Oil could crash to $10 a barrel

Petrol prices could fall back to levels last seen in 2009 as major banks say there is no bottom in sight for the world’s lopsided market Oil prices have crashed to below $30-a-barrel amid warnings the rout could reach as low as $10 and bring down petrol prices to levels last seen in 2009. Standard […]

Humans Innovate Their Way Out of Scarcity

Last week, the World Bank updated its commodity database, which tracks the price of commodities going back to 1960. Over the last 55 years, the world’s population has increased by 143 percent. Over the same time period, real average annual per capita income in the world rose by 163 percent. What happened to the price […]

Oil crashes to $30 a barrel

The dramatic crash in crude oil prices just got even more stunning. Oil plummeted below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since December 2003. The latest wave of selling leaves crude oil down 19% this year alone. It represents an incredible 72% plunge from crude oil’s June 2014 peak of almost $108. […]

Oil at $20 a Barrel?

The turmoil in energy markets may be set to continue. Crude oil is trading at a 12-year low as Morgan Stanley predicts Brent may tumble to $20 a barrel. Bloomberg’s Dan Murtaugh reports on “First Up.”

Your Basic Essentials

“Dish-washing is my balm and poultice.”—Robert Mifflin in The Haunted Bookshop The wind is up outside the windows of my cozy study this morning. I hear tin tumbling across the ground near the wood yard. Something has come loose during the night, hopefully not a roof. A well-attached roof is an essential for living comfortably. […]

Why Oil May Never Hit $100 per Barrel Again

The decline of the energy industry in the U.S. was swift in 2015 and for investors the losses were widespread. In addition, the pain spread to average Americans with an estimated 250,000 jobs lost in the oil & gas industry alone in 2015. Calls for a recovery in oil prices haven’t come to fruition and […]

Antifragile Food Systems

” The alpha person at a gathering of “high status” persons is usually the waiter. ” In the film, No Escape, Owen Wilson and Lake Bell’s characters play a stereotypical USAnian couple, Jack and Annie Dwyer, cast abroad like fishes out of water. He is a corporate engineer in charge of putting a water plant […]

Michael Lynch: Oil Markets 1986 Or 1998?

Oil markets have started with a bang or, more precisely, an implosion with prices hitting levels not seen since pre-peak oil days (i.e., 2003, especially if you ignore December 23, 2008) and causing havoc in not just the oil industry but commodity and equity markets and even some currency markets. For the youngsters, this probably […]

The Last Time Oil Was This Cheap, It Was Expensive

Oil prices have slumped to 12-year lows, shocking even the most bearish forecasters. But back in February 2004, the last time the U.S. benchmark settled below $33.50 a barrel, oil at these prices was considered pricey. In 2004, U.S. oil production was falling, and political conflict and instability in Venezuela and Nigeria had disrupted output in […]

Peak Oil Over The Horizon Or An Era Of Indefinite Prolonged Surplus?

First I like to thank Killian Kirk for helping me come up with the title to today’s blog. For last 60 years we have heard the rising drumbeat of ‘Peak Oil’, the belief that there was finite reserve of petroleum that was rapidly diminishing. You may remember reading often throughout the 80’s and 90’s that […]

2016: Oil Limits and the End of the Debt Supercycle

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

Why Oil Prices Will Rebound in 2016

The plummeting prices of oil and gas roiled markets and affected businesses, investors and drivers in 2015. Whether prices rebound or not is bound to have a similar impact this year. Prices shot up briefly on Monday as investors worried about a potential supply disruption as a result of heightened tensions between oil producers Saudi […]

Down the Ratholes of the Future

The new year now upon us has brought out the usual quota of predictions about what 2016 has in store, and I propose as usual to make my own contribution to that theme.  I’ve noted more than once in the past that people who make predictions about the future really ought to glance back at […]

Gail Tverberg: Something Has Got To Break

Actuary Gail Tverberg explains the tight correlation between the rates of GDP growth and growth in energy supply. For decades, energy has been becoming more costly to obtain, and instead of accepting lower GDP growth, we have been using debt to fund further energy exploration and extraction. That strategy has diminishing returns, Tverberg warns. And […]

Peak Oil? What Peak Oil?

It is unbelievable how many times I’ve heard people telling me “the US has become self-sufficient in oil production,” a group that includes some respectable members of the EU parliament. This is probably due to the confusion that the media have made on the fact that the US production has recently surpassed the US imports […]

Robert Rapier: Grading My 2015 Energy Predictions

Introduction “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” ― Yogi Berra I haven’t looked forward to this post since about mid-year, when it became clear that I wasn’t going to have a repeat of 2014’s perfect record. I recall a year ago wondering whether I would ever have a year the exact opposite […]

Economic Collapse Leads to Nuclear Event

In today’s video, Christopher Greene of AMTV reports on the Economic Collapse 2015. Website: http://www.amtvmedia.com/ On Demand: https://amtvmedia.vhx.tv/ Store: http://store.amtvmedia.com/

Iraq Says It Exported More Than 1 Billion Barrels of Oil in 2015

Iraq said it exported 1.097 billion barrels of oil in 2015, generating $49.079 billion from sales, according to the oil ministry. It sold 99.7 million barrels of oil in December, generating $2.973 billion, after selling a record 100.9 million barrels in November, said oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad. The country sold at an average price of $44.74 a barrel […]

What will happen in 2016?

Never make predictions, especially about the future. So said Mark Twain, Yogi Berra or Niels Bohr – or possibly all three. But if you must, there are really only two options: play safe and go for the obvious, or come up with forecasts so giddily optimistic that no one will take you seriously. Using the […]

A Resolution

On the Eve of 2016, we need a resolution capable of confronting the crisis we face, and making a future worth fighting for. “A Resolution” looks back on the crisis and confusion of 2015: climate change-driven wildfires, droughts, and storms; ISIS and their attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Ankara; bankrupt political leaders at COP21 debating […]

“American Capitalism” No Longer Serves Society

One hundred years ago European civilization, as it had been known, was ending its life in the Great War, later renamed World War I. Millions of soldiers ordered by mindless generals into the hostile arms of barbed wire and machine gun fire had left the armies stalemated in trenches. A reasonable peace could have been […]

From Oil Glut to Shortage?

With the world awash in crude, the oil industry is contemplating a new problem the oversupply could tee up: an oil shortage. As the oil glut has sent prices to decade lows, plummeting investment by oil-producing countries such as Venezuela and Russia and oil drillers such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC […]

China Sees Energy Consumption Rising In 2016

China expects its energy consumption to grow in 2016, the official Xinhua news agency of the world’s largest energy consumer said on Tuesday. China’s apparent demand for crude oil will reach 550 million tonnes (11 million barrels per day) and apparent demand for natural gas will hit 205 billion cubic metres, Nur Bekri, head of […]

Getting food on the table without ruining the planet

As I slumbered gently on the sofa yesterday, slow-burning the oh-so-many calories that somehow found their way to my overstretched tummy, I realised there could be no better time to think about food. As a westerner, this weekend was the biggest blowout of the year – though for most Hong Kong Chinese, the greatest calorie […]

Let’s Define Degrowth before we Dismiss it

Diverse leftist commentators such as Samuel Farber, Paul Krugman, and Leigh Phillips are arguing that economic growth is necessary to protect existing and future well-being. But rarely do they define what they mean by economic growth. Recently there’s been a wave of arguments defending economic growth from a leftist perspective. People are increasingly reacting to […]

Kunstler: Questions and Answers

The really big item in last night’s 60-Minutes newsbreak was that the latest Star Wars movie passed the billion dollar profit gate a week after release. That says just about everything you need to know about our floundering society, including the state of the legacy news media. The cherry on top last week was Elon […]

The Case for $20 Oil

Oil prices have dropped to $35 a barrel, down from over $110 in 2011. The trend line does not mean much; it is just a chart. But that does not mean the causes of the trend are not obvious, and likely are also not over. The argument for lower oil prices breaks into a very […]

Oil back at $95 — but only in 24 years’ time

Oil prices will take decades to recover and will still not reach the peak seen in recent years, according to the latest World Oil Outlook (WOO) from OPEC. In the group’s latest outlook on supply, demand and prices to 2020 and 2040, OPEC predicted that a barrel of oil would cost (in real terms) around […]

IMF sees oil between $30 and $20

Report predicts that Iranian exports will ramp up when international sanctions are lifted Another major global forecast has suggested that the oil price has a lot further to fall yet – and that it could go as low as $20 a barrel. This is the extreme low “cost price” predicted since the autumn by Goldman […]

The Fallacy Of Peak Oil Demand

I have seen the handwriting on the wall for the coal industry for more than a decade. Not only is coal the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels, it is also the fuel that has the greatest number of potential replacements. Renewables may ultimately scale to displace a substantial fraction of our coal consumption, but […]

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