The Myth Of Africa Overpopulation

— “Many in position of power think the world has become overpopulated recently, and Africa takes the center of attention because of the constant increase in population” — “European countries are nowadays giving incentives to their women to give birth to more babies. Yet, an already underpopulated continent, Africa is crowded with Western ‘experts’ giving money to NGOs and […]

You’ll Eat Bugs. These Investors Are Betting Millions on It

Greg Sewitz and Gabi Lewis are used to people laughing at them. Three years ago the two college roommates ordered two boxes of live crickets off the Internet, the sort you might feed your pet iguana. They promptly shoved the two shoebox-sized containers of insects into the freezer. Later, they ground the tiny frozen corpses in […]

What if the suburbs went on forever?

Suburbia has a bad name. As a form of development, it’s associated with sprawl and waste, oversized homes, cookie-cutter communities, and a dreary dependence on automobiles. Yet suburban land is also where most people live — not just in the United States, but around the world — and a new exhibition at MIT argues that […]

Economic Collapse of South America

The 7th largest economy on the entire planet is completely imploding.  I have written previously about the economic depression that is plaguing Brazil, but since my last article it has gotten much, much worse.  During 2015, Brazil’s economy shrank by 3.8 percent, but for the most recent quarter the decline was 5.89 percent on a […]

Has Degrowth Outgrown its own Name?

Why Degrowth has out-grown its own name by Kate Raworth Here’s what troubles me about degrowth: I just can’t bring myself to use the word. Don’t get me wrong: I think the degrowth movement is addressing the most profound economic questions of our day. I believe that economies geared to pursue unending GDP growth will […]

The Impact of Oil, Gas on the US Housing Market

Just a few years ago, the industry was in an upcycle – oil prices were high, drillers had discovered new ways to extract oil and gas and jobs were plentiful in the oilfield. Workers flocked to oil-rich cities like Houston; Midland, Texas; and Williston, North Dakota. The housing markets in these areas saw a heavy […]

Oil likely to recover to $55 in 12 months

Oil prices are likely to recover after 11-year low to USD 55 per barrel from the current USD 34 in 12 months, following gains in the latter half of 2016, according to a report. However, weakness in the price of crude oil is likely to continue in the short-term, with the market yet to see […]

For The ECB, It’s No Longer About Oil

Inflation in the euro area came in at 0.2 percent in February, piling further pressure on policymakers at the European Central Bank ahead of next week’s monetary policy meeting. While the largest component of the price fall in the common currency zone remains energy, the ECB is becoming increasingly concerned about second round effects and the […]

Why Globalization Reaches Limits

We have been living in a world of rapid globalization, but this is not a condition that we can expect to continue indefinitely. Figure 1. Ratio of Imported Goods and Services to GDP. Based in FRED data for IMPGS. Each time imported goods and services start to surge as a percentage of GDP, these imports […]

The implications of peak energy

Our current society is one based on whim. Whatever we want can be had if we have the money. Not only can we have what we want any time we want it, it’s the done thing to throw it away and buy something else when it breaks or the latest upgrade comes out. We are […]

Get Set for the 2023 Oil Glut

Another global oil glut could occur as early as 2023, but it will have nothing to do with overzealous Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries production; instead, it will be triggered by the next generation of electric cars. The argument put forth by BloombergBusiness corroborates those made by peak-oil theorists, who favour scrutinizing demand instead of […]

What Really Controls Oil Prices?

World oil prices are controlled by the amount of crude oil stored at Cushing, Oklahoma. That’s because Cushing is the pricing point for WTI (West Texas Intermediate) oil prices, the most-traded oil futures contract in the world. Cushing Storage Rules World Oil Prices WTI and Brent oil prices have good negative correlation with the volume of crude oil stored at Cushing. Comparative […]

“The Future” as a sales pitch

No one can know the future. But it turns out we can invent a place called “The Future” and invite people to inhabit it. In order to inhabit “The Future”–which is really just an enactment of our ideas about the future–you need the right accessories. For starters you’ll need the basics: the latest iPhone with the latest social networking […]

This Is The ‘Big New Threat’ To Oil Prices

One week ago, we reported that even as traders were focusing on the daily headline barrage out of OPEC members discussing whether or not they would cut production (they won’t) or merely freeze it (at fresh record levels as Russia reported earlier today) a bigger threat in the near-term will be whether the relentless supply […]

Will better, cheaper EVs really crash the oil market?

As the many, many analysts around the media world prove every day, you simply can’t go wrong when you predict the future. Sure, you can be wrong, but it seems like no matter how factually incorrect you might be about the future, you will always find a place at the media table. Of course, I […]

Oil Price And Its Effect On Production

The JODI Oil World Database came out a few days ago. The data is through December 2015. The JODI C+C production numbers differs somewhat from the EIA numbers. The JODI OPEC numbers are crude. Also there are a few very small producers that do not report to JODI so their numbers will be slightly less than […]

Oil rout hits Houston’s rich

Prices for mansions in Houston’s swankiest neighborhood have tumbled in lock step with crude prices. The Houston Opera has offered free season tickets to patrons who lost their jobs in the oil bust. A fancy restaurant offers cut-price dinners. Twenty months into the worst oil price crash since the 1980s, well-heeled residents of the world’s […]

Here’s How Electric Cars Will Cause the Next Oil Crisis

With all good technologies, there comes a time when buying the alternative no longer makes sense. Think smartphones in the past decade, color TVs in the 1970s, or even gasoline cars in the early 20th century. Predicting the timing of these shifts is difficult, but when it happens, the whole world changes. It’s looking like […]

The Only EROEI that Matters is Energy Return on Human Labor Invested

There still needs to be consumers who can afford the output. Even if there is massive consolidation, the basic problem of workers who could not afford the output would not be fixed, because it is related to the fact that the cheap energy sources have already been taken. Even if direct extraction costs are low, […]

‘we can live with $20 a barrel,’ says Saudi Arabia

There will be no short-term resolution to the current oil glut in the form of coordinated production cuts, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister has warned. In comments at an industry conference in Houston that sent the oil price spiralling lower, Ali al-Naimi stated categorically that a cut in supplies “is not going to happen”, reports the […]

Peak Oil: Get Ready for What Comes Next

Recently, I had to plunk down money on a new car. The old one was, well, pretty much ancient. When I bought it new for cash, Bill Clinton had just survived impeachment, gold was $300 an ounce, the Dow was at 9,000 and “Google” was not yet a verb. That was 17 years, two clutch […]

A Market Collapse Is On The Horizon

What is ahead for 2016? Most people don’t realize how tightly the following are linked: 1. Growth in debt 2. Growth in the economy 3. Growth in cheap-to-extract energy supplies 4. Inflation in the cost of producing commodities 5. Growth in asset prices, such as the price of shares of stock and of farmland 6. […]

IEA: Oil supply, demand to rebalance in early 2017

The world’s fuel producers probably won’t curb enough oil production to realign crude supply and demand until early 2017, with the United States making up the bulk of the decline, the International Energy Agency says. And even when the oil market rebalances and buyers begin to draw from oil stocks, the global crude inventory may […]

Michael Lynch: Methods Of Forecasting Long Term Oil Prices

In the early years of the oil industry, prices moved sharply with the discovery of a new, large oil field or the sudden decline of an existing producer. Producers were like farmers, prey to things happening beyond their control and outside of their knowledge. Efforts to control the price (Standard Oil, Texas Railroad Commission, Achnacarry […]

The Great Global Famine – The Aftermath of Peak Oil

Humanity has struggled to survive through the millennia in terms of Nature’s tendency to balance population size with food supply. The same is true now, but population numbers have been soaring for over a century. Oil, the limiting factor, is close to or beyond its peak extraction. Without ample, free-flowing oil, it will not be […]

Bernanke Says Oil, Stocks Moving Together

The past decade has been a roller coaster for oil prices, one that market participants have probably not much enjoyed riding (Figure 1). The period includes much volatility and two sharp crashes. One crash, in 2008, was associated with the financial crisis and the Great Recession. The second may still be going on: Oil prices […]

The global economy echoes 1930s Great Depression

Protectionism, shaky debt, and weak banking systems have consequences Getty Images/Keystone/StaffHuge crowds outside the Sub Treasury Building (now Federal Hall National Memorial) and the statue of George Washington, opposite the New York Stock Exchange at the time of the Wall Street Crash, October 1929. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) One view of what caused the Great […]

Oil is now so cheap even pirates aren’t stealing it any more

Stealing the oil from a ship is no mean feat. Oil tankers are enormous, and ships that carry expensive cargo are designed to be difficult to board. Stealing can mean hijacking the original tanker, disabling its tracking devices, taking it to a location where it can’t be spotted, and transferring thousands of heavy barrels to […]

Foiled by Oil

People do use their oil shares to buy houses, cars, planes and college educations. When crude oil prices hit $140 per barrel, pension funds and college endowments rejoiced. Our 2006 book, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook was published just as conventional hydrocarbons struck their all-time global production top and began to decline (a picture […]

Retrotopia: Back To What Worked

I made some phone calls the next morning and got my schedule sorted out for the next few days. Now that President Meeker had gotten things sorted out with the Restos, I had a lot of things to discuss with the Lakeland government, and I knew they’d want to know as much as possible about […]

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