Drillers bid adios to Canada, hola to Mexico

CALGARY – Calgary-based drillers are ripping out heaters and installing air conditioning units on their rigs as the crews trade winter gloves for sunblock to get in on a growing Mexican oil boom. As low natural gas prices continue to idle drilling equipment in Canada, the national oil company of Mexico is implementing plans to […]

The Path to Fusion Power

The This energy use is very uneven. For a few selected countries, the figures for use per person are: the USA (near, but not quite at, the top of the scale)

Cuba

HAVANA: It The communist government imposed conservation measures even as it continues to get free oil for services from Venezuela, fueling rumors that Cuba is selling President Hugo Chavez

Should Thursday Be the New Friday?

The Environmental and Economic Pluses of the 4-Day Workweek As government agencies and corporations scramble to cut expenses, one idea gaining widespread attention involves cutting something most employees wouldn’t mind losing: work on Fridays. Regular three-day weekends, without a decrease in the actual hours worked per week, could not only save money, but also ease […]

Energy giants hunker down to slash costs

Producers embark on major re-evaluations as hopes of quick turnaround fade The world’s energy giants are increasingly cutting back in the face of slumping demand that they warn is not likely to pick up any time soon. Little more than a year after oil jumped to its high of $147 (U.S.) a barrel, the industry […]

Norman Borlaug: Farmers Can Feed the World

Better seeds and fertilizers, not romantic myths, will let them do it Earlier this month in L But just as the ground shifted beneath the Italian community of L

Top 10 checklist: How societies can avoid

In his book Accepting that the human sphere exists within the larger biosphere, you might further generalize Diamond

DOE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Moving away from fossil fuels will only take four things: time, money, technological advances and a calibrated judgment about what projects should be pursued. “The commonly invoked silver bullet is the wrong way to look it. We have limited time and limited resources,” said Steve Koonin, undersecretary for science Department of […]

The Real Perils of Human Population Growth

About forty years ago, the world population was only 3.5 billion, or about half of the present population of 6.7 billion people. Most of us seem to ignore or be unaware of the magnitude of this rapid expansion and the vast changes that it is causing throughout the world. Indeed, the daily and even the […]

Pemex Output Goal

(Bloomberg) — Petroleos Mexicanos, Latin America Last year, Pemex

A New Approach to Fusion

General Fusion, a startup in Vancouver, Canada, says it can build a prototype fusion power plant within the next decade and do it for less than a billion dollars. So far, it has raised $13.5 million from public and private investors to help kick-start its ambitious effort. Unlike the $14 billion ITER project under way […]

Vital La. oil port left vulnerable to hurricanes

CAMINADA HEADLAND, La. Port Fourchon, about 70 miles south of New Orleans, support 90 percent of the Gulf’s 3,700 offshore platforms and connects with the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port

DOE Makes $30B Available to Jumpstart Renewable Energy

The Energy Department is making up to $30 billion in loan guarantee authority available for renewable energy and electric grid modernization projects. DOE announced yesterday it was ready to accept applications for about $8.5 billion in loan guarantee authority for advanced renewable energy projects made available in the department’s 2009 spending bill and $3.25 billion […]

Gaia Wizard Sets Doomsday Time Bomb

What Erratic populations are hardly novel: 99% of earth’s emergent life forms have gone extinct. The demise of dinosaurs, awarding an obscure, half-pint mammal a leg up, dramatizes extinction

Pickens Plan in a pickle

Clean-energy investments have dried up during the recession, threatening the former oilman’s plans for a wind-powered renaissance. But he isn’t giving up yet. In July 2008, amid soaring gasoline prices, oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens began his glitzy $60 million advertising campaign to persuade Americans to break their reliance on foreign oil. His plan involves […]

Have Renewables Really Eclipsed Nuclear Power?

Wow, have renewables really become more important than nuclear power in America Which is true

Oil firms see no quick recovery as profits plunge

LONDON (Reuters) – Falling oil and natural gas prices hit profits at oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Repsol YPF SA in the second quarter, prompting the industry to cut costs and lower investments. Shell (RDSa.L) Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser said on Thursday the industry is grappling with a combination […]

World fisheries collapse can be averted: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world’s commercial fisheries, pressured by overfishing and threatened with possible collapse by mid-century, could be rebuilt with careful management, researchers reported on Thursday. In fact, a fisheries expert who in 2006 predicted total global collapse of fish and seafood populations by 2048 is more optimistic of recovery, based on a wide-ranging […]

How Many D

While the phrase R and D is familiar to most readers, the path from idea to innovation to established technology almost always involves two more D Democrats on the staff of the House Select Subcommittee on Energy Independence and Global Warming insist that Mr. Obama

White Roofs Catch on as Energy Cost Cutters

SAN FRANCISCO He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief. All that changed last month.

No peak in sight for oil production or demand

There But for those who aren

Blackout: Heinberg on dwindling coal reserves and the siren song of

There isn Right now the U.S. is on the verge of a momentous gamble, as reflected in the ACES bill: betting that long-term emission reductions can be achieved via carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). ACES postpones serious domestic reductions for over a decade on the assumption (hope?) that CCS technology will mature and drop in […]

Powder River Basin methane drilling halts

CASPER – Coalbed methane drilling has dropped off so dramatically in the Powder River Basin that officials are not even bothering to count rigs this summer. Instead, officials counted one well drilled in May. No wells were drilled in June, and so far one well has been drilled in July, according to Wyoming Oil and […]

Helium

Helium is the lifeblood of large particle accelerators. As the world At the turn of the 20th century, natural gas miners found helium coming from underground, produced by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. It appears in pockets of natural gas in small portions, with three percent helium considered a good ratio. Although helium […]

Fertilizers, Climate Change and Enhancing Agricultural Productivity Sustainably

The significant risks and opportunities that climate change presents for agriculture, food supplies and the global fertilizer industry create an imperative for the International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA) and its member companies to contribute to mitigation and adaptation in the context of achieving a more sustainable path to global food security. White paper contains a […]

Report Sees Dire Future for Warming's Impact on U.S. Transport

Transportation’s contribution to global warming has been well articulated. It’s responsible for 33 percent of United States emissions from fossil fuel combustion — more if you count the life-cycle emissions from extracting fuel and manufacturing vehicles. Now, for the first time, the government is taking an in-depth look at the flip scenario: how global warming […]

John Michael Greer: The Economics of Entropy

Over the last few weeks, my posts here on The Archdruid Report have tried to sketch out a way of understanding economics that doesn The differences between these three economies run deep, and so do the differences in the way they are treated in conventional economic thinking. Unfortunately these two sets of differences do not […]

Are We Headed for Another Oil Shock?

Global economic recovery and increased demand for oil As it did in the 1970s, energy demand likely will surge once the world economy expands again. MGI expects demand to grow more than 2% annually between 2010 and 2015, nearly a full point faster than in the period from 2006 to 2010. At the same time, […]

Alaska's biggest tundra fire sparks climate warning

The fire that raged north of Alaska’s Brooks mountain range in 2007 left a 1000-square-kilometre scorched patch of earth Pristine tundra takes up about 30 to 70 grams of carbon per metre squared during the summer months, whereas the severely burned site lost about 40 to 120 grams per metre squared. The team also found […]

How Much Natural Gas Do We Have to Replace Gasoline?

You may have seen the recent news that a report by the Potential Gas Committee [geology.mines.edu] says natural gas reserves in 2008 rose to 2,074 trillion cubic feet. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (via Rigzone) both had stories on it, and T. Boone Pickens issued a press release. In this post, […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
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• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
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• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
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• 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