How (Not) to Run a Modern Society on Solar and Wind Power Alone

While the potential of wind and solar energy is more than sufficient to supply the electricity demand of industrial societies, these resources are only available intermittently. To ensure that supply always meets demand, a renewable power grid needs an oversized power generation and transmission capacity of up to ten times the peak demand. It also […]

Scientists warning of sand scarcity

f you’re looking for a way to express something that’s staggeringly hard to count, you won’t find a more reliable metaphor than grains of sand. There is indeed quite a bit of it – about 7.5 quintillion grains on Earth’s beaches and deserts, according to one estimate. But if you think that this would be sufficient to […]

Why Aramco Delayed Its IPO

The long-awaited Saudi Aramco IPO, scheduled for mid-2018, could be delayed to 2019. International news reports have stated that the Saudi government is currently putting together contingency plans for a possible delay to the biggest IPO ever. The listing of 5 percent of Saudi Arabia’s crown jewel, the world’s largest oil company Saudi Aramco, could […]

Food or Feed? A New Look at the Global Grain Drain

The use of grains such as corn and wheat to feed cattle, chicken, sheep, and other animals destined for human meat consumption has been maligned for decades as wasteful, inefficient, and even unethical. Those grains, after all, could be used to feed hundreds of millions of hungry people, and livestock need to consume large amounts […]

Coal Shortage Sends India Scrambling For NatGas

Big disappointment in the global natural gas industry this week, with majors Total and Eni coming up largely dry in a much-anticipated well offshore Cyprus. But elsewhere things are turning extremely bullish for natgas. With one of the world’s fastest-emerging energy consumers scrambling to get all the supply it can. India.  Local media reported this […]

Reducing the World’s Population by Having Fewer Children, What’s the Problem?

  Jorgen Randers speaks at the 1st Summer Academy of the Club of Rome, in Florence, Sep 2017   The Summer Academy of the Club of Rome saw an interesting debate when a young participant (Jacques Chartier-Kastler) asked to take the floor and speak about what he and his group were seeing as a problem: […]

The ‘Ghost Geography’ Of Midwest Farmland And A Year In The Life Of A Modern American Family …

A grain cart collects corn harvested from one of the Hammond family’s fields. Courtesy Mary Anne Andrei Every year on the farm has its challenges. There are weeds, insects and random hailstorms. Unpredictable global markets can make or break a profitable crop. Recent years, though, have been especially troubling for the Hammond farm in York […]

Venezuela Just Officially Stopped Accepting Dollars for Oil Payments

Did the doomsday clock on the petrodollar (and implicitly US hegemony) just tick one more minute closer to midnight? Source: The Burning Platform Apparently confirming what President Maduro had warned following the recent US sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reports thatVenezuela has officially stopped accepting US Dollars as payment for its crude oil exports. Sponsored By Stansberry Research Millionaire […]

IEA Sees Strongest Global Oil-Demand Growth in Two Years

Global oil demand will climb this year by the most since 2015, the International Energy Agency said, amid stronger-than-expected consumption in Europe and the U.S. The IEA, which advises most major economies on energy policy, increased its estimate for demand growth in 2017 by 100,000 barrels a day to 1.6 million a day, or 1.7 percent. […]

Meth, Coke And Oil In The Texas Shale Patch

When Joe Forsythe returned to the West Texas oilfields last year after a stint in a drug rehab facility, he figured he had beaten his addiction to methamphetamine. The 32-year-old rig worker and equipment handler lasted about a year before relapsing. “It’s easy to get back into that mentality,” said Forsythe, of Midland, Texas, who […]

Kunstler with Neil Howe: How Is “The Fourth Turning” Turning Out?

Neil Howe is a renowned author and speaker on economic, demographic, and social change in America. He is the nation’s leading authority on social generations—who they are, what motivates them, and how they will shape America’s future. Howe is the originator of the term “Millennial Generation” and has written over a dozen books on generations […]

The New Economy of Excrement

Entrepreneurs are finding profits turning human waste into fertilizer, fuel and even food Sewage treatment plant. Credit: Peter Essick Getty Images On the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda, septic trucks full of human excrement bump and slosh their way up orange dirt roads to their final destination: the Nduba landfill. Until recently, the trucks would spill their […]

Saudi Arabia’s Economic Overhaul Claims a Victim

The crown prince is shaking up business to wean the kingdom off oil. The first casualty is Saudi Oger, one of the country’s biggest builders. By Vivian Nereim , Sarah Algethami , and Matthew Martin September 13, 2017, 11:00 PM EDT Oger built the Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Photographer: T.H. […]

Jeremy Leggett: The Test

More than a billion of the world’s poorest people, having no electricity, are forced to waste $27 billion a year on kerosene and other unsustainable forms of lighting. If every one of their households could buy a single solar light, they would save at least $78 billion over three years, and spend it on basic […]

7 Big Changes to the Energy Industry Coming by 2040

For the most part, the way we generate and use energy hasn’t changed a lot in the past 50 years. But that’s not likely to be the case in the decades to come. As renewable energy sources become cheaper and more reliable, and we develop technology that enables us to better store and distribute that […]

Shell’s defence of big oil is too hopeful

Royal Dutch Shell, looking deeply into its crystal ball, sees a future that’s still heavily dependent on oil. The Anglo-Dutch giant expects crude will continue to play a major role in global energy supply for decades, even in its less oil-friendly scenario. That optimism goes someway to justifying the billions of dollars it continues to […]

ISIS still stealing, spilling and smuggling oil throughout Iraq

Despite being recently defeated from their major strongholds of Mosul and Tel Afar in Iraq, more than two years after Iraqi forces specifically sought to retake oil-rich areas from the Islamic State, its militants are continuing to steal, spill and smuggle crude oil from Iraqi oil fields as a means to wreak havoc and fund […]

It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature

About 40 years ago (are we dating ourselves here?) there was a margarine commercial on TV with the tag line, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” As it turns out, Mother Nature was not amused at being tricked into thinking some chemically manufactured concoction was “her delicious, sweet creamy butter.” And that’s when she […]

Egypt muscling in on global gas production

Baker Hughes, a GE company, announced September 9, 2017 a major subsea contract from Petrobel for phase two of the “supergiant” Zohr Gas Field situated in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Egyptian coast. BHGE will provide project management, engineering procurement, fabrication, construction, testing and transportation of a subsea production system, and will support the installation, […]

Gail Tverberg: Why Oil Prices Can’t Bounce Very High; Expect Deflation Instead

Economists have given us a model of how prices and quantities of goods are supposed to interact. Figure 1. From Wikipedia: The price P of a product is determined by a balance between production at each price (supply S) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand D). The diagram shows […]

Kunstler: In the Dark

The stock market is zooming this morning on the news that only 5.7 million people in Florida will have to do without air conditioning, hot showers, and Keurig mochachinos at dawn’s early light Monday, Sept 11, 2017. I’m mindful that the news cycle right after a hurricane goes kind of blank for a day or […]

Dawn of a global commodity: LNG

The LNG sector has not been without its drama in 2017, with Hurricane Harvey, the Qatari diplomatic crisis and Australia’s decision to regulate LNG exports keeping the market on its toes despite significant export capacity expansions. But while there has been some fretting over possible LNG supply disruption, it remains a buyer’s market, thanks to […]

China to Phase Out Internal Combustion Engine Cars

  In the first day of trading after China said it’s working on a deadline to end sales of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, shares are holding ground in the oil companies that stand to lose out. The listed units of China’s big three oil companies — PetroChina Co., Cnooc Ltd and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. — […]

The Plastic Fantasy That’s Propping Up the Oil Market

Kenya’s mountains of plastic bags might not seem central to oil’s grand narrative, but they are. Last week, the East African country banned almost everything about them: making them, importing them, selling them, using them, with penalties of up to four years in jail or fines up to $38,000. More marine plastic than fish by […]

Saudi government allegedly funded a ‘dry run’ for 9/11

Fresh evidence submitted in a major 9/11 lawsuit moving forward against the Saudi Arabian government reveals its embassy in Washington may have funded a “dry run” for the hijackings carried out by two Saudi employees, further reinforcing the claim employees and agents of the kingdom directed and aided the 9/11 hijackers and plotters. Two years […]

There Are Worse Things Than the Weather

And we’d better get ready for them Gasoline prices are falling, but you can’t buy the stuff. In the wake of one hurricane and in the face of another, the price of gasoline — as measured by gasoline futures — declined last week, even as the U.S. gasoline inventory was drawn down. You’d think that […]

“Motherland” explores life and birth and an exploding population

There’s a general lack of respect for and understanding of the Philippines, that Asian archipelago nation of more than 7,000 islands with a dark Spanish-American colonial history. All the news we get these days is that the country is being ravaged by conflict with Muslim militants and a drug war run by recently elected president […]

Earth Is Starting to Run Out of Sand

When most of us think of limited resources, typically fossil fuels, trees or fresh water reserves come to mind. But, can we now add sand to the list? Well, according to scientists, our sand supplies are not only being depleted, but it’s happening at an alarming rate. Certainly, we’re all aware of the growing population […]

Global Ocean Circulation Appears To Be Collapsing Due To A Warming Planet

Scientists have long known about the anomalous “warming hole” in the North Atlantic Ocean, an area immune to warming of Earth’s oceans. This cool zone in the North Atlantic Ocean appears to be associated with a slowdown in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), one of the key drivers in global ocean circulation. A recent […]

France to ban oil, gas output on home soil

France’s government has unveiled a law to ban all production and exploration of oil and natural gas by 2040 on the country’s mainland and overseas territories. The move is largely symbolic, however, as France’s oil and gas production represents just 1 percent of national consumption — the rest is imported. Current drilling permits will not […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Is It Time To Abandon the Idea of Phasing Out Oil and Gas?
• More than 20% of global refining capacity at risk of closure
• Charles Hugh Smith Blog: Fire, Then Ice Our Deflationary Future
• Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser says energy transition strategy ‘visibly failing’
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• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy
• US seeks to buy up to 3 million bbls of oil for Strategic Petroleum Reserve
• Desertification: the world is losing healthy land at an astonishing rate
• US oil production will keep booming in 2024, setting up a possible showdown with Saudi Arabia
• Saudi Arabia piles pressure on UAE to shift COP28 focus away from oil and gas
• US Warship, Commercial Ships Under Attack In Red Sea