We have reached, I would suppose, a period of complacency in the perception of the coming of Peak Oil. We are in a period where, as recent posts have shown, the promises of bountiful supply are built on increasingly tenuous propositions. Unfortunately, the evolving story of the mess t...
Posted by Leanan on May 25, 2013 - 11:27am New Computer Attacks Traced to Iran, Officials Say SAN FRANCISCO — American officials and corporate security experts examining a new wave of potentially destructive computer attacks striking American corporations, especially energy firms, say...
Developed countries worldwide are facing enormous financial costs associated with maintaining and ultimately replacing their aging energy and transportation infrastructure of pipelines, refineries, power plants, electric transmission lines, roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, etc. Given th...
Out of sight, out of mind means deep trouble when it comes to the reserves of freshwater stored underground. New numbers are out on the rate of groundwater depletion around the globe, and if they hold up to further scrutiny, the world is almost certainly facing a future of food shorta...
Posted by Leanan on May 20, 2013 - 10:22am Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust Vast stretches of Texas farmland lying over the aquifer no longer support irrigation. In west-central Kansas, up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gon...
Our energy system is evolving due to depletion of cheap fossil fuels and the need for carbon emission constraints . Government and business are under pressure to tackle the energy challenges of rising energy costs, energy security, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We witness rap...
News of the future was, in my youth, something that one found by crossing the palm of a lady in a dark tent with a piece or two of silver (or the modern equivalent) at one of the fairs that came to town. Such opportunities still exist, with all the caveats that existed back then likel...
The Energy Department gave a terminal near Freeport, Tex., permission Friday to ship liquefied natural gas to Japan, providing a new outlet for rising U.S. production of shale gas despite qualms of environmentalists and many domestic manufacturers. The permit marks another step in the...
Posted by Leanan on May 17, 2013 - 10:30am Avoiding the 'Energy Abyss' John Hofmeister doesn’t call it ‘peak oil,’ instead he calls it the ‘energy abyss,’ the point at which the global economy ceases to grow because the oil industry can no longer meet demand. Hofmeister is the former ...
Oil Shockwaves From U.S. Shale Boom Seen by IEA Ousting OPEC The U.S. shale boom will send “shockwaves” through the global oil trade over the next five years, benefiting the nation’s refiners and displacing OPEC as the driver of supply growth, the IEA said. North America will provide ...
Posted by Leanan on May 13, 2013 - 10:35am Old Technology Fuels New Energy Boom What’s happening today is not a new-technology revolution; it’s an evolution of new applications for existing technology. Oil companies are doing things that they’ve been doing for decades more efficiently...
Tech Talk - the dangers of complacency Posted by Heading Out on May 12, 2013 - 1:20pm Topic: Supply/Production Tags: bp energy outlook , citigroup , energy efficiency , exxonmobil , fuel efficiency , natural gas demand , shell , vehicle miles driven [list all tags ] Perceptions based,...
More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington state and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed air and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly pristine Pacific atoll was branded "the most contaminated p...
Posted by Leanan on May 10, 2013 - 10:28am At Least 9 More Decades for North Sea Oil Oil and gas production in the UK North Sea can continue until the end of this century provided the right government policy decisions are made, according to Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing. ..."I...
Posted by Leanan on May 8, 2013 - 10:57am Shale Oil and Gas: The Contrarian View No one is questioning the fact that we have either reached or will soon reach “peak oil”; that existing fields are being depleted at the rapid rate of 7 percent a year, and that the search is on for “unco...
Posted by Leanan on May 6, 2013 - 8:31am The Oil and Gold Booms Are Over The Malthusian specter of rising demand and shrinking supply has been replaced by a new realization that, for most commodities, demand is flat and supply is rising fast. Oil demand in developed nations has been s...
Posted by Leanan on May 4, 2013 - 11:33am A City That Turns Garbage Into Energy Copes With a Shortage Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste ...
Government investigators have found that JPMorgan Chase devised “manipulative schemes” that transformed “money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers,” and that one of its most senior executives gave “false and misleading statements” under oath. The findings appear in a conf...
"MIN. AL-NAIMI: I don’t know really what he means by 15 million. He may be thinking about our ability to do that, in other words, not that we’re going to do it but that Saudi Arabia is capable of doing it, building capacity to 15 million. Now, based on what we see as projection and ca...
In order to understand the events leading up to the current situation it is necessary to go back to 1707 when the current Union between Scotland and England was established. This came in the wake of a disastrous investment enterprise undertaken in the new world of Panama called the Da...
Posted by Leanan on April 29, 2013 - 9:46am Ready (or Not?) for a Great Coming Shale Boom The Cline Shale, thousands of feet underground in a roughly 10-county swath, is just one of many little-tapped shale formations in Texas and across the nation, geologists say. That means the pote...
In this post I present the results from dynamic simulations using the typical tight oil well for the Bakken as recently presented by the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC), together with the “2011 average” well as defined from actual production data from around 240 wells that w...
Just this month Saudi Aramco announced that production had begun at their Manifa oilfield , and by July would be supplying up to 500 kbd to the new refinery that is being built at Jamail with the collaboration of Total . The first oil from the refinery is expected to ship in August, a...
With unemployment among college graduates at historic highs and outstanding student-loan debt at $1 trillion, the question families should be asking is whether it's worth borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for a degree from Podunk U. if it's just a ticket to a barista's job at Sta...
What's going to happen when all these people get their new widget-related jobs? There's going to be inflation. There's going to be a lot more cars on the road. There's going to be a lot of newly employed kids moving out of mom's basement and driving up rents. As people start occupying...
Our one-floor-of-a-brownstone apartment is just too small for a family of four. We are fortunate to have two children and three bedrooms, though the rest of our living space is limited. There is little room for movement, and any movement is mitigated by the fact that we have neighbors...
Posted by Leanan on April 22, 2013 - 10:12am Is Saudi Arabia Losing Its Importance in the Oil Market? For three decades or so, Saudi Arabia has wielded considerable influence on the global oil market. The kingdom's status as the world's only "swing producer" has given it the unparalle...
So I suspect I should apologize. Here I am talking about the future projections for energy production that have been made by companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell , as though they were still the key and only players in the world. Yet, in reality , Saudi Aramco (12.5 mbdoe); Gazprom (...
Posted by Leanan on April 20, 2013 - 11:21am Russia says Egypt asks for help with gas supplies to Europe MOSCOW (Reuters) - Egypt, struggling to meet domestic energy demand, has asked Russia to help it fulfil its gas supply contracts with Europe, Russia's Energy Minister was quoted as...
Jeremy Grantham is a fascinating dude. He is a highly successful capitalist who blames capitalism for killing the planet. If you’re familiar with this “connoisseur of [market] bubbles,” as the New York Times referred to him in a profile, it’s probably due to his increasingly Malthusia...
