As We Enter 2017, Keep The Big Picture In Mind

The ‘meme’ circulating the internet and among my personal friend group is that 2016 was something of an awful year. Between a poisonous US election cycle, horrifying acts of senseless violence caused by refugees driving trucks in Europe, nightclub and other shootings, and high profile celebrity deaths it all conspired to create a sense of […]

The next ten years: how desperate can we become?

  With the year’s end, it is tradition to make predictions for the next year. In this case, I looked for something that would take a longer timespan as a target and I found something published in 2015. It can be used to learn how bad some predictions can be and how desperate we are […]

The Saudi vision and population growth

The world’s population explosion is one of the biggest obstacles hindering the train of development and creating exhausting competition between the pace of development and the demands of the increasing population. Saudi Arabia has now launched a new phase of its march based on revolutionizing its economic identity by recreating it through the state’s guarantee […]

OPEC cuts: ‘It’s inevitable. Somebody’s going to cheat”

‘It’s inevitable’: OPEC will cheat on output cuts, says analyst   23 Hours Ago | 00:53 OPEC’s first oil output cuts since 2008 take effect next week, but analysts see little chance members of the producer group will stick to their quotas. “It’s inevitable. Somebody’s going to cheat,” ClearView Energy Partners managing director Kevin Book told […]

Oil in 2017: Where Do Prices Go Next?

Charles Newsome, wealth and investment divisional director at Investec, and Bloomberg’s Will Kennedy discuss the outlook for oil prices, the battle between OPEC and U.S. shale producers and U.S. crude inventories. They speak to Bloomberg’s Anna Edwards and Yousef Gamal El-Din on “Bloomberg Daybreak: Europe.” Bloomberg

Why Saudi Arabia Is Likely to Postpone a Huge Oil Company IPO

Saudi Arabia’s oil producer, Saudi Aramco, is its crown jewel. And jewels ought not to be given away too freely. The company’s initial public offering was meant to be the centerpiece of a new economic strategy designed to wean the country off its dependence on crude oil exports. But rising oil prices could make that […]

John Michael Greer: A Leap in the Dark

A few days from now, 2016 will have passed into the history books. I know a fair number of people who won’t mourn its departure, but it’s pretty much a given that the New Year celebrations here in the United States, at least, will demonstrate a marked shortage of enthusiasm for the arrival of 2017. […]

The Prince and the Martian: An Energy Fable

At first glance, Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and Elon Musk, clean-tech mogul and budding red-planet pioneer, couldn’t be more different. Prince Mohammed is an aristocrat in a country where women can’t drive, but which relies for its wealth on many women, and men, driving everywhere else. Musk, meanwhile, runs a California company […]

Solar power at 1¢/kWh by 2025 – “The promise of quasi-infinite and free energy is here”

Thierry Lepercq, head of research, technology and innovation at the French energy company Engie SA, said in an interview at Bloomberg that he sees a potential for the cost of solar electricity to fall below $10-megawatt hour (1¢/kWh) in the sunniest climates by 2025. Lepercq believes “solar, battery storage, electrical and hydrogen vehicles, and connected devices […]

The Train for Berlin: Can Railroads Replace Planes for Long Distance Travel?

This November, I went by train from Locarno, in Switzerland, all the way to Berlin, for the conference of ASPO Germany.  The trip lasted more than 11 hours and it involved four different trains. It was one of the several tests I have been performing during the past few years to see how and how […]

The Overstated Impact Of Trump On Oil

With Donald Trump set to enter the White House and OPEC having agreed to production cuts, analysts are focused on how the global oil industry and prices will be impacted in 2017. The new U.S. President-elect and his cabinet, along with their pro-drilling policies, are increasing hopes of a bright future for the U.S. oil […]

Was 2016 the Best Year Ever?

According to popular wisdom, 2016 was a terrible year. Horrific terror attacks struck many countries. The Syrian crisis claimed tens of thousands of lives. Turkey withstood suicide bombings and a failed coup. More than 70 countries experienced a decline in freedom. Political shocks included Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election […]

Exxon, Qatar Petroleum Get OK to Export U.S. Fracked Gas Amidst Tangled Ties to Russia, ISIS

Just days before Christmas, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave ExxonMobil a gift: a permit to export natural gas from its Golden Pass LNG (liquefied natural gas) facility located in Sabine Pass, Texas. Dubbed Golden Pass Products, the expansion of this LNG facility to export gas is a joint venture between Exxon (30 percent stake) and Qatar Petroleum […]

Things That Make You Go Hmm… Like The Death Of The Petrodollar, And What Comes After

Excerpted from “Get It. Got It. Good” by Grant Williams, author of “Things That Make You Go Hmm…” The story begins in the 1970s when Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon struck a deal with the House of Saud — a deal which gave birth to the petrodollar system. The terms were simple The Saudis agreed […]

No Hope for Humanity

We discuss the real problem facing global growth right now, the massive government debt and credit bubble in this video. Republicans and Democrats keep Spending and Borrowing like there is No Tomorrow. The global financial numbers don`t make sense, governments and central banks cannot add to their balance sheets in an infinite manner, and expect […]

When The Horse Is Dead, The Whip Won’t Help: It’s Time To Dismount And Acknowledge Growth Is Dead

What is Economic Growth? Investopedia says… Economic growth is an increase in the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services, compared from one period of time to another. Traditionally, aggregate economic growth is measured in terms of gross national product (GNP) or gross domestic product (GDP). Ok, but what about the capacity to […]

Kunstler: Exit, Hope and Change

Yes, that was a gag. By now, anyone in this country still of sound mind knows that Barack Obama presided through eight years of remarkable continuity — of changeless conditions that left a great many hopeless. As the days of his tenure dwindle, what do we make of the departing 44th president? He played the […]

Reveries of Collapse

Lady Gaga’s meat suit Energy deflation and dollar preference are large forces beyond the control of politicians, generals or central bankers. They are driving countries and events toward involuntary conservation. America’s new president is the product of economic failure; the inability of the economists to make correct analysis, a long grinding recession disguised as recovery; […]

The Burning Issue: The Energy Transition From Fire to Electricity

Fire is at the root of our climate problems and it is time we put it out, writes Walt Patterson, Associate Fellow at Chatham House. “We need to switch from using fire to using electricity.” Is climate complicated? Yes – except in one key respect. Countless reams of disputed text preceded the Paris Agreement of […]

2016 was the year solar panels finally became cheaper than fossil fuels. Just wait for 2017

The renewable energy future will arrive when installing a new solar panels is cheaper than a comparable investment in coal, natural gas or other options. If you ask the World Economic Forum (WEF), the day has arrived. Solar and wind is now the same price or cheaper than fossil fuels in more than 30 countries, […]

The Haft of his Axe

“Why are we behaving as if we actually deserve to go extinct?” In Nanjing they have banned gas and diesel powered motorbikes, scooters, and trike-cabs or trike-trucks and replaced them with electrics. While most vehicles are retrofits, new electric bikes and trikes are sold in showrooms and all around the city repair shops, battery stores, […]

The United States And The Race For Global Hegemony

The previous article focused on the definition of an international order, globalization, geopolitical theories and how this has changed the notion with which a nation exercises control over a foreign country. In this second part I intend to examine the various geopolitical theories, their translations into modern concepts, and practical actions that the United States have undertaken […]

Knowledge, not resources, driving economic growth

Some economists worry the world economy isn’t growing fast enough. It’s slowing down and reaching the point of “secular stagnation”. On a very different wavelength, however, environmentalists worry that if the world economy keeps growing the way it is, it won’t be long before we run out of the natural resources on which that growth […]

Reservoir Damages May Stop OPEC From Cheating

OPEC oil production comes primarily from conventional reservoirs. These reservoirs require reservoir pressure management. Some have suggested that Saudi Arabia’s rationale for cutting production was to reverse the reservoir damage that overproduction has, or may have, caused. Preservation of reservoir integrity may ultimately limit “immediate” increases to inventories from OPEC. The temptation to cheat on […]

Has tight oil put ‘peak oil’ to rest? Not so fast: Fuel for Thought

Eighteen years ago, the International Energy Agency made an alarming and, by its own admission, controversial prediction. Global conventional oil output would peak well before 2020, it said, based on global oil reserve modeling of the day. Pondering the potential repercussions of Peak Oil for the first time, the West’s energy watchdog concluded that the […]

Oil Price Roulette: Investors Bet On $100 Oil

Oil prices are rising and speculators are already staking out bullish positions on futures for the next few months, but some traders are rolling the dice on a much bigger price spike in the next two years. Some contracts that pay off big time if oil prices hit $100 per barrel by December 2018 just […]

The Arctic Drilling Ban: Much Ado About Nothing?

Outgoing President Barack Obama is about to invoke a 1953 law in a bid to protect the Arctic and Atlantic shelf of the United States from the claws of the oil and gas industry, but below the surface it may just be theoretical. The Outer Continental Shelf Land Act, and more specifically its provision 12(a), […]

Las Vegas just became the largest US city to run on 100% renewable energy

The city of Las Vegas officially achieved a milestone last week, when Boulder Solar 1 — a solar power plant on the edge of Boulder City, Nevada — went live. According to the Huffington Post, the plant’s acres of solar panels will provide 100% of the city’s municipal power, excluding commercial and residential buildings. It’s something Las […]

Fuel removal at Fukushima reactor again faces delay

Work to retrieve spent nuclear fuel in the No. 3 reactor building storage pool of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will again be postponed due to a delay in clearing radioactive debris at the site. TEPCO planned to begin removing 566 spent nuclear fuel assemblies in the storage pool in January 2018. […]

Russia’s Deadly Mideast Game

With its devastating show of force in Syria’s civil war, Russia has reasserted itself as a military power in the Middle East. It’s also put Russians in the region at mortal risk, as the Dec. 19 assassination of Andrey Karlov, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, proves. Karlov is a casualty in the Kremlin’s quest for power […]

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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’

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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