Goldman Sachs: “Peak Coal” Is Here

“Peak coal” is here. Goldman Sachs released a September 22 research note that predicted that coal will decline and never come back. “Peak coal is coming sooner than expected,” the investment bank concluded. “The industry does not require new investment given the ability of existing assets to satisfy flat demand, so prices will remain under […]

The Crux Of The Problem

As world leaders convene for the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York, to reflect on the progress of the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 and adopt more goals for 2030, they ought to focus on the elephant in the room — a swelling global population that weighs on sustainability of social, economic and […]

China Is Sitting on an Ocean of Diesel Fuel

Add diesel to the commodities flooding global markets from China. The nation exported a record volume of the fuel last month after already shipping unprecedented amounts of steel and aluminum overseas. The weakest economic growth since 1990 is sapping domestic demand for commodities, while refineries, mills and smelters grapple with excess capacity after years of […]

Oil unlikely to return to $100 a barrel for years

Traders said goodbye to $100 oil prices a little over a year ago, and they might be staying away even longer than some expect. West Texas Intermediate crude-oil prices won’t likely climb back to $100 a barrel this year, or next, according to Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. […]

How long will fossil fuels last?

It is argued that oil will run out in 53 years, natural gas in 54, and coal in 110. How likely is it? The end, said a reincarnated Cassandra, is nigh. Abundant supplies of fossil fuels will end, bringing down the economic order with it. After all, she argued, at current rates of production, oil […]

Is Cheaper Driving Here to Stay?

We are now seeing declining growth and a deflationary economic contraction globally. In fact, the current $40-plus a barrel oil price is by itself good proof of that. The global collapse in the price of oil shows that with global supply remaining roughly constant over time at about 95 million barrels per day. The current […]

OPEC Sees a Return to $80 Oil

The short-term outlook for oil remains murky, with calls ranging for oil to be anywhere between $20 and $70 a barrel before year-end. However, longer term the picture for crude is starting to come into clearer focus as two very distinct trends emerge: Demand is rising while supplies are falling. This has OPEC starting to […]

Simple, cheap living is possible for those who don’t consume by reflex

I enjoy living simply and healthy on less than half the United States poverty level and less than half the federal income taxable level for me as a single person — to boycott the U.S. empire’s greed and wars. I lived well in 2014 on $4,923 for my total expenses — rent, food, etc. I […]

How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem

Usually, we don’t stop to think about how the whole economy works together. A major reason is that we have been lacking data to see long-term relationships. In this post, I show some longer-term time series relating to energy growth, GDP growth, and debt growth–going back to 1820 in some cases–that help us understand our […]

The Dragon Ships Are Coming

Something exciting is happening and it involves dragon ships that will transport Marcellus Shale gas to European markets as an alternative to Russian gas. Range Resources and INEOS have partnered to export Ethane from Marcellus Shale across the Atlantic Ocean, to European Countries, via ship. At 2:43 in the video following they show the Markwest cracker […]

You Call this Progress?

One of the prevailing narratives of our time is that we are innovating our way into the future at break-neck speed. It’s just dizzying how quickly the world around us is changing. Technology is this juggernaut that gets ever bigger, ever faster, and all we need to do is hold on for the wild ride […]

Recent Statistical Revisions Suggest Higher Historical Coal Consumption in China

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, China National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Note: Revised data from or implied by China Statistical Abstract 2015; previously reported data from China Statistical Yearbook 2014. The values for coal reflect its lower heating value. New preliminary data from the China Statistical Abstract 2015 (CSA2015) show an upward revision to China’s […]

Saudis Winning Oil Market Share Wars Despite Fiscal Pain

Saudi Arabia appears to be winning the oil exporters tussle for market share, even if it is denting the country’s coffers. Anecdotal and empirical evidence doing the industry rounds was backed up by US Energy Information Administration’s recent research pointing to the OPEC heavyweight maintaining its crude oil market share among Asian customers, where much […]

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson on Energy

Charlie Rose, March 8 2013: ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson discusses the difficulties with algae to fuels technology.

Robert Rapier: Peak Oil is a Function of Oil Price

The Origins of Peak Oil Awareness The scientific study of peak oil began in the 1950′s, when Shell geophysicist M. King Hubbert reported on the evolution of production rates in oil and gas fields. In a 1956 paper Hubbert suggested that oil production in a particular region would approximate a bell curve, increasing exponentially during […]

From Saudi Skyscrapers to Turkish Tunnels

What do the world’s tallest skyscraper in Saudi Arabia, a sea-water-desalination system in Cyprus, and an underwater tunnel in Turkey all have in common? They all represent challenges that growing cities face, and in all these projects, BASF has helped to meet these challenges. It is estimated that more than 70 percent of the world’s […]

People can’t imagine life without cars

A majority of people around the world could not imagine living their lives without a car, according to a study released Wednesday at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The findings by the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA), a group that defends the various interests of the car industry, revealed that 57% of people globally […]

The receding tide of oil price foreshadows the incoming DEFLATION TSUNAMI.

The receding tide of oil price foreshadows the incoming DEFLATION TSUNAMI. Nothing grows indefinitely in a finite system, not even debt! Almost all (90%) of ‘money’ in existence today is debt (credit) . This debt is created from thin air with every form of loan, from credit cards, through corporate debt to Treasury Notes. All […]

“She Likes Gasoline”: On Latin America and the Coming Energy Crisis

Over the past ten years, reggaeton singers have changed the idea we’d long had about Latin American music. Their music videos are full of adrenaline, aggressiveness, sexual arousal, speed, fast motorcycles, sport cars, luxurious yachts and lascivious young men. One of Daddy Yankee’s popular pieces (where the title of this post comes from) offers us […]

To Understand The Oil Story, You Need To Understand Exports

Despite the attention-grabbing economic volatility that is grabbing headlines, it’s important to keep our eye on the energy story firmly in focus. This is especially true as the headlines we regularly read about Peak Oil being dead ” are “manifestly false” according to this week’s podcast guest, petroleum geologist Jeffrey Brown. As concerning as the […]

Driving Just Got Cheaper for Everyone

Plenty of people have lost big because of the oil price crash over the last year: rig workers, oil-company shareholders, OPEC government coffers. One massive constituency is benefitting universally: drivers. The map below shows the change in gasoline prices from October 2014 to July 2015 in 76 countries tracked by Bloomberg. There’s only one color scale because gasoline […]

A less fragile future

The good news is that majority of the world’s population is becoming safer, healthier and richer. The bad news is that for those unlucky enough to live in the most fragile of environments, sickness, poverty and insecurity persist. According to the World Development Report on Conflict, the quarter of the world’s population living in fragile and […]

Interest in hybrid vehicles wanes

Interest in hybrid motor vehicles rises and falls with the price of gasoline. Today, with gasoline prices relatively low, some of the steam has gone out of the movement to compressed natural gas vehicles or the hybrids that also use gasoline. Interest was sky high in 2011 when the Legislature authorized two state agencies — […]

Oil and circuses: Our frivolous approach to the planet

The two top news stories in recent days have been the Kentucky county clerk’s refusal to issue marriage licenses and the migrant refugees arriving in Europe. The former is only blather designed to keep mindless conservatives and Christians tuned in. But the second is very serious in its immediacy and particularly in what it portends. […]

Could China slowdown threaten the Middle East’s oil market?

“When China wakes, she will shake the world,” as Napoleon said. Now the country, having dominated the commodities market over the past decade, is again shaking it – but this time the tremors of economic worries are bringing prices crashing down. On 11th August, the yuan was devalued by nearly 2 percent. On 24th August, […]

Iran Gets Ready to Sell to the World

Before the most recent round of sanctions went into effect three years ago, Iran was able to sell oil to 21 countries. By mid-2012, that was down to six: China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey. Rather than immediately pull back on production, and risk damaging oil wells by slowing them down, Iran decided to […]

China leading world towards global economic recession

A “hard landing” for the Chinese economy will likely lead the world into a recession in the next year, Citi’s global economics team has warned. Analysts at the Wall Street bank believe that a slowdown concentrated in emerging markets will drag down demand and see economic activity fall well below its potential across the world. […]

Limits to Growth: An Update

The 1972 book, Limits to Growth, is the best-selling environmental book of all time, and deservedly so. Recently I had the privilege of interviewing Dr Graham Turner, the scientist who has done the most work updating the data underpinning the original Limits to Growth analysis. His conclusions are not always comforting, but surely its better […]

Global energy demand to grow 28 pc by 2035

The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Monday said global energy demand is to grow 28 percent by 2035 while natural gas will be major fuel source within two decades. By 2035, the world will need to produce over 32 percent more energy as compare to 2015 to satisfy the thirst of the world. Historically, coal […]

Paper and barrels, pushing and pulling oil prices: Petrodollars

When oil prices spike — and to a significantly lesser degree, when they collapse — it sets off the same debate almost every time. Did the price rise because of fundamentals? Or did the price rise because of investment flows and trading activities? At the heart of this debate is the idea that there is […]

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