Ilargi: Big Oil and Gas Wars
We live in a world built on such an overkill of 24/7 propaganda and misinformation that some of it easily slips by. Especially when the topic is the Ukraine.
Read more...Category Archives: Energy markets
Matt Stoller: Big Oil Hooked Americans on Credit Cards
The credit card industry gets short shrift when it comes to history.
Read more...Obama Administration May Open Up Atlantic to Seismic Testing
Yves here. Another entry in the “What could go wrong?” category.
Read more...Will the U.S. Follow the U.K. Into Power Shortages?
Britain endeavors to build new nuclear power plants to avert an electric crisis in 20 years – with the retirement of nearly all the nation’s installed capacity, as it falls prey to age. Is the United States is destined for the same crisis?
Read more...Michael Klare: In the Carbon Wars, Big Oil Is Winning
Listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address, it would have been easy to conclude that we were slowly but surely gaining in the war on climate change. Of course, by now, you should know that when Obama claims to have made progress, a reality check is very much in order.
Read more...As Drought Hits, Fracking Poses Threat to Water Supply
A new report describes how hydraulic fracturing is posing a growing risk to water supplies in several regions around the country.
Read more...Gail Tverberg: How the EIA, IEA, and Other Researchers Are Modeling the Wrong Growth Limit
Why the real constraint on energy production isn’t the availability of resources, but the cost of developing them, and how these neglected investment constraints have big ramifications for “peak energy” and economic growth generally.
Read more...Are Fracking Fluids to Blame for Rail Car Explosions?
Over the past year or so there seems to have been far more train derailments of cars carrying crude oil that have resulted in huge, deadly explosions, and it is not a coincidence that the oil in these explosions originated from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota.
Read more...Has the Developed World Hit “Peak Car Use”?
Yves here. While this piece provides a solid overview of the fallen status of cars, it misses an obvious contributor to the lack of enthusiasm for them among the young: with weak incomes and in many cases, heavy student debt loads, an automobile is too large an expense relative to what they get out of it.
Read more...Michael Klare: Have the Obits for Peak Oil Come Too Soon?
Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil” — the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline — was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave.
But this assessment may be premature.
Read more...Michael Hoexter: Malign Confusion about Growth, Economic Growth or “Degrowth”: Which Way Forward? – Part 2
Yves here. One of the big problems with the growth v. “de-growth” debate is how terrible our measures of productive activity are.
Read more...Ragnarok – Iceland and the ‘Doom of the Gods’
Iceland is widely portrayed as a post-bubble success story, but the reality is more conplex.
Read more...New Study Finds Higher Methane Emissions from Fracking
Fracking skeptics have been concerned about methane releases, since methane is a vastly more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This report is particularly grim and calls the entire case for shale gas into question.
Read more...IEA: Shale Boom is Only Temporary, We’ll Soon be Relying on the Middle East Again
Yves here. We’ve written repeatedly about how short-lived shale gas wells are compared to conventional oil wells. The fact that the much-touted shale gas play will in aggregate abate relatively quickly is not something its proponents want the greater public to hear.
Read more...Egypt Marches to a Saudi Drummer
Yves here. This may seem a bit wide of our usual finance and economics beat, but the Middle East continues to be a potential flashpoint, as well as the most visible sphere of jockeying for geopolitical influence.
This piece caught my attention because it gives a plausible and in-depth assessment of Saudi policy in the Middle East, now that it is in the process of divorcing itself from the US. In particular, it also in passing addresses a question that flummoxed Moon of Alabama: why did the Saudis reject what would normally be a prized seat on the UN Security Council?
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