Energy Wars and a Rumor of Wars

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil – Alan Greenspan (2008) Alan Greenspan is not my favourite macroeconomist or central bank chief, although his presence on a bandstand with the great jazz saxophonist Stan Getz deserves almost as much respect as the […]

David Galland: The System Is Coming Unglued

Our video host Stefan Molyneux speaks with Casey Research Managing Director David Galland about the debt situation in the US and whether the federal government can do anything about it… assuming they’d even want to. TRANSCRIPT David Galland – We’re Living in a Degraded Democracy Stefan: Hi everybody, it’s Stefan Molyneux, host of Conversations with […]

G7 to seek ways to prop up global growth

Group of Seven financial leaders, worried about risks to global growth, are likely to agree this week to keep monetary policy accommodative, slow fiscal consolidation in countries where that is possible and implement structural reforms, a G7 source said. Finance ministers and central bank governors of the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and […]

Kunstler: Perestroika

There’s a difference, of course, between what this country thinks it needs and what it’s going to get.  The world has a way of dragging you, kicking and screaming, to where it wants to take you. We think we need more American oil so we can “end our dependence on foreign oil.” Despite the PR […]

EU bans Syrian Oil; What`s about Others?

Agencies- After weeks of review, the European Union has decided to impose an oil embargo on Syria. The EU said it would impose a ban on the import of Syrian oil to the 27-nation bloc. EU Officials said the measure would affect Britain and France, the leading clients of Syria’s energy sector. “The prohibition concerns […]

Robert Rapier: Reality Settling in at the White House

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president, I thought he displayed a “comic book” view of the energy industry: Lots of stereotypes of the good guys and the bad guys. He would support the good guys (those who aspired to produce renewable power) and deal with the bad guys (those who were actually supplying the […]

Peak Oil – Club of Rome

Ian Dunlop is Deputy Convener of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil. Working with the Club of Rome, Ian wrote and helped produce this presentation on Peak Oil.

Israel to simulate strike on nuclear facility

Security forces to hold ‘worse case scenario’ drill testing enemy strike on nuclear compound, lessons learned from Japan’s Fukushima disaster The defense establishment will hold a special emergency drill this week, simulating an enemy strike on Israel‘s nuclear facility. “Operation Fernando” will aim to test the defense establishment’s readiness for the worst case scenario – […]

Abrupt Iran Decision To Move Nuclear Production Deep Underground Dubbed “Provocation” By US

It always seems that just when there is a lull in news of geopolitcal tension, we get an update that the Iranian situation gets that more unstable. After a nearly year long hiatus brought courtesy of allegedly Israeli supervirus Stuxnet taking out Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure offline for many months, the topic of Iran’s nuclear […]

Obama Asks EPA to Pull Ozone Rule

President Barack Obama, citing the struggling economy, asked the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday to withdraw an air-quality rule that Republicans and business groups said would cost millions of jobs. The surprise move—coming on the same day as a dismal unemployment report—reflected the energy industry’s importance as a rare bright spot in adding U.S. jobs. […]

Russia’s Middle East ambitions

Embroiled with numerous social, economic, and political ills in the aftermath of the USSR’s demise, the Russian Federation was left with no option but to abstain from the Middle Eastern theatre. With the election of Vladimir Putin in 2000, however, this diplomatic passivism came to a gradual end as Russia sought to regain its prestige […]

National Energy Policy: The Cheney Law Massacre

The US National Energy Policy of 2005 was created under Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force in secret meetings; evidence shows that the energy industry influences foreign policy and may have led us into the Iraq War. Cheney’s National Energy Policy is also responsible for electricity deregulation scams, corporate welfare for energy producers and many other […]

Armed forces raid BP’s Moscow offices

BP defended itself against a raid by bailiffs and armed special forces troopers on its Moscow office on Wednesday, describing it as “part of a pressure campaign against BP’s business in Russia”. Speaking in Moscow, Jeremy Huck, President of BP Russia, added that the company believed the actions were “without merit”. The raid, ordered Tuesday […]

Ignoring peak oil and scarcity – political myopia?

Oil will one day run out and without a comparable substitute – we can expect a return to 1970s-style oil shocks. And, yet, politicians and economists prefer to ignore the truth If you are lucky enough to have been born in an industrialised country and old enough to remember the oil crises of the 1970s, […]

US Energy Department panel endorses shale fracking

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” for the purpose of extracting natural gas from the earth involves flooding it with millions of gallons of chemical-laden water, a practice that by all estimates is damaging the environment to some extent. But a US Energy Department (ED) advisory panel, which happens to be padded with members connected […]

NASA’s Hansen Arrested Outside White House at Pipeline Protest

James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was arrested outside the White House as he joined protesters in urging President Barack Obama to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s $7 billion pipeline. Before he was taken into custody today, Hansen took a megaphone and implored Obama to act “for the sake of your children […]

At the American Journal of Public Health, experts examine the risks posed by peak petroleum

The September issue of the American Journal of Public Health is now available online featuring 8 studies and articles by an interdisciplinary set of experts, each examining the health risks posed by peak petroleum and what can be done to mitigate and protect against the onset of a major spike in energy prices. The special […]

‘Dirty oil’ pipeline to cut into US heartland

Canada is now largest US oil supplier, but activists fear the heavy environmental costs of tar sands crude. David Daniel had never been to an environmental protest before this week, but as hundreds converge in Washington for civil disobedience against a massive oil pipeline, the retired carpenter from Texas is spearheading opposition against what he […]

NATO nations set to reap spoils of Libya war

It looks like the more telling news on Libya has migrated to the business pages.  With jubilant reporting of Gaddafi’s imminent downfall seizing headlines, it’s the financial pages that have the clinical analysis. So, for instance, it is in this section that the Independent reports a “dash for profit in the post-war Libya carve up“. […]

New German Army report on peak oil

The military spends a great deal of planning for different contingencies.  The rest of the time is spent training and doing exercises in preparation for the various scenarios they have planned for.  And, yes they do on occasion go off to war, most recently for extended periods of time. I find it interesting that I’ve […]

China to Sue ConocoPhillips Over Oil Spills

The Chinese maritime authority is preparing to sue ConocoPhillips, the American oil company, over two oil spills in June that engulfed large swaths of Bohai Bay in north China, according to a report by Xinhua, the state news agency. The report, which appeared on Wednesday, said the State Oceanic Administration was aiming to set up […]

Crude Analysis of Libyan Liberation

Another war for oil? Surely not! But just to be on the safe side, the world’s oil barons are already moving in to seal some sweetheart deals on that sweet, sweet crude with the new, NATO-installed masters of Libya. And guess what? It turns out that companies from the Western countries that eagerly rained tons of […]

Pentagon Quake Nightmare: Fukushima on the Mississippi

In May, the federal government simulated an earthquake so massive, it killed 100,000 Midwesterners instantly, and forced more than 7 million people out of their homes. At the time, National Level Exercise 11 went largely unnoticed; the scenario seemed too far-fetched — states like Illinois and Missouri are in the middle of a tectonic plate, […]

Fracking and the road to energy independence

Spectacularly vast stores of natural gas — by some estimates a staggering 837 trillion cubic feet — trapped in shale formations thousands of feet below our nation’s surface could endow America with decades of energy independence. But the method of exacting the natural gas, a process nicknamed fracking, could be the next environmental superdebate. Maybe […]

Kunstler: History is Not Your Therapist

I suppose we’ll know in a few hours whether Colonel Muammer Gaddafi gets hung out to dry, Mussolini-style, from a lamp-post, or is mercifully handed a one way ticket to Palookaville, a.k.a. The Hague, where old despots go to eat French fries with mayonnaise and be judged. The rebels celebrating in Tripoli’s main square looked […]

Gaddafi’s rule crumbling as rebels enter heart of Tripoli

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s four-decade-long rule over Libya was crumbling at breakneck speed Sunday as hundreds of rebel fighters swept toward the heart of Tripoli and dissidents said they had secured control of many parts of the capital. With rebel leaders saying that Gaddafi’s compound was surrounded, that his son Saif al-Islam had been captured […]

Central Planning and The Fall of the US Empire

One of the most interesting underlying reasons for the decline of the Soviet Union, and soon the US, is misallocation of resources due to a reliance on central planning. Misallocation in this context means that year after year, decade after decade, the wealth of a nation is spent on the wrong things.  The wrong projects […]

Getting ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns

Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection Agency will finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. Mercury, smog, ozone, greenhouse gases, water intake, coal ash—it’s all getting regulated. And, not surprisingly, some lawmakers are grumbling. Industry groups such the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, and the […]

Saudi Arabia’s policy of stability at all costs may backfire

Saudi Arabia is widely perceived as leading the counter-revolution against the Arab Spring uprisings. In reality, the kingdom’s response is centered, as its foreign and domestic policy has long been, on “stability.” The Saudis don’t want anti-Saudi forces, including such enemies as Iran and Al-Qaeda, to increase their influence in the Middle East. Some of […]

The global era and the end of foreign policy

In the past foreign policy mainly consisted of adjusting relations between states – what they will do with or to each other. Now foreign policy mainly consists of adjusting the domestic policies of different states – of what they will do with or to their own people. It is a simple argument, but if fully […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy