How Oil Is Burning a Hole in Asia

Arab states’ petrodollars are burning fast and that’s bad news for emerging markets, real estate and, above all, Asian securities. Gulf Cooperation Council countries have to refinance $94 billion of debt over the next two years, as reported by Bloomberg News on Sunday. As the price of oil drops, so do the foreign-exchange reserves of those nation’s central […]

Peak oil in the South China Sea

The recent deployment of missile launchers and jet fighters on Woody Island of the Paracel islands have put the spotlight on the South China Sea (SCS). Fig 1: The 200 mile Economic Exclusion Zone claimed by China around Woody Island and the overlapping 108 nm range of the HQ-9 SAM system. Image via ISI. [Image Sat International]   […]

What Really Controls Oil Prices?

World oil prices are controlled by the amount of crude oil stored at Cushing, Oklahoma. That’s because Cushing is the pricing point for WTI (West Texas Intermediate) oil prices, the most-traded oil futures contract in the world. Cushing Storage Rules World Oil Prices WTI and Brent oil prices have good negative correlation with the volume of crude oil stored at Cushing. Comparative […]

Kunstler: Going Full Whig

Hillary’s dumb riposte to Trump’s dumb slogan — make America great again! — was “…America never stopped being great.” I guess she’s been traveling around the strip-mall wastelands of Carolina failing to notice the carnage that lays upon this land like a mortal scrofula. America has been committing suicide by bad choices for decades. We […]

OPEC boxes itself into a corner

Heavyweight oil producer group OPEC stepped into the ring with young upstart US shale back in November 2014 and delivered its best shot. Led by prizefighter Saudi Arabia, it decided not to cut output in hopes of arresting the slide in prices, but, in an attempt to floor the relatively high-cost producer, declared it would […]

Greenpeace Surveys Fukushima

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster occurred after a March 11, 2011, tsunami, and in the lead up to the five-year anniversary, environmental group Greenpeace Japan has commenced an underwater investigation into radiation contamination in the nearby waters. More than 160,000 people were evacuated from the area after the disaster which is considered to be the […]

“The Future” as a sales pitch

No one can know the future. But it turns out we can invent a place called “The Future” and invite people to inhabit it. In order to inhabit “The Future”–which is really just an enactment of our ideas about the future–you need the right accessories. For starters you’ll need the basics: the latest iPhone with the latest social networking […]

Nigerian president tells Qatar’s ruler: Oil prices ‘totally unacceptable’

The OPEC cartel needs to take action to stabilize the oil market because crude prices have fallen to “totally unacceptable” levels, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Sunday. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer which earns around 90 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from crude oil exports, has been hit hard by the erosion of […]

No sign of Peak Oil

Nor, for that matter, of peak coal or gas. Fossil fuels, said to be on the path for an effective demise in the rich world later this century, will actually continue to fulfil the major part of our energy needs for the foreseeable future. So says the latest BP Energy Outlook. Gone is ‘Beyond Petroleum’, […]

Amid coal market struggles, less fuel worth mining

Vast coal seams dozens of feet thick that lie beneath the rolling hills of the Northern Plains once appeared almost limitless, fueling boasts that domestic reserves were sufficient to power the U.S. for centuries. But an exhaustive government analysis says that at current prices and mining rates the country’s largest coal reserves, located along the […]

Privatising Air

We seem to have entered an era of ‘reductio ad absurdum’ capitalism. Many of life’s fundamentals such as land, water and energy have been or are being enclosed and privatised. As capitalism runs out of convenient colonies to parasitise, it has begun to work on societies within its traditional hosts in the developed world through […]

Don’t Be Fooled, The U.S. Dollar Index Will Be A Lot Stronger A Year From Now

As many traders and investors know, the U.S. Dollar Index (DX) broke out in September 2014. At that time, the U.S. Dollar Index was trading around the $83.00 level. Today, the U.S. Dollar Index is trading around $96.90 per contract. Just so that new readers understand the U.S. Dollar Index is a measure of the […]

Putin Threatens Turkey With Nukes

Award-winning Iran-Contra journalist Robert Parry has been told by a source close to Vladimir Putin that Russia has threatened Turkey with the use of tactical nuclear weapons if it launches a joint invasion of Syria with Saudi Arabia. Writing for Consortium News, Parry warns that the risk of the United States and its allies escalating […]

US Shale Oil Drillers Finally Buckling as OPEC Pumps On

U.S. oil drillers are finally beginning to buckle. For more than a year, American oil producers found a way to keep pumping despite a worldwide slide in crude prices. Like cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, U.S. drillers dashed off the cliff and somehow kept running in midair, maintaining volumes even as revenue plummeted. Drilling companies’ […]

This Is The ‘Big New Threat’ To Oil Prices

One week ago, we reported that even as traders were focusing on the daily headline barrage out of OPEC members discussing whether or not they would cut production (they won’t) or merely freeze it (at fresh record levels as Russia reported earlier today) a bigger threat in the near-term will be whether the relentless supply […]

Syria fighting largely halts

Fighting appeared to stop across most areas of western Syria on Saturday after a cessation of hostilities came into effect under a U.S.-Russian plan which warring sides in the five-year conflict have committed to. A monitoring group and the United Nations reported only isolated fire in western Syria after the cessation began at midnight on […]

Isis oil: deal with traders nets jihadis badly needed funds

For those willing to try their luck — and test their fate — there are new deals to be had in the Isis oilfields of eastern Syria. In recent weeks the jihadi group has offered traders a licence to buy up to 1,000 barrels of oil at a time at the lucrative al-Omar oilfield — […]

Fukushima Operator Admits It Didn’t Reveal Meltdown

The operator of Japan’s Fukushima power plant has apologized for not announcing its nuclear reactors were in meltdown for months after a huge earthquake and tsunami devastated the facility five years ago. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) denied for two months after the disaster that a meltdown had taken place. It said officials didn’t know […]

Depletion Policies for Oil-Exporting Developing Economies

In modelling the behaviour of oil-exporting countries it is usually assumed that the objective is to maximize the present value of oil revenues evaluated at a vector of market clearing prices. Given the various assumptions on the relevant parameters (initial reserves, demand etc) and the market structure, this exercise gives an extraction policy or, what […]

Forget the old Peak Oil theory, now the oil industry’s doom will be its everlasting supply

Peak-oil theorists — they’re the ones who predicted $300-a-barrel oil, because new discoveries wouldn’t materialize — were fundamentally right after all. So they say. No, not about the $300 price tag. Oil is now around US$30 a barrel and could stay there indefinitely, but that detail, they explain, only helps prove their point. And no, […]

OPEC Losing Its Grip On Oil Markets

From their opposing positions on U.S. shale to whether freezing – or even cutting – oil production around the world is even possible, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Saudi Arabia – its most significant member – appear to be reading from different playbooks. Abdalla Salem El-Badri, OPEC’s executive director, stopped short of […]

Declining Bee Population Is Going to Devastate Our Food Supply

It’s no secret that the world’s bees are dying off in alarming numbers, but sometimes it’s worth remembering what’s at stake beyond just hot toddies and a topping for biscuits, and the U.N. Friday has just the thing: A new report by the organization warns that if the disturbing trend continues, there will be awful […]

Chernobyl On The Hudson

It has been nicknamed Chernobyl on the Hudson. Lying just 34 miles north of New York City’s Central Park, the Indian Point Energy Center has been leaking the radioactive material known as tritium into the groundwater. On February 6, 2016 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo finally alerted the public to the potential catastrophe.

Will better, cheaper EVs really crash the oil market?

As the many, many analysts around the media world prove every day, you simply can’t go wrong when you predict the future. Sure, you can be wrong, but it seems like no matter how factually incorrect you might be about the future, you will always find a place at the media table. Of course, I […]

Gladiator War

We’re chemical machines, that have been built over 4 billion years, and we’ve been tested in what can be called quite accurately a ‘Gladiator War’; where the machines went into the battle and if you won your DNA replicated, and that’s all it was was a war. And as time evolved the war became more […]

Shale Drillers Halt Bakken Fracking as Saudis Send Gloomy Note

Continental Resources Inc., the shale oil pioneer controlled by billionaire wildcatter Harold Hamm, halted all fracking in the Bakken shale formation in the U.S. Williston Basin after posting its first annual loss since the company’s public debut in 2007. Whiting Petroleum Corp. estimates it will leave 73 uncompleted wells in the region by year-end, and another […]

Oil Price And Its Effect On Production

The JODI Oil World Database came out a few days ago. The data is through December 2015. The JODI C+C production numbers differs somewhat from the EIA numbers. The JODI OPEC numbers are crude. Also there are a few very small producers that do not report to JODI so their numbers will be slightly less than […]

Oil rout hits Houston’s rich

Prices for mansions in Houston’s swankiest neighborhood have tumbled in lock step with crude prices. The Houston Opera has offered free season tickets to patrons who lost their jobs in the oil bust. A fancy restaurant offers cut-price dinners. Twenty months into the worst oil price crash since the 1980s, well-heeled residents of the world’s […]

Here’s How Electric Cars Will Cause the Next Oil Crisis

With all good technologies, there comes a time when buying the alternative no longer makes sense. Think smartphones in the past decade, color TVs in the 1970s, or even gasoline cars in the early 20th century. Predicting the timing of these shifts is difficult, but when it happens, the whole world changes. It’s looking like […]

Moscow, New Delhi to trade in own currencies

India and Russia are developing a road map for mutual settlements in national currencies which could open prospects for both countries, India’s Ambassador to Russia Pankaj Saran told RIA Novosti on Wednesday. “Transition to mutual settlements in national currencies of the BRICS looks promising. Russian and Indian companies are interested in using national currencies in […]

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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’
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• 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