The Consequences Of Big Oil’s Exploding Debt

How do you ride out low oil prices and still pay dividends and CEO salaries? You double down on debt, apparently. All oil majors posted plunging profits or accumulated losses in the second quarter, blaming low crude prices and weak refining margins for these results that missed estimates—in some cases by wide margins. All saw […]

The Discrete Charm of Economic Growth

Robert Balthazar. The Discrete Charm of Economic Growth. Part I: The Bilinguals; Part II: The Making of an Overriding Collective Preference (2016). At the outset Balthazar briefly summarizes his own intellectual journey as an economist, looking back on his earlier assumption that the economy as a whole was the spontaneous result of innumerable interacting trends […]

An Updated Version of the “Peak Oil” Story

The Peak Oil story got some things right. Back in 1998, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère wrote an article published in Scientific American called, “The End of Cheap Oil.” In it they said: Our analysis of the discovery and production of oil fields around the world suggests that within the next decade, the supply of conventional oil […]

Have we finally reached the limit of owning stuff?

WHEN a book telling people to throw out piles of their possessions becomes a best seller, it might be an indication we’re consuming too much. Japanese writer Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying has been one of the biggest-selling books on Amazon for months with more than five million copies sold worldwide. While Kondo […]

Army Paper: How our economic war with China could turn real

All war ends in military war. Currency, economic, whatever the name. Its resolution is a  reset through violent means. The current fray over the South Sea is based on natural resources that China wants access to. The War paper herein is based in large part on the failure to rectify that economic situation. All war […]

China’s Marshall Plan

China’s ambition to revive an ancient trading route stretching from Asia to Europe could leave an economic legacy bigger than the Marshall Plan or the European Union’s enlargement, according to a new analysis. Dubbed ‘One Belt, One Road,’ the plan to build rail, highways and ports will embolden China’s soft power status by spreading economic […]

Kunster: ZZZZZZZZZZZ….

Wake the fuck up! Today we turn from the sordid dumbshow of Election 2016 to the parlous mysteries of finance and economics behind our sick politics. Most of the commentary in the mainstream special needs news media is based on the incorrect notion that the current disposition of things is sure to continue and therefore […]

We just used up all of Earth’s resources for the year, and it’s only August

As of Monday August 8, humans will have officially used up all the resources Earth can regenerate in a year. The day is known as ‘overshoot day’, and this year it’s happening five days earlier than in 2015 – which means we just burnt through a sustainable amount of resources in less time than ever […]

How to see new exports of US natural gas to the Middle East

In the last 30-40 years the Gulf region has been the world leader in the supply of energy. But now we are seeing gas supplies from the US to the Middle East. We dare to suggest that in the future the United States will only increase these supplies. With a request to comment on this […]

Amid economic hard times, Venezuelans turn to city farming

Facing a national food crisis, Venezuela’s pumpkin-growing socialist president is exhorting compatriots to grow fruit and vegetables on balconies and roofs and in barracks across the country. His government’s “Great Agro-Venezuela Mission” is promoting city farming to offset shortages which have led to lootings and riots as the OPEC country undergoes a major economic crisis. […]

`Helicopter Money’ Is Coming to the U.S.

Several years of rock-bottom interest rates around the world haven’t been all bad. They’ve helped reduce government borrowing costs, for sure. Central banks also send back to their governments most of the interest received on assets purchased through quantitative-easing programs. Governments essentially are paying interest to themselves. Since the beginning of their quantitative-easing activities, the […]

People Are Calling Natural Gas a ‘Bridge’ to a Sustainable Future—They’re Wrong

For America to reach full renewable energy, we need to re-focus our investments — and divest ourselves of some dangerous ideas about natural gas. By Nancy C. Loeb Natural gas coming out of the ground in Taiwan. (Photo: Naplee12/Wikimedia Commons) It’s been a hot summer, with record-breaking heat in the United States and around the world, and […]

Is Food the Last Thing to Worry About?

Our food system is woefully dependent on petroleum, as writers such as Richard Heinberg (1) and Michael Pollan (2) have eloquently pointed out. Soaring food costs have brought on riots in some countries, and in unstable nations, famine continues to be a regular visitor. Fears of empty grocery shelves have made food security the centerpiece […]

Can the World Sustain 9 Billion People by 2050?

The world’s population is topsy-turvy, and its exponential and uneven growth could have disastrous consequences if we aren’t ready for it. Humanity recently hit a benchmark, a population of 7.9 billion in 2013. It is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, and 9.6 billion by 2050. If that weren’t enough, consider 11.2 billion in […]

The End Of A Trend: Oil Prices And Economic Growth

It used to be that when it came to the world economy, oil prices and economic growth were more like distant cousins who disliked each other rather than a happily married couple always seen nuzzling together in public. The received wisdom was that low oil prices are good for the overall economy even if they […]

Might the fossil fuel industries implode faster than the clean energy industries can grow to replace them?

In a memorable recent statement, some of Germany’s top scientists argued that “controlled implosion of fossil industries and explosive renewables development” can deliver the targets in the Paris agreement on climate change. Taking this premise at face value, and setting aside the thought that other factors might also be needed, the course of events in […]

Greenspan Says Oil Prices Have Probably Bottomed Out at $40

Former Fed chairman comments in Rock Creek Group client call Greenspan also calls Chinese economic system ‘unsustainable’ Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan suggested that oil prices have probably bottomed out at about $40 per barrel after tumbling more than 20 percent in the past two months into a bear market. “It’s hard for me […]

The day when the oil wars started

The title of this video can be translated as “Deconstructing Energy.” It was prepared by UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) in occasion of the international conference on peak oil held in Barbastro in 2014. The video is mostly in Spanish, but it starts with an interview in English with the modest me (Ugo […]

America’s Fracking King on Environmentalists and Donald Trump’s Appeal

The following is a condensed and edited interview with Harold Hamm, CEO, Continental Resources. Hamm Photographer: Jonno Rattman for Bloomberg Businessweek Domestic crude supplies have almost doubled. Do you feel Americans appreciate what your industry has done? It’s hard to miss the benefits of what’s happened as a result of the oil and gas renaissance. A […]

Salmon Die-Off in Canada

The Salmon farming industry is currently looking to expand it’s operations by 43% by 2020 along the coast of so.called BC. The industry’s open net farms are placed on the migratory paths of pacific wild salmon; exposing them to disease, lice and pollution. If you like these reports, consider making a donation – subMedia.tv/donate “This […]

What Oil in the $40s Means for Oil Majors

It all seemed to be going so well, but European oil groups have stumbled again. As the second quarter was closing, it looked as though fears over dividend cuts at the highest yielding of Europe’s big-five energy companies, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, might finally ease. After all, oil prices had ridden a […]

ISIS wants ‘loads of attacks in England, Germany & France’

A former Islamic State jihadist, German-born Harry Sarfo, has revealed that the terrorist group is actively seeking volunteers in Germany and the UK to carry out “loads of attacks at the same time in England, Germany and France.” Members of the far-reaching Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) intelligence service, called Emni in Arabic, allegedly told […]

Beware oil inventory data, experts warn it’s misleading markets

Oil markets are once again in the doldrums amid fears of a persistent oversupply and concerns over the slow drawdown in U.S. inventories, but oil experts say those concerns are overdone. “We are at the start of the rebalancing, we haven’t finished it yet, whereas the market almost priced in that everything was done but […]

Which Way Is Oil Going?

Crude oil prices dropped on Monday, dipping below the $40 a barrel mark for the first time since April. Weeks of slow decline precipitated this 4% loss, which many are blaming on poor earnings from ExxonMobil XOM +0.93% and Chevron CVX +0.13%. The truth is that for most of the summer oil has been overpriced. […]

Heinberg: You Can’t Handle the Truth!

Movie buffs will recognize this title as the most memorable line from “A Few Good Men” (1992), spoken by the character Colonel Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson (“You can’t handle the truth!” is #29 in the American Film Institute’s list of 100 top movie quotes). I hereby propose it as the subtext of the recently […]

Kunstler: Let the Games Begin!

Hot air balloons may be crashing in Texas, but in Philadelphia last week sainted Hillary, draped in spotless white privilege robes, floated through the glassiest ceiling of all on mighty gusts of saccharine gas. The good wife… the good mother… tireless fighter for the rainbow outcasts and gender martyrs of this patriarch-plagued republic, she pledged […]

Depletion is real, depletion is now, and if a jellyfish stings you, you know why

  My coworker, Ilaria Perissi (on the right in the picture) explaining the results of our works on fish depletion at the 34th conference of the System Dynamics society in Delft, Holland. We found that the same models that describe oil depletion can be applied to fish depletion, and that overexploitation is the main mechanism that […]

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