In New U.S. “Bioeconomy”, Industry Trumps Environment

The White House on Thursday announced the formulation of the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, aimed at shoring up the U.S. commitment to bioscience-related research. But critics warn that the new programme focuses too much on economic concerns, placing too little emphasis on either social issues or on the environment itself. “We’re disappointed to see what finally […]

State Officials In Alabama Close Gulf Shrimping After Scientists Find Severe Deformities

After scientists and fishermen have found severe deformities in a substantial percentage of Gulf seafood, the State of Alabama have moved to shut down shrimping. WERC-FM local news reports: Some area waters along the Gulf Coast will close to shrimping starting today.  The areas closed are all waters in the Mississippi Sound, Mobile Bay, areas of Bon […]

Peak Dow, Peak GDP and Peak Oil

Peak Oil and Peak Credit do not exist in a vacuum; they’re why we have Peak GDP, Peak Dow and peak Income. You don’t get Peak Oil and cheap abundance in everything else: you get Peak X, Y and Z, for example Peak Oil, Peak Dow and Peak GDP. Peaks come in causal series, and […]

Planning to flourish in a world of 7 billion

Seven billion and counting. That’s the stark figure on global population that’s concentrating minds at the Royal Society, and has led to the publication of its latest report “People and the Planet”. According to the UN that figure is set to rise to 10 billion before the end of the century, while dramatic shifts in […]

The growth of 250 years global transport in three minutes

The animated film charts the growth of humanity from the start of the Industrial Revolution to present day by mapping every land and water transportation route on earth.

Debbie Chachra: peak plastic

Dr Debbie Chachra is a materials scientist: an engineering professor at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering (Deb’s bio at Olin), and a prolific writer.  She also produces one of my favourite tumblrs, Daily Idioms.   Basically, I learn something every time Deb writes anything.  So I asked her to write to you about whatever […]

Robert Rapier Discussing Peak Oil, Speculators, Oil Shale, and Alternative Fuels

I am traveling some over the next two weeks, and did not have a chance to record my weekly video segment this week. However, last Friday I was a guest on Alan Colmes’ show on Fox News Radio, so I will share that this week instead. I had been a guest on his show last […]

Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges

Nuclear disaster or plague likely unless population shrinks and natural resources are reassigned to poor, says Prof Paul Ehrlic The world’s most renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor. Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population […]

EPA Official: ‘Crucify’ Oil & Gas Companies

Are you familiar with a certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official named Al Armendariz? Chances are you’ve never heard of him. We suspect most Americans haven’t. However, with the recent unearthing of the video below, that could change very soon. Thanks to a little digging by the staff of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), attention has been […]

Saudi Arabia Builds Up Crude Inventories

Saudi Arabia appears to have been building crude oil inventories in lower domestic demand months in a scramble to offset the risks of “limited” effective spare production capacity, Goldman Sachs said on Wednesday. In a note to clients, Goldman Sachs cited a crude oil inventory build of 35.4 million barrels in the period December-February, based […]

A World Without Oil Price Speculators

The quality of media reporting on energy has improved significantly since I started this blog in 2004.  However, one subject on which I think the state of energy reporting still leaves much to be desired concerns the role of market speculation in setting oil prices.  It’s a complex issue, and it has become highly politicized this year. […]

Peak Housing, Peak Fraud, Peak Suburbia and Peak Property Taxes

Once again pundits are claiming that housing is “finally recovering.” But they’re overlooking three peaks: Peak Housing, Peak Financial Fraud, and Peak Suburbia, all of which suggest years of stagnation and decline, not “recovery.” Here is the latest Case-Shiller index, which has traced out a nearly textbook bubble and a return to the mean that […]

Global food prices on the rise again

* Global food costs up 8 pct December through March * Production outlook strong, could check price rise * African domestic food prices especiallly high (Recasts, adds details, comment from World Bank official) Global food prices are rising again, pushed higher by costlier oil, strong demand from Asia and bad weather in parts of Europe, […]

Tom Murphy: Flex-Fuel Humans

If you’re one of those humans who actually eats food, like I am, then a non-negligible part of your energy allocation goes into food production. As an approximate rule-of-thumb, each kilocalorie ingested by Americans consumes 10 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy to plant, fertilize, harvest, transport, and prepare. The energy investment can easily exceed a […]

Iraq Set To Triple Oil Output In Six Years

Iraq, which is currently producing more than three million barrels of crude oil per day, will increase its capacity of production to more than ten million barrels a day in the next six years. “This is to assure the world market that there is sufficient crude for them,” Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain […]

Transition makes planning for life in a post-oil world seem possible, even desirable

Transition as a combination town hall, village square, encounter group, social network and barn-raising. by Bill O’Driscoll What does the future look like? Many people imagine it’ll be like today, only moreso: faster, flashier, more globalized. But in the low-profile neighborhood called Larimer, they’re busy actually planning for a different future, one that doesn’t look […]

US Oil Consumption and Oil Prices

The chart above shows weekly US oil consumption since 2000 as the blue curve (the EIA weekly product supplied series).  I have added a 13 week centered moving average (red) to cut the noise a bit.  Both of these are on the left scale in millions of barrels/day (not zero-scaled to better show changes).  Then […]

Indonesia: growing population and hunger for limited energy

Energy is consumed mostly by humans and for the purpose to fuel human activities. It is clear that, for an economy, there is a correlation between the size of a population and the amount of energy demanded. The structure and composition of population bring different influences to the amount of energy consumed. Some general trends […]

How did dinosaurs get miles under the earth?

The Bakken formation in North Dakota, Montana and Canada now is estimated to hold up to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, only it’s available primarily when the price of oil is above a bargain rate – as the oil is located miles deep and drilling costs are substantial. So a new book about oil, […]

Cubashima

Without electricity filling stations cannot pump. Cars pile up, first in long lines, as they did in Russia and Cuba, then simply abandoned on the street. Four months after Fukushima, streets still held cars without gasoline. When there is no gasoline for cars, there is also no gasoline for trucks. This would include the trucks […]

How Tripling Government Investment Made Clean Energy Cheaper

Over the last five years, the world’s largest nations collectively engaged in a massive policy experiment: what happens when governments triple the historic rate of public investment in clean energy? In the U.S., taxpayers will have spent $150 billion between 2009 and 2014, three times more than we did between 2002 and 2007, according to […]

Oil takeover has support in Argentina

With public opinion in Argentina firmly behind President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s plan to nationalize the country’s largest oil company, Congress is expected this week to approve the takeover despite some analysts’ warnings that her policies are economically reckless. Two nationwide polls released over the weekend showed 74 percent and 62 percent, respectively, of those […]

Feds make 1st arrest in BP oil spill case

A BP engineer intentionally deleted more than 300 text messages that said the company’s efforts to control the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were failing, and that the amount of oil leaking was far more than what the company reported, the Justice Department said Tuesday. In the first criminal charges related to the deadly explosion […]

An update on global net oil exports: Is it midnight on the Titanic?

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, USA is hosting a series of online webinars, as a service to members. With a minimum donation of $100 (greater amounts are always appreciated), one can join ASPO-USA and have full access to the webinars, or you can pay a one time fee of $40. […]

Orlov: Fundraising in Extremis

There are some important projects that need to be up and running starting like yesterday, because they are key to human survival. Unfortunately, they cannot be funded in the usual ways because of the warped nature of market economics and global finance, which dictates that the only goal of investing money is to make more […]

Latest Global Trade

Time for an update in my seasonally adjusted global trade series (see here for sources and methodology).  The data above go through February (which has pretty complete data – and March is too incomplete to form even a preliminary estimate).  You can see that it continues to look like global trade, recovering since 2009, hit […]

Iran oil industry safe after cyberattack

An Iranian official says the country’s oil industry is working well despite an attack from hackers and a computer virus that targeted the sector’s computer systems. Deputy minister for oil and civil defense Hamdollah Mohammadnejad says all field units and exports of crude have continued working without interruptions. His remarks were reported Tuesday by state […]

Emerging Forces in Global Oil Consumption: The Middle East and Africa

Over the past decade, Asia’s transition to the leadership position in global oil consumption is well known. Starting in 2002, OECD countries slowed their consumption growth for oil and subsequent to 2005 actually saw their consumption decline. This process freed up limited oil supplies to Asia, which now accounts for 31% of total global oil […]

The story of Rabbit Island

It is said that foxes came to the Island long, long ago. Some say that the first fox couple arrived on a raft from a place beyond the horizon. Others say, instead, that foxes were created here by the Fox-God, and others still that they had always been here, from the day when the Gods […]

Long Irish efforts pay off in an oil find

It’s been a long time coming, but oil has flowed out of an Irish well. Platts’ Ireland correspondent Kieran Moran has the story in this week’s Oilgram News column, At the Wellhead. ———————————————————————————————- It has taken over forty years and 156 exploration and appraisal wells, but last month a well drilled offshore Ireland finally produced […]

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