Oil ends year down 25%, its worst annual showing since the crash of 2015

Oil capped its worst annual showing since 2015 as fears of scarcity turned into panic about a glut. Futures in New York eked out a small gain on Monday but finished the year down 25 per cent, completing a reversal few anticipated just three months ago, when prices jumped to a four-year high. There’s growing […]

Oversupply Will Keep Oil Prices Under Pressure

An energy information provider, Argus Media stated that an oversupply of oil will ensure the prices are under intense pressure even after entering the New Year. However, with the passing time, the cuts of the producers will ensure the crude prices are boosted. This condition refers to the scenario in which the balance between the […]

China taking on U.S. dollar, forging ahead in digital payment

  While China has made major strides in catching up with the United States in terms of economic power, it still lags far behind in finance. In various ways, the dollar still reigns supreme over the yuan. However, that is not stopping China from carving out new sectors of influence in digital technology and artificial […]

Kunstler: Ding Ding ! Margin Call USA

Welcome to the American hall of mirrors… and mind the broken glass all over the floor. That’s Nature’s way of saying the country has run out room to punk itself. 2018 was the consolidation of bad faith in everything we do: politics, the news media, economics & finance, show biz, regular biz, jurisprudence, medicine, education, […]

US energy independence is not the shining prize it seems

It is a common sensation at this time of year: waiting for something in eager anticipation, only to find it disappointing when it eventually arrives. For decades, the US has dreamt about ending its dependence on foreign oil. Now “energy independence”, defined in that way, is very close, the limitations of that ambition have been […]

Facing soil crisis, US farmers look beyond corn and soybeans

Shovel in hand, Duane Hager heads for his cornfield and digs up a shovelful of dirt, revealing wriggling earthworms. Although a pelting rain has soaked his gray T-shirt in seconds, not a single puddle lies in the field or in the cow pasture beyond – a sign of vigorous, uncompacted earth. “If you have soil […]

Most of us are clueless about humanity’s place in the planet’s long history

The oldest rocks in the Grand Canyon are more than 1.7 billion years old. (Los Angeles Times) For a few weeks each February, small towns pop up like Brigadoons on the ice covering Lake Winnebago, the largest inland water body in Wisconsin. Winnebago is a vestige of the much larger Glacial Lake Oshkosh, which formed […]

2019: Are you Ready for a New World War?

  Detail from Picasso’s “Guernica” – 1937 With the end of 2018, also the centennial of the end of the Great War (or WWI) is past. It passed remarkably in silence: a few celebrations, but little or no discussion of the reasons and the consequences of that war, supposed to be the one that would […]

Urban Underground Farming

According to the U.N., the world population is more than seven billion and is expected to reach more than nine billion by 2050. With a vast majority of the population migrating to urban areas, cities are forced to expand. This puts a strain on rural land space and food production; urban underground farming is being […]

Oil Sands Rebound in 2019

The Canadian oil industry could be in for another turbulent year in 2019, depending on how some pivotal events pan out. Government-mandated production cuts and the potential startup of a key crude pipeline are among key developments to watch for next year. Here’s a look at each one: Production Curtailments While the announcement of production […]

Brexit: Stage One In Europe’s Slow-Burn Energy Collapse

Everyone’s talking about Brexit. Some about the French riots. But no one’s talking about why they are happening, and what they really mean. They might think they are, but they are usually missing the point. On 6th May 2010, the Conservative Party took the reins of power for the first time since 1992, propped up […]

Russia Blames Fed Interest Hike For Low Oil Prices

It seems that the Federal Reserve can’t get a break. For months, President Trump has been increasingly criticizing the Fed’s policy of incrementally increasing interest rates, a near-unprecedented move for an American president. After the most recent Fed move to hike interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point last week, Trump tweeted on […]

The Dark Places of the Future

Over most of the last decade now, I’ve watched celebrations of the New Year become more and more muted, and I think it’s far more likely than not that this trend will continue when 2018 gets hauled off to the glue factory a little less than a week from now. No doubt plenty of people […]

Population Expert Welcomes Declining Fertility Rates

Declining fertility rates throughout the world should be welcomed, said Sarah Harper, an expert on population change at the University of Oxford. Her comments came in a report by The Guardian. She maintained the focus on boosting population was outdated and possibly bad for women. Women now have an average 2.4 children in their lifetime, […]

Peak Oil? Unlikely In The Near Term

WTI: surges 10% on Boxing Day. Peak oil? Maybe for Saudi Arabia? One of my themes over at “the big stories” is the growing gap between Europe and the US when it comes to being energy sufficient. Major sub-themes include: US energy centers of gravity natural gas and coal in the post-nuclear world the Saudi […]

The 10 Daily Habits Of Highly Prepared People

For some people, preparedness is about the big things: the well-stocked retreat home, buying yet another firearm, or getting a super-fancy generator. While these things can certainly be classified as preparedness endeavors, it isn’t the expensive and dramatic gestures that make us truly prepared people. The way prepared people spend their time before an emergency is the real key […]

The Battle For Syria’s Oil Region

The Syrian Civil War has gone through several phases over the course of seven years and it now appears to be entering another one. Government forces have regained control over much of Syria with Russian air support and Iranian ground forces. Only Idlib and the territories east of the Euphrates river remain out of the […]

Michael Snyder: The Worst Is Yet To Come Next Year

When talking heads on mainstream news networks are using phrases such as “the worst is yet to come next year”, that is a clear indication that a new financial crisis has arrived.  And that is an extremely bold statement to make considering that this is already the worst quarter for the stock market in 10 […]

China Cracks Open Door for US Natural Gas Imports

China last month imported two tankers of U.S. liquefied natural gas, nudging open a doorway that had been closed shut for a month at a time when America is rapidly expanding its ability to export the heating fuel. The three operating U.S. terminals soaked up more than 5.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas from […]

Kunstler and Bill Holter: Financial and Political Turmoil

Bill Holter writes and is partnered with Jim Sinclair at the newly formed Holter/Sinclair collaboration. Prior, he wrote for Miles Franklin from 2012-15. Bill worked as a retail stockbroker for 23 years, including 12 as a branch manager at A.G. Edwards. He left Wall Street in late 2006 to avoid potential liabilities related to management […]

Iran in talks with Afghan Taliban

Iran has been holding talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban with the knowledge of the Afghan government, a senior Iranian security official was quoted by the official news agency IRNA as saying on Wednesday during a visit to Kabul. The news came days after reports last week of talks between U.S. and Taliban officials over proposals for […]

The Coming Scramble for Africa

China, and Russia to a degree, are ahead of the game, but the U.S. has the advantage going forward. In the 19th century, Europe’s great powers were caught up in what historians have dubbed “the scramble for Africa,” as Britain, France, Germany, and Italy competed with one other to establish colonies and control over the […]

Trump Takes On The FED And The Military Industrial Complex

Trump Takes On The FED And The Military Industrial Complex

Kunstler: Merry Christmas to All

And this solemn night a great stillness falls upon the land as the Leviathan of Washington is sent to its room to get its mind straight, and the USA gets on with collapse in earnest. There will be no visions of sugarplums for the Deep Staters as the government enters its induced coma, only premonitions […]

Have we reached Peak Car?

General Motors has announced it’s shuttering five production facilities and killing six vehicle platforms by the end of 2019 as it reallocates resources towards self-driving technologies and electric vehicles. The announcements should come as a surprise to no one, as they echo a similar announcement made by Ford earlier this year that it will exit […]

What’s Got Oil So Spooked? It’s the Economy, Stupid

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Not only are oil prices down nearly 40 percent since early October, they’re below where they were when the OPEC+ group of producers began their first round of output cuts in January 2017. There are two main factors behind this pessimism. The first stems from an undue skepticism […]

Peak Oil, Peak Gold, Peak Whatever … Phooey!

A Monday Morning Musing from Mickey the Mercenary Geologist   Non-renewable natural resources (e.g., industrial metals, precious metals, agricultural minerals, industrial minerals and rocks, energy fluids, and energy solids) are extracted from Earth’s surface and its depths. Exploitation of these resources naturally leads to depletion and more must constantly be found, developed, and mined. In […]

The Top 10 Energy Stories Of 2018

As 2018 comes to a close, it’s time to review the top energy stories of the year. This year there wasn’t an overwhelming choice for the top story as we have had in some previous years (e.g., the Deepwater Horizon spill), but many of the year’s biggest developments impacted oil prices. Here are my picks for the stories […]

Oil policy twists and turns in 2018 – the Capital Crude top 10

There were 56 episodes of Platts’ Capitol Crude podcast this year, covering nearly everything US oil policy touched from Boulder, Colorado to Beijing, China. Here are 10 of our favorite episodes from 2018: February 20 – Free at last! Just days after leaving his position as a top energy policy adviser to President Trump, George […]

Drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge One Step Closer

The U.S. Department of the Interior has taken another step towards allowing oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by issuing a draft environmental impact statement for the leasing program proposed for the 1002 Area (coastal plain). In 2017, Congress mandated the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to establish a program for […]

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