The ‘Us Vs. Them’ Fallacy On Oil Exports

Lacking factual, substantial reasons for keeping the United States’ antiquated ban on crude oil exports, those who oppose letting U.S. crude reach the global marketplace are left to make a non-factual, unsubstantial case instead. In a letter to the editor in the New York Times, the Sierra Club’s Michael Brune offers up a couple of […]

Saudi Arabia Credit Rating Cut

Saudi Arabia’s credit rating was cut by Standard & Poor’s , which said the decline in oil prices will increase the budget deficit in a country that relies on energy exports for 80 percent of its revenue. S&P cut the sovereign rating one level to A+, the fifth-highest classification, as it said the biggest OPEC […]

If the global energy industry innovates, the oil age may not have to end

Societal demand to move beyond fossil fuels has become mainstream almost overnight. This leads us to the question: What comes after oil? As someone who hunts for novel energy technologies for a living, I have been in search of the answer. To mark Earth Day in April, the Earth League, a network of institutions working […]

Angolans are asking: where did all the oil riches go?

A few years ago, Luanda, the capital of Angola, was on every ambitious investor’s lips. With large infrastructure and housing projects rapidly changing its appearance, the city seemed to be leaving behind the country’s 27-year civil war. But hopes for renewal are slowly dissipating as the price of the commodity on which Angola’s future was […]

Oil Companies Have Cut Back Everything Except Crude Production

A year after the bear market in crude began, oil companies have cut workers, are using fewer rigs and have less money to spend. But they’re still pumping more oil. BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Corp. and Hess Corp. are among the companies producing more crude than a year ago. In the U.S., shale explorers […]

How China’s one-child policy ended in failure

Desperate attempts by China to curb population growth in 1979 led the communist authorities to offer couples condoms, coils, sterilisation and financial rewards as part of its one-child policy. When this failed, fines and even forced abortions were said to have been used to enforce ‘family planning.’ Even in the 1950s, when China’s population was […]

Water, Sunlight, Oil, and Sectarianism

In a prior post in the International Affairs Forum, I tried to outline what Western and Eastern polities might want out of the ever-fractious Middle East, using the p5+1 deal with Iran as a focus point. Basically, this would be peace, prosperity, citizen-centered governance, and openness to global economic and social systems. In other words, […]

Venezuela is running out of cash

Venezuela is running out of money fast and has started selling its gold. The cash-strapped country could default by next year when lots of debt payments are due. Venezuela’s reserves, which are mostly made up of gold, have fallen sharply this year as the country needs cash to pay off debt and tries to maintain […]

Chevron Announces Discovery in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) today announced the successful appraisal of the Anchor discovery in the Lower Tertiary Wilcox Trend. “The positive results of our appraisal work at Anchor indicate a significant discovery of potentially hub class scale.” said Jay Johnson, executive vice president Upstream, Chevron Corporation. The original Anchor discovery well, located in Green Canyon […]

China ends one-child policy after 35 years

China has scrapped its one-child policy, allowing all couples to have two children for the first time since draconian family planning rules were introduced more than three decades ago. The announcement followed a four-day Communist party summit in Beijing where China’s top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain growth at a time of […]

An example of a false flag operation in the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940

  The Italian attack against Greece, that started in October of 1940, was one of the greatest military blunders of history and it may be argued that it cost the axis powers the whole war. Here, I discuss how the attack provides is one of the few documented cases of a  “false flag” operation. (Image: […]

Pouring oil on troubled waters: ‘Surplus until 2017’

Thomas Pugh economist at Capital Economics predicts oil could hit $55 per barrel for Brent crude at the end of 2015, with oil to remain in surplus for another couple of years. “The market is still going to be in surplus by this time next year, so by the time you actually have supply and […]

The Federal Reserve: Illusion Of Understanding, Illusion Of Control

The net result is nonsensical policies that fail to achieve their stated objectives. We live in an era of illusion: the illusion of understanding, and the illusion of control. Few institutions reflect these illusions better than the Federal Reserve, though the Pentagon, Congress, the Imperial Presidency, the sick-care cartel and the higher education cartel are certainly […]

Shell Halts Construction On Alberta Oil Sands Project

Royal Dutch Shell Plc will not continue construction of its 80,000 barrel per day Carmon Creek thermal oil sands project in northern Alberta because of the lack of infrastructure to move Canadian crude to market, the company said on Tuesday. Shell said the decision to halt the project was also the result of “current uncertainties” […]

How the New World Order “Globalists” Are Dividing Americans

How can a people who have struggled long years under oppression throw off their oppressors and establish a free society? The problems are immense, but their solution lies in the education and enlightenment of the people and the emergence of a spirit that will serve as a foundation for independence and self-government. – Thomas Jefferson After […]

Is it the Beginning of the End for the Alberta Oilsands?

A new report from Oil Change International challenges industry’s common assumption that the continued production of oilsands crude is inevitable. The report, Lockdown: The End of Growth in the Tar Sands, argues industry projections — to expand oilsands production from a current 2.1 million barrels per day to as much as 5.8 million barrels per […]

End of growth is our reality

“Growth is the largest religion in the world and it is the one thing for which we collectively agree,” said filmmaker and author of ‘The Third Curve – The end of growth as we know it’ Mansoor Khan during his lecture by the same name, organised at Design Centre, Porvorim. The first time author, in […]

The North Slope puzzle: more gas means less oil

During this week’s special session in Juneau, most lawmakers have been focused on whether the state should take a larger stake  in the Alaska LNG project, which would build a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope. But on Monday afternoon (Oct. 26), the Senate Resources Committee met to hear about another crucial, if little-discussed […]

U.S. And China Still Driving Demand Higher

Despite prognostications otherwise, gasoline demand in the United States and globally continues to grow. Lower gasoline prices combined with net additions to the global fleet of vehicles powered by gasoline mean that despite increases in sales of electric and hybrid vehicles, gasoline demand will likely continue to grow in absolute terms in the near future. […]

BP’s big plans need crude at $60

BP has big plans to balance its cashflows by 2017, but it needs crude prices to hold $60 a barrel and St James’s Place has reported a terribly polite 17 per cent rise in net fund inflows. FT City editor Jonathan Guthrie rounds up the morning’s main news and puts it into context. BP is […]

U.S. Plans to Sell Down Strategic Oil Reserve to Raise Cash

The U.S. plans to sell millions of barrels of crude oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve from 2018 until 2025 under a budget deal reached on Monday night by the White House and top lawmakers from both parties. The proposed sale, included in a bill posted on the White House website, equates to more than […]

Deepwater Horizon ripples help sink US Arctic drilling: Regulation and Environment

Investigators into the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the US Gulf of Mexico often lament the failure of Congress to pass any meaningful safety-related measures informed by the lessons learned from the tragedy. But make no mistake — the ripples of Deepwater Horizon have been felt by the industry and can be clearly seen in […]

Looking Back 10 Years After Peak Oil

All views expressed here are those of Verwimp Bruno and do not necessarily represent those of Ron Patterson. 1. INTRODUCTION Peak Oil is the moment in time when, on a global scale, the maximum rate of oil production is reached. The moment after which oil production, by nature, must decline forever. Since Earth is a closed system, next […]

Oil prices ‘to rise to $60.2 in 2017’

Oil prices will stabilise at around $55 per barrel next year before picking up to $60.2 per barrel in 2017, according to an analysis by Qatar National Bank (QNB). QNB said oil markets have been oversupplied since the beginning of 2014 leading to a sharp fall in prices. However, the bank predicted prices will stabilise […]

Dispelling The Oil Storage Myth

Summary One concern hitting many investors recently has been the possibility that the U.S. is approaching full oil storage capacity. If true, this would certainly result in firesale energy prices at some point, throwing oil and other products down much lower than they are today. Upon digging into this, however, I discovered something that should […]

“Revolution” or “Phase Transition”?

At the P2P Foundation, we don’t use the moniker ‘revolution’ with much frequency, preferring the concept of phase transition. In this article, we would like to elucidate the relation between the two concepts. In my experience, revolution is used in two quite different senses; in a generic sense, it just means a ‘big change’, like […]

Who Will Lead the Clean Energy Future?

At the heart of every major transformation are the people carving the new path forward. The same goes for the transition currently occurring in our electricity system, which is moving away from traditional monopoly utilities relying on coal, to a world with distributed energy generation (like rooftop solar),new technology, and disruptive market entrants. But just […]

Global Trade Is Collapsing

When the global economy is doing well, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes up, and when the global economy is in recession, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes down.  It is just basic economics.  Governments around the world have become very […]

Iran Proposes to Swap Oil, Gas With Russia

Iran has proposed to swap oil and gas with Russia, Press TV quoted oil minister Bijan Zangeneh as saying. Zangeneh said the proposal was raised during a meeting on Wednesday with the visiting Russian energy minister Alexander Novak. According to the proposal, Iran would receive natural gas, oil and oil products from Russia through its […]

Michael Lynch: The Myth Of America’s Addiction To Oil

Some years ago, President George W. Bush, the putative oil man, shocked the nation by saying that America was addicted to oil. Needless to say, any number of groups echoed the charge, and I wrote a piece then, but it seems time to revisit the case, given changes in oil prices and rebounding sales for […]

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