IEA Says North America to Be a Products Titan

So Peak Oil is dead, yeah? Well, to a point. The Financial Times editorializes that while the “bell-curve” theory of production has been broadly disproved, the oil price remains stubbornly high because Peakists were right about the easy oil having been already found and drilled. North America is on course to produce 20% of the […]

Utility Group Says ‘Utility Death Spiral’ Talk Is Overblown

The notion that large numbers of electricity consumers will unplug from the power grid doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, according to an energy efficiency advocacy group. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ran the numbers on electricity consumption projections and concluded that U.S. utilities are largely safe from disruptive defections — at least for […]

Price for Meats, Poultry, Fish & Eggs Rockets to All-Time High

 The seasonally-adjusted price index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs hit an all-time high in May, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS). In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1. As of last May, it was 234.572. By this January, it […]

Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction

Following the bulk of western reporting on the Iraq crisis, you’d think the self-styled ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria‘ (Isis) popped out of nowhere, took the west completely by surprise, and is now rampaging across the Middle East like some random weather event. The reality is far more complex, and less palatable. The meteoric […]

Fourth Turning Accelerating

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. […]

BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014

BP has released its Statistical Review of World Energy 2014. There are a lot of things in this report but I am only posting charts on liquid petroleum only. The BP report includes crude oil and NGLs. Their data does not include ethanol or any type of biofuels or process gain. The report actually has […]

Conventional Oil Production

The United States is awash in shale oil. Iran, once OPEC’s second-largest producer, is slowly ramping up production. Oil consumption in the Western world has been flat since the 2008 financial crisis. The “peak oil” theory has pretty much vanished, along with The Oil Drum, the bible of peak oil believers. Rest in peace. Or […]

Transition: time to emerge from under the radar?

I was recently sent a really interesting paper by Philip Barnes of the University of Delaware called The political economy of localization in the Transition movement.  I was keen to publish it here, but it’s in moderation to be published, so I couldn’t.  Instead, I wrote to Philip and asked if he might be able to summarise […]

Looking past the death of Peak Oil

Production has not peaked, but prices could be volatile Peak Oil is dead. The news that US output of liquid petroleum has regained its previous peak, reached in 1970, is enough to read the last rites over the idea that a region’s oil production will follow a shape like a bell curve, rising to a […]

Iraq Breaks Down, Oil Surges – The Context Underlying The Growing Crisis

The situation in Iraq is serious, and is probably going to get worse before it gets better. The potential for this recent action to morph into a regional conflict is very high. That that means that oil could go a lot higher, and if it does, we can expect the odds of a global economic […]

BP: US Beats China’s Oil Demand Growth in 2013

Oil demand in the United States grew at the fastest pace in the world in 2013, outstripping China for the first time since 1999 as the globe’s top economy reaped the benefits of a shale boom, oil company BP said on Monday. In its annual review of energy statistics unveiled in Moscow, BP also raised […]

EIA: As coal power fades, natural gas’ growth dependent on price, supply

Dive Brief: The degree to which natural gas replaces coal as a source of electricity generation in the U.S. by 2040 depends primarily on natural gas prices and that depends on still uncertain supply-demand factors, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In all scenarios, increasing natural gas supplies drive replacement of coal for power […]

The Kurds take Kirkuk, now what?

The long-standing dispute over an oil-rich Iraqi city may have reached a critical hour as Kurdish Peshmerga forces now claim to have taken control of Kirkuk. As neighbouring countries and the international community scramble for an appropriate response to the so-called Sunni rebellion rapidly gaining ground across Iraq, Kurdish troops have stirred controversy by stepping […]

“Extracted”: the movie

Babylonia-Brussels, Dianna Rienstra, Daphne Davies, the staff of the Club of Rome, and several more people. The book “Extracted” is available from Chelsea Green

As Massacre Claim Shakes Iraq, Militants Seize New City

Wielding the threat of sectarian slaughter, Sunni Islamist militants claimed on Sunday that they had massacred hundreds of captive Shiite members of Iraq’s security forces, posting grisly pictures of a mass execution in Tikrit as evidence and warning of more killing to come. The possible mass killing came as militants cemented control of the city […]

Peak Oil: Addressing the Basics For Starters?

In my last post, I returned to a topic I’d set aside in the past couple of years: transportation. The topic is just as vital as ever, and contributions from a few other prominent writers suggest that we might want to consider the issue with renewed purpose and awareness. Bill Chameides, the current Dean of […]

A billion planets, One Earth…

How will our continuously growing population affect our way of life, our planet, our environment? No matter how you look at it, we have a big problem At the rate we’re going, we are already using up the available resources of 1 ½ Earths, even though this planet is all we have at the moment. […]

Russia cuts gas supply to Ukraine

Russia on Monday cut gas supplies to Ukraine as a payment deadline passed and negotiators failed to reach a deal on gas prices and unpaid bills amid continued fighting in eastern Ukraine. The decision does not immediately affect the gas flow to Europe, but could disrupt the long-term energy supply to the region if the […]

Russia plunges into Cuban oil exploration

Russia has agreed to plunge into the search for oil in deep waters between the shores of Cuba and Florida, renewing fears of a major oil spill and the potential for environmental disaster. With President Vladimir Putin looking on, Russian companies Rosneft and Zarubezhneft signed an energy agreement with Cuba late last month to explore […]

Vanadium: The metal that may soon be powering your neighbourhood

Hawaii has a problem, one that the whole world is likely to face in the next 10 years. And the solution could be a metal that you’ve probably never heard of – vanadium. Hawaii’s problem is too much sunshine – or rather, too much solar power feeding into its electricity grid. Generating electricity in the […]

I’m Just Now Realizing How Stupid We Are

This is my 3,000th column. I’ve learned a tremendous amount in writing about investing and the economy. Here are a few of the big lessons. I’ve learned that changing your mind is one of the most difficult things we do. It is far easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake. I’ve […]

What the hell does “sustainable” even mean?

How many of these terms can you define? Sustainable, organic, natural. Food miles, carbon footprint, food desert, direct trade. And not just define, but really define — explain not just what they mean, but how they’re implemented, and why they’re important to reforming our food system? It’s harder than most people realize, says artist and […]

America’s Covert Re-Invasion of Iraq

Heavily armed, well funded, and organized as a professional, standing army, the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept southward into Iraq from Turkey and northeastern Syria, taking the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, and now threaten the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad itself. The United States was sure to prop up two […]

We will never run out of oil (which is entirely beside the point)

Harvard economist Morris Adelman, famous for saying that we will never run out of oil, died last month. What followed the announcement of his death was a predictable set of encomiums like this one from defenders of the oil industry extolling Adelman’s infinite wisdom. Some (including my father, it seems) were so caught up in […]

The Energy Cost of Food

In my earlier essay The Energy Basis of Food Security, I linked the high energy intensity of food production to the reality that food and energy prices trend together; when energy prices increase, food prices follow suit. With this as a backdrop, it’s worth exploring energy use in the US food system a little more […]

How Isis have rampaged towards the capital

+2   Who are ISIS? The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) grew out of Al Qaeda In Iraq, a militant group that emerged in the chaos engulfing the country after the 2003 invasion. They rebranded themselves after the Syrian uprising, attracting foreign fighters and controlling areas with extreme brutality, such as beheadings […]

Growing Global Population Drives Food Industry Mergers

The global population’s growing appetite for high protein foods and products are seen as the driving force behind food industry mergers, the Wall Street Journal reported. The report stated China, the country which has the biggest population in the world, is consuming more meat and dairy products, while in the United States, healthy conscious consumers […]

China’s energy consumption ‘unrivaled’

China’s demand for oil and natural gas will be unrivaled within the next two decades, analysis from Wood Mackenzie finds. Paul McConnell, a principal analyst for the energy consultant group’s global trends service, said in a report expanding economies in Asia are growing by the year. “By 2030 China’s energy consumption will be unrivaled and […]

Economics of natural gas don’t always add up for fleets

(Houston Chronicle) A compressed natural gas (CNG) Frito Lay truck is shown on display during the Natural Gas Vehicle USA Conference outside the Omni Houston Hotel, 4 Riverway, Thursday, June 12, 2014, in Houston. ( Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle ) HOUSTON — Though natural gas is abundant in the U.S., whether it can serve […]

Russia’s Smart Move to Asia

In my previous post at Ugo Bardi’s blog, I suggested that “Russia but not the U.S. has been pivoting to Asia just now”. Since then several landmark events happened in the Asian arena, such as, Vladimir Putin’s successful visit to China and the conclusion of a $400 billion gas mega-deal between Russia’s Gazprom and China’s CNPC […]

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