China Takes Another Stab At The Dollar, Launches Currency Swap Line With France

One more domino in the dollar reserve supremacy regime falls. Following the announcement two weeks ago that “Australia And China will Enable Direct Currency Convertibility“, which in turn was the culmination of two years of Yuan internationalization efforts as summarized by the following: “World’s Second (China) And Third Largest (Japan) Economies To Bypass Dollar, Engage […]

U.S. Won’t Allow Crude Exports Within the Next Decade

The U.S. won’t allow companies to export domestic crude oil within the next 10 years, according to more than 60 percent of those polled at a Bloomberg Oil Forum. Thirty-four out of 82 traders, analysts and energy professionals attending the forum in London, or 41 percent, said the U.S. would never allow exports, while 22 […]

China Must Exploit Its Shale Gas

IF the Senate confirms the nomination of the M.I.T. scientist Ernest J. Moniz as the next energy secretary, as expected, he must use his new position to consider the energy situation not only in the United States, but in China as well. Mr. Moniz, a professor of physics and engineering systems and the director of […]

Venezuela Oil Diplomacy: From Caracas To Cuba

The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez believed in sharing his country’s oil wealth with his Latin American neighbors. But now, Venezuelans are electing a new leader, and there are questions about whether the new president will continue those policies. NPR’s Tom Gjelten talks about the effects of Venezuela’s oil diplomacy, from Cuba to Connecticut. This […]

Al-Nusra pledges allegiance to al-Qaeda

The leader of the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist group fighting in Syria, has pledged allegiance to the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani said the group’s behaviour in Syria would not change as a result. Al-Nusra claims to be have carried out many suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks against state targets. On Tuesday, […]

Can the Utility Industry Survive the Energy Transition?

For Greentech Media this week, I reviewed a new white paper from the Edison Electric Institute which details the many “disruptive challenges” facing private utility companies as the energy transition to a renewably-powered grid progresses. The utility industry is being disrupted on every side, prompting worries about its stability. A new policy paper from the […]

How to Convert the Country to Natural Gas, by T. Boone Pickens

It starts with getting into the transportation sector. When I started the Pickens Plan in 2008, there were about 200,000 vehicles on natural gas in the world; now there’s about 16 million. That growth’s coming from everywhere but the U.S. Places like Iran and Argentina. China’s already got 40,000 trucks on LNG [liquefied natural gas], and […]

World Bank warns of a new ‘Arab Spring’ due to high unemployment in Mena

Dubai: Unemployment rate among young people in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region is the highest in the world, said a latest World Bank report which warned of a ‘high levels of vulnerability’ if governments do not take urgent steps to create jobs and ensure inclusive growth. “As well as a source of […]

Total Collapse Is Almost Over Complete Collapse Coming Soon

TOTAL COLLAPSE IT IS ALMOST OVER! COMPLETE COLLAPSE COMING SOON!

Oil Flows Beneath the Battlefield

At seven o’clock in the morning on Mar. 1, Kurdish militias took over the only operational oil refinery in Syria, located about 800 kilometres northwest of Damascus. “They told us to go home, and to wait for two days until everything was settled,” recalled Mahmud Hassan, one of 3,000 workers at the Rumelan refinery. According […]

How Obama’s New Budget Targets Oil And Gas

Granted, President Obama’s newly submitted budget is likely dead-on-arrival in Washington, but it’s still well worth taking a look at it to get a sense of what he would do to the energy industry if he were king instead of just president. The headline proposal is the president’s idea for an Energy Security Trust, “funded […]

Iran’s Ahmadinejad Orders Launch of Five Nuclear Reactors

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said his country has “gone nuclear” and ordered officials to “speedily” launch five more reactors. Ahmadinejad was speaking at a ceremony to mark Nuclear Technology Day, as well as launch two uranium mines and a yellow cake production plant in the city of Yazd. The controversial president once again made […]

Russia Putin Warns Korean Crisis Could Be Worse Than Chernobyl

Russian President Vladimir Putin appealed on Monday for calm on the Korean Peninsula, warning that the escalation of tension in the region could lead to a nuclear disaster far worse than the Chernobyl incident. “We are concerned about the escalation on the Korean Peninsula because we are neighbors and because if, God forbid, anything should […]

US, Japan Now Global Allies in Money Printing

U.S. markets, particularly the riskiest areas of investment, are likely to benefit at least near term from the latest entrant to the central bank money-printing arena. Following the lead of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan last week announced an even more ambitious project to use created funds to buy assets in the hopes […]

Should the U.S. Allow Increased Domestic Crude Oil Exports?

U.S. domestic crude oil production was in decline following the mid 1980’s.  Recent drilling technology innovations and new State and Private Lands reserve development have reversed this trend since 2008.  Rapidly growing new domestic crude oil supply could possibly exceed some regional (Refining) markets’ demand similar to what has been recently experienced with the rapid […]

Why Iran isn’t the Soviet Union

Despite the rhetoric of the Obama administration and tougher sanctions, hard realities suggest a likely American policy of not attacking Iran but seeking to contain it. For Iran, the benefits of nuclear weapons are significant: becoming the ninth member of the world’s exclusive nuclear club, spurring nationalist ardor at home, potentially dominating the Middle East, […]

Proposed expansion of energy agency looks a seismic shift

When the International Energy Agency was launched in 1974, the French foreign minister at the time, Michel Jobert, called it “an instrument of war”. The IEA was the industrialised countries’ counter to Opec and the first oil shock. Now, as the Financial Times reported on Thursday, the IEA is seeking a closer association with the […]

Hundreds of millions want to emigrate

The highly-respected Gallup Poll’s latest offering, a worldwide survey aimed at identifying potential migrant numbers, shows that a massive 13 per cent of the world population wants to emigrate. Over 640 million adults are desperate to change countries to better their lives and careers, with most based in Africa and Asia and wanting to move […]

Decline And Fall Of The New Rome

Rampant inflation, caused by debasement of the currency, government corruption and nanny state corrective action that makes matters worse. Declining trade, caused by wars to control the empire, massive military over-reach and ever increasing spending on the military – funded by increases in taxation on the citizens, especially those least in a position to pay. […]

Turkey, Iraq, and Oil

Though the pace of growth of the Turkish economy has slowed significantly, one of Ankara’s priorities over the coming years is to meet the country’s growing energy demands. The clearest solution is to diversify suppliers of oil and gas, with the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan (KRG) area being one potential source for such fuels. Had you […]

Iran: 2013 will be ‘fall of American empire’

The “American empire” will fall this year, the head of Iran’s Basij forces claimed Sunday, a message that was approved by the Islamic regime’s supreme leader. “America should not think that with some diplomatic dialogue it can solve its dossier (problem) with the nation of Iran,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi said. “The path of […]

The Sequester and Oil Prices

Well, March arrived with ‘the sequester,’ didn’t it? As you heard, on March 1, ‘the sequester’ swung into action with President Barack Obama signing an order to bump away $85 billion from the budget of Government agencies between March 1 and October 1, 2013. If there lurked some hope of a different budget plan with […]

Benoit Thevard – Europe facing peak oil – European Parliament

Benoît Thevard presents the conclusion of the report “Europe facing peak oil” at the European Parliament in November 2012. This study, commissioned by the MEP Yves Cochet, aimed to clearly redefine the contours of the oil situation, to place them in the current geopolitical and economic contexts, and to consider the potential impact on Europe. […]

Current U.S. energy policy: Risk management that is worse than ever

Current U.S. energy policy is, in fact, a hodgepodge of disconnected policies designed for specific constituencies with no coherent goal. The country has subsidies for fossil fuels, subsidies for nuclear power, subsidies for wind and solar, and subsidies for insulating and retrofitting buildings. We also have energy standards for some appliances and miles per gallon […]

North Korea says enters “state of war” against South

North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a “state of war” with South Korea, its latest bout of angry rhetoric directed at Seoul and Washington, but the South brushed off the statement as little more than tough talk. The North also threatened to shut down an industrial zone it operates jointly with the South […]

US petrol rules to push fuel costs higher

The US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new standards to cut pollution from road fuel that have been strongly opposed by the oil industry but backed by carmakers. The new rules to reduce the sulphur content of petrol, known as Tier 3, are intended to cut cars’ emissions of pollutants that create smog and cause […]

Iraq, Afghan Wars Will Cost to $4 Trillion to $6 Trillion

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher. Washington increased military benefits in late 2001 as […]

Have We Ever Gotten to the Bottom of Exactly ‘Why’ Bush and the Neocons Disastrously Invaded Iraq?

The true purpose of the Iraq invasion remains opaque. Here’s a theory why. A decade after President George W. Bush ordered the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, one of the enduring mysteries has been why. There was the rationale sold to a frightened American people in 2002-2003 – that Saddam Hussein was plotting to attack them […]

Iran’s Nuclear Activities Go On Despite Sanctions

While the U.S.-led sanctions regime on Iran has produced substantial economic hardship, analysts here are increasingly pointing out that Tehran’s controversial nuclear activities have continued unabated. According to a study released Tuesday by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), “there is a clear disconnect between the stated goals of the sanctions policy (a change in […]

Next Up For Cyprus: Depression

From SocGen: Depression for Cyprus: Our Cypriot GDP forecast entails a drop of just over 20% in real GDP by 2017. This forecast had already factored in much what was agreed, but did not account for the additional uncertainty shock generated by the past week’s appalling political mess. Risks are clearly on the downside and […]

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