Trump pushes Big Corn and Oil to break biofuels deadlock

U.S. President Donald Trump urged representatives from the rival oil and corn industries on Thursday to break a deadlock in talks over the future of the nation’s biofuels policy by accepting a deal involving reforms sought by both sides. FILE PHOTO: The Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery is seen at sunset in front of the […]

Venezuelan crisis: All the oil, but no food

Alejandro Manuel Mago Coraspe is an inmate at the Vista Hermosa prison in Bolivar, a city in northern Venezuela. The 41-year-old is serving a nine-month sentence for vehicle theft. He was hospitalised recently for complications from food poisoning. Coraspe was so hungry that he ate dead rats found in the prison’s garbage dump, and the […]

Exxon Quits Some Russian Joint Ventures Citing Sanctions

Exxon Mobil Corp will exit some joint ventures with Russia’s Rosneft, citing Western sanctions first imposed in 2014, while the Russian company said the pullout will result in serious losses for its U.S. partner. The move is an about-face for Exxon, which had opposed the sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Crimea and argued they unfairly […]

Venezuela’s Petro: Stable Coin For Crypto-Economy Or Illegal Oil Futures?

Starting in late 2017 Venezuela’s President Nikolas Maduro began expanding heavily into media space in an attempt to promote a new payment instrument– the government-issued cryptocurrency Petro. On Feb. 20 the pre-sale of Petro was launched and has already raised $735 mln, according to Maduro’s Twitter. Total amount of PTR issued for sale is 100 mln […]

Why America wants a war with Russia

Just recently I saw this innocent question asked on Moon of Alabama’s website, and decided to post a reply: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/russian-bots-how-an-anti-russian-lobby-creates-fake-news.html “For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia.” Ever since US Crude Oil production peaked in 1970, the US has known that at some point the oil majors […]

Vision 2030 & the Political Costs of Saudi Reforms

A pillar of the Saudi social contract has been the allocation of oil rents to the population in exchange for loyalty and fidelity to the Saud clan. A key weakness of Vision 2030 is its lack of focus on the potential political consequences of economic reforms. The plan seems to assume that its ramifications will […]

Gail Tverberg: Raising Interest Rates Is Like Starting a Fission Chain Reaction

Central bankers seem to think that adjusting interest rates is a nice little tool that they can easily handle. The problem is that higher interest rates affect the economy in many ways simultaneously. The lessons that seem to have been learned from past rate hikes may not be applicable today. Furthermore, there can be quite […]

Iran ready to share resources with India

Oil and gas-rich Iran is ready to share its natural resources with India to help its development, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on a visit to India on Friday. “Iran is rich in oil and natural gas resources. It is ready to share the natural resources with India for its development and progress,” Indian media […]

Singapore to introduce carbon tax in 2019

Singapore will introduce a tax on emissions of S$5.00 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent ($3.80/tCO2e) from 2019, according to The Straits Times. The move was announced in the country’s budget on Monday and will apply to all facilities producing more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. – All facilities producing 25,000 […]

The Militarization of U.S. Energy Policy: Donald Trump Enlists Fossil Fuels in the Struggle for Global Dominance

As the recently published National Security Strategy shows, Donald Trump has turned the expansion of the U.S. fossil fuel industry and its exports into a major component of American foreign and security policy, writes energy expert and author Michael T. Klare. In the view of the Trump administration, anyone that stands in the way of […]

Kunstler: Thirteen Russians and a Ham Sandwich

Remember that one from 1996? Funny, that was the American mainstream media bragging, after the fact, about our own meddling in another nation’s election. WASHINGTON — A team of American political strategists who helped [California] Gov. Pete Wilson with his abortive presidential bid earlier this year said this week that they served as Russian President […]

Hezbollah Leader Threatens “We Will Open Fire” On Disputed Israeli Offshore Oil & Gas Operations

During a televised address in Beirut on Friday Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah once again warned Israel to back off its claims over disputed oil and gas field just off the southern Lebanese coast, threatening that Hezbollah could “disable [Israel’s offshore oil installations] within hours.” “If you prevent us, we prevent you; if you open […]

US military expenditure a giant elephant in the room

For more than 20 years, the Government Accountability Office has never been able to produce a clean audit at the Defense Department, as required by federal law to allow appropriations for the next fiscal year, because of hundreds of millions of dollars in unaccounted annual expenditures. What does the federal government spend for military purposes? It […]

America: A Military Nation

Americans like to think of their country as different from those run by military regimes. They are only fooling themselves. Ever since the federal government was converted into a national-security state after World War II (without a constitutional amendment authorizing the conversion), it has been the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA that have run […]

The Coming Fall of the House of Saud: Austerity is in, and the Countdown to Saudi Arabia’s Fire Sale is On!

With austerity policies sweeping the globe it was really only a matter of time before they hit the more affluent parts of the Middle East, although one certainly wouldn’t expect the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be so hot on the heels of the “lazy” Greeks. The word “austerity” has however earned a bit […]

The End Of The Petrodollar? China Unveils Oil-Futures Launch Date

After decades of dollar-hegemonic control, the world’s biggest oil buyer is finally getting its own crude-futures contract – the so-called ‘petro-yuan’ is born. The start of trading, open to foreigners, will mark the end of years of delays and setbacks since China’s first attempt at a domestic contract in 1993. Following December’s final successful test, in a […]

Noam Chomsky: We’re on the Brink of Global Catastrophe

Famed linguist and activist Noam Chomsky says that the United States under President Donald Trump is driving the world closer to catastrophe than it’s been in decades. In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Chomsky pointed out that the so-called “Doomsday Clock” created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board is now closer […]

The Widening Saudi–Iran Divide

The conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran marks a deepening division between regional powers and international hegemons in the Persian Gulf. The Saudis and Iranians have to learn to cooperate or risk further confrontation. By Seyed Hossein Mousavian New regional and international coalitions are forming with respect to the Middle East and Persian Gulf. An […]

Sun setting on US empire

Leading US economist Laurence Kotlikoff says he remains optimistic about solving the big structural problems plaguing global finance, but he has a grim prognosis for the US if it doesn’t change fiscal and monetary policies. “We’re heading the way the British Empire went, its inevitable” he says. “The [US] dollar is going to give way […]

Beware of The Agenda Behind “Population Control”

Population control –family planning, mother and child healthcare, reproductive health– is back in the news with enhanced momentum. A few years ago some leaders who were encouraging their citizens to produce more children because the optimal size for economic development hadn’t been reached have abruptly changed their minds. In support of population growth, they argued […]

First U.S. City to Ban Fossil Fuel Expansion Offers Roadmap for Others

On a clear July morning three years ago, dozens of environmental activists pushed their kayaks into the Willamette River in Portland while others rappelled 400 feet from the top of St. Johns Bridge in an attempt to block a Shell Oil ship and its drilling equipment from leaving the port and entering Alaskan waters. A […]

The World Bank’s Systematic Looting of Africa

A brand new World Bank report, The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018, offers evidence of how much poorer Africa is becoming thanks to rampant minerals, oil and gas extraction. Yet Bank policies and practices remain oriented to enforcing foreign loan repayments and transnational corporate (TNC) profit repatriation, thus maintaining the looting. Central to its “natural capital accounting,” the […]

Kunstler: A Quandary

It is the super-duper quandary of the moment: choose between the oafish, charmless, and possibly not-so-stable-genius Leader-of-the-Free-World… and a security state that will do whatever it takes to get rid of him, for instance, engineering a nationwide hysteria over Russia. Has anyone else noticed how odd it is that the so-called “Resistance” has all along […]

Iraq’s Toxic Conflict

In Iraq, thirty years of armed conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, wounded countless more, displaced millions and laid cities and towns to waste. Amongst all of this death and destruction, there is an often-overlooked victim whose harm has far reaching consequences: The environment. Whilst Iraq’s environment has suffered from degradation due to […]

Economic Collapse: Will Cryptocurrency Save the Financial System?

Where to go from here? If trust and sustainability were the two conditions that allowed for the transition from physical gold to paper currency, it is from this basis that we must start to analyze where we are going and what effects the next economic crisis could have. In 2008, confidence in central banks saved the […]

The Fetid Fruits Of Empire: Too Many Wars, Too Many Enemies

If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week’s end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history. Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded. Erdogan’s foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S. […]

Celebration 50 Years Since the Global Uprisings of ’68

Older generations never tire of reminding youth that the years they spend on college or university campus are formative moments in their lives, times that more often than not play an important role in shaping the trajectory of their future careers and helping to determine the types of adults that they will soon become. These […]

Kunstler: Stormy Weather

For those of us who are not admirers of President Trump, it’s even more painful to see the Democratic opposition descend into the stupendous dishonesty of the Russian Collusion story. When the intelligentsia of the nation looses its ability to think — when it becomes a dis-intelligentsia — then there are no stewards of reality […]

Rex Tillerson says ‘stability’ threatened by Russian pipeline

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is lashing out against Russia’s plans to open a natural gas pipeline to supply energy to Germany, saying Saturday that it threatens stability in the region. “Like Poland, the United States opposes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” Tillerson said while at a joint press conference in Warsaw with Polish Foreign […]

Prince Alwaleed Finally Released From “Hotel Arrest”

Two weeks after we reported that Saudi Arabia’s billionaire prince Alwaleed Bin Talal was reportedly carted off from the Riyadh Ritz Carlton to Saudi Arabia’s highest security prison after refusing to pay a $6 billion “freedom fee” to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to secure his freedom, the flamboyant billionaire and Twitter investor appears to […]

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