Shale Has Delinked US Oil and Gas Prices

The relationship between crude oil (WTI) and natural gas (Henry Hub) prices has long been an essential one. These two sources of energy are intrinsically linked, and together supply over 60 percent of U.S. and global energy. Especially over the past decade, oil and gas are being produced by the same companies. Even the oil […]

There’s No Tomorrow

A very entertaining and informative animated film about peak oil and energy. A Film by Dermot O’Connor. “The inspiration for the film: in November 2004, on the night of the final Bush/Kerry debate, Professor David Goodstein, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Caltech, gave a public lecture on the subject of Peak Oil and […]

Oil Prices Advance on Iraq Revelation

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude oil prices posted solid gains Wednesday on reports that OPEC member Iraq wants the cartel to raise existing production cuts. “Petroleum markets continue to move back-and-forth remaining in their congestion ranges based upon the latest ‘news of the day,’ whether it be about the U.S.-China trade issues or […]

Will OPEC Really Risk An Oil Price Crash?

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC partners led by Russia, are now nearly two years into their production agreement and are expected to roll-over the accord through the end of June 2020 in order to stabilize crude markets and prices. Their goal has so far been elusive amid faltering demand growth and […]

Russia Opens Giant Gas Link to China

The world’s biggest natural gas exporter and one of the globe’s top consumers of the fuel cemented their energy cooperation on Monday with the launch of Russia’s giant Power of Siberia pipeline to northern China. Gas started flowing toward China through the link, which has become a symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s pivot to the […]

This Is What the Future of Food Looks Like

It’s the year 2050. With a swelling global population and once-abundant resources that are no longer available on the planet, what’s on your plate and lunchboxes is no longer the same. The 2019 you would have never recognised it all. Using technology to plug gaps that exist in the food system, trends spread faster than […]

Why Oil Demand Won’t Follow Coal’s Death Spiral

After a steady rise that lasted nearly 50 years, U.S. coal consumption peaked about a decade ago. Since the peak in 2007, coal consumption in the U.S. has fallen an astounding 44%. US Coal Consumption 1949 to 2019 Robert Rapier There are two primary reasons behind coal’s death spiral. Both were aided by legislation aimed […]

What Can We Learn From Peak Whale Oil?

The energy industry is based on what was once thought of as an inexhaustible natural resource, but over-exploitation and a growing reliance on oil has made extraction more and more costly and difficult as previously abundant areas have run dry. What’s more, in the areas where this natural resource has been depleted, what’s left behind […]

Rethinking Malthus

Of history’s great thinkers, the one most relevant to farmers and ranchers is probably the English demographer Thomas Robert Malthus. He’s famous for doubting that farmers could increase food production fast enough to feed a rapidly rising population. He thought the resulting food shortages would beget famines, diseases and wars, which would eventually reduce population […]

The End of Babies

In the fall of 2015, a rash of posters appeared around Copenhagen. One, in pink letters laid over an image of chicken eggs, asked, “Have you counted your eggs today?” A second — a blue-tinted close-up of human sperm — inquired, “Do they swim too slow?” The posters, part of a campaign funded by the […]

The Future of Food Security

Professor Susanna Hecht (Professor of International History and Associate Faculty at the CIES) and Professor Tim Swanson (Professor of International Economics and Academic Co-Director at the CIES) started the discussion by highlighting how the current food system affects ecosystems and biodiversity. Addressing the challenge of food security will necessarily imply changing how we produce and […]

The Ramifications of Global Oil Demand Hitting a Plateau

Global oil demand will hit a plateau around 2030 as the use of more efficient cars and electric vehicles ends an expansion that dominated the past century, the International Energy Agency predicts. The prospect of “peak demand” has spread in the oil industry in recent years as countries seek to avert catastrophic climate change by […]

How big a problem is idling?

Idling your car — at home, in a drive-thru line, at a red light — is environmentally harmful, and also largely unnecessary. How bad is idling? When a gasoline-powered vehicle is idling, it is in its least efficient mode. It’s doing nothing but sitting there, burning fuel and sending emissions into the atmosphere. Natural Resources […]

Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence?

The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels. The mist shower, a satisfying but forgotten technology which uses very little water and energy, could be a solution. Designer Jonas Görgen developed a do-it-yourself kit to convert almost any shower into a mist shower and sent me one to try […]

OPEC Braces For Drastic Drop In Oil Demand

OPEC admitted that demand for its oil over the next few years could be drastically weaker than it previously thought, due to a combination of a weakening economy, rising supply elsewhere, and pressure from climate activists. In its World Oil Outlook, OPEC said that demand for its oil may only reach 32.8 million barrels per […]

Is China Facing A Natural Gas Crisis?

1. China’s gas needs growing – China’s consumption of natural gas is rising faster than its production, with the gap met by rising volumes of imports. In 2018, imports accounted for 45 percent of China’s gas supply, up from 10 percent in 2010, according to the EIA. – China has tried to scale up shale […]

The first map of America’s food supply chain is mind-boggling

My team at the University of Illinois just developed the first high-resolution map of the U.S. food supply chain. Our map is a comprehensive snapshot of all food flows between counties in the U.S.—grains, fruits and vegetables, animal feed, and processed food items. To build the map, we brought together information from eight databases, including the Freight […]

The oil age is coming to a close

The oil industry faces an uncertain future. The world is rapidly waking up to the severity and immediacy of the threat from climate change. At the same time, electric vehicles are getting cheap enough to compete with internal-combustion engines. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects electrics to begin taking over in about a decade: Meanwhile, concerns […]

Megadam: ‘Obsolete Technology’ Wreaks Havoc across the Americas

It’s a technology that’s been all but abandoned in wealthy countries, where costs began outpacing benefits decades ago. Yet a global boom in major dam construction, mainly in developing countries, is currently underway, with an estimated 3,700 now under construction or in the planning stages. Latin America is ground zero for much of this development, with nearly 400 […]

The Myth That People Work Harder Under Capitalism

In the not so distant past, people didn’t work hard, but not for the reasons the ahistorical or socialists think. There were no happy peasants laboring a few hours in the fields and spending the rest of the day in leisure. They were starving and had no energy to work hard. Far from an idyllic […]

Venezuela’s Water System is Collapsing

Fetching water from a mountainside in the Venezuelan capital Caracas.CreditCreditMeridith Kohut for The New York Times By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera Oct. 19, 2019, 10:13 a.m. ET     The brick shack on the outskirts of Venezuela’s capital is crowded with tubs, jugs and buckets. The water they hold must last the family of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Delusion and Danger of Infinite Economic Growth

“Fairytales of eternal economic growth.” That’s how climate activist Greta Thunberg depicted the dominant mindset at the United Nations last week. “How dare you,” she said, admonishing them for “empty words” instead of concrete actions to preserve the planet. She’s right. One of the reasons nations fail to address climate change is the belief that […]

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