Keeping Peak Oil Reality In Mind # 18: Deny & Delay

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Paul Gilding. Like many, I feel a great impatience sitting here on the edge of it all. Waiting for it to be clear to everyone that it’s time to stop pretending the old models will somehow get back to normal. We lurch from crisis to crisis, but […]

Iran Positioned to Threaten Oil Lanes

In mid-December, the U.S. military will have only one aircraft carrier positioned in the Persian Gulf region for the first time in two years. At the same time, the Iranian navy said it was kicking off a 10-day exercise in the region. Oil prices spiked when Iran early this year threatened to close oil-shipping lanes […]

US-Created “Syrian Opposition” Led by Big Oil Rep

A year ago, it was reported that Libya’s new NATO-installed prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, was in fact a long-time US resident, having taught at the University of Alabama and was formally employed by the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, […]

Pemex announces light crude oil discovery in southern Mexico

Mexico’s state oil monopoly Pemex said on Sunday it had made a new discovery of light crude oil in an onshore well in Southern Mexico. The oil was found at a depth of 6 kilometers in the “Navegante 1” well in the state of Tabasco. Pemex estimates the reserve contains up to 500 million barrels. […]

Don’t gush over prospect of US as oil king

For one thing, it confirms that conventional oil production is in serious decline. This is the “light sweet” crude that is inexpensive to extract and refine, one of the key building blocks of modern industrial society.   Now that we have a pause in the important news, the Petraeus sex scandal, let’s turn to other […]

Fracking Industry Keeps Eye on Obama; EPA Report Could Doom its Future

The drilling process that has brought U.S. energy independence within reach faces renewed scrutiny from the Obama administration and an uncertain future in many states. Oil and gas industry leaders remain enthusiastic yet cautious that hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking,” will be fully embraced by the newly re-elected President Obama and state leaders. Fracking […]

Energy storage systems signal arrival of ‘baseload’ renewables

It has been widely thought that the arrival of cost-competitive rooftop solar PV systems would be the biggest game changer in the electricity market. But it may be that the emergence of affordable energy storage systems will have an even more profound impact. There are predictions that the energy storage market is going to boom. […]

Iran Accepts Payment in Gold to Get Around Sanctions

Yet another reason the US government hates gold, unlike dealing with paper money in bank accounts, there is no way they can stop international trade in gold and it is difficult to track gold movements. WSJ reports: Turkey on Friday acknowledged that a surge in its gold exports this year is related to payments for imports of […]

Goodbye Petrodollar, Hello Agri-Dollar?

When it comes to firmly established, currency-for-commodity, self reinforcing systems in the past century of human history, nothing comes close to the petrodollar: it is safe to say that few things have shaped the face of the modern world and defined the reserve currency as much as the $2.3 trillion/year energy exports denominated exclusively in […]

The population conundrum

  They were the decades that gave us Gordon Gekko and the Big Bang. The 1980s and 1990s were the boom years for stock-market investors, with globalisation, deregulation and rising productivity driving double-digit market returns. Yet, just as the financial crisis has unravelled previous assumptions about free market economics, an FT analysis shows that perhaps […]

Sixteen Percent of the U.S. Soybean Crop is Used for Biodiesel

Do you know what percent of the U.S. soybean crop is used for biodiesel? The biodiesel use of soybeans is to be about 16 percent of the total soybean crop this coming year (as a % of total U.S. soybean acres – used for biodiesel) or 468 million bushels. Both the biodiesel and ethanol plants […]

Oil Supply Is Rising, but Demand Keeps Pace and Then Some

IT used to be taken for granted that as economies grew, they would use more oil. That was a major reason cited in warnings that the world would run out of oil, particularly if standards of living rose in developing countries. Well, standards of living are improving in developing countries, but the dire forecasts now […]

Saudi dynasty faces generational choice

Two royal deaths and two cabinet reshuffles in just over a year have edged Saudi Arabia’s ruling family toward a tough decision: turning to a new generation after 60 years of rule by sons of the founding patriarch. The succession beyond King Abdullah – the fifth of Ibn Saud’s sons to reign and who is, […]

radioactive contamination of Tokyo Bay

On 11/21/2012, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology reported they measured high level of cesium from the ground soil of Tokyo bay. The sample was taken on 10/16/2012.     Source   Related article..Japan/korea sea contaminated as much as Tokyo bay    Iori Mochizuki   fukushima-diary.com/

Cuba: In it for the Long Haul

“A Cuban woman told us,  “You cannot understate how hard life was in the Special Period – people died; it left scars.” Cubans keep going, keep resisting, in part because surrender is not in their vocabulary, and in part because they have no other choice. They are a reluctant global model for powerdown economics.” We […]

German military analysis of peak oil now available

Complete English translation of German military analysis of peak oil now available Last week the Bundeswehr posted an English version (112 pgs) of their extraordinary analysis of peak oil. The original German document (125 pgs) was approved for public release last November, yet neither the complete German version nor the partial English translation has attracted […]

Putting a price tag on war with Iran

An all-out U.S. war with Iran, including an invasion by American troops, would cost the global economy close to $2 trillion in the first three months and could go as high as $3 trillion, according to a Washington think tank. A full-scale ground operation to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program is unlikely but the scenario is […]

Risk of mass blackouts may still be rising

Businesses and households expect reliable electricity to be available at the flick of a switch. But the frequency of large-scale blackouts in the United States has not fallen in the last 30 years, and big blackouts remain a common occurrence throughout emerging markets. The risk of massive failures affecting the supply to millions of customers […]

Is Humanity Really Going to Starve to Death in Twenty Years Because We Will Have Run Out of Potash and Phosphorus Fertilizers?

Don’t believe everything you read. Even if it’s published by the respected journal “Nature”. A week ago, my eyes about popped out of my head as I read the “World View” column in “Nature” featuring Jeremy Grantham: Then there is the impending shortage of two fertilizers: phosphorus (phosphate) and potassium (potash). These two elements cannot […]

Could Economic Growth Kill Us?

Now that the U.S. presidential election is over, attention has turned to the challenge of keeping the world’s largest economy growing. The underlying assumption is that growth is always the proper goal. What if that assumption were wrong? Given our current economic malaise, and the obvious needs of the poor in developing nations, growth may […]

Pakistan: Natural gas shortages

As expected, against all the tall claims of the advisor to the ministry of petroleum and natural resources, Pakistan is inching towards the worst natural gas crisis in the forthcoming winter. The irony is that the advisor is misleading the nation and creating a false impression that the solution is round the corner. Sometimes it […]

World food expert: Population presents challenges

World population is expected to rise from 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. Africa will be home to a 2 billion increase, the fastest rate of increase in the world. As world population increases, so does the demand to feed the hungry. Catherine Bertini, 2003 World Food Prize Laureate, spoke Nov. 15 at the […]

Iran’s president welcomes Hamas-Israel ceasefire

Iran’s president welcomed the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, but expressed reservations about its effectiveness, said a Pakistani television station, which interviewed him on Thursday. “President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad said the cruelty in Gaza should unite Muslims. He said he welcomes the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, but he seems to not be very optimistic about […]

John Michael Greer: In the Twilight of Empires

Last week’s post on the logic of nuclear deterrence in an age of decline got what was, all things considered, a much less irrational response than discussions of nuclear war generally field.  I’m not sure whether or not that counts as evidence for my theory that we’ve all somehow slipped into an alternate reality, the […]

A Closer Look at Bakken and U.S. Oil Production

Recent US news reports have highlighted the fact that US oil production has been rising and is now higher than it has been in years. Reports that highlight the recent US oil production increase don’t mention that oil production outside of Texas and North Dakota has actually declined in the last few years. Occasionally the […]

Bakken revolution is only half-complete

Crude production from the Bakken and Three Forks formations could rise by another 50-100 percent in the next three years, and not start to decline until 2020 or even 2025, according to official projections from the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division. Output from the Bakken, Three Forks and Sanish formations hit a new record […]

Are Electric Cars a Niche? Or Able to Beat Conventionals?

Are electric cars a Niche?  Or just coming into their own?  I’ve been asked that question twice now in the last week in various forms, so thought I’d blog my answer. Electric Drive Transportation Association has the total number of US sales at just under 400,000 this year, or 3.3% market share including hybrids.  Hybrids they […]

Oil Watch – World Total Liquids Production

World total liquid fuel production data published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that global liquid fuel production has risen steadily (in stages) from 76.3 million barrels per day (mmbpd) in January 2002 to a recent high of 91.3 mmbpd in July 2012. +15 mmbpd represents a 20% uplift in liquid fuel supply in […]

Collapsing Into Gaia: What to expect when you’re expecting collapse

“Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners.  From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.” – James Lovelock “Oh, the hills are groaning with excess / Like a table ceaselessly being set” – Joanna Newsom “A physiology of Earth is intimately concerned with, above all, how the awesome cycles […]

Black market surge presages Venezuela devaluation

Lettuces. Green ones. Benjamins. Called by a host of nicknames to evade Venezuela’s strict currency controls, U.S. dollars are in such hot demand that the black market price has soared to nearly four times the local bolivar money’s official fixed rate. Added to existing fiscal pressures for President Hugo Chavez’s socialist government, the new illegal […]

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