Ocean animals face a mass extinction

Not since an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs — along with at least half of all other beings on Earth — has life in the ocean been so at risk. Warming waters are cooking creatures in their own habitats. Many species are slowly suffocating as oxygen leaches out of the seas. Even populations that have […]

Europe ratchets up preparation for Russian oil embargo next week

European Union countries are likely to approve as early as next week a phased embargo on Russian oil, officials say, sealing a long-postponed measure that has divided the bloc’s members and highlighted their dependence on Russian energy sources. It has taken weeks for EU countries to agree on the contours of the measure, and intensive […]

Richard Heinberg: The Failure of Global Elites

In the 1970s, global political and corporate elites had all the information they needed to put the world on a path toward long-term stability. Systems science was sufficiently advanced that a team of its practitioners organized a scenario study to see how trends in industrial production, population, food, pollution, and resource usage might interact over […]

Russia estimates its oil output could fall as much as 17% this year

Russia’s oil output could decline by as much as 17%, Reuters reported Wednesday. The Kremlin is facing its biggest slump in crude production since the early 1990s. Russia is facing its biggest slump in oil production since the finals days of the Soviet Union, as Western sanctions continue to batter the economy. The Kremlin sees […]

EU ‘prepared’ for Russian gas halt, says EC President

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said April 27 the EU was working on a coordinated response to the cut-off of Russian gas deliveries to Bulgaria and Poland, adding that the EU was “prepared” for such a scenario as prices surged on the disruption. Gazprom said earlier April 27 it had fully suspended gas […]

Russia strikes back by cutting off gas to 2 NATO nations

Russia cut off natural gas to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday and threatened to do the same to other countries, dramatically escalating its standoff with the West over the war in Ukraine. European leaders decried the move as “blackmail.” A day after the U.S. and other Western allies vowed to speed more and […]

Ugo Bardi: Our Ruin Will Likely Be Rapid

During the first century of our era, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius that life would be much happier if things would only decline as slowly as they grow. Unfortunately, as Seneca noted, “increases are of sluggish growth but the way to ruin is rapid.” We may call this universal […]

Is Global Oil Production Growing Fast Enough?

Media outlets tend to make it sound as if all our economic problems are temporary problems, related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, world crude oil production has been falling behind needed levels since 2019. This problem, by itself, encourages the world economy to contract in unexpected ways, including in the form of economic […]

Peak Oil Might Be Just Three Years Away

The energy transition continues to gain steam, with oil demand projected to peak in this decade – perhaps as soon as 2025, according to new research by leading global consultancy McKinsey & Company. McKinsey’s Global Energy Perspective research was launched at a time when global energy markets are facing an unprecedented array of uncertainties, including […]

Decline In World Conventional Oil Output And Peak Oil

Summary World Conventional Oil output peaked at a centered twelve-month average (CTMA) of 74193 kb/d in July 2016. The general trend for non-OPEC conventional oil has been an annual decline rate of about 48 kb/d over this period, and for OPEC, output has increased at an annual rate of 171 kb/d over the same period. […]

World could run out of food in the next 27 years

THE world could run out of food in just over 27 years, a sociobiologist has claimed. To be precise, we have exactly 27 years and 251 days left, from April 24, according to the doomsday scenario, if the calculations are accurate. Former Harvard Professor Edward Wilson, who died in December 2021, said previously we would […]

2022 Oil Demand Expected to Stay Below 100MM Barrels Per Day

In a new report sent to Rigzone this week, Standard Chartered forecasted that overall 2022 global oil demand will stay below 100 million barrels per day. In the report, the company projected that demand will increase from 97.5 million barrels per day (MMbpd) in 2021 to 98.9 MMbpd this year. Looking at specific quarters, the […]

EU companies will pay for gas in rubles

The European Commission said Friday that EU companies may be able to comply with Russia’s proposed gas payment system, without running afoul of sanctions against Moscow. Shortly following the war in Ukraine, President Putin issued a decree mandating that Russian gas exports to “unfriendly” nations be paid for in rubles. Several EU leaders pushed back […]

How China’s food security challenges shape its decisions at home and abroad

I still recall my astonishment, as part of research inside the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping, after discovering that China leads the world in fruit and vegetable production but loses up to half of what it produces through wastage between the farm and the kitchen table. That equates to about a quarter of all the fruit […]

Mother Earth is in deep trouble

At the doors of MidAmerican Energy‘s downtown Des Moines headquarters Friday, youth activists held up a large check made out to the electric and natural gas company’s CEO, Kelcey Brown. The amount? “Our future,” the check read. “We’re losing. Not just money, but years of our lives. Our future,” said climate justice activist Hannah Hayes, a sophomore at Roosevelt High School. Friday […]

After 53 Earth Days, Society Still Hasn’t Collapsed

Cassandra in Greek mythology was the Trojan priestess who was cursed to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. Ideological environmentalism features a cohort of reverse Cassandras: They make false prophecies that are widely believed. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 classic, The Population Bomb, prophesied, “The battle to feed all of humanity is […]

‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’

The world’s energy picture is changing almost daily, and everyone seems to have a solution for the high price of natural gas and gasoline. Drilling for new oil is the solution, our senior U. S. senator said. He didn’t exactly say “Drill, Baby, Drill,” as Sarah Palin famously did during the 2008 Vice Presidential debate, […]

Cooking-oil chaos exacerbates a looming world hunger crisis

The world’s supply of cooking oil — already squeezed by war — is getting smaller. Two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended global agricultural trade, Indonesia is set to ban exports of cooking oil in the wake of a local shortage and soaring prices, adding to a raft of crop protectionism around the world. […]

Daniel Yergin: How to cut off Russian oil and gas to Europe without causing chaos

What seemed undoable when Russia invaded Ukraine — banning Russian oil and gas sales in a Europe that depends heavily on Russian energy — is becoming increasingly likely. But it will need to be done right if it is going to work. Sanctions imposed against Russia in February after the war began notably excluded energy […]

Biden resumes oil and gas leases on federal land

The Biden administration announced Friday that it would resume lease sales for oil and gas drilling on federal land, though it plans to reduce the amount of land available significantly and will increase the royalty it charges companies for the oil and gas produced on the land. The Interior Department said in a news release […]

Kuntler: You’ve Been Misinformed

Half the nation doesn’t believe anything it is told by those in authority and the other half revels in its reckless abuse of authority…. Isn’t it obvious by now that pervasive dishonesty is the foremost crisis of many crises in Western Civ generally and American life in particular? All our authorities have made themselves false, […]

BofA Research Maintains $100+ Oil Forecast

BofA Global Research is maintaining its $102 per barrel average Brent crude oil price forecast for 2022 and 2023, a new report from the company has revealed. In the BofA Global Research report, which was sent to Rigzone, the company outlined that it had lowered its summer spike price for Brent to $120 per barrel […]

‘Too many people, not enough food’ isn’t the cause of hunger

Nearly one in three people in the world did not have access to enough food in 2020. That’s an increase of almost 320 million people in one year and it’s expected to get worse with rising food prices and the war trapping wheat, barley and corn in Ukraine and Russia. Climate change related floods, fires […]

Experts say IEA’s pumping of 120mn barrels of oil has limited, short-term impact

Experts and specialists say the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s announcement of a new pumping of oil from emergency reserves of about 120 million barrels to boost energy supplies and calm prices will have a limited and short-term effect. HE the Second Deputy Prime Minister and former minister of energy and industry Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah […]

Richard Heinberg: The Failure of Global Elites

In the 1970s, global political and corporate elites had all the information they needed to put the world on a path toward long-term stability. Systems science was sufficiently advanced that a team of its practitioners organized a scenario study to see how trends in industrial production, population, food, pollution, and resource usage might interact over […]

The “Doomsday Preppers” Were Right

For years, there was a great debate about what the future of our society would look like.  The irrational optimists kept assuring us that we would never suffer any serious consequences for decades of incredibly foolish decisions, and they kept promising that a new golden age of peace and prosperity for humanity was just around […]

The Global Fertilizer Shortage Means That Far Less Food Will Be Grown All Over The Planet In 2022

I never imagined that I would be writing so much about fertilizer in 2022.  When I was growing up, there were only two things that I knew about fertilizer.  I knew that it helped stuff grow and I knew that it smelled bad.  But these days, experts are telling us that a global shortage of […]

Is Today’s Energy Shortage Worse Than The 1970s Oil Crisis?

When Middle Eastern oil producers declared an oil embargo on exports to the U.S. in 1973, oil prices soared and the U.S. experienced significant fuel shortages. Today’s energy crisis, which includes not only oil but also natural gas and coal, could be even worse than the infamous oil crisis of the 1970s. The current energy […]

Food and fertilizer fears

Are we on the verge of a fertilizer production, trade and supply crisis? Some usually sober and authoritative voices seem to think so. Events have certainly collided this autumn to create an increasingly toxic operating environment for the industry. The dizzying upwards spiral in fertilizer prices, crippling supply and logistical constraints, and the European energy […]

Gazprom Halts Gas Shipments To Europe Via Critical Pipeline

After European nations imported the most gas from Russian sources yesterday in months, scrambling to stock up on supplies as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadline to either pay for gas in rubles (or be cut off) came and went, Russian gas giant Gazprom has officially halted all deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, a […]

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