What Made Me Reconsider the Anthropocene

Looming over the new food court of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is one of those creatures so massive and menacing that its mere existence in Earth’s ancient past counsels against time-travel research. It is an accurate, if unbelievable, model of the Megalodon shark—52 feet long, dagger-studded maw agape. These things ate baleen […]

Russia Ready To Seize Control Of The World’s Largest Oil Reserves

The Venezuelan government is readying to hand over control over state oil company PDVSA to Russia’s Rosneft, a local newspaper has reported, citing sources from the industry. Russian TASS reports, quoting El Nacional, that the radical move is being discussed as a way of erasing Caracas’ debt to Moscow. The debt is sizeable: at the end […]

“Oil for development” budget, challenges and opportunities

Iran has recently announced that its next fiscal year’s budget is going to be set with less reliance on oil revenues. Last week, Head of the Country’s Budget and Planning Organization (BPO) Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said “In the next year’s budget – it starts on March 19, 2020 – oil revenues will be only spent […]

The Mythology of Overconsumption

As a species, our lives have been made better throughout the ages because we have consistently consumed more. If we were to reverse our consumption habits, which is not possible, humankind would not flourish. Life would not get better for anyone if we suddenly consumed less. Nor should we expect the ecology to be magically […]

The Attacks on Abqaiq and Peak Oil in Ghawar

Fig 1: The attackers hit at Fajr prayer time Fig 2: Matt Simmons’ book When the late Houston based investment banker Matt Simmons wrote his 2005 book “Twilight in the desert, the coming Saudi oil shock and the World economy” he could not have imagined that Saudi Arabia would be threatened by a pre-dawn drone […]

Why Don’t We Fight Wars Over Carrots?

What are the geopolitics of carrots? It’s an odd question to ask, but one posed by veteran oil analyst Professor Paul Stevens at the LNGgc conference held October 9-10 in London. The point of the question is that carrots do not have geopolitics because they are cheap, abundant and available nearly everywhere. Stevens was comparing […]

How do we feed the world without destroying the planet?

Hunger is the most awful and profound expression of poverty. It exists in every country. It is something that most people can identify with on some perhaps primordial level. The fear of hunger is etched into our DNA, passed down the generations from hungry, scared ancestors. It is in our bones. It is in my […]

IEA Cuts Oil Demand Forecast as Economy Eclipses Saudi Attack

The International Energy Agency cut forecasts for growth in global oil demand, noting that fears of an economic slowdown are overshadowing the loss of supply during last month’s attack on Saudi Arabia. The strike on the kingdom’s production facilities caused the biggest disruption in modern history, halting about 6% of world oil supply, the agency […]

Miracle of ‘fusion’ power grows nearer

Some consider it to be the most complex scientific endeavour in human history — harnessing hydrogen fusion power on a massive scale for the benefit of mankind. If successful, it would represent a revolutionary energy breakthrough, albeit a costly one — US$22.5 billion and counting. The good news is, the reality of fusion-driven energy has moved […]

Soft Paths to Zero

“While reducing emissions should be a priority, it is morally questionable to focus on relatively cheaper emissions reduction without drawdown. This merely shifts the responsibility, and cost, onto the backs of future generations.“     Being still somewhat in the Greenwich Meridian, I got up this morning while it was still dark, grabbed some kombucha […]

Who Owns the Arctic?

In August, President Donald Trump made international headlines when he voiced an interest in buying Greenland, the world’s largest island, which teeters on the edge of the icy Arctic Ocean. As it turns out, Greenland isn’t for sale, and Trump was widely ridiculed for his diplomatic blundering. Yet, many wondered what could be behind this […]

Trump Hasn’t Solved the Pipeline Crisis

A protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Dec. 4, 2016. Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images America has a severe plumbing problem. When it comes to crude oil and natural gas, the country can’t seem to replace its aging pipes or put in new lines to meet market demand on a timely and cost-efficient basis. […]

The Baby Bust and the Global Economy

Growth has been slowing around the developed world — not just in recent months but for decades. One potential reason is that women are having fewer babies. On this week’s Stephanomics, reporter Jeannette Neumann visits a region in Spain with the lowest fertility rate in Europe to find out why this is happening and what it […]

Can American Values Survive in a Chinese World?

The People’s Republic of China bounds from strength to strength. Every year sees increases in its wealth and power relative to the world. But what do its leaders hope to achieve with their newfound clout? China’s Vision of Victory, Jonathan D.T. Ward, Atlas Publishing, 316 pp., $25, March 2019 This is the topic of Jonathan […]

National Geographic Warns Billions “Face Shortages Of Food And Clean Water” Over Next 30 Years

A lot of people out there don’t like when I write these kinds of articles, because they directly contradict the false narrative that humanity has an extremely bright future ahead.  Sadly, the truth is that our planet and everything that lives on it is rapidly deteriorating. And I am not talking about the false environmentalism […]

Saudi Arabia’s economic realities after oil attacks

The attacks on Saudi oil facilities at Khurais and Abqaiq last month revealed devastating weaknesses of domestic defense and leadership on the Saudi side, fissures within the Saudi-US relationship and an abdication of the US security umbrella. An act of war and an attack on global energy infrastructure has been met with a muted response from […]

Oil Rises as Iran Tanker Attack Reignites Mideast Risk

Oil jumped to the highest in two weeks after the U.S. and China reached a partial agreement following trade talks and as an Iranian oil tanker was struck. Futures in New York climbed 2.2% on Friday and the global benchmark Brent closed above $60 a barrel for the first time in nearly two weeks. The […]

Aramco: We’ll Fully Recover From Attacks By End-November

Aramco will have its oil production capacity fully restored happen by the end of next month, chief executive and chairman Amin Nasser said at an industry event in London as quoted by CNBC. A report by Reuters from late September had quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying the Saudi major had restored its […]

OPEC September 2019 Oil Production

Data for the OPEC charts below were taken from the October OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report OPEC 14 crude oil production was down1,318,000 barrels per day in September. Most of that decline was due to the Iranian attack on the Saudi oil complex at Abqaiq. Algeria is in slow decline. Angola is also in slow […]

China’s Worrying Oil Vulnerability

1. China’s Middle East vulnerability – China is the largest oil importer in the world and its vulnerability lies in its dependence on oil flows from the Middle East. China’s oil imports from the region have surged from 0.33 mb/d in 1998 to 4 mb/d in 2018. – The Abqaiq attack highlighted the stakes. “With […]

Trade Talks Loom Over Oil

(Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) – S. oil exports increased from an average of 966,000 bpd in the first half of 2018 to an average of 2.9 mb/d in the same period this year. – In June 2019, the U.S. set an average monthly record high of 3.2 […]

Peak energy, peak oil, and the rise of renewables: An executive’s guide to the global energy system

The McKinsey Podcast Global energy demand is headed toward a plateau over the next ten to 20 years, as the world focuses on electrification, energy efficiency, and more service-driven economic growth.

China’s development, governance set model for world

China’s remarkable political and socioeconomic achievements have created a development model illuminating to the whole world, said a Cypriot senior politician. “Despite the huge size of the country and its people, it has managed to improve the living conditions of its citizens to a very high degree,” Antros Kyprianou, secretary general of the AKEL, the […]

Peak oil demand is now

The theory of “peak oil demand” was a techno-utopian response to the supposed debunking of the peak oil theory first set out by M. King Hubbert in the 1950s.  Hubbert’s simple observation was that oil fields tend to reach peak production roughly 40 years after they are discovered.  Since most of the oil in the […]

Russia dumps U.S. dollar: Country’s top oil producer chooses euro for all future deals

One of the world’s top oil producers and exporters, Russia’s Rosneft, is ditching the U.S. dollar for euros when it comes to all future deals. The change in the default currency for all new exports of crude oil and refined products is clearly visible in September’s tender documents published on Rosneft’s website. The switch to […]

Iraq protests: Death toll soars after four days of protests

Image copyright AFP Image caption Violence intensified on Friday, despite the Iraqi prime minister’s appeal for calm The death toll in anti-government protests that have swept Iraq the past five days has soared to at least 70, security and medical sources say. The figure has more than doubled since Friday, as clashes between protesters and […]

Are Russia and Saudi Arabia Still Pumping Too Much Oil?

This year, the oil market has faced some of the worst supply disruptions in recent times and yet prices remain stuck in the $60s. OPEC’s oil production tumbled the most in 16 years last month after the worst-ever attack on Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure temporarily halved its output. Earlier in the summer, Russia’s Druzhba contamination […]

U.S. Oil Reserves and Peak Oil

U.S. Oil Reserves and Peak Oil Trang T. D. Luong Published 2013 DOI:10.5038/2326-3652.4.2.1 Abstract. We use calculus methods to estimate the quantity of U.S. oil reserves. We consider a model that consists of an exponential function with four unknown constants. We fit real oil production data to determine the unknown constants. With the constants determined […]

Fire Engulfs New Saudi High-Speed Rail Station

Online videos showed what appeared to be major structural damage. The station is the centerpiece of a new multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project. A massive fire on Sunday ripped through a new high-speed train station leaving at least five people injured in Saudi Arabia’s coastal city of Jeddah. Videos posted on social media showed black plumes […]

How far is far enough in an emergency?

The world is on fire and no one in power seems able to do anything about it. Natural disasters come in ever greater frequency and intensity, while “climate refugee” is no longer a notional term. Irreversible feedback loops, scientists warn, are rapidly approaching. We have 12 years — or maybe only 18 months. The crisis […]

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