Yergin: Expect Extreme Volatility In Oil Markets

Rising pipeline takeaway capacity in the Permian and global oil demand growth at its weakest in a decade are set to lead to more volatility in oil prices in the near term, a prominent energy expert said, joining a growing number of analysts who see prices further depressed by slowing economies and crude demand. “The […]

Gas to Become Primary Energy Source in 2026

DNV GL sees global gas demand overtaking demand for oil in 2026 to become the world’s primary energy source. That’s according to the company’s latest Energy Transition Outlook report, which predicts that global oil demand will peak in the mid-2020s and gas demand will keep rising to 2033. Gas demand is then anticipated to plateau […]

OPEC Cuts 2020 Oil Demand Forecast

OPEC on Wednesday cut its forecast for growth in world oil demand in 2020 due to an economic slowdown, an outlook the producer group said highlighted the need for ongoing efforts to prevent a new glut of crude. In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said oil demand worldwide would expand […]

Review: Growth by Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil’s latest book explores growth in nature and society. It examines the rules and patterns of growth in four key domains, those of the living world; human energy consumption; human artifacts; and human populations, societies and economies. The author is a passionate advocate of quantitative analysis, and thus Growth is filled with numbers, graphs […]

Oil plummets as Trump signals thaw in Iranian sanctions deadlock

Oil dropped to a one-week low as U.S. President Donald Trump considered easing sanctions on Iran that severely restricted the OPEC member’s ability to export crude. Futures declined more than 2% in New York and London on Wednesday. Trump is preparing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani later this month, according to people familiar […]

Chris Nelder interviews Colin Campbell: A Return to Regionalism

SPOTIFY ITUNES Is “peak oil” still something to be concerned about, and if so, what does depletion of conventional oil supply suggest about our future? Our guest in this episode certainly thinks peak oil will be a key factor in the decades ahead, and he foresees a future in which humanity must downsize significantly, both […]

Why a Hipster, Vegan, Green Start-up Service Economy Lifestyle cannot be Sustainable

On the borderlands of Montreal’s well-to-do Outremont district and the ultra-hipsterized Mile End district lies an expanse of land near the Canadian-Pacific Railroad line. This space separates these two districts from Parc-Extension (Parc-Ex for short). One of Canada’s poorest and most densely populated neighbourhoods, Parc-Ex is a port of call for many newly arrived immigrants. […]

Dow Wants to Turn Piles of Plastic Trash Into Oil

Dow Inc. is partnering with the Dutch developer of a method for turning plastic trash back into oil as the global chemical powerhouse seeks to expand recycling amid rising alarm over pollution. Fuenix Ecogy Group has created a method for breaking down plastic into a form that can be used in a fresh round of […]

Why Humans are Unfit to Live on This Planet

Cassandra’s legacy Let it be known that you are lofty as the heavens! Let it be known that you are broad as the earth! Let it be known that you destroy the rebel lands! Let it be known that you roar at the foreign lands! Let it be known that you crush heads! Let it […]

Heinberg: Two Arguments for Localism

Dear faithful readers, My essay this month was written in response to a piece by Brian Tokar on the subject of local-versus-global action. Great Transition Network, which invited these essays, also published contributions from Helena Norberg Hodge, David Bollier and others. You can read the whole discussion here. Meanwhile, my book project is advancing by […]

Trying to get a grip on actual oil demand

The current quarter will be key in shaping the oil supply-demand balances for 2019, according to the latest outlooks from the world’s three major oil-forecasting agencies. If the big inventory draws they expect fail to materialise, Opec’s goal of pulling down excess stockpiles will be delayed again. The International Energy Agency, the US Energy Information […]

China’s Very Ambitious Transportation Revolution

The proverb goes that when China coughs, the world catches the flu. The unprecedented economic development of the world’s most populous country has led to a steep increase in national and personal wealth. An obvious beneficiary of economic growth is the automotive industry. Car ownership has grown to almost 58 per 1000 citizens and, currently, […]

Jeff Rubin on Peak Oil

Jeff Rubin waxes philosophical on the need for a major paradigm shift in our attitudes, and suggests that we can have the world we want if we are willing to let go of the world we have.

What’s Wrong With the Global Economy?

Global markets were seized by fear last week that trade wars were slowing growth in Germany, China and the United States. But the story here is bigger than President Trump and his tariffs. The postwar miracle is over. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the world economy has been struggling against four headwinds: deglobalization of […]

World Futures Institute: Energy – Part One

Many columns ago a list of 18 areas was identified affecting the future of humanity and the earth. Among the sublevels identified were energy storage (especially long term), energy conversion, energy system efficiency and energy distribution. As human beings we use energy. At the simplest of levels we use the energy contained in food to […]

Overpopulation threatens the world’s food supply

That was the front-page headline in the New York Times last Thursday, August 8th, announcing a new report from the IPCC, “Climate Change and Land.” I’m kidding, of course. The actual headline read “Climate Change Threatens the World’s Food Supply, United Nations Warns,” and the article did not mention population once. A young girl stands […]

Get Ready for $2 Gas

The summer of 2019 is starting to look like the summer of 2016. That year, gasoline prices started below $2 a gallon in winter. They rallied slightly into the summer but hugged the $2 line for most of the next nine months. U.S. gas prices dropped 13 cents this month, compared to July, and the […]

Oil Markets Face Nightmare Scenario

Oil prices rose sharply on Tuesday after President Trump decided to delay tariffs, recognizing the negative impact tariffs would have on the U.S. economy. But by Wednesday, oil prices crashed again, as financial markets see the risk of economic recession rising in spite of the tariff delay. The closely-watched spread between two-year and 10-year treasury […]

How will we travel the world in 2050?

If the aviation industry was a country, it would rank among the world’s top ten emitters of carbon dioxide (CO₂). Aviation emissions have risen by 70% since 2005 and as demand increases in rich and poorer countries, they’re forecast to increase by between 300% and 700% by 2050. Arresting this incline will be the first […]

Declining Quantities Of Consumers Vs. Increasing Energy Consumption?!?

Summary I compare the UN World Population Prospects 2019 report (split by the World Bank Gross National Income data) vs. the EIA International Energy Outlook 2017. I show the observed data sets from 1980 through 2018 and projected data sets from 2019 through 2050. Imminent declines in the wealthier nations consumer populations are sure to […]

IEA Says Oil Outlook is Fragile

The outlook for global oil demand is “fragile” amid growing signs of an economic slowdown, which squeezed consumption growth during the first five months of this year to the weakest in a decade, the International Energy Agency said. The IEA, which advises major economies, trimmed forecasts for oil-demand growth this year and next, and warned […]

Saudi Arabia Is Steering Ever More Oil to China, Draining the U.S.

Signals from oil tankers last month suggest that Saudi Arabia is sending an ever-larger portion of its crude to China — with the U.S. losing out. Saudi Arabia’s observed exports to China soared to 1.74 million barrels a day in July, the highest since Bloomberg began tracking the tanker shipments in January 2017. At the […]

The Twilight of the Monofuture

I’m pleased to say that my post here two weeks ago, on the way that belief in progress depends on a certain kind of historical amnesia, got a lively and mostly thoughtful response. Oh, I fielded and deleted some saliva-flecked denunciations, to be sure, but that always happens when I try to pose hard questions […]

Vance Packard’s The Waste Makers: A late review

Where did the Convenience Industrial Complex start? A 1960 classic tells all. The Convenience Industrial Complex is the term we came up with to define the economy based on us buying more and more stuff we don’t need in ever larger sizes to consume more resources which we just throw away when we are bored […]

The World Is Not Enough

Earth Overshoot Day came on July 29 this year. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, this is only the second time the day, which marks the time at which humanity has used up its allotment of natural planetary resources for the year, occurred in the month of July. It had occurred in August between 2010 and 2017. The […]

Never-ending Growth?

Remaining at the present level would imply a continued carnage at the “commodity extraction frontier” until so little is left that eternal warfare and collapse are inevitable. (Remko de Waal/Getty-AFP) The most ambitious internationally agreed plan to make this world a better place are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But during their annual review, […]

Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake?

The summer I was eighteen, I visited a parking lot forty-five minutes north of town and got behind the wheel for what I hoped would be the first real rite of my adulthood. I was tall, gangly, excitable. Less than a week earlier, following a brief stretch of test-taking at the Department of Motor Vehicles […]

After Oil

Peak oil is the day when the world’s supply of oil reaches its peak and then begins to decline… and it could be right around the corner. Hear what the academics and experts are saying about what we an and should do to prepare for a world After Oil. Join Barbara Bogaev and hear from […]

The world faces a dwindling supply of this crucial resource needed to grow food

By 2030, the world’s population is projected to be about 8.5 billion people. Global food security is a major concern for governments – zero hunger is the second most important of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is a severe conflict between sustainable food production and the use of nonrenewable resources in agricultural […]

Half the battle in global oil market dominance

In the last one week it was the usual interplay of the forces of bulls and bears in the global oil market. Tensions in the Middle East continued to weigh on oil futures. The United States benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, WTI traded down by US$1.70 (-2.85 percent) at US$57.88 last Tuesday after reports that the […]

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