"As production falls, the sales to the US become more important," said Pietro Donatello, an oil analyst from Latin Petroleum in the capital, Caracas. "Only the US is paying the full amount for Venezuelan oil and in cash, the rest are in some kind of barter agreements."

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Hain, the former work and pensions secretary, urged the government to draw up reserve powers that could be used in the event of a major utility collapsing and taking vital services with it. His words follow jitters in the City about the damage a freeze in bank lending could do to some companies that have borrowed heavily to invest in infrastructure.

“Right now, if you are a pure exploration play in need of cash, then you have no hope. You are in dire straits,” Richard Griffith, director of equity research at Evolution Securities, said.

The stock market’s tumble is cracking the piggy bank designed to safely mothball Vermont’s Yankee nuclear power plant when the plant is evenutally shut down, notes the Boston Globe. Since the spring, the so-called “decommissioning fund” for the Entergy plant, which will pay to dismantle and safely entomb nuclear reactors when they are shut down, has lost about $40 million, or 10% of its value.

Parts of the factory came "within 2 to 3 hours" of being overwhelmed by the floods - which could have led to the release of potentially radioactive contaminated water.

"Expansion becomes impossible without abundant cheap energy. So I think that the debt of the world is going bad. That speaks of a financial crisis, unseen, probably equalling the Great Depression of 1930; it's probable we face the Second Great Depression. It would be a chain reaction, one bank would fail, and another one would fail, industries will close…" For people who are not aware of the Peak Oil theory, and sadly they are still the vast majority today, this theory advanced by a wide range of energy experts argues the world is going to face, in the near future, a permanent and irreversible decline in global oil production. While it would be too long to present in details the theory, the following quote from Dr. Schlesinger, the former US Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Defence and CIA Director tell us how seriously the theory is taken at the highest levels of decision-making:

On Sunday, the Islamic Republic's Oil Minister Gholamhossin Nozari was quoted as saying by a local newspaper that unless OPEC acted decisively to arrest the current slide in oil prices, investment conditions in the oil industry would be hit severely.

Richard Heinberg identifies the essential axioms of sustainability and ties them to current economic trends such as the high and volatile prices of oil and other commodities. Species survival will require more than "Sustainability Lite," a vague commitment to more environmentally benign practices, but instead an all-encompassing effort to live within the ultimate resource limits of the planet.

Your guess is as good as mine. We've entered the realm of phase change, where everything is slipping and nothing has settled. The final result, when the dust settles - and that may not be for weeks to come - will certainly be a poorer western world. Will it be so poor that it can no longer afford to import anything? Including oil from the land of the date palm? If so, we are really in for a rough ride, poised as we are at the edge of the heating season here in the temperate regions. Notice, by the way, that the $700 billion just approved by congress to bail out Wall Street is exactly the same sum of money that we send to the oil exporting nations this year.

They talk about the inherent costs of the industrial system that render any kind of reform or energy alternatives to be simply more of the same, since these false solutions don't take into account the cost of the infrastructure or the embodied energy required to make 'green' consumer items, from smart cars to biofuel and low-energy light bulbs. From this critique of individualist and lifestyle-based solutions, they offer the option of collective, co-ordinated, resistance to the actual power structures.

The UAE is the fourth largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) but it is in need of clean energy imports to fuel its rapid industrial growth.

The divisions could “tear the organisation apart,” a London oil analyst said.