The End of Peak Oil

U.S. production of crude oil is now about ten million barrels per day, matching peak levels achieved in 1970.  The Energy Information Administration projects that U.S. oil production this year will be the highest ever recorded.  Let’s hope this is the final stake in the heart of peak oil theories. As a young geology student in 1981, I was taught that […]

Those Living Near Oil, Gas Wells Have Higher Cancer Risk

Study: Those Living Near Oil, Gas Wells Have Higher Cancer Risk The study was conducted by CU Boulder, NASA, UC Irvine.

Ten reflections on today’s crisis

Roberto Savio is founder of IPS Inter Press Service and President Emeritus ROME, Apr 10 2018 (IPS) – It is now clearly evident that w e are in a period of transition, even though we remain uncertain as to its outcome. The political, economic and social system that has accompanied us since the end of […]

Saudis Shoot Down Missiles, Drones as Middle East Tensions Flare

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted ballistic missiles and shot down drones sent from Yemen, in the latest attack by pro-Iranian rebels that showed improved military capabilities more than three years into the conflict. One missile was intercepted over Riyadh, with loud blasts heard in the night sky above the Saudi capital on Wednesday. Two other […]

India Must Break Its Oil Habit

One under-appreciated factor behind Narendra Modi’s success as Indian prime minister has been the tailwind he’s received from low oil prices. Brent crude averaged $99.43 a barrel during his predecessor Manmohan Singh’s second term in office, putting pressure on an economy that’s heavily dependent on imports. It began its precipitous decline from those levels just weeks after […]

What Does Prepper Food Taste Like?

After 9/11, my dad filled a duffel bag with some energy bars, a couple gallons of water, some penicillin, and a map. Amid scaremongering headlines about imminent anthrax and “dirty bomb” attacks in the city, he wanted to have some supplies on hand in case we needed to get out of Brooklyn fast. Were he […]

Cities around the world should prepare for running out of water

It’s called “Day Zero”: when Cape Town, South Africa’s bustling port city, sees its water taps run dry, and its population thrust into a perilous situation. Originally projected for this year, the impending crisis has been delayed in part by severe measures — the city instituted restrictions that amount to less than one sixth of […]

Lack Of Investments To Hurt Global Oil Supply

Fatih Birol, head of International Energy Agency, said a dearth of investments can start hurting global oil supplies from the first part of the next decade as production at ageing fields falls amid robust energy consumption worldwide. “This growth in oil output is not enough to feel there will be enough production in the future […]

Nuclear Fusion Update

The Conversation claim nuclear fusion is back again. Nextbigfuture has been constantly tracking nuclear fusion and advanced nuclear fission every week for the past 13 years. The popular question is when will we have commercial nuclear fusion that has a significant impact on the energy production of the world? MIT has spunout a tokomak fusion […]

What Will It Take to Keep Up With Shale Gas Boom? $170 Billion

Bottlenecks on the U.S. natural gas super highway are starting to stack up, raising concerns about whether infrastructure can be built fast enough to meet surging supplies. Gas output will expand by 24 billion cubic feet, or 32 percent, through 2025 from last year, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. To support that growth, […]

Global oil demand not to peak soon, India vulnerable to high prices

New Delhi Apr 11 (PTI) International Energy Agency said today that global oil demand will not peak in the near future and Indias vulnerability to high prices will increase with surge in its crude oil imports. Oil demand will continue to grow stronger this year, at about 1.5 million barrels per day, driven by petrochemicals […]

US Navy destroyer is now off Syrian coast with 60 Tomahawk missiles

A U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, is now situated off the coast of Syria with 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles on board, CNN Turk has reported. CNN Turk also reported that the destroyer was buzzed by Russian planes at least four times, but the Pentagon has denied those reports. US Navy source told @dcexaminer […]

Iraq is barely committed to OPEC deal

Iraq, one of the leading producers in OPEC, continues to be among those doing the least to support an agreement credited with supporting oil prices, data show. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, with support of other producers like Russia, is in its second year of an agreement to drain a surplus on a five-year […]

Coal Dead? Peak Oil Demand? Five Takes on Fossil Fuels’ Future

Energy executives debate role of old fuels in new world order Coal plants play chicken, while nuclear power may rise again Fighting Climate Change, Without the U.S. For all the buzz around wind, solar and electric cars, energy company executives had plenty to say Tuesday about the continuing role of fossil fuels and nuclear power […]

Oil rallies as concerns grow over geopolitics

Oil prices rose on Monday, supported by a rebound in the stock market as concerns of a trade war between the United States and China eased. A rainbow is seen over a pumpjack during sunset outside Scheibenhard, near Strasbourg, France, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann Brent crude LCOc1 futures rose $1.25 to $68.36 a barrel, […]

Richard Heinberg on why low oil prices do not mean there is plenty of oil, EROI, collapse

[ Yet another wise, thoughtful, and wide-ranging essay from my favorite writer of the many facets of a civilization about to decline as it is starved of the fossil fuels that feed it.  Although the topics are quite varied, Heinberg weaves them into a cloth that is more than the sum of the parts in […]

A New Rant from an Unrepentant Secular Doomsday Prophet

Do you see yourself as a worthless cockroach contributing to the collapse of human civilization? Probably not, but Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich thinks precisely that about you. Fifty years ago, he published arguably the worst book ever written, The Population Bomb, which declared that human overpopulation would cause mass starvation. Instead, the Green Revolution (led […]

Petro-Yuan Is The Newest Weapon For The China-Russia-Iran Anti-USD Alliance

Pictured above, the currency symbols for the old Spanish peseta and the Chinese yuan. Maybe Baba Beijing can synthesize the two of them into a cooling looking petro-yuan logo. After 25 years of dreams, planning, rumors and testing, the Chinese petro-yuan is now official. Right now, almost all global oil trade is conducted in US […]

Fossil Water Depletion, Groundwater Contamination, Saltwater Intrusion, & Permanent Subsidence

Much of the modern world’s agricultural productivity, industrial activity, and high degree of urbanization is dependent upon the pumping and exploitation of limited freshwater resources. In some regions the water that is being relied upon is so-called fossil water — that is, water that was deposited many millennia ago and is mostly not being replenished […]

An Electric Car Revolution Will Require Perpetual Subsidies

Highlights: Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) can be economically attractive as commuter cars in city traffic. Attractiveness fades for longer-distance travelling due to larger battery packs, a smaller efficiency advantage, and more fast charging at on-peak rates. As a result, displacing just a low single-digit percentage of global oil consumption through BEVs will require perpetual subsidies.  […]

Why Bahrain’s Huge Oil Discovery Might Not Provide The Windfall It Is Hoping For

On April 1, Bahrain’s Higher Committee for Natural Resources and Economic Security announced it had made a significant discovery of oil and gas in the offshore Khaleej Al Bahrain Basin, the largest find in the country since the early 1930s. Oil minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa described the find as “at substantial levels, […]

About 7% of fossil fuels are consumed for non-combustion use in the US

While most fossil fuels in the United States are burned, or combusted, to produce heat and power, EIA estimates that the equivalent of about 5.5 quadrillion British thermal units of fossil fuels were consumed for non-combustion purposes in the United States in 2017. Over the past decade, non-combustion consumption of fossil fuels has typically accounted […]

Trump’s foreign policy might mark Peak America

Summary: No analysis by Trump’s foes shows the danger he poses so clearly as his own speeches. But we have lost the habit of listening to our leaders, instead relying on trusted tribal voices to filter and mold their words into pleasing poems. See Trump’s statement about Iran – and fear for America’s future. The […]

First they locked up the Knowledge

“If you were given the choice between continued life on earth and computerized devices and the internet, which would you choose?”   “Putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key — and putting it there is the […]

Surviving The Next Great Depression

Numerous economists and investors are warning of another great financial crisis to come but few people want to listen to them. No crisis is ever exactly like the last one and the next great depression will be different from the last one. In the last depression those who had money were in a good financial […]

The Saudis Are Determined to Keep the Market in Balance

WTI crude is $63/bbl, up from a February low of $58/bbl and down from the January high of $67/bbl. The discount to Brent is $4.65/ bbl. WTI averaged $51/ bbl in 2017 and $43/ bbl in 2016. The Brent premium blew out to over $7/ bbl in December and has contracted since. Brent averaged $3.10/ […]

How To Recognize When Your Society Is Suffering A Dramatic Decline

When historians and analysts look at the factors surrounding the collapse of a society, they often focus on the larger events and indicators — the moments of infamy. However, I think it’s important to consider the reality that large scale societal decline is built upon a mixture of elements, prominent as well as small. Collapse […]

Those Pesky Declinists and Their Dangerous Ideas

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-idea-that-the-world-is-in-terminal-decline-is-so-dangerous Declinists claim to see the big picture. Their portraits are grandiose, subsuming, total. Consider one of the all-time bestsellers, the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (1972). With more than 30 million copies sold in 30 languages, this ‘Project on the Predicament of Mankind’ gave alarmed readers a portrait of demise, mapped out with gloomy […]

Is The Iran Nuclear Deal Coming To An End?

As the U.S. moves closer to pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing sanctions, Iran could see some of the recent progress in its energy industry being rolled back. The Iran nuclear deal in 2015 was an economic windfall to the country, removing international sanctions and opening up Iran to greater engagement with […]

Why A Dollar Collapse Is Inevitable

“Naturally, the smooth termination of the gold-exchange standard, the restoration of the gold standard, and supplemental and interim measures that might be called for, in particular with a view to organizing international credit on this new basis, will have to be deliberately agreed upon between countries, in particular those on which there devolves special responsibility […]

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