PetroChina To Impose Temporary Halt On US LNG Purchases

Energy traders were on alert when Reuters reported last week that Chinese energy giant, PetroChina – the world’s first company to hit (and lose) a $1 trillion market cap long before Apple – was in advanced discussions with Qatar to purchase liquefied natural gas (LNG) under short- and long-term agreements. The superficial explanation was that […]

My Plastic Fantastic Love Affair

  Her neon mouth with a bleeding talk smile Is nothing but electric sign You could say she has an individual style She’s a part of a colorful time Super-sealed lady, chrome-color clothes You wear ’cause you have no other But I suppose no one knows You’re my plastic fantastic lover Your rattlin’ cough never […]

Ten Years After the Crash, We Are Still Living in the World It Brutally Remade

If you were standing in the smoldering ashes of 9/11 trying to peer into the future, you might have been overjoyed to discover this happy snapshot of 2018: There has been no subsequent major terrorist attack on America from Al Qaeda or its heirs. American troops are not committed en masse to any ground war. […]

$90 Oil Is A Very Real Possibility

U.S. sanctions on Iran could push oil prices up to $90 per barrel later this year. The first round of U.S. sanctions on Iran just took effect, a slew of measures targeting Iran’s currency and its financial sector. The U.S. sanctioned the trading of bank notes issued by the Iranian government, the trade of gold […]

Hyperloop transport moving closer to reality

In India, Virgin has partnered with the state of Maharashtra to build the world’s first hyperloop track. The ultra-fast rail system will link Mumbai and Pune and help to modernise the South Asian nation’s transport infrastructure Mumbai, India’s largest city. The proposed route will allow for ultra-fast travel between Mumbai and Pune, via the soon-to-be-completed […]

Energy Slaves, “Hard Work,” and the Real Sources of Wealth

Check out this brilliant ‘long-form comic’ by Stuart McMillen: Energy Slaves.  Click here or on the URL above. Many Canadians and Americans struggle financially.  Millions are unemployed.  Many others live paycheque-to-paycheque.  A 2017 report by the US Federal Reserve Board found that 40 percent of US citizens couldn’t cover an unexpected expense of $400 without selling something or borrowing […]

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

So what would the decline of America look like? I don’t ask the question because I think it’s happening (yet?), but because even the most inveterate optimist should be interested in the dangers, if only to ward them off. Here’s the cleanest tale of hypothetical decline I could come up with, keeping away from the […]

Visualizing How America Uses Its Land In 13 Illustrations

Bloomberg is out with a fascinating look at how America uses its land for various purposes in the lower 48 contiguous states, based on extensive data published in 2017 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to feed […]

Exxon’s Shocking Supply And Demand Predictions

  Here are the latest oil production numbers from the EIA. All data is in thousand barrels per day unless otherwise noted. (Click to enlarge) The USA through May 2018. The upward surge has stalled for the last two months. U.S. production was down 30,000 bpd in May. (Click to enlarge) It is a little […]

The threat to oil is not just electric cars, but self-driving electric cars

The phrase “peak oil” was coined to explain when the world’s supply of oil would start running out. Over the past decade, however, the meaning has shifted from supply to demand—consumption of oil may dwindle out before resources do. What changed? The rise of electric cars means that there will come a time when more […]

The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan

The small satellite network, which keeps global computer systems from freaking out, is shockingly vulnerable to all kinds of interference. Duke Buckner was enjoying his breakfast at the Renaissance Tel Aviv Hotel, looking out on the city marina, on the day that time stuttered. Buckner oversees marketing and business development for Microsemi Corp., an American […]

Addicts and Gangsters

“The rial is now at an all-time low, with an inflation rate of 147 percent. Addicts are dropping like flies.“   These past few weeks we have been talking about how hard it is to end our addiction to the fossil growth economy that is killing us all. Over many years we’ve been getting updates […]

3 Things Happening RIGHT NOW That Could Wreak Havoc on the Economy

by Daisy Luther Anyone with a price book will agree that the cost of nearly everything has been steadily going up. Unfortunately, wages are not increasing at the same rate. And to quote Bachman-Turner Overdrive, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. There are three events happening in the economy right now that could, alone, cause the […]

We Are Exceeding Earth’s Carrying Capacity

IN HIS ARTICLE, “The Earth’s Carrying Capacity for Human Life is Not Fixed,” Ted Nordhaus, co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based energy and environment think tank, seeks to enlist readers in his optimistic vision of the future. It’s a future in which there are many more people on the planet and each enjoys a […]

What is the price of oil and why is it rising?

The price of oil has been on a roller-coaster ride over the past few years, plummeting from its 2014 peak before recovering – all with huge consequences for the global economy and especially oil-producing states. The threat of war between the US and Iran continues to drive oil prices up amid fears supplies could be […]

The bulls are wrong — here’s why oil could plummet to $45

The oil price rebound that has buoyed many embattled crude producers may not last. Ed Morse, managing director and global head of commodities research at Wall Street bank Citigroup Inc. and one of the world’s top oil forecasters, believes Brent oil prices – which are currently trading near US$72.50 per barrel and have tried to […]

How Cars Divide America

Urbanists have long looked at cars as the scourge of great places. Jane Jacobs identified the automobile as the “chief destroyer of American communities.” Cars not only clog our roads and cost billions of dollars in time wasted commuting, they are a terrible killer. They caused more than 40,000 deaths in 2017, including of some […]

You Can’t Stop A Wave But You Can Surf-3

“The struggle with any addict is to produce permanent change.“   Part Three Just when things seem most dire, and there is no possible escape, we catch another faint flicker of hope. In my two previous installments I laid out the predicament. By now anyone who has followed this blog for a while (and a […]

Prepare For The Imminent Economic Collapse 2018

Shocking video of the coming Economic Collapse and the next Great Depression. There have not been so many trouble signs for the global economy in a past few months. Analysts are sounding the alarm about junk bond defaults, the smart money is getting out of stocks at an astounding rate, mortgage rates are absolutely skyrocketing, […]

America’s Grids Are Not Ready For Summer Heatwaves

Los Angeles has had blackouts and soaring electricity prices. Electricity prices across the nation have jumped to as much as double for late summer. The Secretary of Energy is calling for subsidies to make otherwise noneconomic coal and nuclear power plants available to the grid. The taxpayers of New York have stepped up with a […]

Saudi Arabia Says It Won’t Oversupply the Global Oil Market

Saudi Arabia rejected concerns that it’s planning to oversupply global oil markets and said it will actually trim crude exports next month. Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to cool rallying prices, the kingdom bolstered production by the most in three years last month, pumping almost 10.5 million barrels a day. Yet it signaled […]

Global Population Growth Ceased In 1988…Population Has Only Grown Older Since Then

The world stopped growing about 1988… and has only grown older since. Global births, per five year periods, according to the UN.  Births and UN medium and low variant estimates through 2040…plus my best estimate of the most likely births.  Despite the significantly larger (older) total population, births continue to languish and appear set to decline.  Since […]

The Future of Oil Demand: Peak, Plateau, or Plummet?

Projecting future levels of global oil demand is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge. With the advent of competitively priced alternatives to oil and changing policy prerogatives, some analysts have speculated that oil demand will experience a peak in the near future. This high level of uncertainty for future levels of demand has important implications for […]

Chinese Oil Demand Growth Could Slow Down Soon

Oil demand growth in the world’s biggest oil importer—China—is at risk of slowing down, at least in the coming months.   Higher oil prices play a role in this, but the main culprit is a new tighter tax regime on independent Chinese refiners, which is already choking the refining margins and profits of the so-called […]

You Can’t Stop A Wave But You Can Surf

  “A more prosperous way down would be to work at community scale“ Part Two According to both Jimmy Carter and Kris De Decker, whom we quoted in Part One, we can only solve energy poverty and energy decadence if we manage to decouple human need satisfaction from energy intensive ‘need satisfiers.’ “By equating what […]

This Oil Price Crash Was Just A Correction

The oil market is “stretched to the limit” despite the fact that OPEC+ agreed to ramp up production following their meeting last month, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA said that the increased supply from Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies and Russia is “very welcome,” given the series of outages reported around the […]

Gail Tverberg: The world’s weird self-organizing economy

Why is it so difficult to make accurate long-term economic forecasts for the world economy? There are many separate countries involved, each with a self-organizing economy made up of businesses, consumers, governments, and laws. These individual economies together create a single world economy, which again is self-organizing. Self-organizing economies don’t work in a convenient linear […]

Speculation About $150 Oil And The (Inevitable) Rise Of Deep Water Companies

As this column goes to press, the world oil price is well north of $70 a barrel, a long way from the nadir of $30 a mere 30 months ago. So the oil forecaster’s parlor game is again in full swing. Will we see a return to the $150 barrel, the peak last experienced in […]

Despite renewables gains, gas leads new US generation

Dive Brief: Despite the rise of renewable energy and the struggles of older plants such as coal, the United States’ energy infrastructure remains dominated by fossil fuels, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) May infrastructure update. About 2.1 GW of new gas capacity came online in May, according to the report, compared with […]

Bernstein: Oil May Jump Past $150 On Chronic Underinvestment

A supply shortfall is lurking should major oil companies continue to underinvest in exploring for new oil reserves, and this “chronic underinvestment” is setting the stage for the next super-cycle that could see oil prices soar to $150 a barrel or more, analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co said on Friday. Investors clamoring for cash returns […]

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