OPEC Sees Oil Price Below $100 a Barrel in the Next Decade

Oil prices will remain below the psychologically important $100-a-barrel mark until at least 2025, according to a draft report by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), seen by The Wall Street Journal. In its most optimistic scenario, OPEC, which represents 12 oil-producing countries, forecast that oil will sell for around $76 per barrel […]

How Much Longer Can The Oil Age Last?

History has been so fascinated with oil and its price movements that it is indeed hard to imagine our future without oil. Over the last few months, we have witnessed how oil prices have fluctuated from a 6 year low level of $42.98 per barrel in March 2015 to the current levels of $60 per […]

China world’s biggest oil importer

  China overtook the US as the world’s biggest importer of crude oil in April, the culmination of a seismic shift in global energy flows over the past decade. Chinese customs data showed crude oil purchases from overseas hit a new high of 7.4m barrels a day in April, equivalent to roughly one in every […]

‘Resilience’ Is The New Black

This is another essay from our friend Dr. Nelson Lebo III in New Zealand. Nelson is a certified expert in everything to do with resilience, especially how to build a home and a community designed to withstand disasters, be they natural or man-made, an earthquake or Baltimore. Aware that he may rub quite a few […]

Are Flying Cars For Real?

One of the most common features of our imagined future has always been the flying car. The 21st century was meant to have skyways instead of highways, with vehicles buzzing overhead, weaving through skyscrapers and gliding into skyports. Take heart. Although we’re a little behind schedule, there are a number of companies out there seriously […]

China likely to raise oil prices

China is likely to raise gasoline and diesel retail prices in the domestic market after a rising trend of global prices. Analysts predicted the guide prices will be lifted by over 200 yuan (around 33 U.S. dollars) per tonne, marking the third consecutive rise. The change is expected to be announced on Monday by the […]

Why Food Companies Aren’t Prepared To Deal With Water Scarcity

Leading global food companies are failing to account for impending water scarcity in their business plans, a new report finds. Released Thursday by the Boston-based sustainable business consortium Ceres, Feeding Ourselves Thirsty: How the Food Sector is Managing Global Water Risks looked at how the world’s top 37 food companies, like Coca-Cola, Cargill, and General […]

Why We Have an Oversupply of Almost Everything

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article called, Glut of Capital and Labor Challenge Policy Makers: Global oversupply extends beyond commodities, elevating deflation risk. To me, this is a very serious issue, quite likely signaling that we are reaching what has been called Limits to Growth, a situation modeled in 1972 in a book […]

The Whisper of the Shutoff Valve

Last week’s post on the impending decline and fall of the internet fielded a great many responses. That was no surprise, to be sure; nor was I startled in the least to find that many of them rejected the thesis of the post with some heat. Contemporary pop culture’s strident insistence that technological progress is […]

The Future of Food: Production, Innovation, and Technology

For the next six months (May 1 to October 15, 2015), the world will be focused on a very important topic: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.”  This is the theme of Expo Milano 2015 (also known as the “World’s Fair”), which is taking place in Milan, Italy, and will be the world’s largest, most […]

Is United States Energy Independence in Sight?

The data analysis arm of the US Department of Energy is forecasting that despite low oil prices, the US will become energy independent within a decade.  That result depends on frugality as much as resource abundance, and it includes substantial volumes of energy trade with the rest of the world. The US Energy Information Administration’s latest […]

Conversation with Clark Strand

Conversation with Clark Strand, author of Waking Up to the Dark – Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age. A former Buddhist monk, Clark Strand poses the question: has electric lighting compromised our humanness, damaged our spirits, and foreclosed our future? Does it represent much of what has gone wrong with modernity. We explore this and […]

There Will Be No 25-Year Depression

Today, we have bad news and good news. The good news is that there will be no 25-year recession. Nor will there be a depression that will last the rest of our lifetimes. The bad news: It will be much worse than that. On Monday, the Dow rose another 43 points. Gold seems to be […]

Why the World’s Appetite for Oil Will Peak Soon

  The result, in my opinion, is as startling as it is world-changing: Global oil demand will peak within the next two decades. A less potent weapon The geopolitical and economic implications of peaking demand will be huge. The fall in the importance of Saudi Arabia is already palpable, with all the major powers from […]

‘Beyond petroleum’ – fracking’s collapse heralds the arrival of peak oil

The ‘death of peak oil’ has been much exaggerated, writes Paul Mobbs. Take out high-cost ‘unconventional’ oil and production peaked ten years ago, and even North America’s fracking and tar sands boom has failed to open up new resources both big enough to make good the shortfall, and cheap enough to reward investors. We really […]

The Devastation of Energy Poverty

The McKinsey Company has recently issued a report, Powering Africa.  The first sentence makes a statement that is obvious—“There is a direct correlation between economic growth and electricity supply”.  It goes on to state that “if sub-Saharan Africa is to fulfill its promise, it needs power—and lots of it”.  The sub-Saharan region is starved for […]

Ford F-150 propane, natural gas options

Ford is expected to announce today plans to offer the 2016 F-150 full-size pickup with a package that prepares it to be powered by propane or compressed natural gas, an option that appeals to fleet buyers. The announcement is to be made in Dallas at the Alternative Clean Transportation Expo. The $315 factory-installed package would […]

Changes to Total Global Debt Affects The Oil Price

In some posts on Fractional Flow I have presented some of my explorations of any relations between the oil price, changes to global total debt and interest rates. My objective has been to gain and share some of my insights of how I see the economic undertows that also influences the price formation for crude […]

The Great Oil Game: Resource Crisis in Russia?

Weekly pageviews of “Resource Crisis.” My blog seems to be having a remarkable success in Russia, but do the Russians understand the problem of resource depletion? Complex structures, such as states and empires, are always prone to collapse and they usually give little or no previous warnings. The collapse of the Soviet Union, indeed, had […]

Oil be damned

IN 2014 oil prices crashed. Americans jumped for joy. Small wonder: each year the average American consumes more energy than a Briton and a Japanese person put together. The oil-price drop pleased economists, too. Many were sure that it would give the economy a nice boost. However, the oil bust was followed not by a […]

A Global Financial Forecast for Natural Gas

With an abundant supply of natural gas in North America—far more than we ever imagined thanks to natural gas shale resources—there are three distinct and important factors shaping our industry’s financial future today. On a global level, as the U.S. gets set to export its first liquefied natural gas early next year1, how these large […]

How tech can stop the looming food crisis

  Start by developing technologies that reduce all the wasted food out there. The world’s population is expected to increase from 7 billion today to 9 or 10 billion by the end of the century, according to the United Nations. We also can expect more pressure on the food supply as people in the developing […]

The Dwindling US Economy

The announcement today (April 29) of a barely positive GDP first quarter 2015 growth rate of 0.2 percent (two-tenths of one percent) is an intentional exaggeration. Today’s GDP report is the “advance estimate.” There will be two revisions, with the first occurring in one month on May 29. Although the “consensus estimate,” which is Wall […]

Michael Lynch: Lessons In Oil Price Forecasting

When I published a working paper in 1992 at MIT called “The Fog of Commerce: The Failure of Long-Term Oil Market Forecasting,” many thought the lesson was that forecasting the long-term price of oil couldn’t be done. My actual point had been that bad theories and bad models lead to bad forecasts, specifically the belief […]

Roubini: We’re Not Going Back to $100/Barrel Oil

Roubini Global Economics co-founder Nouriel Roubini comments on oil prices during an interview with Bloomberg’s Stephanie Ruhle and Erik Schatzker at the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, CA.

Venezuela rations power

Venezuela’s socialist government on Tuesday announced a nationwide electricity rationing plan to tackle a surge in demand caused by rising temperatures in recent weeks. The measures include cutting the workday for public officials to six hours, asking private companies to boost energy efficiency and inspecting malls and factories to ensure they meet reduced power consumption […]

Iran facing shortages of natural gas

Iranian officials have issued fresh warnings over the rising consumption of natural gas in the country.   The National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said on Monday that Iran will not have enough gas to provide the houses in the near future if no measure is taken to contain the current pace of “wasteful consumption” of […]

Degrowth, Sustainability, and Tackling Global Inequalities

Recently I was interviewed by Jen Wilton, a UK journalist and researcher, on the subject of degrowth. What follows is the transcript of our phone interview, originally posted here. Q: What would a degrowth society look like? SA: A lot of mainstream environmentalism still clings to the idea that we can dematerialise our ways of […]

A Look At The “Confounding” Global Supply Glut

On Saturday we once again explored the question of whether central banks are creating deflation. The idea that post-crisis DM monetary policy may be causing disinflationary pressures to build is somewhat counterintuitive on its face but in fact makes quite a lot of sense. Here’s how we explained it: The premise is simple. By keeping […]

Slums, 21st Century Wars

“In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with a population of more than one million; today there are 400, and by 2015 there will be at least 550. Cities, indeed, have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950, and are currently growing by a million babies and migrants each week… […]

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