The Next Ten Years In Oil Markets

An eventful 2019 wraps up a decade of turmoil in oil markets, in which Brent Crude prices fluctuated from as high as US$125 a barrel in 2012 to as low as US$30 per barrel in January 2016. Geopolitical turmoil, economic growth, soaring U.S. shale production, and OPEC’s various policies to try to set the trends […]

World’s power demand requires fossil fuel energy

Approximately 40% of the world’s electricity is produced by burning coal. Coal is the world’s reliable energy foundation, and it’s expected to remain the leading fuel for power generation well into the future. Energy from coal power increases productivity. It builds and illuminates schools, cleanses water, powers farm machinery, drives robot assemblers, stores and moves […]

The Year in Doom 2019

“Violence is as American as cherry pie.”  –H. Rap Brown​   2019 has been a year of notable accomplishments and disasters: China became the first country to gain access to the far side of the moon, thus announcing itself in the space race, the Ebola epidemic continued in the Congo, birds and insects continue to die […]

Chris Martenson: Good Riddance To The ‘Twenty-Teens’

This is my last report from the good old “twenty-teens”. In some respects, they didn’t turn out at all like I thought they would. But in many others, exactly as predicted. I badly underestimated the system’s ability to perpetuate obvious frauds and swindles without causing a social rebellion. And worse, to watch so many otherwise […]

Your electric car and vegetarian diet are pointless virtue signaling in the fight against climate change

Switch to energy-efficient light bulbs, wash your clothes in cold water, eat less meat, recycle more, and buy an electric car: We are being bombarded with instructions from climate campaigners, environmentalists and the media about the everyday steps we all must take to tackle climate change. Unfortunately, these appeals trivialize the challenge of global warming, […]

Dennis Meadows: The Limits To Growth

Fifty years ago, an international team of researchers was commissioned by the Club of Rome to build a computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth on a finite planet. In 1971, its findings were first released in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro, and later published in 1972 under the title The Limits To Growth. […]

The decade that blew up energy predictions

America’s energy sources, like booming oil and crumbling coal, have defied projections and historical precedents over the last decade. Why it matters: It shows how change can happen rapidly and unexpectedly, even in an industry known to move gradually and predictably. With a new decade upon us, let’s look back at the last one’s biggest, […]

Apocalyptic Thinking Is Wrong

“Let’s not teach our children that apocalyptic thinking is right thinking,” says Laurence Siegel. Apocalypticism “has always been wrong as a forecast, and it will continue to be wrong.” Siegel is a business consultant and the director of research at the CFA Institute Research Foundation. In Fewer, Richer, Greener, he argues convincingly that humanity has […]

Why Oil No Longer Rules The Stock Market

Things are looking pretty good for the average American investor at the moment, with the S&P 500 still taking out new highs and a 27.3 percent YTD gain rivalled only by Russia’s RTS Index 39.2 percent return over the timeframe on the global arena. Rising stock valuations are awesome for investors holding stocks in their […]

Our Genetic Timebomb

“The yaksha asked: “What is the greatest surprise?” Yudhisthira replied: “People die every day, making us aware that men are mortal. Yet we live, work, play, plan, etc., as if assuming we are immortal. What is more surprising than that? — The Mahabharata“ Every few days or weeks, Rob Mielcarski posts to his Un-Denial blog […]

Why oil refining is a critical part of the energy industry

It does not have the glamour of wildcatting in distant frontiers, nor the customer visibility of petrol stations, but oil refining is a critical part of the industry. It turns the gloopy black crude oil into the carefully tailored products, from petrol, diesel and jet fuel, to lubricants and feedstocks. A key part of Middle […]

Kunstler: Christmas in Flyover Land

Last year, a local guy started renovating a restaurant on Main Street that has been shuttered for at least fifteen years. He’d retired from the army and started a company that made a fortune clearing landmines in faraway lands where US nation-building plans went awry. Wasn’t that a ripe business opportunity! He’s from here and […]

Food for Stuff: 21st Century Land Use

According to projections by the UN, the global population could surpass 9 billion by 2050. That’s a whole lot of mouths to feed. Now, with about 7 billion people on earth, 800 million remain undernourished and a staggering 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. Simultaneously, global wealth per capita is increasing, fueling higher demand for meat, […]

Dave Collum’s 2019 Year In Review

Authored by David B. Collum, Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology – Cornell University (Email: [email protected], Twitter: @DavidBCollum), “I hope David comes to his senses.” ~ Nassim Taleb (@nntaleb), best-selling author and Professor at NYU Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This […]

Caitlin Johnstone: Why Everything Is F**ked

We all slid out of the womb an itty bitty helpless information sponge into a world full of mentally ill giants who couldn’t wait to fill our tiny skulls with all of their inner demons. And now everything, understandably, is fucked. That’s basically our whole entire situation in a nutshell. You can add on as […]

Scientific Models and Myths: What Is the Difference?

Most people seem to think, “The difference between models and myths is that models are scientific, and myths are the conjectures of primitive people who do not have access to scientific thinking and computers. With scientific models, we have moved far beyond myths.” It seems to me that the truth is quite different from this. History […]

How Clean Is Natural Gas?

When former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in 2013 that the natural gas boom was helping America fight climate change, not everyone was convinced, with methane leaks cited as cause for concern. As it turns out, those concerns might be warranted, according to new research that takes a lot of the green out of our […]

Monetizing US Shale Deposits

On today’s doubleheader episode of Double Down, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert talk to Chris Cook about the 2020 energy outlook. As  Saudi Arabia takes 1.5% of Saudi Aramco public, DOUBLE DOWN asks former energy market regulator, Chris Cook, whether or not this is the sign of peak oil. He says that, in fact, it […]

The Worrying Truth About Russia’s Oil Industry

The widespread adaptation of the combustion engine at the start of the 20th century propelled oil into becoming the world’s most important commodity. Resource-rich countries such as Russia were the beneficiaries of the new global energy order. Its predecessors, the Soviet Union and Imperial Russia, were already among the first and most important producers of […]

Why Collapse is not always a bad thing: the New Book by Ugo Bardi

New book provides an analysis of the process of failure and collapse, and outlines principles that help us manage these challenges in our lives Heidelberg | New York, 12 December 2019 Image: © Springer Nature Everyone experiences collapse in their lives: you may lose your job, get sick, or a close friend or family member […]

Explaining Peak Oil the Easy Way

(This translates a slightly different article previously posted in Spansih at the author’s blog, The Oil Crash. Translation by Fabricants de Futur.) A reader has written to me to say that she does not completely understand if we have a serious problem with oil or not, and I have written her a long explanation which […]

Could Low Energy Growth Lead To A Recession?

Many people have the impression that recessions come from financial missteps, such as the US subprime loan fiasco. If energy is involved at all, the problem comes from high oil prices as supply becomes inadequate to meet demand. The real situation is different. We already seem to be on the road toward a new crisis; […]

Our Final Exam in Madrid

“Why are we hauling giant container shiploads of Christmas decorations from Vietnam to England? Don’t the English know how to make decorations?“ Greta Thunberg, after image by Adam Ferris At this writing, negotiators struggle to get the most out of a relatively ambition-free meeting of the parties to the UN’s Paris Agreement. They’ll burn the […]

Are We In Peak Oil Demand?

Estimates are widely varied, so how can we even begin to answer this important question? No one seems to agree just exactly when POD (peak oil demand) will occur. Let’s look at some of the projections by major institutions in this regard. This is just a sampling to indicate the wide discrepancy in views. OPEC […]

Is ‘Decarbonization’ a Fool’s Errand?

The great fossil fuel hysteria of 2019 is remarkable as much for the rapidity with which the fervor has swept the landscape as for the long-term consequences it promises to wreak. Popular madnesses with a financial twist are nothing new, dating back to the era of tulip-bulb mania. This region, in its short history, has […]

Aramco Reaches $2T Goal

Saudi Aramco jumped for a second day, pushing the oil giant’s value beyond the $2 trillion mark that alienated global investors and potentially making further share sales abroad more difficult. The stock climbed by the daily 10% limit to 38.7 riyals at the open in Riyadh before trimming gains. It rose 9.4% to 38.50 riyals […]

Saudi Aramco shares surge 10% as historic IPO begins trading

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest initial public offering (IPO), surged past expectations as it debuted on the country’s stock exchange on Wednesday morning. Shares of the state-owned oil company rose to 35.2 Saudi riyals ($9.38) from 32 riyals in early deals in Riyadh, up 10% and hitting their daily limit. The price gives it a valuation […]

Blowout: Another Side of the Deepwater Horizon Story

In November 2012 Bob Kaluza was in Houston meeting with the defense lawyers that his employer, the British oil giant BP, had hired on his behalf. Two and a half years earlier, Kaluza had been one of two BP supervisors on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig the night it exploded, and he was worried that […]

The World Is Getting Better. It’s Just That No One Tells You About It.

A special Morning Jolt today, as I try to run through a long but by no means complete list of good news from the past year that was astoundingly under-reported and discussed, particularly when compared to presidential tweets, discussions of which pop culture offerings weren’t woke enough, glowing profiles of the eighth or ninth-most popular […]

Episode 22: Stop Flaring Natural Gas

by Simon Lack Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:07:23 Subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | Spotify In this week’s podcast, Simon Lack explains why flaring of natural gas needs to stop

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