Our Photovoltaic Future: The Metabolic Revolutions of the Earth’s History

    Illustration from the recent paper by Olivia Judson on “Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017) “The Energy Expansions of Evolution”.  Olivia Judson published a very interesting paper this March on “Nature Ecology & Evolution“. It is a wonderful cavalcade along 4 billion years of the history of the Earth, seeing it in terms of five “metabolic revolutions.” […]

Big Oil’s Dream of $65 Billion Hidden Off Norway Is Fading Away

Norway’s oil industry has been salivating for years over the Arctic Lofoten islands, which could hold billions of barrels of crude. It will likely have to keep dreaming. The general election next month is unlikely to lift a deadlock that’s keeping a ban on drilling off the environmentally sensitive archipelago as more and more Norwegians […]

Mystery surrounds only oil well drilled in ANWR

With oil development advocates again emboldened by the prospects of cracking open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a big secret that could add to the continuing debate over exploration remains as cloaked in mystery as ever. Experts say data from the KIC-1 well — the only well ever drilled in the refuge — remains the tightest of North […]

A last-resort ‘planet-hacking’ plan could make Earth habitable for longer

One way to prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising into a city-drowning, hurricane-strengthening, heat-stroke–triggering danger zone is to immediately switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. At the moment, that transition seems unlikely. So scientists and tech innovators are also investigating various forms of geoengineering — an approach that involves transforming the Earth’s clouds and skies in ways that […]

Permian Oil Reserves Are Grossly Exaggerated

We are entering a new age of American energy dominance according to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. President Trump reflected that view in comments he made last week that “…we’ve got underneath us more oil than anybody, and nobody knew it until five years ago.” Trump was referring to tight oil production and today, that means the Permian basin. […]

Road Trip to the End of the World

“Who you with?” “I’m a science journalist,” I said, jolted from my reverie on the shoulder of I-68 in Maryland, where a crowd of geologists had gathered on a field trip to poke at some rocks revealed by the highway department’s dynamite. The rocks, slate gray and studded with pebbles from a punishing ice age, […]

Magnitude 4.2 quake strikes near Cushing, Oklahoma, oil storage hub

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2 on Friday struck Stroud, Oklahoma, about 20 miles (32.2 km) from the key oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) said. There were no reports of damage from the quake, Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) spokesman Matt Skinner said by phone. The OCC and […]

Major Oil Deposit in Gulf of Mexico

One of Mexico’s earliest private-sector energy investors says that it has struck it big with a significant oil discovery in Mexican waters. Britain’s Premier Oil PLC, along with partners Talos Energy of Houston and Sierra Oil & Gas of Mexico City, said Wednesday that exploratory drilling in the Zama-1 field, located in the shallow waters […]

A 1 trillion-ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica, and scientists say it’s one of the largest ever recorded

A 300-foot-wide, 70-mile-long rift in Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf, as seen in November 2016. John Sonntag/IceBridge/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Antarctica has shed an iceberg that’s big enough to fill Lake Michigan. It weighs about 1 trillion metric tonnes. It may be the third-largest iceberg recorded since satellites began taking photos of Earth. Human […]

The World Keeps Not Running Out of Oil

The world has anticipated the “rapid exhaustion” of crude oil supplies for at least 100 years.Will it go on being close to running out of crude for the next 100? “Peak Oil” — the idea that global oil production will soon reach a maximum and then begin to decline — attracted a significant number of […]

Is Saudi Arabia Depending Too Much On The Ghawar Field?

  About the only joy Fossil Fuelers have been getting lately is the sweet satisfaction that the ‘Peak Oil’ crowd got it wrong. What the Fossil Fuelers may need to start chewing on is that peak oil, which is merely a description of an inevitability for a limited resource (you heard it here last – […]

The Atlas for the end of the world

Richard Weller has written “an atlas for the beginning of the anthropocene” – Atlas for the end of the world. Coming almost 450 years after the world’s first Atlas, this Atlas for the End of the World audits the status of land use and urbanization in the most critically endangered bioregions on Earth. It does […]

Oil Companies’ Proved Reserves in 2016 Decline for Second Consecutive Year

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on Evaluate Energy. Note: Rest of world includes associated companies’ reserves with unspecified geographies. Annual reports of 67 publicly traded oil companies indicated that their aggregate proved liquids reserves declined in 2016 for the second consecutive year. The decline in proved reserves was heavily concentrated in a few companies […]

U.S. Supervolcano Hit by a Swarm of Earthquakes

Updated | Yellowstone supervolcano has been hit by a series of earthquakes, with more 400 recorded since June 12. The latest was recorded on Monday, June 19, with a magnitude 3 earthquake striking 8.6 miles north northeast of West Yellowstone, Montana. The swarm began last week, and on June 15 saw a magnitude 4.5 earthquake […]

Current Yellowstone Quake-Swarm “Could Rip The Guts Out Of America”

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seismology reports conclude that a massive swarm of earthquakes swept through the park on Friday triggering more than 60 separate events in which seismographs spiked to magnitudes of up to 5.0. Experts fear that the supervolcano is long overdue for an eruption capable of wiping out a vast amount of human, […]

Oil, Gas discovered in southern Pakistan

Pakistani petroleum minister said that there have been five oil and gas discoveries in southern Sindh province of the country. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi making the announcement at a press conference on Monday said these would lead to addition of 600 barrels per day of oil and 70 million cubic feet of gas. He said overall […]

Explorers continue to retreat from oil frontiers

The Great Australian Bight, an undisturbed marine reserve for whales and hundreds of aquatic species, was one of the oil industry’s most promising deep-water frontiers – a frontier where BP planned to drill. For years, environmental groups waged war on those plans until BP gave them up in October. But it wasn’t the fierce opposition […]

BP finds hidden trove of oil in Gulf of Mexico

British oil major BP has discovered 200 million barrels of oil in a hidden cache in the Gulf of Mexico, thanks to a technological breakthrough allowing the company to see beneath geological formations that had befuddled oil exploration for decades. The find, worth a potential $2 billion in recoverable oil, is in an undrilled section […]

334 Trillion Cubic Feet Of Natural Gas Discovered In USA

Technological advancements have just pushed the boundaries of recoverable oil and gas in the U.S. further, according to an announcement by the U.S. Geological Survey. The agency reported that two formations in the Gulf Coast Basin may contain as much as 304.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas plus 1.9 billion barrels of natural gas […]

Huge! Geologists Discover The US’s Largest Natural Gas Deposit

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) discovered the largest continuous natural gas deposit in the country, stretching across the Gulf Coast states of Texas and Louisiana. USGS estimates between 4 billion barrels of oil and 304.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas sit untapped in the Haynesville and Bossier shale formations. More natural gas was found […]

Is Britain’s ‘largest oil discovery in decades’ really all that?

A large oil find has been declared 60 miles west of Shetland, off the north coast of Scotland. It’s being described as the UK’s “largest undeveloped discovery”. Taken at face value, this is exciting news for an industry still reeling after the oil price collapse of the past few years (environmentalists though are less enthusiastic). […]

Why Are We Waiting (for Peak Oil)?

Remember those long holiday road trips where the question endlessly repeated was “are we there yet”? Well, for many in the peak oil community, waiting for it to arrive has evoked a similar feeling, as the predictions of some academics, commentators, and bloggers have failed to materialize punctually. So, it’s worth revisiting some thoughtful papers […]

Down 10%, Mexico Oil Reserves Gone in 9 Years Without New Finds

Record-low drilling activity for 3 years seen as the cause Foreign explorers now working offshore offer boost by 2024 Mexico’s existing oil reserves are dwindling so fast the country could go dry within nine years without new discoveries. That’s the message from the National Hydrocarbons Commission, which said Friday that the reserves fell 10.6 percent to […]

Eni Has Over 800MM Barrels Of Oil In Place In Mexico Find

Italy’s Eni said on Wednesday it expected that its recent discovery off the coast of Mexico would hold more than the 800 million barrels of oil it originally estimated. “This is an important find and we’ve found new layers of good light oil that make us think there’s more,” Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi said at […]

Bahrain denies depletion of oil reserves in 15 years

Bahrain denied on Tuesday that the oil production in Bahrain will deplete within the next fifteen years, Al Wasat local online news reported. The Minister of Oil Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa confirmed in the parliament session that the oil reserves will continue for the decades. He was responding to a remark by MP […]

Peak Gold – Biggest Gold Story Not Being Reported

– Peak gold – Biggest gold story not being reported – Gold ‘Mining Zombie Apocalypse’ caused miners to slash exploration budgets – Decline in gold production at world’s top 10 gold mining companies – Byron King – “No new big mines being built in the world today” – Glencore CEO Glasenberg – Primary global gold output declined […]

Thousands of underground gas bulges, formed by thawing permafrost, set to ‘explode’ in Siberia

Local Siberian media has reported that the very ground that people stand on is moving under their feet in the arctic regions of Siberia. Scientists have discovered 7000 gas filled bubbles according to the Siberian Times.  These, bulges or ‘bulgunyakh’ in the local Yakut language, were originally discovered last year by researchers in Siberia’s remote Bely Island. At that time only 15 […]

There’s a lot more oil to keep in the ground all of a sudden

Spanish oil company Repsol just announced that it has made the largest onshore oil discovery in the United States in 30 years: a find of 1.2 billion barrels beneath Alaska’s North Slope. “Keep it in the ground” has become a rallying cry for climate and environmental activists in recent years, and they’re particularly intent on stopping Arctic […]

An Oil Legend’s Biggest Hunt Ever: 10 Billion Barrels in Alaska

It’s hard to tell where the world ends here on the Alaska North Slope. In the subzero twilight, when the Arctic winds snarl, snow and cloud stretch to every horizon in a seamless vault of spectral white. Beyond the tundra, five miles out on the frozen sea, oil workers from a tiny outfit called Caelus […]

Thermodynamic model of oil depletion sparks controversy

This is a post by François-Xavier Chevallerau, a Brussels-based public policy professional who is in the process of setting up a new international think tank to support the emergence and promotion of biophysical economics in the public debate and the policy conversation. Here, he comments on the “Hill’s Report” that was also discussed in a […]

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