The Huge Challenges Ahead For Saudi Arabia’s Oil Reforms

Every week, The WorldPost asks an expert to shed light on a topic driving headlines around the world. In this edition, we speak with Dr. Muhammad Sahimi about Saudi Arabia’s new plan to diversify its economy. Saudi Arabia launched an ambitious 14-year strategy to reshape its economy amid plummeting global oil prices on Monday, the […]

Let’s Stop Pretending Nuclear Power Is Commercially Viable

First its new president, Jean-Bernard Levy, said French state utility EDF would delay a decision on its joint French-Chinese nuclear project in the UK, Hinkley Point. That was over a year ago. Then the CFO of EDF, Thomas Piquemal, quit reportedly because he opposed the project on financial grounds. That was a short time ago. […]

Venezuela’s Energy Crisis Causes Riots

In a desperate attempt to save electricity, drought-stricken Venezuela has introduced a new concept to the workplace calendar: the five-day weekend.

Six maps that will make you rethink the world

We don’t often question the typical world map that hangs on the walls of classrooms — a patchwork of yellow, pink and green that separates the world into more than 200 nations. But Parag Khanna, a global strategist, says that this map is, essentially, obsolete. Khanna is the author of the new book “Connectography: Mapping […]

US-Created System In Iraq Is Collapsing: Protesters Storm Parliament, State of Emergency Declared

Less than two years ago, the US set up another puppet government in the mid-east this time in the state of Iraq when following substantial US pressure, on August 14, 2014 then prime minister al-Maliki agreed to stepped down and be replaced with Haider al-Abadi. Today, the regime is in chaos and the system set […]

Economic Gravity in the Oil Industry: What Goes Up Comes Down

IT’S not rocket science. What shoots up quickly usually comes back to earth. But a lot of people who hold leases to drill for oil on their land forgot that. Clarke and Sally Keeshan, whose income from leases on their Texas ranches fell by 60 percent in the last two years, are an exception. So […]

The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”

In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule.  Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s […]

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 5

[T]he West’s energy security is assured to a degree that has not existed in the past. That’s good news for the American people and for the world, even if it is not news that Obama wants to hear. He doesn’t? I wonder how that author knows this? Any chance it’s instead just a variation of […]

Oil’s Magic Number Becomes $50 a Barrel for Promise of Recovery

The new magic number in the oil industry is $50. BP Plc, rig-owner Nabors Industries Ltd. and explorer Pioneer Natural Resources Co. all said in the past 24 hours that prices above $50 will encourage more drilling or provide the needed boost to cash flow. With oil bouncing close to $45 a barrel, an industry that has […]

Debacle at Doha: The Collapse of the Old Oil Order

Sunday, April 17th was the designated moment. The world’s leading oil producers were expected to bring fresh discipline to the chaotic petroleum market and spark a return to high prices. Meeting in Doha, the glittering capital of petroleum-rich Qatar, the oil ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), along with such key […]

Opec troubles herald oil’s peak day

On Sunday, April 17, the world’s largest oil producers gathered in Doha to discuss the possibility of freezing their levels of oil production to bolster prices in the global market for crude oil. Prices have been allowed to fall for almost two years due to supply consistently exceeding demand, and the major oil exporters want […]

Fossil Fuel Companies Need to Become Renewable Energy Companies

It seems clear that Exxon Mobil and other parts of the fossil fuel industry have tried to suppress the science of climate change. I am not surprised that these companies acted in their short-term self-interest, and I expect them to continue to advance those interests. Their deception is disappointing and may even be illegal, but […]

Low Oil Prices Will Lead To Shortages — In 2035

OMG guys we’re running out of oil! In 2035. That’s right, if oil companies don’t get their act together and start exploring for more crude, the world might not have enough oil to meet demand. Twenty years from now. It seems almost comical to consider given today’s glut of the stuff. But the analysts at […]

San Francisco Becomes First Major City to Require Solar Panels on New Buildings

San Francisco is one step closer to its goal of transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy after the city’s Board of Supervisors unanimously voted on Tuesday to mandate solar installations on new buildings. San Francisco has mandated rooftop solar panels on new buildings starting in 2017. Photo credit: Flickr According to the San Francisco Examiner, […]

Michael Lynch Defeats the Mainstream

“Since at least 1989, Mr. Lynch has made a career of poo-pooing any concept that oil supplies might be finite and that we might find production capability dropping as demand continues to rise…. [Oil supply] not an issue?  Do you expect to be dead and gone in the next 4 to 8 years?” – Charles Armentrout, […]

Will The United States Collapse Due To An Internal Societal Meltdown?

Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the United States of America?  All great nations eventually fall, and the United States is not going to be any exception. Many of those that write about the decline of our once great country tend to focus on external threats, and there are certainly many that […]

Is the US so energy independent we should export crude oil?

[ This is one of several House of Representative sessions discussing energy independence and whether to revoke the energy policy and conservation act of 1975 ban on crude oil export. The only time so far I have ever seen a cautionary note about the reality of energy independence so far is in this session, in […]

Communities Innovate Their Way Out of Sprawl

The suburbs have lost a lot of luster in the past 70 years. What was once hailed as a refreshing alternative to the grittiness of city living has been tugged and pulled and paved into a series of brownfields and vacant parking lots that stretch for miles and miles. Public planners have been predicting “the […]

A majority of millennials now reject capitalism

In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy, a new poll shows that most young people do not support capitalism. The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent said they support it. It isn’t clear that the […]

The story of the fisherman and of the farmer

As I sit on the podium with the other speakers, I have in front of me about 30 boys and girls, around 10-12 years old; not even teenagers. They sit while the other speakers tell them of climate change and renewable energies. They are being told what we believe is good for them: that we […]

Australian river near fracking site bursts into flames

In a protest against coal seam gas leaking into South West Queensland’s Condamine River, NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham headed to the river and hopped on a boat. Then he sparked a lighter a few inches above the water and the river burst into flames. He ignited gas that has been bubbling in the river […]

Are consumers getting tired of consuming?

In debates around the use of natural resources, a popular narrative is that humankind is consuming its way to disaster – going to hell in a shopping basket if you like. We can do all in our power to make manufacturing and transportation – or just the very process of existing – as efficient as […]

Participatory Economics and the Next System

It is increasingly apparent that neoliberal capitalism is not working well for most of us. Growing inequality of wealth and income is putting the famous American middle class in danger of becoming a distant memory as American children, for the first time in our history, now face economic prospects worse than what their parents enjoyed. […]

Limits to Growth or Opportunities for Prosperity?

ast week, in a hot and crowded room deep within the Houses of Parliament, myself and fellow researchers from The Sussex Energy Group (SEG) and The Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand attended the launch event of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Limits to Growth. The APPG, chaired by Green MP Caroline Lucas and […]

Bankers Trying to Sell Loans Backed by Oil Reserves

Banks are trying to unload loans once thought to be the safest form of energy credit. Debt backed by oil and gas reserves are being offered at discounts as increased scrutiny by regulators and investors has forced lenders to set aside more cash to cover losses, the law firm Haynes & Boone LLP said in […]

A warning for parched China: a city runs out of water

Yang Shufang wakes up at 5 o’clock each morning and fetches water. “I bring a few buckets, enough for drinking or cooking,” she says. Yang doesn’t live in the remote countryside, and her water isn’t from a village well. She lives on the seventh floor of a luxury condominium complex in Lintao, a Chinese city […]

Less Than 5% Of Saudi Aramco To Be Sold

Saudi Arabia plans to sell less than 5 percent of its state oil company Saudi Aramco through an initial public offering (IPO), Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Monday. He said in a television interview he expected Aramco, the world’s biggest energy company, to be valued at more than $2 trillion and that […]

Ignoring the Shale Revolution

On March 8, 1956, Shell Oil research geologist Marion King Hubbert delivered a keynote speech at an American Petroleum Institute meeting in San Antonio, Texas, and predicted that U.S. oil production would peak within 10 to 15 years. The reaction was dismissive. Hubbert was challenging an entrenched belief in American petroleum abundance. Fifteen years later, […]

That Time the U.S. Government Wrote a Report on Peak Oil

Last year, on October 29, the White House released a strategy and a multi-agency plan to prepare for and coordinate responses to space weather threats. What’s a “space weather threat” you might ask? From the intro to the White House report: “Space-weather events are naturally occurring phenomena that have the potential to disrupt electric power […]

Kunstler: The Awful Lull

Spring unfolds at last in all its loveliness and Hillary sits back in repose like the matriarch of toads with a clear path to her toadstool throne, having swallowed the mouse-king Sanders. (She forgets that there are millions more mice under the thatched grass, including new mouse-kings awaiting.) And Trump with his bullfrog smile now […]

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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’
• 100 million-degree ‘artificial sun’ sets new records in hunt for energy’s ‘Holy Grail’

• 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