How Circular is the Circular Economy?

The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without destruction or waste. However, the concept only focuses on a small part of total resource use and does not take into account the laws of thermodynamics. Illustration: Diego Marmolejo. Introducing the Circular Economy The circular economy has become, […]

China Is Expected to Become World’s Biggest Natural Gas Buyer by 2040

China, the driver of global demand, is forecast to become the world’s largest gas-buying country with net imports approaching the level of the European Union by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency’s the World Energy Outlook. China already overtook South Korea as second-largest LNG importer last year and is on track to surpass Japan. […]

There will be an oil shortage in the 2020s, Goldman Sachs says

An oil shortage is coming says Goldman Sachs, because firms cannot fully invest in future production. Global oil majors are increasingly looking to invest in lower-carbon areas of the energy sector, as they react to pressure for cleaner energy, both from government policy and investors. “In the 2020’s we are going to have a clear […]

WTI Drops Below $60

Crude oil futures declined again Friday, but the key natural gas benchmark got a late-week boost from a Canadian cold blast. The December futures price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil spent part of Friday below $60 a barrel but managed to settle above that threshold. After peaking at $60.79 and bottoming out at […]

Oil Trades Near $62

Oil was steady after eight days of losses as investors weighed the potential outcome of an OPEC meeting this weekend against a bigger-than-expected gain in American crude stockpiles. Futures in New York were little changed, after an 8.8 percent drop since Oct. 26. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies may discuss the […]

Why we get bad diagnoses for the world’s energy-economy problems

The world economy seems to be seriously ill. The problem is not overly high oil prices, but that does not rule out energy as being a major underlying problem. Two of the symptoms of the economy’s malaise are slow wage growth and increasing wage disparity. Tariffs are being added as solutions to these issues. Radical […]

So Much for King Hubbard’s “Peak Oil” Theory

When M. King Hubbard concluded in 1956 that the world would shortly run out of oil, his theory was adopted by environmentalists and government meddlers as the basis for interference in the energy business. Hubbard’s theory initially predicted that U.S. crude oil production would peak at around 1970. Revisions to the theory pushed the peak […]

Hope from Havana

Where I am staying in Havana there is no internet. There is an international hotel within walking distance where you can buy minutes for a few CUCs. Internet access, like travel for USAnians, was looking promising not too long ago as Cuba and the US embarked upon a slow reconciliation process. Hotel and restaurant developers […]

Venezuelans Face Gasoline Shortages

Cars, motorcycles and buses wrapped around Caracas’ gas stations earlier this week as oil production and refining becomes increasingly erratic in the former petro giant. The fuel shortages have expanded across the country as Petroleos de Venezuela SA’s refineries run at the lowest rates seen this year amid a lack of crude oil and as […]

Dr. Mike Joy on Peak Oil

Energy makes the economy go round Dr Mike Joy tackles some disturbing truths about our reliance on oil, suggesting how we might transition to a ‘de-carbonised world’   Newsroom,co.nz, 30 Octoer, 2018 How many barrels of oil does it take to power the economy? Far from the punchline of a joke, the answer outlined by […]

US Far From Zero Iran Oil Exports Target

While a fresh wave of US sanctions with the purpose of driving Iranian oil exports down to zero is looming, the White House is still far from that target, as Tehran was still selling up to 1.9 million barrels per day of crude in September, a leading business website reported. In a report on Tuesday, […]

Heinberg: Our Bonus Decade

“The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as […]

Fear and Loathing in the Global Middle Class

The lifting of billions of humans out of poverty is one of the great achievements of our age and should be celebrated. However, this shift at times increases the chances of civil strife and other serious problems. My Brookings and Georgetown colleague (a two-fer!), Raj Desai, assesses the rise of a global middle class and […]

We are Entering a New Era for Oil

The oil market has been in an interesting period since at least 2014. In the years prior, many had been worried about the concept of peak oil, or the idea that the world was past its peak output of oil and that supply would grow ever tighter. Then the shale boom happened and the world […]

The World Has Reached Peak Chicken, Peak Rice, And Peak Milk

We still haven’t reached peak oil. But peak milk happened in 2004, peak soybeans in 2009, and peak chicken in 2006. Rice peaked in 1988. A new study published in Ecology and Society explains that 21 key resources that humans rely on–mostly food–have already passed their peak rate of production. “Peak,” in this case, doesn’t […]

Peak Oil or Peak Demand?

Following the dawn of the oil industry in the 1800s, demand for oil steadily grew. Initially driven by demand for kerosene as an illuminant, the world’s thirst for oil accelerated with the mass adoption of the internal combustion engine. But the demise of the oil industry has been predicted throughout its history. A 1909 newspaper […]

A Psychologist Explains Why Billionaires Are Building Bunkers For The End Of Days

Many of the world’s richest seem to earnestly believe that some kind of apocalyptic “event” [3] is coming, and have prepared accordingly. You might have read about this before — such as in the New Yorker’s deep dive [4] back in January 2017 — but billionaire doomsday preppers are back in the news again thanks […]

The Coming Inflation Threat: The Worst Of Both Worlds

Inflation is a funny thing: we feel it virtually every day, but we’re told it doesn’t exist—the official inflation rate is around 2.5% over the past few years, a little higher when energy prices are going up and a little lower when energy prices are going down. Historically, 2.5% is about as low as inflation […]

Goldman Sachs: Oil Unlikely To Reach $100

  Crude oil is unlikely to reach US$100 a barrel as various analysts have warned, Goldman Sachs’ chief of commodities Jeffrey Currie told S&P Global Platts in an interview. This is not the first time the analyst has countered the dominant sentiment: in September, Currie also said the chances of Brent hitting US$100 were slim […]

$400 oil isn’t THAT crazy

Last weekend, after Saudi Arabia threatened to cut the world off from its vast oil supply and President Trump puffed his chest in response, one prominent exec from the Kingdom painted a particularly gloomy picture of our energy future. “If U.S. sanctions are imposed on Saudi Arabia, we will be facing an economic disaster that […]

At $80 a barrel, BP says oil prices are “unhealthy for the world”

“The oil prices in the world are too high and it’s unhealthy for the world,” said Bob Dudley, the chief executive officer of British oil-and-gas giant BP. Some emerging market economies such as South Africa, India, and Turkey were suffering from their highest-ever prices of gasoline because the market price of oil—which is traded in […]

Huge Iranian oil armada heads to China before US sanctions kick in

An unprecedented volume of Iranian crude oil is set to arrive at China’s northeast port of Dalian this month and in early November before US sanctions on Iran take effect. More than 20 million barrels of oil have been shipped to Dalian by the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), Reuters reports, citing an unnamed Iranian […]

Food Supply Won’t Meet Future Demand

The gap is growing between global food demand in the future and the projection on the rate of growth for agricultural production, a new report shows. The 2018 Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Index, put together by the Global Harvest Initiative, continues to highlight that food production is not growing fast enough to sustainably feed the […]

Oil Demand Is Cooling. Just Don’t Expect Prices to Follow

The world’s two big intergovernmental energy groups have updated their outlooks for the oil market to the end of next year – and they don’t make comfortable reading. High prices, trade wars and weakening currencies are taking their toll on demand growth. That doesn’t necessarily mean that prices will fall. Concern that there isn’t enough spare […]

The World’s Fragile Economic Condition – Part 2

The world economy can appear to be operating quite well but can be hiding a major problem that causes it to be fragile. My presentation The World’s Fragile Economic Condition (PDF) explains why we should expect financial problems if energy consumption stops growing sufficiently rapidly. In fact, a global sell off in the equity markets, such […]

A Few Things You Probably didn’t Know about William Nordhaus, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

The “base case” scenario of “The Limits to Growth” 1972 report to the Club of Rome. The strong non-linearity of the behavior of complex systems — including the global economy — is nearly impossible to understand for people trained in economics. William Nordhaus, the recent Nobel prize winner in economics, is no exception to the […]

IEA: Expensive Energy Is Threatening Economic Growth

Expensive energy is back and it is threatening global economic growth, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Oil Market Report on Friday, joining other organizations like the International Monetary (IMF) and OPEC that also expressed this week concerns about mounting challenges to economic and oil demand growth. Brent Crude prices have been holding […]

The global economic impact of $100 oil ‘isn’t trivial’: Here are the likely winners and losers

Oil prices have surged more than 25 percent this year, prompting investors to bet that a return to triple-digits could be just around the corner. President Donald Trump’s administration is scheduled to impose crude sanctions against Iran from November 4. “Overall we would put an oil shock in the top three of our concerns over […]

China Replaces Venezuela Oil With Canada Imports

Chinese refiners are buying more and more very cheap heavy Canadian crude oil to make up for the dwindling supply of Venezuela’s heavy grades as China’s road construction sector—a key consumer of the heavy oil’s bitumen yield—is booming. China purchased 1.58 million barrels of heavy Canadian crude oil for loading in September, up by nearly […]

Major world cities are making cars a thing of the past

Friday, October 12, 2018, 5:03 PM – As global population increases, so does the number of cars in our city streets and roads. Engineers, policy makers, scientists, and urban planners around the globe have been brainstorming ways in which cities can be more pedestrian-friendly while lowering CO2 emissions. A good number of large cities worldwide […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• How Circular is the Circular Economy?
• Temperature of China’s ‘artificial sun’ reaches new heights
• China Is Expected to Become World’s Biggest Natural Gas Buyer by 2040
• US Expected to Produce Half of Global Oil and Gas Output by 2025
• In OPEC’s Heartland, Billions Are Spent to Boost Oil Capacity

• Tree Teachings: How Fossil Fuels and Climate Change Are Altering the Global Forest
• The Twilight of the Intelligentsia
• Oil Could Hit $100 If Supply Crunch Worsens
• So Much for King Hubbard’s “Peak Oil” Theory
• Iran able to sell as much oil as it needs despite US pressure
• Army Major Exposes The US Military’s Empire Of Secrecy