IEA sees 2010 boost in energy spend

Money spent on exploration and development projects would however still be about 10% below its investment peak seen in 2008, Reuters cited Trevor Morgan as saying at an industry event. “We don’t actually see much of an increase in capacity on a net basis in the next 5 years,” said Morgan. “Hence our concern is […]

UK Royal Society to re-examine climate change

Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures. The Royal Society has appointed a panel to rewrite the 350-year-old institution’s official position on global warming. It will publish a new “guide to the science of climate change” […]

Humility in a Climate Age

Since the dawn of modernity, the balance between naturalism and mastery has been increasingly weighted toward mastery. Our attempt to decipher nature’s ways and manipulate them in the service of human betterment has been accelerating for centuries and shows few signs of abatement. Indeed, we seem continually committed to run roughshod over the nonhuman world. […]

How We Can End Our Addiction to Oil

Richard Heinberg of Post Carbon Institute said it best: “This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a […]

UK Energy minister to Hold Peak Oil Summit

“Government has gone from the BP position – ’40 years of supply left, the price mechanism works, no need to worry’ – to ‘crikey’,” he said. “BP and others are telling us that, but you lot, Virgin, Scottish and Southern, and others are telling us something completely different. We do not know who to believe. […]

EU Launches TWENTIES Project: Largest Industrial Energy Project Ever

The project is to advance the development and implementation of new technologies that will make it possible to increase the use of wind power in Europe significantly. This will contribute to the EU objective for 2020: a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions; a 20% improvement in energy efficiency, and a 20% share of consumption from […]

Coal Hard Facts

More than six thousand workers are killed every year in China’s coal mines. The World Health Organization estimates that in East Asia, a region made up predominantly of China and South Korea, 355,000 people a year die from the effects of urban outdoor air pollution. All over China, limestone buildings are dissolving in the acidic […]

Matt Simmons Tells Bloomberg Only Way To Contain Oil Leak Is With Small Nuclear Bomb

n his May 28th interview with Bloomberg’s Mark Crumpton and Lori Rothman, Matt Simmons of energy investment bank Simmons & Company, provides some stunning revelations on what is really occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, and proposes that the only effective way to contain the leak is to relieve BP, bring in the military, and […]

The Sun’s Recent Behavior Is Odd, Scientists Baffled

Sunspots, markers of magnetic activity on the sun’s surface, provide a visual proxy to mark the cycle’s evolution, appearing in droves at maximum and all but disappearing at minimum. But the behavior of our host star is not as predictable as all that—the most recent solar minimum was surprisingly deep and long, finally bottoming out […]

A Growing Network Preparing for the World’s End

“A ‘shit hit the fan’ scenario happens to just about everyone sometime in their life,” he says. “Preparing and having a ‘prepper’ mindset will lessen the impact of whatever disaster it may be that you might experience in your life.” Fair enough. But is it really necessary to spend hundreds of dollars on packaged emergency […]

BP Suspends “Top Kill” For Second Time After Trying Two Junk Shots

The technician working on the project said Saturday pumping had again been halted and a review of the data so farwas under way. “Right now, I would not be optimistic,” the technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the effort. But he added, that if another […]

Things You Didn’t Know Were Made of Oil

A partial list of products made from Petroleum (144 of 6000 items) One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline. The rest (over half) is used to make things like: Solvents Diesel fuel Motor Oil Bearing Grease Ink Floor Wax Ballpoint Pens Football Cleats Upholstery Sweaters Boats Insecticides Bicycle Tires Sports Car Bodies […]

How much oil does the world need?

So what does an ordinary schmuck do facing odds like this? Buy a hybrid? Fine, if you can afford it. Take a bus to work? Not a bad idea, but not many people are doing it in Cranbrook. Ride a bicycle or walk to work? Great idea from a health and fitness point of view […]

Peak Oil and Apocalypse Then ‎

JG: Predatory militarism is the result of desperation and temptation. In the Japanese case, the element of desperation prevailed. As a consequence of their own ill-conceived policies, they saw no other choice in 1941 than to loot oil from the East Indies, even at the cost of starting a suicidal war with the United States. […]

Is Renewable Energy Adequate for Our Needs?

Ignoring intermittency and assuming that land acquisition for collectors and transmission lines is possible, that adequate exotic materials are available for manufacturing collectors, and cost is no object, with today’s technology how large an aggregate system would be required to convert from fossil/nuclear to 12 terrawatts of renewables for 6 billion people now? How large […]

BP Starts Junk Shot

In a move called a junk shot, the British oil giant added chunks of rubber and other material into drilling mud being pumped into the well to help create pressures great enough to overcome the flow of oil so the well can be capped with cement, said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer. BP’s Macondo […]

The Beginning of the End of Our Oil Addiction



The electric vehicle is here – and its mass deployment in the US has just begun. On Thursday, both the House and the Senate introduced bi-partisan legislation to scale up the use of electric vehicles in the US. The legislation would provide incentives for the widespread adoption of electric vehicles in select “communities” around the […]

US National Security Strategy Includes Food and Energy Priorities

The strategy also outlined the importance of improving the U.S. economy for national security “through better education, national debt reduction, a stronger U.S. clean energy industry, greater scientific research and a revamped health care system,” the news service reports (Gearan/Loven, 5/27). In an introduction to the strategy (.pdf), President Barack Obama writes that the U.S. Armed […]

‘Top kill’ to stop Gulf oil spill in ‘very critical’ stage

With the “top kill” timeline stretching on amid what one US official calls a “very critical” period, President Obama said Friday he will send reinforcements to the Gulf Coast within 24 hours to help deal with the massive BP oil spill. BP is already drilling two relief wells, the first of which would not be […]

Peak Phosphorous

Forget peak oil. The next big crisis is peak phosphorous–a shortage of mined phosphorous for fertilizer. The problem is so bad that supply won’t be able to meet agricultural demand within the next 30 to 40 years. But a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-backed startup called Ostara thinks it might have the solution: a system that […]

Matt Simmons “another leak much bigger 5 to 6 miles away”

Matt Simmons on Dylan Ratigan “There’s another leak much bigger 5 to 6 miles away” another oil leak much bigger bp disperants gulf of mexico supertanker rig underwater camera live feed dylan ratigan environmental destruction louisiana parish boats fishing shrimp drilling regulators Minerals Management Service high meth watched porn corruption fraud corporate stranglehold fascism profits […]

New Oil Discoveries Offshore Brazil

In well OGX-10, the Hawaii prospect, an oil column of approximately 110 meters and net pay of approximately 40 meters was identified in the carbonate reservoirs of the Aptian section. The well is in its final stage of log analysis. Therefore the rig, Sea Explorer, provided by Pride International, will be moved to well OGX-7A, […]

Top Kill Has Not Worked Yet. Junk Shot Perhaps Tonight…

Some on BP’s team saw improvement, while others were more skeptical. While mud is pumped into the blowout preventer, some can go down into the well, while some go up and then out of a broken pipe atop the blowout preventer, where oil and gas are leaking. “We have not stopped the flow, so the […]

China to crack down on vegetable hoarding

China’s top economic planner urged local governments to step up efforts to strengthen market monitoring and clamp down on speculators who force up the prices of vegetables including green beans and garlic. Profiteers’ illicit earnings will be confiscated and they may face fines of up to one million yuan (US$146,000), the commission said in a […]

Promising Advance in Fuel-Cell Technology

Chemists at Brown University and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, both in the United States, are reporting a promising advance in fuel-cell technology. Fuel cells require a catalyst that can operate efficiently and last a long time. The precious metal platinum has been the catalyst of choice for most researchers, but it has several drawbacks: […]

Accounting for increasing energy use by the US food system

What we eat matters. Non-essential foods — alcoholic beverages, baked goods, snack foods, and pet foods — accounted for the biggest component of the increase observed between 1997 and 2002. The amount of energy used to get fresh fruits and vegetables to our plates also increased as we opted for pre-cut portions and convenience packaging. […]

Peak Oil Panel Discussion – ASPO Ireland

ASPO Ireland Director, Richard O’Rourke, is invited to respond to the Minister’s criticism that ASPO Ireland has not been good at lobbying government.

Barreling Toward Peak Oil

People throw around the term “peak oil,” but that doesn’t mean the system will run out of oil. It means the amount of oil you’re gaining by finding new oil fields—and bringing them onstream—is equal to the losses you’re taking as other fields run down. The U.S. was the first country to peak in 1970, […]

World Food security at risk

A top U.S. official said on Thursday global food prices could soar again if countries don’t cooperate to increase food production especially in developing countries. Ertharin Cousin, U.S. ambassador to U.N. food agencies in Rome, said factors such as continued use of land for biofuels, and food scarcity, which led to a spike in global […]

10 Things You Need (But Don’t Want) To Know About the BP Oil Spill

1. Oil rig owner has made $270 million off the oil leak Transocean Ltd., the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP, has been flying under the radar in the mainstream blame game. The world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, the company is conveniently headquartered in corporate-friendly Switzerland, and it’s no stranger to oil […]

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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’
• 100 million-degree ‘artificial sun’ sets new records in hunt for energy’s ‘Holy Grail’

• 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