Middle East Oil Exports Lower Than 40 Years Ago

Yes, it’s true. Middle East net oil exports are less than they were 40 years ago. How could this be? Just yesterday, Zerohedge released a news story stating that OPEC oil production reached a new record high of 34.19 million barrels per day. To the typical working-class stiff, driving a huge four-wheel drive truck pulling […]

The Economy’s Hidden Problem: We’re Out of Big Ideas

By all appearances, we’re in a golden age of innovation. Every month sees new advances in artificial intelligence, gene therapy, robotics and software apps. Research and development as a share of gross domestic product is near an all-time high. There are more scientists and engineers in the U.S. than ever before. None of this has […]

Cooperative and Common Ownership

Company buy-outs and transformation into cooperative enterprises are often presented as a step in the construction of commons, as the various stakeholders – workers and users – are involved in the process of preserving and developing a resource. However, even though the cooperative form departs from the traditional rules of capital, it still remains essentially […]

An Updated Version of the “Peak Oil” Story

The Peak Oil story got some things right. Back in 1998, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère wrote an article published in Scientific American called, “The End of Cheap Oil.” In it they said: Our analysis of the discovery and production of oil fields around the world suggests that within the next decade, the supply of conventional oil […]

A Mountain of Gold

“The Chinese ecovillage movement is mostly retrofuturist, showing deference, if not nostalgia, for lost culture.”   It is Wednesday September 28 and we are sitting on the plane in Nashville waiting to take off for Hangzhou via Detroit and Beijing. This China trip is merely a warm-up for our Fall itinerary that has us traversing […]

Smart growth is the way

We recently took a trip to Orlando, Florida, to attend the National Association of Realtors annual conference. It’s a big deal with all the best and brightest in the industry and keynote speakers like Colin Powell and Lawrence Yun. We wanted to look at what global and national economic issues are affecting real estate and […]

“Economy Shattered, Currency Collapsing”: Venezuelans Wait In 6 ATM Lines For Enough To Buy Rice

A fistful of bolivars buys… well, next to nothing. A sad state of affairs in Venezuela. Is this how the economic crisis will play out in America? A cash strapped population, forced to the brink and stripped of their dignity? Unfortunately, it is already underway in Venezuela. Of course there is a higher standard of […]

Crude Oil Prices: “Random”? Hardly.

This week’s shocking spike in crude oil prices is +12% and counting, the biggest one-week gain in five years. Media stories blame one culprit: the November 30 OPEC agreement to cut production. In absolute terms, the agreed-to cut is small: 1.2 million barrels a day, less than 2% of daily global oil production. Given the […]

Oil to Top Out at $60 a Barrel

For a moment last week, it seemed as if the bad old days, when the once-mighty Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries enjoyed dominance over the oil market, had returned. On Wednesday, OPEC announced that its members had agreed to a larger-than-expected production cut, its first reduction in eight years. The 14-nation cartel also announced that […]

Goodbye peak oil, hello peak demand

The threat of the world facing a declining supply of oil, so-called peak oil, has given way to a forecast that is calling forth its much more benign cousin: peak demand. The relatively subdued reaction to an agreement this week by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut oil production beginning in January […]

Oil Skyrockets as OPEC Members Agree on a Deal

Gold prices began to drop once again yesterday as the pressure of the dollar strength continued to weigh on gold and silver. We have been saying that gold prices will continue to be weak in the short term and under pressure as we approach the Fed meeting in which a rate hike is expected to […]

IEA World Energy Outlook 2016

The IEA has released the 2016 version of their annual world energy outlook report – World Energy Outlook 2016. The report has prompted a spate of articles about “peak oil demand” (with earlier reports from the Economist and WSJ being joined this week by Forbes, Bloomberg and The FT). Other than speculation about when demand-driven […]

From Peak Oil to Peak Oil Demand in Just Nine Years

Peak demand for oil is the big new thing. True, the International Energy Agency, in the annual World Energy Outlook it released earlier this month, didn’t envision a peak coming before 2040 barring a big acceleration in anti-climate-change efforts. But at least it’s talking about the possibility, and forecasting a slowdown in demand growth in the meantime. Others think […]

Hey Oil Market: Forget About OPEC for a Second

The oil market’s attention is focused overwhelmingly on figuring out which OPEC member is going to cut what. The bigger question it shouldn’t lose sight of is this: Who will replace China? Looking back over 50 years, oil demand has gone through three broad phases: pre-1970s industrialization in the OECD countries, retrenchment after the oil […]

Tempering US Economic Growth Expectations

Listen, before we go through a litany of economic charts that pour some cold water on the recent bout of optimism regarding US economic growth prospects we want to stress that we don’t believe economic growth is about to fall off of a cliff. Quite the contrary, we feel that we are on the same “muddle-through” growth […]

Japan Is Aggressively Buying Up Oil And Gas Around The World

This coming year could be a surprisingly exciting time for oil and gas developers. Yes, energy prices are depressed right now. But not everyone sees that as a negative. In fact, private equity funds are still raising record amounts of capital for energy investments — with managers and investors alike seeing the current downturn as […]

How to Boost the Global Economy? Higher Oil Prices

Forget the stagflation of the 1970s. Higher oil prices would be a boon for the global economy, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Pricey crude means economies such as Saudi Arabia take in more money than they can spend, which financial markets help distribute through the rest of the world, boosting asset values and consumer […]

A Crude Oil Meltdown Could Have A Long Tail

Donald Trump, as the new U.S. President-Elect, has enjoyed an incredible last few days. The expectations are high as well as the rhetoric. We have seen a .41 basis point rise in the 10 year yield since the election. The dollar is trading at close to a 14 year high. The stock market had a […]

Is Argentina About To See An Oil Crash?

It’s been a tough week for the U.S. oil and gas industry, with the Department of Interior annulling 25 leases in Colorado’s Mancos shale (for environmental reasons), and then cancelling 15 leases on tribal lands in Montana. Topped off by the release of a new 5-year offshore drilling plan that closes the Atlantic, Pacific and […]

Will We Ever See $100 Oil Again?

A report from auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has revealed that oil prices are unlikely to climb back to the $100 level, and will have a limited rise from the current spot price to between $60 and $70 per barrel over the next few years. The rise, which would pull oil prices up from the below $50 […]

The Imminent Peak Oil Demand Myth

Summary Soon after peak oil supply theory became widely denounced in the wake of the shale boom, more and more voices proclaimed that peak demand will soon happen. Breaking down GDP growth and oil demand relationship into components in a simple formula suggests that there is no evidence of it starting to occur, or that […]

GMO Crops Could Help Feed the World

For many people, “GMO” is a scary word. Genetically modified organisms have been controversial for years, with a major criticism being that they do nothing to significantly increase crop yields. But new research from the University of Illinois shows otherwise. Researchers found that by boosting the levels of three proteins involved in photosynthesis they could […]

IEA cuts coal growth outlook in half as China peaks

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has dramatically scaled back its outlook for coal demand growth over the next 25 years, Carbon Brief analysis shows. The 2016 World Energy Outlook sees global coal demand rise by 214 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) by 2040, less than half the 485Mtoe increase it expected last year. The […]

IEA Sees Peak Oil Demand After 2040

Global oil demand won’t stop growing before 2040 despite pledges made at the Paris climate change summit last year to cap greenhouse-gas emissions, the head of the International Energy Agency said. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol’s comments have added to a debate over when oil consumption—which has steadily grown for decades—will begin a sustained decline, […]

The Catastrophic Consequences Of Peak Oil Demand

With OPEC’s 2016 World Oil Outlook now grimly forecasting that peak oil demand could become a reality in just over a decade, and natural gas and renewables chomping at the bit to cannibalize commodity market growth, it may be good for the environment, but the trade-off will be global instability on a catastrophic level. The […]

The True Cost of Food

The true cost of food has been an issue that has affected me since the beginning of my farming life. Ever since I started farming back in the 1970s, I produced milk, wheat and carrots as sustainably as I could manage, but found it difficult to compete with my neighbours who were using chemical production […]

Oil demand growth could fall below 1% by 2018

Impact investment firm Wermuth Asset Management (WAM), has said that regardless of whether oil prices rise around potential OPEC production-capping news, there is no long-term future for the hydrocarbon sector. Solar power is now available at $3 cent/kWh, which is equivalent to oil at $5/barrel. According to WAM research, continued investment in Oil and Gas […]

Britain to officially shutter all coal power plants by 2025

Government to phase out the most polluting fossil and replace it with cleaner sources, such as gas, to meet climate commitments Campaigners are calling for UK’s coal power plants to close even earlier than 2025. Photograph: David Jones/PA The last coal power station in Britain will be forced to close in 2025, the government said […]

Oil Is Heading Back To $20s

Oil bulls had a good ride in the last eight months. The black gold rallied, from mid-$20s in January to the mid-$50s in late October. But economic fundamentals have turned bumpy for oil bulls in the last couple of weeks, with oil heading towards the $40-mark rather than the $60-mark as some had expected. And […]

Global oil demand could peak by 2020, says Shell

The world’s second-largest energy company by market value is less confident than others that the majority of vehicles on the world’s roads will continue to be powered by fossil fuels for the next few decades. The rise of electric cars has led many analysts to make predictions about the future of the oil industry. ExxonMobil and OPEC have […]

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