Oil Demand Gushing Again

The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil rose to $68.88 a barrel yesterday, one of the highest recent readings since December 2, 2014. That’s a spectacular 147% rebound from the January 20, 2016 low of $27.88. It’s remarkable because it follows a 76% crash in the price of this commodity from its June 19, […]

Big Oil flush with cash again, but no party yet

The world’s top oil companies are expected to generate more cash in 2018 than at any other time this decade after three painful years of cuts, but it isn’t party time yet. The shift in sentiment has been rapid as crude prices have risen by more than 50 percent over the past six months to […]

The Dark Side of America’s Rise to Oil Superpower

The last time U.S. drillers pumped 10 million barrels of crude a day, Richard Nixon was in the White House. The first oil crisis hadn’t yet scared Americans into buying Toyotas, and fracking was an experimental technique a handful of engineers were trying, with meager success, to popularize. It was 1970, and oil sold for […]

The Bumpy Road Down, Part 3

In the last post in this series I talked about the next financial crash and how it may well be serious enough to spread into the non-financial sectors of the economy and effect supply chains and critical systems in ways that we did not see in the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08. Systems that most […]

Why Oil Prices Could Dive

WTI briefly touched $65 per barrel after the EIA reported a surprise drawdown in inventories — the highest price since late 2014. Although the rally hit some stumbling blocks in recent days, prices remain at multi-year highs. However, absent further bullish news, the downside risk looms large. One of the most acute threats to prices […]

Would Rural Areas Be Safer In A SHTF Situation?

In a situation where national infrastructure and life sustaining resources are suddenly cut off , population density will have a lot to do with how well you get by in the days following the crisis. When it happens, what you have on hand will likely be all you have to work with for an extended […]

Cape Town, South Africa is running out of water as ‘Day Zero’ looms

Cape Town, South Africa is set to run out of water by April 12, 2018, sooner than previous predictions. Andrea Willmore/Shutterstock Cape Town, South Africa has moved up its predictions for when the city will run out of water, with officials now saying they’ll likely have to shut off the taps in early April. The city […]

Trump Fires Latest Shot In Trade Wars – Imposes 30% Tariff On Solar-Panel Imports

President Donald Trump is once again burnishing his protectionist bona fides by slapping imported solar cells and washing machines with 30% tariffs – his most significant action taking aim at the world’s second-largest economy since he ordered an investigation into Chinese IP practices that could result in tariffs. Acting on recommendations from US Trade Representative […]

Oil imports by China could lead to zero-sum game

One of the assumptions most observers of the crude oil market make is that China will continue to be the engine of global demand growth, thereby providing underlying support to prices. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, given that the world’s largest importer brought in 8.4-million barrels per day in 2017, 10.1% more than in the […]

The Rise of the Asian Consumer

There are five Starbucks coffee shops within an easy, 10-minute walk from my apartment in the central business district of China’s capital city. That may come as a surprise. But Starbucks has become as much a part of daily life in China’s major metropolises as it has in America. Starbucks already has more than 3,000 […]

Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil

Art Berman, 40-year veteran in the petroleum production industry and respected geological consultant, returns to the podcast this week to talk about oil. After the price of oil fell from its previous $100+/bbl highs to under $30/bbl in 2015, many declared dead the concerns raised by peak oil theorists. Headlines selling the “shale miracle” have […]

Why the oil price is so high

PERHAPS the most vexing thing for those watching the oil industry is not the whipsawing price of a barrel. It is the constant updating of theories to explain what lies behind it. In March 2014, when the price of a barrel of Brent crude was in three figures, the then boss of Chevron, an oil […]

How long will the rich be willing to share the roads with the poor?

  In Ray Bradbury novel “Fahrenheit 451” we are told of a world with no private cars (above, a still from the 1966 movie by François Truffaut). Bradbury had correctly understood that dictatorships not only tend to burn books but also don’t like their citizens to own private cars. In this post, I argue that the […]

Technology has pushed oil supply from decades to centuries

Technological advances and innovation change every industry, and energy is no exception. In 2008, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) was estimating that crude oil production in 2020 would be 13.4 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) and would fall to 12.0 quads in 2030. In the most recent estimates (from EIA’s 2017 Annual Energy Outlook), 2020 […]

Hail the Return of $100 Crude! Maybe

A slump in new production outside the U.S. shale patch in 2019 could help to send Brent crude briefly back above $100 a barrel next year, according to London-based consultancy Energy Aspects. The International Energy Agency also has a 100 number in its latest outlook, published Friday. While it doesn’t forecast prices and doesn’t yet […]

Kunstler: Blow Back

Is there any doubt that the Democratic Party will be blamed for the government shutdown brought on by the DACA showdown? They insisted on a DACA deal that would have enabled everybody-and-his-uncle in a DACA person’s family to migrate to this country, a formula known as chain migration. Did they really believe that would go […]

Oil demand to peak by 2030 due to EV adoption

Oil demand is set to peak by 2030 as demand for electric vehicles increases, according to a study by Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML). The company said oil demand has primarily been driven by transport over the last five decades to total 54 per cent of global demand today. Based on this reliance on […]

Oil producers will cooperate beyond 2018, says Saudi Arabia

Global oil producers are in agreement that they should continue cooperating on production after their deal on supply cuts expires at the end of this year, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid al-Falih said on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih addresses a news conference after an OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria, November […]

Anniversary of the Trump Presidency Part One: Peak Oil and the Deep State

Click to download the audio (MP3 format) As these words go to publication, millions are expected to take to the streets in centres across the United States, Canada and around the world, all in demonstrations timed with the anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration. The thrust of the Womens’ March on Washington and its various affiliates […]

Richard Heinberg: Post Carbon Music

On November 30, 2017 at the New England Conservatory of Music, Richard performed Paganini’s “Sonata Concertata For Guitar And Violin” and spoke about what the future might mean for today’s young musicians and artists, and the important role they have to play in the societal transformation ahead.  Full transcript: Over the next few minutes I hope to […]

IEA prediction of explosive U.S. oil growth stokes OPEC fears

OPEC’s fear that another surge of shale oil could neutralize its production cuts might be coming true. U.S. oil output is set for “ explosive” growth this year as prices rally, the International Energy Agency said on Friday. That was just one of a chorus of voices from Goldman Sachs group Inc. to OPEC itself […]

When Economic Growth Indicates Failure

Nothing can be duller than listening to an economist or other policy expert pontificate endlessly on such metrics as gross domestic product, stock market prices, employment, and consumer confidence. Most of all they talk about GDP: Rising GDP is good; falling GDP is bad. But as a measure of economic activity, GDP is what it […]

Extinction Anxiety

(Address for “Psyche and the Spirit of the Times: Psychoanalyzing Trumpism” given at Antioch University Seattle.)   In order to talk about extinction anxiety I first need to address epistemological anxiety, otherwise, you won’t know if what I am saying to you is a bunch of ‘fake news’ served up by yet another privileged white […]

Oliver Stone’s “Ukraine On Fire” Documentary Released In The West

Oliver Stone’s seminal documentary Ukraine on Fire has finally been made available to watch in the West. Investigative journalist Robert Parry reveals how US-funded political NGOs and media companies have emerged since the 1980s, replacing the CIA in promoting America’s geopolitical agenda abroad. As Russia-Insider details, Ukraine on Fire provides a historical perspective for the deep divisions in the […]

“We Must Avoid Day Zero” – Cape Town Is 90 Days Away From Running Out Of Water

If you’ve ever needed a reason to store extra food and water, this just might be it.   Cape Town, South Africa is on schedule to run out of water in less than 95 days, and when they do, the government will turn off the taps. “There are only 95 days left before we reach […]

Peak oil demand and its implications for prices

Even if oil consumption reaches a peak and then starts to fall, the world will still need large quantities of oil for many decades to come. “Global oil demand is likely to continue growing for a period, driven by rising prosperity in fast-growing developing economies,” they wrote in a paper published on Monday. “But that […]

How to convince the public of the danger of anthropogenic global warming

Last year, the vagaries of life led me to chair a commission charged with examining the candidates for the admission to the Italian Chemists Association. It was a rather formal exam that was supposed to provide the successful applicants with the legal status necessary, for instance, for certifying chemical analyses. Overall, the applicants did poorly, […]

Africa Has Shitloads Of Resources

Anyone who knows me — or has read my resume below — will understand why I have to comment on the horrendous outburst by the President of the United States on January 11th. I heard Jesse Watters on Fox News explain that the s***hole remarks were just harmless bar talk, but if we can agree […]

Venezuela Has Some Bad News and Some Really Bad News

I think we can all agree that, absent a war or some deliberate strategy, a 14 percent drop in a country’s oil production in the space of one year is not a good thing. Even worse, though, is a 29 percent drop. These two realities, both undesirable, were presented for Venezuela in OPEC’s latest monthly report, […]

The World’s Oil Kings Are Under Threat

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown in the world’s biggest oil market. Middle East producers who for decades reigned as the undisputed leaders of oil sales to Asia are sensing a threat to their dominance, which is goading them to review age-old habits. Before the U.S. shale boom and the biggest price crash […]

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