The Protein Ladder

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information   In 1800, three percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. By 1900, roughly 14 percent of the world’s population were urbanites and 12 cities had 1 million or more inhabitants.   In 1950, 30 […]

M. King Hubbert: The Limits To Oil

M. King Hubbert did more to raise awareness of the finite nature of global oil reserves than any other person, living or dead. He was a larger-than-life figure, who fought tirelessly to insert the limits of nature into the national dialog regarding the strategic use of resources. Yet surprisingly little has been publicly documented about […]

Noam Chomsky: American Power Under Challenge

The other day I pulled a tattered copy of The Chomsky Reader off a bookshelf of mine.  Leafing through some of the Vietnam-era essays collected in that 1987 paperback brought to life a young Tom Engelhardt who, in the mid-to-late 1960s, was undergoing a startling transition: from dreaming of serving his government to opposing it.  […]

Groundwater Contamination from Fracking Changes over Time

A new Texas study has found that horizontal oil wells fractured by the injection of high volumes of chemicals, sand, and water contaminate nearby water wells with a variety of heavy metals and toxic chemicals that fluctuate over time. In the last decade, North America’s $40-billion fracking industry has punctured uneconomic or ”unconventional” rock formations […]

what we will need to do to survive doomsday

CONCERNED scientists have revealed how we can prevent the human race from being wiped out — and it involves either changing our planet’s orbit or uploading ourselves into machines. In around 500 million years, scientists believe that the Sun’s expansion will leave our planet completely uninhabitable, with conditions so unforgiving that the Earth will return […]

Iran Seen Taking Its Time on Joint Action With OPEC Members

Iran says it’s almost ready to talk with other OPEC members about limiting oil production as the country’s exports recover to levels reached before international sanctions crippled crude sales. Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc say no agreement is in the cards for now. With prices up 65 percent from the 12-year low in January, joint […]

Crude prices up as Canada’s blaze grows

Oil prices have jumped again as a huge wildfire in Canada’s oil sand region knocked out over a million barrels in daily production capacity. As Hayley Platt reports, a government reshuffle in Saudi Arabia is also being closely watched. reuters

Kunstler: Trumptopia

For years, it was easy to see the political storm clouds gather over Europe with its fractious coalitions and its ancient babble of conflicts. Marine Le Pen’s Daddy, severe old Jean-Marie, was on the scene in France decades before Donald Trump ascended to glory on the noxious clouds of America’s crapified culture, attended by heavenly […]

Venezuela’s power struggle a race against time: Fuel for Thought

Venezuela’s oil industry is at risk of grinding to a halt, along with the rest of the nation, as El Guri, Venezuela’s largest hydroelectric power facility, could see a drop in output of 3,800 megawatts if eight of 18 turbines are shut down. That would be roughly a quarter of the power produced in the […]

The Battle Of Kirkuk

As fighting rocks northern Iraq’s oil-rich Kirkuk area, and air strikes attempt to take out Islamic State positions, the dust will likely either settle in favor of the Iraqi Kurds, who have played a key role in protecting this area from the ISIS advance and who could use Kirkuk to cement their independence ambitions, or […]

Saudi’s New Oil Boss Vows to Maintain Policy

Saudi Arabia will probably keep producing crude at near-record levels under its newly appointed oil minister, Khalid Al-Falih, as the world’s largest exporter sticks with his predecessor’s policy of defending market share against higher-cost shale. Al-Falih, also chairman of the state producer Saudi Arabian Oil Co., said on his first day in office on Sunday that […]

World Rig Count Still Falling

Baker Hughes recently published their International Rig Count. This rig count is at the end of April. It does not include the US, Canada, any of the FSU countries or inland China. The count includes both oil and gas rigs. Total International Rigs stood at 946 in April, down 39 for the month and down […]

The migrant crisis will never end.

Sometimes, one fact goes a long way towards explaining a global crisis. Behind the rubber dinghies laden with desperate people washing up on European beaches and the refugee camps spread across the deserts of Jordan – or, for that matter, the plains of Chad – lies a remarkable figure. The number of people driven from […]

Saudi Replaces Central Bank Governor in Major Reorganization

Saudi Arabia appointed Ahmed AlKholifey as central bank governor, replacing Fahad Al Mubarak as part of a government reorganization, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. AlKholifey, named to the role in a royal order from King Salman, was previously deputy governor for research and international affairs at the central bank, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. The […]

New Saudi minister is believer in reform and low oil price

It was January 2016 and oil prices had crashed to their lowest in more than a decade. Saudi Arabia’s health minister, Khalid al-Falih, a favourite to take over the oil ministry from his mentor Ali al-Naimi, was not panicking. Falih told an audience of oil executives, bankers and policymakers at the World Economic Forum in […]

Don’t let the low prices fool you: peak oil will be upon us soon

The end of the oil era has been predicted for so long that it has ceased to attract much interest. Critics rightly say it’s now difficult to know who to believe. Were not forecasters urging governments to go green not so long ago, because we had reached “peak oil” and the world was running out […]

Russia Nears Launch Of Ruble-Priced Oil Trading Platform

It appears Russia is close to taking the next big step towards de-dollarization and killing the petro-dollar as Vladimir Putin’s “dream” of ruble-based pricing of its domestically-produced oil is on the verge of realization. SPIMEX (The St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange) is actively courting international oil traders to join its emerging futures market, which as […]

Saudi Arabia’s Powerful Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi Is Fired

Saudi Arabia fired long-serving oil minister Ali al-Naimi on Saturday, dismissing one of the industry’s most powerful figures as the country battles with weak oil prices. Mr. Naimi, who had been the kingdom’s oil minister since 1995, has been a loud voice against lowering Saudi Arabia’s production when prices fall, a departure from its past […]

Americas, Asia do what OPEC wouldn’t: cut oil production

Wildfires in Canada. Instability in Venezuela. Stalling U.S. frackers. Drops in oil output are happening so fast that it looks as if the Americas alone could resolve global oversupply. The 70 percent oil price slide LCOc1 CLc1 between 2014 and early 2016 has been pegged to one problem: production exceeding demand by as much as […]

The Movement to Stop Fossil Fuel Development Is Winning

Colorado’s high court today struck down the rights of Coloradans to enact local fracking bans. It’s no surprise, given the massive sway of the oil and gas industry in the state. The suit was brought against Longmont (which passed a popular fracking ban in 2012) by Gov. John Hickenlooper and his industry cronies. While it’s […]

13 Global Catastrophic Events Which Could Lead To An American Apocalypse

Is the strongest and most powerful nation on the planet headed for an apocalypse which will bring it to its knees?  We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and apocalyptic themes have become very common in books, movies, television shows and video games.  It is almost as if there is an unconscious […]

Debt: The Key Factor Connecting Energy and the Economy

There are many who believe that the use of energy is critical to the growth of the economy. In fact, I am among these people. The thing that is not as apparent is that growth in energy consumption is dependent on the growth of debt. Both energy and debt have characteristics that are close to […]

Hydraulically Fractured Wells Provide Two-Thirds of U.S. Natural Gas Production

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on IHS Global Insight and DrillingInfo Inc. For decades, hydraulic fracturing had been referred to as an unconventional completion technique, but over the past 10 years it has become the technique by which most natural gas is produced in the United States. Based on the most recent data from […]

Raging wildfire in Canada fuels oil prices

Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta is under siege from massive wildfires. And that’s threatening key oil facilities. Huge forest fires have already torched at least 1,600 homes and forced the evacuation of about 88,000 people in the region, including the entire population of the oil sands town of Fort McMurray. Forty-nine wildfires were still burning […]

More delays for ITER, as partners balk at costs

Last week, an independent review committee delivered a report that was supposed to show that ITER, the troubled international fusion experiment under construction in Cadarache, France, finally has a reliable construction schedule and cost estimate. But the report says only that the new date for first operations—2025, 5 years later than the previous official target—is […]

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 6

I suggested at the outset of this series that I did not want it to turn into yet another exercise in mocking those who do not accept the implications of peak oil. A legitimate argument could be made that I’ve failed in that objective. I view the tone adopted in a number of comments I’ve […]

Why Oil Companies Should Stop Looking For Oil

Oil companies are getting hammered by investors for being oil companies. The price of a barrel of crude is down 60 percent in the last two years. The New York Stock Exchange index for oil and gas stocks has fallen about 25 percent over the same period. Exxon Mobil has been downgraded by Standard and […]

A massive wildfire in Canada has destroyed 1,600 homes and forced 80,000 people to flee

Tens of thousands of Canadians have been evacuated while wildfires rage through their homes in Alberta.The town of Fort McMurray has seen more than 1,600 homes destroyed and 80,000 residents flee. As of Thursday, the fire showed little sign of slowing down, Reuters reports, and it now threatens the local airport. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley […]

Michael Lynch: Saudi Oil Confounds The Skeptics

Friend and colleague Rob Bradley came across a 5-year old article denouncing me for my foolishness is not believing in peak oil theory and especially “refuting” a New York Times piece I had written. My piece was in response to revelations from Wikileaks that mentioned a former Saudi Aramco official who raised questions about that […]

Oil Price – A Conundrum

The oil prices are known to follow the basic principle of economics i.e. of demand and supply. Hence, the volumes of oil (proved and proved+ probable) discovered at a given date, likely duration of achievement of the ‘mid-point’ peak of the oil production in a region are accounted by traders for gauging the potential supplying […]

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