were recently interviewed for the University of Hawaii’s student paper, Ke Kalahea. Here are the answers to their questions, useful in conveying what Turn21 is about.  What is Turn 21? Turn21 is a group of committed and concerned citizens of the planet dedicated to preserving the only world we have, here […]

OPEC Update

All charts are updated through March 2016 The latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report is out out. The charts are “Crude Only” production and do not reflect condensate production. Also the charts, except for Libya, are not zero based. I chose to amplify the change rather than the total. OPEC is now 13 nations with the […]

Iran’s Dilemma: Too Much Oil And Not Enough Ships

Late last week, just ahead of the Doha meeting, we reported that Iran’s existing oil tanker armada, which until recently had been on anchor next to the Iranian coast and which according to Windward data was storing as much as 50 million barrels offshore, had finally started to move. The reason, as Bloomberg reported, was […]

Saudi Arabia forced to BORROW $10 billion as tumbling oil prices continue to hit the kingdom’s finances

Saudi Arabia is being forced to borrow $10 billion as the world’s top oil exporter seeks to fill a record budget deficit caused by low crude prices. The kingdom had initally been seeking to raise between $6billion and $8billion through a loan lasting for five years for its first foreign borrowing in more than a […]

Why $80 could be ‘new normal’ for oil

The “new normal” for U.S. oil prices could be as much as double the current $40 per barrel, but don’t expect $65 to $80 crude until around 2018, long-time industry advisor Tom Petrie said Wednesday. “We overshot on the downside, when we penetrated $30 [per barrel],” Petrie said, referring to the Feb. 11 bottom of […]

Iraq Says OPEC, Others to Meet on Output Freeze Possibly in May

Iraq sees oil prices rising slowly despite Doha talks failure Country wants producers to agree to short-term output freeze Major OPEC and other crude producers will meet in Russia, possibly next month, in a new push to agree on an output freeze to shore up oil prices, Iraq’s Deputy Oil Minister Fayyad Al-Nima said. Iraq […]

Mexico’s oil reserves slashed by a fifth

Platts has a look at Mexico’s declining oil reserves – Mexico’s reserves slashed by a fifth. The article also notes that the West’s biggest integrated oil companies also failed to replace, on average, their production with new reserves for a second year running, with just half of all production replenished over the year. “ExxonMobil, Chevron, […]

Lithium: An increasingly precious metal

While the Australian mining boom is now receding in the rear view mirror, one mining sector that is still attracting enthusiastic investment is the lithium mining industry. Western Australia currently produces about 30% of the world’s lithium supplies, and 20 new companies are scrambling about the state trying to take advantage of the boom in […]

Hubbert’s Peak or Yergin’s Plateau?

In 1956, Shell geologist M. King Hubbert correctly predicted that oil production in the United States would reach a peak around 1970. Since his Peak Oil theory fits so well with the Malthusian worldview of “Progressives”, anti-capitalists and anarchists, Hubbert has become a posthumous hero to the Left, an unusual role for a scientist polluted […]

American gas for Europe?

With the spotlight remaining firmly focussed on the UK steel industry and the UK jobs at risk, there has been much talk around the collapse in demand for steel worldwide and in turn global steel prices and the role of cheap Chinese imports. The result has been a global culling of production capacity and the […]

Hedging Your Bets in a Water-Stressed World

You probably have some sort of insurance – for your healthcare, car, house, or apartment. Acting on climate change is also like insurance. It is all about managing the risks. We can’t know for certain what the future brings, but recent research predicts a 40 percent shortfall of available water across the globe by 2030. […]

Total U.S. Energy Production Increases for Sixth Consecutive Year

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review Total U.S. energy production increased for the sixth consecutive year. According to data in EIA’s most recent Monthly Energy Review, energy production reached a record 89 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu), equivalent to 91% of total U.S. energy consumption. Liquid fuels production drove the increase, with an […]

MIT Prof Says Carbon Tax Only Way to Stop Fossil Fuels

There may be no more efficient method of communication than price. The market always knows best. Prices instantly convey the collective wisdom of producers and consumers involved at every stage of production, signaling to each whether they should produce, or consume, more or less. For years, opponents of fossil fuels have warned of “peak oil,” […]

Thousands Of Gallons Of Radioactive Waste Leak At Nuclear Site

The ongoing radioactive leak problems at the Hanford Site, a nuclear storage tank in Washington State, are nothing new. We first wrote about the ongoing radioative leakage at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, in 2013.   As a reminder, during the Cold War, the […]

US 2015 Oil Production and Future Oil Prices

Oil production can be confusing because there are various “pieces” that may or may not be included. In this analysis, I look at oil production of the United States broadly (including crude oil, natural gas plant liquids, and biofuels), because this is the way oil consumption is defined. I also provide some thoughts regarding the direction […]

Steady State Economies

What is it like to live in a steady state economy? Miss Hokusai in Edo Japan   “Miss Hokusai” is a delicate and beautiful movie set during the late Edo period in Japan. It may give us a feeling of what it is like to live in a steady-state economy. In the picture from the […]

Energy And The 2016 Presidential Candidates

With the New York presidential primaries just a day away, it is enlightening to hear what each candidate thinks about the controversial issues surrounding energy and power. Energy is far more important to our future, our economy and our national interest than immigrant walls or bathroom gender tests. Of the five presidential candidates, two believe […]

A Personal Appreciation of M. King Hubbert

A recent vacation afforded me the opportunity to read The Oracle of Oil, Mason Inman’s excellent new biography of Marion King Hubbert. I strongly recommend it. But, rather than writing a standard book review (which might cover much of the same ground as this one by Frank Kaminski), I’m inspired instead simply to offer a few words in […]

Stashing the Booty

This week we take you inside the sketchy world of booty hiding, otherwise known as offshore tax havens. If you love what we do, consider supporting us! In the music break UK rap crew dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip with “Great Britain” Then we continue of our coverage of a revolution that’s taking France […]

Making Meaning for the Ending of Our Days, part 2

Stephen Jenkinson asserts that our death-phobic culture considers “The best death is the least death” — basically dying quickly and knowing little about dying. He titled his book Die Wise rather than Die Wisely to encourage us to learn about dying from those who die before us. He advocates being exposed to dying people from […]

The Real Test Of The Petro Dollar System

Currently the US Dollar, traded on the stock market as (UUP), and (USDU); is the world’s reserve currency. Although there is talk of the fall of the US Dollar as the world reserve currency, it’s all talk and there’s no signs that this will happen any time soon. Hungary recently issued sovereign bonds in Yuan – but […]

What really happens if Saudi Arabia starts pumping more oil?

A month ago, I wrote about “why OPEC will never cut production again.” This weekend we saw Saudi Arabia put an exclamation point on the matter by scuttling a deal in Doha for an oil production freeze. The repurcussions of this decision will obviously be far reaching. Stating that “if we don’t freeze, then we […]

Kunstler: The Elephant Cometh

The elephant’s not even in the room, which is why the 2016 election campaign is such a soap opera. The elephant outside the room is named Discontinuity. That’s perhaps an intimidating word, but it is exactly what the USA is in for. It means that a lot of familiar things come to an end, stop, don’t […]

Habitat Loss

What happens to us as a people when the sources of knowledge are only to be found outside of our communities? When we ask the internet for gardening advice on a plot of land between Paint Rock Valley and Big Sandy instead of the farmer who has lived those conditions for eighty years? When our […]

An Energy Diet for a Healthy Planet – Part II

I’ve written before about how efficiency is not the enemy of resiliency and the benefits of going all-electric. In Part I, I mentioned a few ways to cut our energy diet from 230 kwh /person/day to 100 kwh/person/day. I also pointed out that 56 kwh/person/day of our energy consumption is lost as waste heat in […]

Timing of the peak all-important

Strange new economic phenomena will kick in the moment oil production peaks, turning normal national finance ministry policies on their heads The reason there is such heated debate over when exactly peak oil is due to arrive is because, at the point of the peak, the fundamental laws of economics governing oil production, consumption, and […]

Too Much Water to Waste?

Does California have too much water? Seriously. Because our actions are sending peculiar messages. Even the State Water Board has backed off on conservation targets for some water agencies. It’s true, rains have replenished much of Northern California’s reservoirs and Governor Brown’s mandated 25% water restrictions made a serious dent in our water binge. A […]

No Deal: Doha Talks End Without Agreement

The most anticlimiatic culmination to the most farcical “agreement” of 2016, one which could have been seen a mile away by any carbon-based trader not housed in a collocated, supercooled facility in Secaucus, has taken place and here is the “shocking” result: OPEC, NON-OPEC MINISTERS FINISH OIL TALKS IN DOHA, NO AGREEMENT – RTRS OIL […]

Russian Energy Minister Sees Oil Price at $50

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday that he sees global oil prices at $40-45 per barrel in the second half of this year, with potential to rise to $50 by the end of 2016. A planned meeting of major OPEC and non-OPEC countries in Doha later this month may allow to speed up […]

Beyond Meat ?

Peak meat may have occurred in the US already, however even the steadily increasing population of vegans and vegetarians that walk amongst us occasionally have a craving for something that looks and tastes like meat. As a result interest in artificial meat remains high. MIT TEchnology Review has a look at the current state of […]

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