China Will Not Hesitate To Protect Iran Even With A Third World War

Fast forward to 2:08: “It is puzzling to some that Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, a professor from the Chinese National Defense University, said China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third World War… Professor Xia Ming: “Zhang Zhaozhong said that not hesitating to fight a third world war would be entirely for […]

How to Make Cold Fusion Work: Use Unobtainium

In my last post I said I’d steer clear of the whole cold fusion thing until something interesting happens. Well, in the last week something interesting has happened … Once again, let me do a quick recap: An Italian inventor, Andrea Rossi, claims to have created a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, or LENR, device (otherwise […]

Nigeria sets ambitious oil targets, sceptics abound

Nigeria plans to produce 3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil by 2015 and build three new refineries adding 445,000 bpd of capacity, the oil minister said on Wednesday, ambitious plans which have been promised before. Analysts and oil executives doubt the plans are achievable. Africa’s largest energy industry is struggling because a […]

Renewable Energy Sector Presents Rising Risks, Demand for Insurance

The renewable energy sector needs to improve risk management and access alternative sources of capital as operational risks rise and governments cut funding due to the uncertain economic environment. Based on a survey of 284 senior-level renewable energy executives, a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by Swiss Re canvasses the […]

Saudi Arabia Finally Gives Up

Saudi Arabia has long said that it has loads of untapped reserves and would, within a few years, be on track to increase oil production from 10 million barrels per day to as much as 15 million barrels of oil per day. But Saudi production has stayed stubbornly at 10 million barrels. Last week, the […]

The era of decadence: it’s all downhill from here

LET’S not exaggerate. This is not the end of days. It is merely the end of civilisation as we know it. That is the sobering argument made in Decadence: Decline of the Western World. Five years in the making, the Australian documentary proposes that the West peaked in 1969 and is now dying. ”The West […]

25% Of World’s Land Highly Degraded

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has issued a report about the state of the world’s agricultural land. In the report – the State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW) – they reported that in order to keep up with the world’s growing population, food production systems, […]

US FAO: Food Production Must Cut Fossil-Fuel Dependence

The global food system needs to cut its dependence on fossil fuels to feed a growing world population, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization said. Reliance on fossil fuels to grow, process and store food could limit the ability to meet increasing demand as the world population expands, the Rome-based UN agency said in […]

Canadian firm bids to commercialize fusion reactor

In the race against world governments and the wealthiest companies to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor, a small, innovative Canadian firm is hoping to bottle and sell the sun’s energy. In a laboratory in this Pacific Coast city, General Fusion physicists and engineers in bright red smocks are busy assembling an experimental reactor. They hope […]

MPG of a human

On Do the Math, three previous posts have focused on transportation efficiency of gasoline cars, electric cars, and on the practicalities of solar-powered cars. What about personal-powered transport—namely, walking and biking? After stuffing myself over Thanksgiving, I am curious to know how potent human fuel can be. How many miles per gallon do we get […]

Do Your Homework

I am amazed that those of us in the peak oil community have been able to come to any consensus or perception regarding the dilemma before us, considering the amount of inaccurate and conflicting information that has been spread in front of us. Were this 20 years ago without the power of the internet, I’m […]

Pimco’s 4 “Iran Invasion” Oil Price Scenarios: From $140 To “Doomsday”

Pimco’s Greg Sharenow has released a white paper on what the Newport Beach company believes are the 4 possible outcomes should Iranian nuclear facilities be struck as increasingly more believe will happen given enough time. The conclusion is sensible enough “Whenever the global economy is in a fragile state, as it is today, geopolitical concerns […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: The IEA’s Road Show

Every November following the publication of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, the leadership of the Agency travels to major capitols in an effort to explain to the world’s leaders the conclusions of the new publication. Parts of this year’s briefings contain not-so-subtle hints as to what sort of energy policies the world’s leaders might like […]

Radioactive fallout scatters in Japan

Japan’s Science Ministry says radioactive substances from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have spread across the country following Japan’s devastating temblor in March. The ministry said that the cesium from the stricken nuclear plant has now reached all prefectures including Uruma in Okinawa Prefecture, about 1,700 kilometers from the plant, Japan’s daily newspaper The Japan […]

What Peak Oilers Won’t Tell You About Peak Oil

M. King Hubbert is the father of Peak Oil theory. In a 1956, he paper correctly called the timing of the peak in U.S. crude oil production in the early 1970s. Neo-Malthusians and Progressives make sure you know about Hubbert’s pessimistic outlook for conventional crude oil. They made Hubbert a household name, the only oil […]

Spot The Peak Oil Denier Test Criteria (Pt 3)

As I mentioned in my last two posts, there are some common threads running through the mostly nonsensical camps arguing against the reality that oil is a finite resource which is now on the downside of its maximum production rates. We fact-based lunatics call that Peak Oil. I outlined (only partially tongue-in-cheek) some of the […]

Israel Preparing Iran Attack?

Aaron Kleinreports today multiple eyewitness accounts of the Israeli military moving large missiles into position outside of Jerusalem and in the West Bank. According to Klein, the missile descriptions are consistent with the Jewish state’s mid-to-long range Jericho ballistic missiles and their movement would be considered unusual. The movement was confirmed by a member of […]

Kunstler: Your New American Dream

It’s really something to live in a country that doesn’t know what it is doing in a world that doesn’t know where it is going in a time when anything can happen. I hope you can get comfortable with uncertainty.     If there’s one vibe emanating from this shadowy zeitgeist it’s a sense of […]

Petrodollars: Trying to reverse the slide in Indonesian oil output

Indonesia used to be a major exporter of oil. It hasn’t been in that position for more than five years, and its decline in production has resisted efforts to be reversed. But have those efforts been adequate? In this week’s Oilgram News column “Petrodollars,” Platts’ Meghan Gordon–normally based in Washington, but who recently spent a […]

“Demand-side” economics and the liberal denial of reality

When, after 9-11, George Bush told us to “go shopping” he in fact demonstrated a correct understanding of mainstream economics, liberal and conservative alike. As all economists know, a decline in consumer spending, confidence, and optimism, can plunge an economy into recession. This entirely uncontroversial view is one step away from its categorical version which […]

Egypt Halts Gas Flow to Israel, Jordan After Pipeline Blast

Natural-gas flows from Egypt to Israel halted after an explosion on the Sinai pipeline network that delivers the fuel, Egyptian and Israeli officials said. Exports to Jordan and some domestic supplies were also suspended because of the blast, Egypt’s Oil Ministry said today in an e-mailed statement. “An alleged terror attack” at about 1 a.m. […]

Getting Ready For ‘Peak Oil’

While researching his 2004 book, “The End of Oil” author Paul Roberts was allowed to see the Shayba oil field in Saudi Arabia’s “empty quarter.” Full of pride, Robert’s Saudi engineer hosts boasted about the remarkable infrastructure built over the Shayba, rattling off a list of impressive production statistics. Saudi oilmen are usually very tight-lipped […]

New ways needed to grow food

– In another 40 years, many parts of the world will have run out of water for farming, say a new authoritative analysis of the state of the world’s land and water resources. “It is now estimated that more than 40 percent of the world’s rural population lives in river basins that are physically water […]

ITER Fusion Project remains on track

During its ninth meeting in Cadarache, France (November 17-18), the ITER Council confirmed that the experimental fusion project is within the schedule and cost decided in July 2010. This would see first plasma in November 2019, with the start of Deuterium-Tritium operation planned for March 2027. The ITER Council is the governing body of the […]

James Howard Kuntsler Talks About Peak Oil, Collapse, and The Long Emergency

Repost from Todays Author’s: “Author James Howard Kunstler talks about his book “The Long Emergency” with host Gary McLouth. In the best-seller The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler explores how the terminal decline of oil production had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. The book explores the global oil predicament, climate change, […]

Is Oil Fueling the Rise in Political Partisanship?

In 2009 I published a chart in an article at Oil-Price.net that showed volatility in the price of oil had risen and fallen in a series of seven spikes during the prior decade. The turbulent year of 2008, when oil jumped to over $140 a barrel, was part of this series. But what was unexpected […]

Peak Oil – The Dangers That Face Us

What will happen if there is not enough oil for the world?

Tech Talk – A Second Look at Natural Gas in the Bakken

The comments on the recent post on natural gas flaring at The Oil Drum drew a few comments that I would like to discuss before moving on to start reviewing the situation in Russia. Most particularly I want to discuss the change in the regulations that are now imposed in the Bakken, and then go […]

The War on Terrorism or a Global Crusade against Islam

When people and nations live in darkness, they lose sense of direction. In an information age, knowledge–driven global culture of reason, ignorance is no longer a requisite to learn from the living history. The previous Empires knew their geography and limits, but the newly articulated American Empire in its infancy, is challenging the limits of […]

Lust for fossil fuels brings the world to Canada’s oil sands

The helicopter swooping over once-pristine spruce forests provides a close-up view of why the province of Alberta in Canada is among the planet’s most coveted – and contested – petroleum hot spots. North of Fort McMurray, a boomtown serving tens of thousands of migrant workers, Syncrude Canada’s oil sands operation stretches 192km². Rivals Exxon Mobil […]

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