Saudi’s $36bn bid to beat unrest

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced financial support measures, worth an estimated SR135bn ($36bn), in a bid to avert the kind of popular unrest that has toppled leaders across the region and is now closing in on Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi. The measures include a 15 per cent salary rise for public employees to offset inflation, […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Inflection Point

It has taken two months for the contagion that began with the immolation of a fruit seller in Tunisia to reach the first significant oil producing nation. As oil production in Libya grinds to a halt and Muammar Gadhafi clings to power amidst increasing turmoil, it is beginning to look as if it may be […]

Carolyn Baker Interviews David Wann

n our efforts to include voices that offer options for our current human predicament, we often overlook those in our own local communities. I’m fortunate to live within an hour’s drive of sustainability expert and futurist, David Wann. He recently spoke here in Boulder, Colorado, promoting his new book, The New Normal: An Agenda For […]

Nomura Predicts $220 Oil If Just Libya, Algeria Cut Output

Waiting for a Saudi revolution before buying those $200 oil calls? It may be time to reevaluate: according to Nomura a halt in just Libyan and Algerian oil production (far more likely than the crisis spilling over to Saudi) would send oil to over $220/bbl. Specifically “the closest comparison to the current MENA unrest is the […]

Gaddafi loses more Libyan cities

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s long-standing ruler, has reportedly lost control of more cities as anti-government protests continue to sweep the African nation despite his threat of a brutal crackdown. Protesters in Misurata said on Wednesday they had wrested the western city from government control. In a statement on the internet, army officers stationed in the city pledged “total […]

Geithner Says Not To Worry About Surging Oil Prices: “Central Banks Have A Lot Of Experience In Managing These Things”

You really can’t make this shit up: “The economy is in a much stronger position to handle” rising oil prices, Tim Geithner said today during a Bloomberg Breakfast in Washington. “Central banks have a lot of experience in managing these things.” We are, all of us, now doomed. Bloomberg‘s account of one lunatic’s daily ramblings […]

With oil and food costs rising, it looks like 2008 all over again

History repeats itself: food riots are breaking out across the poorer nations, the Middle East is in turmoil and Brent crude has passed the $100 mark – 2011 is opening just like 2008 did. It was a significant year in terms of the global economy: social unrest around the world over a spike in the […]

Why all of the Concern about Libya?

We keep hearing about unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa, with Libya being the latest country to get top billing. Why all of the concern, especially related to oil? Libya is a relatively oil-rich country. According to the CIA World Factbook, its per capita income is more than double Egypt’s. While Egypt is […]

Is a food crisis coming?

Food could soon hold a greater value than gold to many people with rising prices, civil unrest and food products such as corn being converted into fuel. Americans may soon understand what other countries such as Egypt already know. Regardless of what country you live in everyone could agree they have felt an increase in […]

Toyota Unleashes the Super Prius

When General Motors set out to build the Chevrolet Volt, it had one goal in mind above all else: give Toyota nightmares. Fed up with watching the Prius cruising along as the vehicular darling of the environmental set, GM launched the automotive equivalent of a moonshot program, hoping to steal the spotlight with a next-gen […]

If the world calls, will Saudi be there?

Let’s say that Libya’s entire oil production shuts down, a process that currently seems under way. Would Saudi Arabia genuinely make up the difference, as its energy minister, Ali al-Naimi , has said in Riyadh? The answer is crucial — everyone from the presidents of the world’s leading industrial nations to the CEOs of the […]

What ‘Peak Oil’ Really Means for the Energy Sector

Peak oil is here. Even the International Energy Agency (IEA) has admitted that production of conventional petroleum has peaked, although they forecast continued conventional production at 2011’s reduced levels (down 2 million barrels per day from 2006) many years into the future. The attainment of even this plateau, however, depends on rapid increases in Saudi […]

Fresh violence rages in Libya

Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are waging a bloody operation to keep him in power, with residents reporting gunfire in parts of the capital Tripoli and other cities, while other citizens, including the country’s former ambassador to India, are saying that warplanes were used to “bomb” protesters. Nearly 300 people are reported to have been […]

Peak Oil: Recreation Changes

People will find it harder to participate in oil based recreational activities as Peak Oil hits. World oil supply high demand solar how to alternative fuels global warming Peak Oil crisis understanding explaining peakoil petroleum future apocalypse end crash energy inflation gas gasoline prices unemployment fuel finance resource wars middle east war military kunstler heinberg […]

The Resurrection of Peak Oil

t has been a long wait for “peak oilers,” whose passionate belief is that the world will run out of oil in coming years, sending prices through the roof. This splinter religion came into being in 1956 when M. King Hubbert produced some simple supply/demand charts showing that US reserves of Texas tea would dry […]

Libya: Why the oil market is nervous

Libya is the first oil exporting nation to be engulfed in the political upheaval spreading across North Africa and the Middle East, and investors are worried that further chaos in the region will drive crude prices even higher. U.S. oil prices surged 6% Monday following violent protests in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, that claimed an estimated […]

There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)

We keep seeing statements from the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy suggesting that a steady state economy is desirable. I would agree that growth in a finite world is not sustainable, but even continuation of our current level economic level, or a drop to an economic level two or three levels […]

Peak Oil or Peak Stupidity? How Permaculture Expands Life and Time

Geoffrey Lawton, arguably the world’s greatest permaculture teacher, lectures at historic Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills, 5/07. For more Geoffrey Lawton, please investigate www.permaculture.au and the Permaculture Institute of Australia. Here Geoffrey teaches us that a normal community once used 1 horsepower per 240 people! Life and time back then were spacious and expansive. […]

Kunstler: White Is The New Black

Let it be remembered that as the world was blowing up, Fashion Week gave the New York news media a case of the vapors. But let them tell it. In the immortal words of The New York Times’s Cathy Horyn: “…amid the parkas and the managed pant-suits there was a story here: the amount of […]

Egypt, a Classic Case of Rapid Net-Export Decline and a Look at Global Net Exports

In a recent guest column, “Peak Oil Versus Peak Exports,” we discussed the dramatic differences between simple post-peak oil-production declines, e.g., Texas and the North Sea, and net export declines, e.g., the UK and Indonesia, as illustrated in the “Export Land” Model (ELM), a simple mathematical model. Based on the ELM, we have concluded that […]

Due Diligence: How to Evaluate a Renewable Energy Technology

Doing Due Diligence To people who follow the energy industry closely, it’s a common occurrence to come across announcements from companies proclaiming to have developed the key to the ‘next big thing’ — for solving the world’s energy crisis. Maybe they say they can take any sort of waste biomass and turn it into fuel […]

Earth may be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050, experts say

A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an “unrecognizable” world by 2050, researchers warned at a major U.S. science conference Sunday. The UN has predicted the global population will reach 7 billion this year, and climb to 9 billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in […]

Libya protesters set fire to government buildings in Tripoli

Protesters in Libya’s capital are reported to have set fire to government buildings and attacked the headquarters of state television as the anti-Gaddafi demonstrations that began in the east of the country threaten to engulf the regime. Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets overnight clashing with police and shouting anti-Gaddafi slogans as tribal leaders […]

Rules Scramble to put Lid on Popular Dissent

The wave of popular uprisings across the Middle East has triggered a fresh round of government handouts and offers of greater political participation, as rich and poor countries alike try to quell or pre-empt unrest. The United Arab Emirates, seen as one of the most politically stable countries in the region, has unveiled limited electoral […]

Gasoline Gangsters Episode 6 Women & Peak Oil

Exploring the role women play in the peak oil debate. I talk about Nicole Foss from the Automatic Earth Blog. Kathy McMahon from Peak Oil Blues Dot Org and Janaia Donaldson from Peak Moment Television. Plus I discuss this week’s crude oil and gasoline smuggling news headlines.

Bloodshed in Libya, moves for talks in Bahrain

Security forces in the Libyan city of Benghazi killed dozens of people as they fought to crush an uprising against leader Muammar Gaddafi’s rule, the bloodiest of multiple revolts now rocking the Arab world. Witnesses said Benghazi was in a state of chaos, with government buildings ransacked and troops and police forced to retreat to […]

Rising alarm over global scarcities

As the world’s population expands, competition for food, water and energy will intensify, sending up prices for basic commodities. Hunger will increase, and waves of migrants will flee the worst-affected areas. That was the warning Sir John Beddington issued in 2009 when he was chief scientific adviser to the UK government. He predicted a “perfect […]

30 wounded in Kuwait protests on Friday

Thirty people were wounded in Friday’s clashes in Kuwait between security forces and stateless Arabs demanding citizenship, security sources said on Saturday. The protest in Jahra, northwest of Kuwait City, was the first in the oil-producing Gulf Arab state since a wave of unrest began sweeping across the Middle East in December. Fifty people were […]

Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a scientist’s video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn’t degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor. At a science conference in Washington, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University […]

Here comes $4 gasoline

At first blush, a replay of the 2008 gas price spike seems far fetched. The biggest driver of U.S. gasoline prices is the cost of crude oil, and near-month oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange have sat out the scorching commodities rally. They lately fetched $85, some 40% below the crisis peak. But […]

« 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