Train Derails In Lynchburg, Massive Fire Erupts, “Flames Stories High”

  In what can only be explained as a massive oil pipeline derailment, because trains are obviously so much safer when transporting flammable commodities, moments ago another train derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia with numerous railcars falling in the river, and a massive fire erupting with flames that are “storeys high” according to ABC13. And moments […]

Peak Oil Cartoons

Time to take ownership of the Anthropocene

Maybe you, too, know that feeling of despair that comes when learning of some catastrophic impact of climate change — a disappearing coral reef, an extinguished species, a rising coastline’s impact on struggling farmers. A recent headline in the Guardian about the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes it hard to feel anything […]

Natural gas – Thoughts of a Lapsed Physicist

For those of us who follow energy issues closely, a long-standing, persistent question has been: Are methane hydrates for real? Are they a realistically large potential energy resource? The answer seems to be yes. Thirty years ago the information available to answer these questions was not available. Today the literature on methane hydrates (also known […]

What would Randy Udall say?

There has been considerable talk in the US of late about not only future energy exports but even about using an “energy weapon” against Russia.  While that might be nice, it’s wishful thinking. An energy commentator who thought in depth about the US’s energy policy back-story and the myth of oil independence was Randy Udall, who […]

Russia Ships First Arctic Oil, Fortifies Oil Defenses

Riding on his pride in the first export of Russian Arctic oil earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that allows oil and gas corporations to establish private armed security forces to defend their infrastructure, upping the ante for protestors. On the same day, April 22, Earth Day, Putin also met with […]

Just keeping up

HERE is a striking fact from James Hamilton: U.S. production of oil from tight formations is up 3.5 mb/d since 2005, and yet total global field production of crude from all sources is only up 2.3 mb/d. In other words, more than all of the increase worldwide over the last 8 years is attributable to […]

Tech Talk – of oil, water and the age of Stone

There seems to be an assumed correlation between those who have some concerns over the accuracy of the theories of climate change (shall we call them the doubters for today’s discussion) and those who believe that there is a plentiful amount of fossil fuel available that will see us properly provided for well into the […]

Bakken Oil Fields Mark Billionth Barrel Of Oil

Oil drillers targeting the rich Bakken shale formation in western North Dakota and eastern Montana have produced 1 billion barrels of crude, data from the two states show. Drillers first targeted the Bakken in Montana in 2000 and moved into North Dakota about five years later using advanced horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques to […]

Rosneft, Exxon to explore Russian arctic

Russian oil company Rosneft said it was moving ahead with a joint effort with Exxon Mobil to explore for hydrocarbons in the arctic waters of Russia. The board of directors said Monday they’d work to develop the Ust-Lensky reserve area in the northern Laptev Sea and the Severo-Vrangelevsky-1 in the Chukchi Sea in eastern Russia. […]

National Response Center shuts down website, transparency

Media outlets and other curious parties have been in the dark about pipeline leaks and other environmental disturbances since mid-February, and the lights could be kept off for another month. The National Response Center’s website has been under maintenance since February 21st and could remain that way until the end of May. In a prepared […]

Confronting China’s water insecurity

Among the numerous challenges China faces in its quest to become a great power, the biggest, perhaps, is mounting water insecurity. China has 20 per cent of the world’s population but only 7 per cent of the world’s fresh water. To make matters worse, the country’s scarce water resources are unevenly distributed between the south […]

ITER- in five minutes

a 5 – minutes video on fusion produced for the MIIFED conference in Monaco.

The Energy Independence Illusion

Adapted and expanded from a presentation on “Energy Independence and Foreign Policy” to the World Affairs Council of Oregon, 3/28/14. BACKGROUND The roots of energy independence lie in the energy crises of the 1970s. US oil production peaked in 1970, and we became increasingly dependent on oil imported from the Middle East. In response to […]

Resources will be needed to support nation

Recently, I received duplicate mailings from Zero Population Growth, an organization that is anxious about running out of resources to support a rapidly multiplying world population. In several countries, the majority of people barely have enough for one good meal a day, yet the birth rate continues to rise. In the past, many children never […]

China secures Abu Dhabi oil field

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has secured the rights to produce and export oil from Abu Dhabi, helping China secure more fuel for its rapid economic growth. State-run CNPC has expanded over the past decade to over 30 countries around the globe to help secure supplies of the oil and gas that China needs to […]

Venezuela’s Oil Heads East

The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez used to berate the old management of state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) for sending oil to Europe. Chávez, who died in March 2013, said PDVSA’s sales to Germany, the U.K., and Sweden made no commercial sense because of the distance involved and the proximity of Middle East […]

Russia hit by sanctions: How Big Oil is reacting

Major oil companies with interests in Russia scrambled Monday to respond to new U.S. sanctions against Russia, as the United States on Monday imposed measures against seven Russian government officials and 17 companies linked to President Vladimir Putin in its latest action to punish Moscow for its intervention in Ukraine. Standard and Poor’s ratings agency […]

The Fracking Prostitutes of American Colleges

Lackawanna College, a two-year college in Scranton, Pa., has become a prostitute. The administration doesn’t think of themselves or their college as a prostitute. They believe they are doing a public service. Of course, streetwalkers and call-girls also believe they are doing a public service. Lackawanna College’s price is $2.5 million. That’s how much Cabot […]

Quietly, America Takes 1 More Step to Becoming an Energy Export Superpower

America is fast becoming the world’s energy superpower. Thanks to shale production, it leads the world in natural gas production. By next year, the U.S. should pass both Russia and Saudi Arabia in oil production. On top of that, America is also a top producer of natural gas liquids like propane and ethane. Producing the […]

REALLY saving energy: Paul Wheaton at TEDxWhitefish

Paul Wheaton, the bad boy of Permaculture was proclaimed by Geoff Lawton in 2012 the Duke of Permaculture. He is the creator of two on-line communities. One is about Permaculture, Permies.com, and one is about software engineering, CodeRanch.com. He is a powerful advocate of Sepp Holzer’s techniques for which a recent study showed they have […]

Peak Oil: No “Shock Moments”

There may never be a ‘shock moment’ of peak oil’s arrival; instead, peak oil may continue to play out as a gradual, unplanned transition to a new set of energy and consumption patterns that are less oil dependent, giving rise to social, economic, and ecological impacts that no one can predict with any certainty. [1] […]

Mike Ruppert’s Story Part 8 – Orinoco

As mentioned in previous posts, before Mike left the US, he disbursed his worldly affects among his loved ones, his FTW (Fromthewilderness) colleagues who were the closest thing he had to family, with the stipulation they be returned to him should he ever come home again; and that for the most part, they were. The exception […]

Report from Fukushima: lots of cleanup to do, not enough workers to do it

The sudden arrival of a battered Toyota and its three occupants at our place last week underscores the problems Japanese construction steel producers face. I’m back from a quick trip home. It’s in a once pristine corner of rural Fukushima, just outside the 20km exclusion zone around the crippled Daiichi nuclear plant. The back roads […]

Pick Your Poison For Crude — Pipeline, Rail, Truck Or Boat

Crude oil is moving around the world, around our country, around pristine wilderness, around our cities and towns. It’s going to keep moving, will undoubtedly increase during our new energy boom, so what is the safest way to move it? The short answer is: truck worse than train worse than pipeline worse than boat (Oilprice.com). […]

New York state shale gas: Not so much

A drilling foreman once told me, “Don’t believe ANY reserve number unless it’s linked to a price.” And, that is just what petroleum geologist and consultant Arthur Berman and his colleague Lyndon Pittinger have done in a new report on the viability of shale gas in New York state. Not surprisingly, when Berman and Pittinger […]

Global energy crunch: how different parts of the world would react to a peak oil scenario

Peak oil theory predicts that oil production will soon start a terminal decline. Most authors imply that no adequate alternate resource and technology will be available to replace oil as the backbone resource of industrial society. This article uses historical cases from countries that have gone through a similar experience as the best available analytical […]

Is Peak Oil Waiting for Godot?

Waiting for Godot was a two act play by Samuel Beckett where two men kept waiting for Godot and they just kept waiting and waiting and waiting… And no, I don’t think we will be kept waiting and waiting like the characters in that play. Peak oil is about to arrive, in my opinion anyway. […]

Oil firms’ answer to global calamity: Insurance

The crisis in Ukraine has provided a reminder of an an old story: The world is a dangerous and unstable place—and some of the most volatile places on earth are oil-producing areas where oil companies are compelled to drill. That stark backdrop means oil companies must insure against any number of adverse developments, all while […]

Argentina: about 15,000 vehicles are converted to natural gas

The figures provided by the CNG Management of the National Gas Regulatory Agency (Enargas)  indicate that during the first quarter of this year, 44.489 vehicles were converted to natural gas, although the number is set to be higher, since the agency’s records are not yet complete. Therefore, the monthly average of transitions to CNG accounts […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Is It Time To Abandon the Idea of Phasing Out Oil and Gas?
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• Charles Hugh Smith Blog: Fire, Then Ice Our Deflationary Future
• Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser says energy transition strategy ‘visibly failing’
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• 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