Scientists detect unexpected widespread structures near Earth’s core

  Earthquakes send sound waves through the Earth. Seismograms record the echoes as those waves travel along the core-mantle boundary, diffracting and bending around dense rock structures. New research from University of Maryland provides the first broad view of these structures, revealing them to be much more widespread than previously known. Credit: Doyeon Kim/University of […]

Kurt Cobb: Peak World Oil Production?

We who have been suggesting that a peak in world oil production was nigh almost from the beginning of this century looked like we might be right when oil prices reached their all-time high in 2008. But since then, we have taken it on the chin for more than a decade as the U.S. shale […]

Our Wile E. Coyote Economy: Nothing But Financial Engineering

Ours is a Wile E. Coyote economy, and now we’re hanging in mid-air, realizing there is nothing solid beneath our feet. The story we’re told about how our “capitalist” economy works is outdated. The story goes like this: companies produce goods and services for a competitive marketplace and earn a profit from this production. These profits […]

Kunstler: The Party of Chaos and Falsehood

The USA has gone so batshit crazy in these months of the corona virus freak-out that an orgy of looting, arson, and murder, on top of epic job loss and business failure, propelled the stock markets up-up-and-away back to near-record highs — until it finally puked yesterday in a rare moment of self-revulsion, like a […]

United States: An Obituary

The United States of America was problematic from the start. It was founded on genocide and slavery, and, while frequently congratulating itself on the rights and freedoms it granted its citizens, never managed to confront the demons in its past. The question would arise repeatedly, generation after generation: rights and freedoms for whom? Nevertheless, the […]

It’s The Oil Demand, Stupid!

For oil markets the 2020 story is not as much about supply as it is about demand, or rather its lack. To be sure the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia rocked the markets. But soon it became clear that there is not enough demand for the additional volumes that either country wanted […]

Our Food Systems Are Failing

The United Nations secretary-general António Guterres has just released his latest policy brief on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global food security and nutrition. In the report, Guterres stresses that the world is at a crossroads where hundreds of millions of people are facing hunger and malnutrition, while disruptions in the food chain […]

Why Are There So Many Humans?

Something curious happened in human population history over the last 1 million years. First, our numbers fell to as low as 18,500, and our ancestors were more endangered than chimpanzees and gorillas. Then we bounced back to extraordinary levels, far surpassing the other great apes. Today the total population of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans […]

A Retrospective Look at the Oil Price History

How did oil price change in recent centuries? Read about the major milestones in the history of oil, who are the main oil producers, and what defines its price. One of the most valuable assets on Earth, oil has a great impact on the global financial market. The price of oil depends on a large […]

Yale Economist Warns of Dollar Crash

Peter Schiff has been warning that that real crash will be a dollar crash. Now, some people in the mainstream are starting to sound that alarm as well. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Peter was warning about the dollar’s demise. During an interview on RT last September, he warned that America’s “fiscal profligacy” was going […]

North Sea Oil Is Starting to Diminish

A glut of benchmark North Sea oil that’s been sitting on ocean-going tankers for weeks is starting to diminish. Millions of barrels of the region’s unwanted crude have been stashed on oil tankers since the coronavirus caused a demand collapse. But now the volumes are starting to shrink sharply, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Anchored […]

Is This The World’s Next Oil Hotspot?

By the end of the second quarter of 2020, data from drill bits may tell us whether or not the world has found the next Eagle Ford, and it’s all going down in Africa …  To hear mainstream media tell it, you would think that the oil and gas era is coming to an end. […]

China Begins Consolidation Of $100+ Billion Oil & Gas Pipeline Industry

China has required the three biggest state-held oil corporations to transfer the management of half of their liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals to the newly created state-controlled midstream firm, Caixin Global reported, citing industry insiders. The transfer of 10 LNG terminals owned by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Sinopec, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation […]

CEOs Bank Big Bonuses As Oil Companies Go Bankrupt

When public oil and gas companies are doing relatively well, many are happy to adopt a pay-for-performance model to reward CEOs and executives. However, the tables are quickly turned when things go to the dogs. When these companies go bankrupt, the misery is shared by employees who lose their jobs; retirees see their benefits and […]

Oversupply Is a Thing of the Past

Oversupply is a thing of the past as long as OPEC+ compliance stays strong and the oil demand recovery trajectory isn’t radically altered. That’s according to Rystad Energy, which made the comment in a statement sent to Rigzone on June 8. The company outlined that the last surplus month appears to have been May, when […]

Why are fossil fuels so hard to quit?

We understand today that humanity’s use of fossil fuels is severely damaging our environment. Fossil fuels cause local pollution where they are produced and used, and their ongoing use is causing lasting harm to the climate of our entire planet. Nonetheless, meaningfully changing our ways has been very difficult. But suddenly, the COVID-19 pandemic brought […]

BP to cut 10000 jobs worldwide amid virus pandemic

Oil and gas company BP announced Monday that it will slash its global workforce by 10,000 jobs as the COVID-19 pandemic slams the energy industry. Chief Executive Bernard Looney said that the cuts will affect office-based roles in BP’s global workforce of 70,000 people and come mostly this year. The changes are expected to significantly […]

Mediterranean Oil Tensions Are Boiling Over

Under pressure in Libya – where it’s gone head-to-head with General Haftar in an ongoing battle to decide who gets to ultimately control the country’s oil revenues – and floundering in Syria, Turkey is once again upping the ante in the Mediterranean, this time preparing to issue new oil and gas exploration licenses in direct […]

From environmental villain to pandemic hero — plastic is back

During the height of the Flint water crisis, CNN introduced us to Gina Luster, her 7-year-old daughter, and 13-year-old niece. The network’s in-depth profile described the family’s physical devastation from the city’s lead-contaminated water and their daily lifeline: bottled water. By CNN’s count, this family of three depended on 151 bottles of water a day […]

The case for the suburbs

The topic of suburbanization has come to the forefront as COVID-19 spreads and the subsequent shutdown endures. As the virus lingers, we have seen big-city residents seeking shelter by migrating to less dense places in the suburbs. While most of these moves are a temporary response to the pandemic, population data suggests urban centers have […]

The Great Pause Week 11: Son of a Lab Rat

“Humans, by and large, seem unshakable in their beliefs that skin color, religious affiliation, or ethnic-origins confer separate forms of intellect.“   My dad was literally a lab rat. Grandpa too. But dad was genetically manipulated by CRISPR to develop a coronavirus vaccine. They inserted human genes that allowed the SARS-CoV-2 virus to move by […]

Saudi Arabia Lays Down the Law to the Oil Market

Saudi Arabia called out the cheats at yesterday’s OPEC meeting — the countries that hadn’t fully reduced oil output in May as agreed — and extracted promises that they would compensate with even deeper reductions in the third quarter. Now the kingdom faces the group’s perennial problem of enforcing those promises. The meetings of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries […]

The Systemic Collapse Of The US Society Has Begun

I have lived in the United States for a total of 24 years and I have witnessed many crises over this long period, but what is taking place today is truly unique and much more serious than any previous crisis I can recall. And to explain my point, I would like to begin by saying […]

Responding to Collapse, Shortages of Money, Part 2

A high water level, wind, big waves and temperatures below freezing combine to create ice sculptures along Lake Huron.   I am writing this in late March of 2020 and it seems that hardly anyone else is writing anything that doesn’t focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. A few posts back I said that shortages of […]

Kunstler: Guess What — It’s a Hustle

Of course, George Floyd didn’t deserve to die with a cop’s knee on his neck and his face mashed into the pavement, but after yesterday’s first of what will be several funerals for the now revered former armed robber and convict, you’d think he was the second coming (and going) of George Washington. Uh, check […]

Uprisings: The Week After George Floyd

In the week following the murder of George Floyd by four cops, uprisings have sprung up across america, and solidarity actions have taken part around the world. From Minneapolis to Miami, Berlin to Toronto, people have taken the streets in outrage over the situation. One week in, tensions are still high and the struggle has […]

Fossil Fuels for Decades and Beyond

The easy thinking flies smoothly off the keyboard: “Fossil Fuels are Done;” “End of the Oil Era;” “The Inevitable Death of Natural Gas;” “The Demise of King Coal;” On and on, a parade of abstractions unconnected to the empirical world but sounding good, nevertheless. Preying on everyone’s wish for a clean, healthy environment, special interest […]

Michael Lynch: ‘Peak Oil’ Errors Can Teach Us About Covid Statistics

Take the second derivative. Scene from “Go Tell The Spartans.” Sunset Boulevard Back when I was a college student, I went to the movie theater to see the Vietnam-era movie “Go Tell the Spartans,” and one scene struck me: an intelligence office (bespectacled naturally) was explaining to his boss, Burt Lancaster, why he estimated one […]

The Big Boy Fusion Reactor

Engineers have installed the first and largest piece of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fusion project in France. The gigantic assembly begins with this piece, the steel base, which weighs more than 1,200 tons. Meet the Big Boy Nuclear Fusion Is Right Around the Corner ITER has been in the works for 30 years. […]

20,000 Ton Oil Spill in Russian Arctic Has ‘Catastrophic Consequences’

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared an emergency after 20,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled into a river in the Arctic Circle. The accident is the second largest oil spill in terms of volume in modern Russian history, the Word Wildlife Fund (WWF) told AFP, as BBC News reported. The oil spread around 7.5 miles from the fuel site, turning the […]

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