Mathematician Predicts Wave of Violence In 2020

“In a feature that recalls Asimov’s Foundation series and ‘psychohistory’, Nature profiles mathematician Peter Turchin, who says he can see meaningful cycles in history. Worryingly, Turchin predicts a wave of violence in the United States in 2020. Quoting from the piece: ‘To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, […]

Netanyahu ‘determined to attack Iran’ before US elections

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is determined to attack Iran before the US elections,” Israel’s Channel 10 News claimed on Monday night, and Israel is now “closer than ever” to a strike designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive. The TV station’s military reporter Alon Ben-David, who earlier this year was given extensive access to the […]

World powers eye emergency food meeting

Leading members of the Group of 20 nations are prepared to trigger an emergency meeting to address soaring grain prices caused by the worst U.S. drought in more than half a century and poor crops from the Black Sea bread basket. France, the United States and G20 president Mexico will hold a conference call at […]

US-Israeli deal on Iran? No Israeli strike now if Obama pledged a spring attack

House this week scrambled to reconnect with Jerusalem after the Obama administration was persuaded that Israel was serious about conducting a fall military operation against Iran’s nuclear program before the Nov. 6 US presidential election – notwithstanding the heavy opposition guns firing against it at home and from Washington. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense […]

Obama Aide Says Using Petroleum Reserve Is an ‘Option’

The Obama administration is monitoring oil markets and a release from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve remains “an option that is on the table” if prices rise or supply is disrupted, said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman. “The administration does carefully monitor the global oil market” because of its impact on the economy, Earnest […]

US considers release from reserves

The price of oil headed higher for a fourth straight day Friday on fresh signs U.S. consumers are gaining some confidence in the economy. Benchmark oil rose 34 cents to $95.94 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It has gained three percent this week on positive economic data and a drop in […]

White House “Dusting Off” Plans For Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release

It must be election season because moment ago Reuters just reported that the White House is “dusting off old plans on a potential SPR release as prices rise” according to a source with knowledge of the situation. This too, just like the earlier Corzine news, should not be a surprise. Obama made it expressly clear […]

Israeli minister warns of 30-day war with Iran

Matan Vilnai, who is stepping down as home front defence minister to become ambassador to China, said the country was “ready as never before”. “The assessments are for a war that will last 30 days on a number of fronts,” he told the Maariv newspaper. “It could be that there will be less fatalities, but […]

Food Activists See Portents of New and Deeper Hunger Crisis

Food rights activists from around the world will descend on the coastal U.S. state of Florida next week to protest homelessness and hunger facing millions of people in the United States and across the globe. The Aug. 20-26 protests in Tampa were organised to draw attention to the Republican Party’s aggressive stance on tax cuts […]

Saudi Aramco says virus shuts down its computer network

Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Saudi Aramco) said its computer systems had been shut down by a virus late on Wednesday, but it added that production had not been affected. “An official source of Saudi Aramco confirmed that it had isolated electronic systems for the entire company today and cut off external access as an early […]

Shell’s Arctic Oil Drilling Window Closing As Permits Awaited

The short window for Royal Dutch Shell PLC to drill exploratory wells off Alaska’s Arctic coast is rapidly narrowing as the company still hasn’t completed the retrofit of its vital oil spill response vessel or received final permits for its use. Shell initially planned to begin exploration activities in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in […]

Dozens Of Underwater Drones Deployed To The Waters Of Iran

What to do when international talks begin falling apart? Send a fleet of unmanned submersibles in preparation for a waterway showdown. As US talks with Iran over their nuclear program began to sour and the possibility of sanctions against the country rose, Iran responded by threatening to cut off the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow […]

Ahmadinejad arrives in Saudi for Islamic summit

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived on Monday in Saudi Arabia ahead of an extraordinary summit in Mecca expected to focus on the Syria conflict, on which Tehran and Riyadh have taken opposing sides. Ahmadinejad arrived in the Muslim holy city of Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, SPA state news agency said, adding that he visited […]

US Interior to Open More of National Petroleum Reserve for O&G Development

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Monday outlined a proposed plan to open additional acreage in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) for oil and gas development. The proposed plan would make approximately 11.8 million acres available for leasing. Salazar said the move would make the vast majority of projected oil resources in […]

US Navy ship collides with oil tanker in Gulf

A U.S. Navyguided missile destroyer was left with a gaping hole on one side after it collided with an oil tanker early Sunday just outside the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The collision left a breach about 10 feet by 10 feet (three by three meters) in the starboard side of USS Porter. No one was injured […]

Opportunity after the disaster: new nuclear regulatory body

Japan’s energy policy is now at its most critical juncture since the inception of nuclear power in 1966. Nearly 16 months after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station — the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl — Japan’s nuclear policy has finally started to transform. After much delay, on June 20 the […]

Syria’s Pipelineistan war

A deal between Syria and Iran’s oil ministers may jeopardise Turkey’s position on the East-West energy road[REUTERS] Deep beneath “Damascus volcano” and “the battle of Aleppo”, the tectonic plates of the global energy chessboard keep on rumbling. Beyond the tragedy and grief of civil war, Syria is also a Pipelineistan power play. More than a […]

Iraq’s oil output overtakes Iran’s

Iraq has overtaken Iran as the second-largest OPEC oil producer for the first time since the late 1980s, a symbolic shift that signals the huge impact of Western sanctions on Tehran and the steady recoveryof Baghdad’s energy industry. The International Energy Agency, the Western countries’ oil watchdog, said Friday that Iraq last month produced more […]

The Other Side Of Sanctions

Iran has been pushed into a corner and is fighting for its life.  The safest weapon in its arsenal is an economic strategy; and it is the one point where the United States is vulnerable.  There is no doubt about it.  Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act that was signed into law by […]

U.S. Hits Syrian Oil Company, Hezbollah With Sanction

The Obama administration imposed new sanctions today against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah, the militant Islamist group with close ties to Iran. On the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting with Syrian opposition members and Turkish leaders in Istanbul, the U.S. targeted the Syrian state-run oil company, Sytrol, under […]

Your Complete Guide To The Coming Fiscal Cliff

  All you need to know about the fiscal cliff which will savage the US economy in under 5 months, unless Congress finds a way to compromise at a time when animosity and polarization in congress is the worst it has ever been in history.   Key dates:   The cliff in graphics:   The […]

Barak Confidant: Israel Has Decided to Attack

Former Labor party minister, Uzi Baram, wrote a column in Yisrael HaYom today that urges Israel’s leadership to tell the people clearly what lies in store when they execute an expected attack on Iran.  What is most striking about the article is this: Recently, I’ve come to believe that the leaders of the State have decided […]

China Slams the US for “Stirring Up Troubles” over the South China Sea

Chinese state-run media ratcheted up criticisms of the US Tuesday over tensions in the South China Sea, with the Communist Party’s top newspaper – People’s Daily Online – telling Washington that it is “stirring up troubles”. The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned a US State Department statement published on August 3, 2012, that said Washington was […]

Peter Shawn Taylor: Jeff Rubin gets Peak Oil wrong

Two hundred and twenty five bucks. In April 2008, Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, predicted a barrel of oil would cost $225 by 2012. With oil at $118, it was a controversial call. But Rubin, the best-known bank economist in Canada at the time, was no stranger to risky predictions. In 1989, […]

Mitt Romney: peak oiler?

I was surprised to read what Cory Suter in “Polycimic” reports about Mitt Romney’s 2010 book “No Apology; The Case for American Greatness. ” In the book Romney  speaks about Peak Oil, cites Matt Simmons’s book “Twilight in the desert” and says that, “whether the peak is already past or will be reached within a […]

Unprecedented number of US coal-fired power stations to be shut down in 2012

The Obama Administration continues to move forward with plans to completely shut down the American coal industry, as a record 57 coal-fired power stations are slated for shutdown in 2012. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 175 coal-fired generators that collectively represent a whopping 27 gigawatts (GW) worth of electricity-generating capacity are set […]

Syria reaches oil deal with ally Russia

Syria has reached an agreement with ally Russia to secure much-needed fuel as a delegation of ministers sent by President Bashar al-Assad asked Moscow to help alleviate the effects of sanctions on the war-torn country. The trip was a rare foreign visit made by high-level Syrian officials, whose circles of support are shrinking as violence […]

Noam Chomsky – Peak Oil and Climate Change

Noam Chomsky – Peak Oil and Climate Change

John Michael Greer: The Degeneration of Politics

There’s a certain wry amusement in looking back over the last few months of posts here on The Archdruid Report.  Each week, I’ve gone to the keyboard intending to proceed further with the outline of the impending fall of American empire that’s the putative theme of this sequence of posts; each week, I’ve ended up […]

China unveils oil offensive in South China Sea squabble

First came the diplomatic offensive, then the flexing of military muscle. Now, China is opening a third front to assert its claims in the South China Sea – moving ahead with its first major tender of oil and gas blocks in disputed parts of its waters. China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), a state oil […]

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