Venezuela Rebellion Could Send Oil To $80

Venezuela’s deteriorating crisis is “going to be the biggest geopolitical story to watch in the oil markets,” according to Helima Croft of RBC Capital Markets. The economic, political and security situation in Venezuela has been frightening for quite a while, but things continue to grow worse. The new “constituent assembly,” put together to rewrite the […]

No-Name US Oil Driller Gets Shot at World’s Biggest Reserves

Nicolas Maduro was in his element, flanked by an enormous Venezuelan flag, beneath a portrait of Simon Bolivar on horseback, in front of a statue of Hugo Chavez, praising foreign companies wise enough to make deals with what he called “our beloved PDVSA.” That would be Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state-owned oil giant struggling […]

Did BP Just Unlock A New Major Shale Gas Basin?

BP made a potentially groundbreaking discovery in New Mexico, which could open up a new area for shale gas development. BP was drilling in a little-known area in northern New Mexico, in a place called the Mancos Shale. The British oil giant reported huge figures from the shale gas well, suggesting the Mancos could provide […]

Our Photovoltaic Future: The Metabolic Revolutions of the Earth’s History

    Illustration from the recent paper by Olivia Judson on “Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017) “The Energy Expansions of Evolution”.  Olivia Judson published a very interesting paper this March on “Nature Ecology & Evolution“. It is a wonderful cavalcade along 4 billion years of the history of the Earth, seeing it in terms of five “metabolic revolutions.” […]

Time to listen to the ice scientists about the Arctic death spiral

Ice scientists are mostly cheerful and pragmatic. Like many other researchers coolly observing the rapid warming of the world, they share a gallows humour and are cautious about entering the political fray. Not Peter Wadhams. The former director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and professor of ocean physics at Cambridge has spent his scientific […]

Oil And The OPEC Meeting – Something To Believe In

Summary The two-day compliance meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producers concludes today. Oil prices have drifted lower ahead of the result, out of fear of a bad result. It’s a trend we’ve seen recently, but we expect to turn around as tangible factors for sustained oil price rise have developed. I’m looking for a well […]

Is This the Beginning of the End for the Oil Industry?

The energy sector is undergoing a seismic shift that has caught many pundits by surprise. That shift was triggered by the Saudi decision to boost production as the Kingdom sought to challenge the U.S. shale oil industry’s rise and reassert OPEC’s dominance. Because of growing global supplies coupled with waning demand growth, crude prices plunged. […]

Peak Demand? No, A New Gasoline Demand Record

Given all the media hype about peak oil demand — which is supposed to come about largely as a result of the explosive growth of electric vehicles (EVs) — you might be forgiven for missing the news that U.S. gasoline demand just hit a new all-time high. This new demand record comes despite EV sales […]

Saudi Arabia Builds Cities in the Sand to Move Beyond Oil

After relying on oil to fuel its economy for more than half a century, Saudi Arabia is turning to its other abundant natural resource to take it beyond the oil age — desert. The kingdom is converting thousands of square kilometers of sand into new cities as it seeks to diversify away from crude, create […]

Electric Car Boom Drives Rush to Mining’s $90 Billion Heartland

A scramble by the lithium market’s biggest players to tie up supply of the high-tech metal is gathering pace in the 170-year-old heartland of Australia’s $90 billion mining industry. Rising Chinese demand for lithium-ion batteries needed for electric vehicles and energy storage is driving significant price gains and an asset boom in Australia, already the world’s largest […]

Capitalism has failed the world: Socialism is the viable alternative

The latter question carries much more weight compared to the former question as the system of capital accumulation has been in existence for more than 500 years. The socialist system, in contrast, was only experimented in the 20th century. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, socialism was exported in various nations in the world. […]

Kunstler: Just Wait a Little While

The trouble, of course, is that even after the Deep State (a.k.a. “The Swamp”) succeeds in quicksanding President Trump, America will be left with itself — adrift among the cypress stumps, drained of purpose, spirit, hope, credibility, and, worst of all, a collective grasp on reality, lost in the fog of collapse. Here’s what you […]

Is God Serious?

“How ironic is it that having cornered some seemingly unique absence of reality, adherents cannot tolerate views that cling to a different absence of reality?” We confess we have always found delicious humor in the tall tales that religions tell. If you are a certain kind of Muslim you may believe that the Prophet, may his […]

Macroeconomic Risks For The Oil Industry

The global oil industry now appears to be in the early stages of a cyclical expansion which is likely to see prices rise over the next few years, slowly at first but then accelerating later. Deep and long cycles in oil prices have been the defining characteristic of the industry since the 1860s (“Crude volatility: […]

Among States, Texas Consumes the Most Energy, Vermont the Least

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, State Energy Data System. EIA’s State Energy Data System (SEDS) recently released 2015 data estimates for all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The estimates include data on both total energy consumption and energy consumption per capita, which is calculated by dividing total consumption by population. In 2015, Texas consumed a total of 13 […]

Big Oil’s Dream of $65 Billion Hidden Off Norway Is Fading Away

Norway’s oil industry has been salivating for years over the Arctic Lofoten islands, which could hold billions of barrels of crude. It will likely have to keep dreaming. The general election next month is unlikely to lift a deadlock that’s keeping a ban on drilling off the environmentally sensitive archipelago as more and more Norwegians […]

What do the new U.S. sanctions on Russia target?

U.S. President Donald Trump reluctantly signed into law a sweeping sanctions bill against Russia, Iran and North Korea this week. As U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet this weekend at a regional forum in Manila, here is a look at new Russia sanctions : * The law establishes […]

Good ideas, big plans – all they need is money

You’ve got to start somewhere. Two companies, with relatively little experience, have embarked on ambitious projects to build separately a pipeline and refinery in West Texas, hoping to tap into booming oil production in the Permian Basin. Permico Energia, a Houston startup, says it plans to build a $2 billion pipeline system to transport natural […]

The Five Forces of Fragmentation: A Global System in Breakdown?

Wayne Visser Copyright How do we know when value to society is being destroyed by economic activities? Taking a systems science perspective, the answer is: whenever it causes fragmentation, or disintegration. This is consistent with the idea that the tendency towards greater integration in nature and society is a fundamental principle of evolution (Smuts, 2013; […]

Is The EIA Exaggerating U.S. Oil Production?

Oil is back at $50 per barrel, restoring some semblance of confidence in the market. But that is just about as much as we can expect in terms of a rally, according to most analysts, with momentum likely to dissipate from here. But not everyone agrees. Many are worried that oil prices will crash again […]

Earth Overshoot: Living Large in the 21st Century

Buying on credit:  August 2nd was Earth Overshoot Day. As of that day, the year is done for planet Earth, she has given a year’s worth of natural resources.  It may seem counter-intuitive at first. Obviously, we aren’t done with 2017 yet. How can we take more than the Earth makes, for decades on end? Have […]

California Legislature Passes 10-Year Extension to Cap and Trade

Success in the legislature: After weeks of negotiations in the California legislature, the Senate and Assembly passed an extension to cap and trade on July 17. This is a win for California’s climate leadership and for green building. USGBC actively supported the cap-and-trade extension, as one of the state’s key strategies to reach its SB 32 goal to reduce […]

Now we’re in debt: Earth Overshoot Day

Earth Overshoot Day is hosted and calculated by Global Footprint Network, an international think-tank that coordinates research, develops methodologies and provides decision-makers with tools and information to help the human economy operate within Earth’s ecological limits. Earth Overshoot Day is the public face and campaigning focus of their highly technical work. Calculations by Global Footprint Network (GFN) […]

What’s Really Driving the Global Economic Crisis is Net Energy Decline

As argued in more detail by Ted Trainer in this symposium the best hope for transition to a ‘post carbon’ — or, better, a sustainable society (a much broader goal) — lies in a process of radical societal reconstruction, focused on the building, in the here and now, of self-governing and self-reliant settlements, starting at the micro-local level. The ‘Simpler Way’ vision we […]

The Battle for Power in Venezuela

  Bloomberg’s Vivianne Rodrigues discusses the turmoil in Venezuela with Bloomberg’s David Gura on “Bloomberg Markets.”

Saudi Oil Minister Is Said to Have Met Top Commodity Hedge Funds

Khalid Al-Falih, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, met in private with some of the world’s top commodity hedge funds in July, taking the unusual step of personally canvassing investor views on the state of the market. In the past, Saudi Arabian officials have disparaged hedge funds as unhelpful speculators that undermined OPEC’s quest for market stability. […]

The Coming Financial Disruption

From the late 1700’s through the 1800’s the first industrial revolution brought immense benefits to the average Jack. Mass production of textiles, transportation, food, and beer meant that it was no longer just Lords and Ladies that could afford to get hammered. Indeed, Jack and Jill too could fall down the hill after getting plastered […]

Forbes Says Self-Reliant Homesteaders Are “Delusional” and “Mooching” Off “Civil Society”

It’s always interesting reading when someone smug and sanctimonious writes a clueless diatribe about another group of people being smug and sanctimonious. So when I saw that an economist for Moody’s and Forbes had written an op-ed calling self-reliant homesteaders “delusional,” I knew I’d be in for some misinformed hilarity. The article, entitled, “Dear Homesteaders, […]

Away from Oil: A New Approach

The time of large SUVs is over: this is what experts in the automobile industry said in 2008, when the oil price was at its peak. Times can change very fast. The oil price fell sharply in 2014 and not much has changed since then. SUV sales in the US reached a new record in […]

Climate change isn’t the end of the world

Yes, the costs are not evenly spread. Some places will do better and some will do worse. The American South might be a worse place to grow wheat; Southern Canada might be a better one. In a century, Miami might find itself in approximately the same situation as the Dutch city of Rotterdam today. But […]

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