IAEA: Hearings on Fukushima closed to public

The United Nations nuclear agency’s decision to hold talks about the Fukushima disaster behind closed doors this week ignores the “blindingly obvious” need for greater transparency, said a former official in the U.K. atomic industry. “People deserve openness from the industry and its regulators,” Malcolm Grimston, a former information officer at the U.K.’s Atomic Energy […]

Russia ‘invited to join energy agency’

LONDON — The International Energy Agency (IEA), which represents consumer countries, has invited Russia and other producer nations to join it, Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said in a newspaper interview on Sunday. The Observer weekly said the move was a desperate attempt to broker a deal between buyers and sellers over soaring crude prices. “We […]

Robert Rapier: Media Misinformation Promotes Dysfunctional Energy Policy

Over the years I have had some enlightening interactions with the news media. I have gradually developed the view that many in the media believe their role is more to entertain than to inform. My naive younger self believed that the media generally presents objective information, which is important to ensure that a well-informed general […]

Europe needs to acknowledge peak oil scenario – and plan accordingly

If the European Union does not sufficiently prepare for tomorrow’s new energy challenges, then it will lose out in the long-term to more creative economies, a conference in Brussels has been told. According to one MEP, the inability to acknowledge limits to conventional oil exploration will not only mean losing out to more innovative economies, […]

Heinberg: Post-Growth Geopolitics

As nations compete for currency advantages, they are also eyeing the world’s diminishing resources—fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water. Resource wars have been fought since the dawn of history, but today the competition is entering a new phase. Nations need increasing amounts of energy and materials to produce economic growth, but—as we have seen—the […]

Waters roil in the South China Sea

MANILA – Escalating tensions between China and Southeast Asian claimants to the Spratly Islands threaten to spill over into a full-blown conflict. The Philippines and Vietnam are at particular loggerheads with Beijing after a series of provocations that some believe show China is taking a more assertive stance on its claims in the potentially oil […]

We can’t afford subsidies for renewable energy

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) calculated the costs in dollars per megawatt/hour of different energy sources as follows: Conventional coal power: $100.40; Natural gas: $83.10; Nuclear: $119.00; Onshore wind power: $149.30; Offshore wind power: $191.10; Thermal solar power: $256.60, Photo-voltaic solar power: $396.10. According to the EIA, the availability, i.e. the ability to produce […]

UK ministers ignored ‘peak oil’ warnings, report shows

The government was warned by its own civil servants two years ago that there could be “significant negative economic consequences” to the UK posed by near-term “peak oil” energy shortages. Ministers were told it was impossible to know exactly when production might fail to meet supply but when it did there could be global consequences, […]

Sierra Club goes totally peak oil — almost

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Michael Brune’s book Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal, just released in a revised edition to talk about the Deepwater Horizon spill, more or less starts with peak oil. Why surprised? Because mainstream environmentalists often shy away from the topic. Maybe the idea that cheap […]

Transmission lines and GOP politics: It’s all local, and it’s impenetrable, too

The power of eminent domain to site transmission lines isn’t going to be make-or-break in the 2012 US presidential race. It could play a tiny role in the always-critical New Hampshire primary, though, where a power line is a big issue right now. Since CNN’s Monday night Republican candidate debate was in that state, the subject did come […]

Vietnam Confronts China Over South China Sea Energy Riches

An increasingly fractious maritime confrontation is developing in the South China Sea, with enormous implications for international companies interested in developing East Asia’s offshore hydrocarbon resources. Far from the radars of city of London and Wall Street investors, the clash has seen Vietnam emerge as spear carrier for its fellow ASEAN members on the dispute. […]

SPR may be ‘Plan B’ after OPEC

US President Barack Obama and members of his administration again talked of dipping into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve as energy prices climbed June 8 after ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to change production at an acrimonious meeting in Vienna. Obama was quoted by the Huffington Post as saying, “My general […]

Iran Thwarted Saudi Arabia’s Efforts at OPEC Meeting

Iran thwarted efforts by Saudi Arabia to increase oil production at last week’s meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, state-run Fars news agency reported, citing the acting oil minister. Many countries opposed Saudi Arabia’s proposals, Mohammad Aliabadi said, according to the report. The 12 members of OPEC failed on June 8 in Vienna […]

Sudan bombs oil-rich southern state

The White House has urged Sudan to “immediately” end the escalation of “reprehensible” violence on southern army positions less than a month before the south becomes the world’s youngest country. “The United States condemns reported acts of violence in Southern Kordofan that target individuals based on their ethnicity and political affiliation,” White House spokesman Jay […]

OPEC fails to reach agreement on oil supply

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has failed to reach a consensus over production levels, after Saudi Arabia pushed for an increase in supply at a meeting in Vienna, the Austrian capital. Saudi Arabian oil officials, backed by Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pressed other nations at the  meeting on Wednesday for an […]

The Myth of Viable Industrial-scale Renewable Energy

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill’s dictum could have been coined for the green advocates of the renewable energy revolution; a revolution that demonstrates a thorough-going disconnect between the political rhetoric and a grasp of the physics and economics vital to energy realism. Remember Germany’s ‘Green Chancellor’ Rhetoric: In […]

Seymour Hersh on Iran’s nuclear capability, the Arab uprisings and Obama’s isolation

UAN GONZALEZ: The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is back in the news this week with another explosive article that is ruffling some feathers at the White House. During the Bush administration years, Hersh was widely criticized by White House officials for his exposés on the torture at Abu Ghraib, secret U.S. operations overseas, […]

World Bank: CO2 levy on jet, shipping fuel

The World Bank will suggest a global levy on jet and shipping fuel in recommendations to G20 governments later this year on raising climate finance, a senior official said on Sunday. Developed countries have already written off chances of agreement on a new binding deal at a U.N. conference in Durban this year, placing a […]

OPEC has Most-Hostile Meeting Since 1990 Gulf War

OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna this week will find themselves supporting opposing camps of a military conflict for the first time in 21 years, with hostilities in Libya complicating an agreement on oil quotas. Not since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 has the producer group gathered with some nations giving financial and military support […]

UK Government to work with business on plans to tackle peak oil threat

Business leaders today welcomed a commitment by the Government to work with the private sector on contingency plans to protect the UK and its economy from the growing risk of rising oil prices. It follows a meeting between Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and representatives from the UK Industry Taskforce […]

Kuwait protesters demand PM’s removal

Thousands of youth activists have rallied in Kuwait for the removal of the prime minister, pushing the oil-rich Gulf state closer to political turmoil. “The people want to topple the prime minister,” chanted more than 3,000 protesters late on Friday night for the third straight week, braving temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius in the desert state. […]

The battle for the South China Sea

Six countries are all scrambling for the South China Sea. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia are all making claims to it. But why now? China estimates there could be up to 213 billion barrels of oil beneath the sea. This would mean China would have the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves, just falling behind […]

No New Zealand ‘Oil shock response plan’

BY now everybody has heard of climate change and peak oil. It is unlikely that anyone interested can genuinely be undecided on whether these things are threats or not. Attempting to convince those resisting change is probably pointless, but here I go again. First, Alan Nicholl’s Thermodynamic Atmosphere Effect report by Joseph E. Postma. I […]

Post Carbon Tackles T. Boone

Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century has been requested by local, state and federal agencies, media and concerned citizens worldwide. Since it’s release less than three weeks ago, the report has been downloaded over 11,000 times. Today we are releasing three supplements to the report that we hope you’ll find of interest […]

New shocks in Japan as operating nuclear power unit forced to shut down

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s request May 6 to Chubu Electric to shut all operations at its sole Hamaoka nuclear power plant is causing waves of aftershocks at multiple levels, at the prospect of further worsening power shortages across the country. Kan’s request, which was the first of its kind and not legally binding, was […]

Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak Resources, Peak Planet: Building a Currency for the 21st Century

In a planet running out of resources, the most important public policy tool may be the measuring stick. This becomes important to remember amid the remarkable swings of pessimism and guarded optimism we’ve seen over the past two years on the ability of individual nations to scale-up the sustainable energy agenda. COP15 in Copenhagen 2009 […]

Canada on Secret Oil Offensive: Documents

The Canadian government has been carrying out a secret plan in Europe to boost investment and keep world markets open for the Alberta tar sands, collaborating with major oil companies and aggressively undermining European environmental measures, documents obtained by The Dominion reveal. In 2009 the federal government launched a strategy to “protect and advance Canadian […]

Spain’s Irish Spring

“Spain is now as forked as Ireland. It not only has all the problems of a crumbling paradigm — the religion of endless growth — but it has elevated the high priests of that paradigm to its seats of power.” Twenty-one and a half years ago we wrote: “What will it be like when this […]

Energy Myths of the Left

From confused “peak oil” theorists to confused Congressmen, it’s all but impossible to hear a discussion of US energy policy without hearing the left’s tired refrain: “The United States currently uses 25% of the world oil production but has only 2% of world reserves.” The left uses this misinformation to argue against domestic oil drilling, […]

Representative Bartlett talks about US Deficit and Peak Oil

Starts at 07:54 Watched this last night on CSPAN live and was very encouraged that Represenative Bartlett (Republican) talks about peak oil and the U.S. debt

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