World seen better at handling hikes in the price of oil

The world has increased its resilience to increases in the price of oil, according to a researcher at the International Monetary Fund. Writing in IMF Survey Magazine, Jorg Decressin says “fundamental changes in the workings of the global economy and the use of macroeconomic policy” have enabled the world to absorb a quadrupling of oil […]

It Only Took a Global Depression to Reduce Gas Prices by 40 Cents

You can’t watch the mainstream media propaganda channels for more than ten minutes without a talking head breathlessly announcing that gas prices have dropped for the 24th day in a row and are now back to $3.55 a gallon. Wall Street oil analysts, who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to tell […]

Resource depletion: Opportunity or looming catastrophe?

Imagine a world of spiralling food prices, water shortages and soaring energy costs. For many living in the world today, this nightmare scenario is already a reality. Even for the well-off living in developed economies, it is becoming all too familiar. And on current projections, it’s going to get a whole lot worse. Short-term fluctuations […]

Myth of Perpetual Growth is killing America

Yes, everything you know about economics is wrong. Dead wrong. Everything. The conclusions of economists are based on a fiction that distorts everything else. As a result economics is as real as one of the summer blockbusters like “Battleship,” “The Avenger” or “Prometheus.” The difference is that the economic profession is a genuine threat, not […]

Jeff Rubin: Who’s in the driver’s seat?

Persuading North Americans that their oil-guzzling days are over is a hard sell – but that doesn’t change the facts. The old economic order is shifting, notes economist Jeff Rubin, author of The End of Growth. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 7, Zero-Sum World: Why China can afford triple-digit oil prices while America can’t […]

Iraq Says Oil Price Decline Is Severe; Surplus ‘Tremendous’

The latest crude price decline has been severe and there’s “tremendous” surplus in the market, Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi said. “It is very clear that there are tremendous surplus quantities that led to this severe decline in the prices,” al- Luaibi said today in Vienna, where he is attending the meeting of the […]

What About $67 Oil?

The story so far: 1: There was a bubble in oil prices in 2008. The evidence for that is it popped which is a pretty good clue; although so far no one has figured out what drove the bubble. Yes it was probably speculators with access to easy money, but sadly no smoking gun has […]

US Air Travel Plateau

Yesterday, I had a bad air-travel day (one of several lately on work trips) which led me to wonder about all the peak-oil related predictions of the demise of air travel.  The above shows the data for total US domestic passenger revenue-miles.  The obvious features seem to be: Strong growth in the 1990s A sharp […]

The real reason the military is going green

Air Force cargo planes drop barrels of fuel to remote bases in Afghanistan to avoid dangerous land-based fuel convoys. This makes each barrel cost up to $400, and is a major reason the Pentagon is working to cut down the military’s reliance on fossil fuels. Photo: U.S. Army. Retired Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson calls himself  […]

Willful Blindness, Willful Hypocrisy

Here’s the deal. Research reveals that we lie to ourselves. Not you and I of course, but others do prolifically. Willful Blindness is one of various books and research papers that verify this. We seem to fool ourselves for a variety of reasons. Two of the main reasons, one is self protective and the other […]

4 Reasons Natural Gas Is So Cheap

Natural gas prices have been low this year. You can’t complain about that. Recently, natural gas broke the psychological $2 mark which may beg the question of how much lower natural gas will go. It has since gone north of $2 but that doesn’t change much of anything. Natural gas is still relatively cheap. According […]

Affluenza Afloat: The Dangers of Supersized Cruise Ships in Our Peak-Oil World

Recent news that the 2,600 passenger Grand Princess cruise ship will be docked in San Francisco one year from now has unleashed a titanic blast of excitement. Naturally, the thrill of thousands of passengers and crew routinely disembarking at the pier is music to the ears of struggling retailers and restaurateurs. In the meantime, avid cruise fans enticed by dramatic […]

Far Too High’ Oil Price Poses Economic Risk, IEA

Fatih Birol saying oil prices still a risk to world economy, even though they’ve come down $30 dollas in the last 2 months??? and even though OPEC/Saudi Arabia has said they need $100 dollar a barrel oil

Disruptive Economics Accelerating Global Energy Change

Oil analysts already integrate “disruptive technology” in the shape of hybrid and all-electric cars in their forecasts of probable, at least possible decline in the total oil demand of the world’s two-largest car fleets – in the EU27 and USA – and in the world’s fastest-growing fleets of China, India and other smaller emerging economies. […]

Average Household Energy Use

This is EIA data from 2005 showing the average end-use of energy within households.  I haven’t found time series data for household energy use at present. I note that my house comparesquite unfavorably to the average.  I assume that’s a function a) of it being an old house, b) of us being a five person […]

Petrol prices ignite anger in South Africa

Petrol prices in South Africa hurting the consumer. May 2012

Stuart Staniford: Oil prices

It’s worth a comment on oil prices which have been collapsing with remarkable speed lately.  Firstly, let’s briefly recap the price history of the last five years, which I have divided into eight eras in the chart above. The final stage of the 2005-2008 price shock.  This was driven by the onset of the plateau in […]

The end of cheap oil?

IEA Confirms The End Of Cheap Oil, reads one blogger’s headline. The end of cheap oil – and life as you know it, proclaims the Digital Journal. Age of Cheap Oil Is Over: IEA’s Chief Economist, says MarketWatch. Obama Cops to Peak Oil Reality, blares the Post Carbon Institute. But a funny thing happened on […]

Japanese oil demand to surge

Japanese crude oil demand during the peak summer season is expected to reach a 10-year high as nuclear power plants go dark, industry estimates indicate. None of the 50 nuclear reactors in Japan is online, meaning about 20 percent of the country’s power capacity isn’t available. The country’s crude and fuel oil demand for power […]

Oil Prices are Down, and That’s Very Bad News

Stuart Staniford reviews the recent rise and then collapse of oil prices today, and concludes that it’s the economy, stupid: So whither these trends now? On the one hand, it seems clear that the recent downward forces on prices will continue….Spain’s difficulties rescuing Bankia, and the fact that there are likely still a lot of […]

Texas May Triple Power Prices to Avert Summer Blackouts

Texas, the biggest electricity consumer in the U.S., faces a shortage of power to fuel its growing economy that may force the most extensive overhaul of the state’s competitive market since deregulation in 2002. Texas utility commissioners and grid operators are studying whether to allow the nation’s highest peak wholesale power prices to triple, part […]

The Realities Of Choosing Your Survival Retreat Location

Unfortunately, having a ‘Plan B’ just isn’t the modern American way.  The great and diabolical misfortune of having two to three solid generations of assumed prosperity in one’s culture is the side-effect it has of lulling the populace into comfortable apathy.  “Prepping” becomes a kind of novelty; a lifestyle that people joke about while planning […]

Peak oil: Are we looking at it all wrong?

By as early as 2015, global demand for oil will begin to decline, some scientists say. Not because we’ll have run out of the fossil fuel, but because we just won’t need as much of it. I don’t know about you, but when I’m skimming around on the Web and I catch sight of the […]

Burning Desire for Efficiency

Ever wonder how efficient it is to heat water? Of course you have! Ever measured it? Whoa, mister, now you’ve gone too far! I recently devised a laser-phototransistor gauge to monitor my natural gas meter dial—like ya do. As a side benefit, I acquired good data on how much energy goes into various domestic uses […]

Gail Tverberg: Running Short of Cheap Oil

This is a link to an interview done by Justin and Seth of the Extraenvironmentist.com, while I attended the Degrowth Conference in Montreal. The interview relates to how running short of cheap-to-extract oil affects the economy.  The interview is 13 minutes long. The video shows only my answers, not the questions they asked, so it […]

German Power Grids Increasingly Strained

With a steep growth of power generation from photovoltaic (PV) and wind power and with 8 GW base load capacity suddenly taken out of service the situation in Germany has developed into a nightmare for system operators. Figure 1The peak demand in Germany is about 80 GW. The variations of wind and PV generation create […]

Ramping up to use natural gas as a motor fuel

In the 1990s, natural gas was promoted as the motor fuel of the future. Utilities opened refueling stations and government agencies traded in their dirty diesel trucks for vehicles fueled with clean compressed natural gas (CNG). The Lower Merion School District committed itself in a big way. It converted half its fleet of 113 buses […]

Peak Oil: Oh, nein! Price at the pump puts Germany on road to Athens

High petrol prices in Germany an ever increasing problem. 27 May 2012

India: diesel crisis, petrol outlets go dry

It was a double whammy for residents of Chennai, as a large number of the 300 fuel outlets in the city that put up ‘no diesel’ on Friday also ran out of petrol. While there was no explanation from the oil companies till late evening, pump owners said petrol shortage was a spin-off of the […]

Cheaper gas spurs more travelers this Memorial Day

More Americans will hit the road this holiday weekend than a year ago. And they’ll have a bit more money to spend thanks to lower gas prices. Memorial Day kicks off the summer travel season, and since pump prices never reached $4 or $5 a gallon, as feared, economists says travelers are likely to dine […]

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