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Brown tells Californians to conserve amid drought

Gov. Jerry Brown provided some very practical guidance for Californians amid a deepening drought: Take shorter showers, turn off the water while brushing teeth, and "don’t flush more than you have to." "Make no mistake, this drought is a big wakeup call," Brown said Thursday in downtown Los Angeles before meeting with local water district officials. "Hopefully it’s going to rain. If it doesn’t, we’re going to have to act in a very strenuous way in every part of the state to get through." The governor’s pragmatic plea came as wet weather finally moved through northern portions of the state, which has been in an extraordinary dry period during what is normally the time for rain and snow. But the stingy storm system was squeezing out only dribs and drabs of moisture in most areas. The National Weather Service office in San Francisco […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Lifting Oil Export Ban Sidelined by Wyden Skepticism

Senate Energy Committee Chairman Ron Wyden said the U.S. must weigh the costs to consumers before ending the 40-year ban on crude oil exports and he predicted a prolonged debate. “It’s fair to say this conversation is not going to be resolved any time in the next few weeks,” Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said at a hearing today. It was the first hearing on the issue in 25 years, he said. Harold Hamm , chairman of Oklahoma City-based Continental Resources Inc. (CLR) , told the panel that ending the limits will cut gasoline prices. Graeme Burnett, senior vice president of Delta Air Lines Inc., said ending restrictions will raise fuel costs. The differences between oil producers and users suggest a lobbying battle ahead as lawmakers reconsider the export ban enacted after the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s. Senator […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Explainer: whatever happened to the threat of peak oil?

Despite the arguments that once raged and the considerable volumes written to advocate certain viewpoints and disparage others, interest in peak oil is at an all time low. Indeed some commentators have confidently declared that peak oil is dead and that the theory has turned out to be nonsense . But this attitude stems largely from the explosion of tight or shale oil production in the US. This oil, trapped in shale rock formations in the same way as shale gas, and similarly extracted by fracking, was almost unheard of just over five years ago. Yet recent projections suggest production of it could exceed 7m barrels per day by 2035 . Despite this, some analysts maintain that tight oil has no bearing on peak oil, and others claim that it is a point we have already passed . So we are in the strange position where both sides of […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Selloff's Spread to Europe Is Sign of Broad Fear

Until this week, European emerging markets had largely dodged the vicious selloff that has swept through their peers elsewhere. Now, they are showing cracks . The Hungarian forint took a heavy blow early Thursday, dropping as much as 1% against the dollar. The Polish zloty and the Czech koruna also stumbled. The currencies clawed back some ground late in the day, but analysts cited Thursday’s gyrations as a sign that the market’s fear of investments seen as risky is broad. Whether bouts of weakness in such countries persist will be a barometer of wider emerging-market strains. The turmoil in emerging markets also has spilled over to stock funds. Emerging-market stock exchange-traded funds saw their second-biggest withdrawal on record last week. The ETFs had $2.7 billion in net outflows in the week ended Jan. 29, according to Lipper, the largest one-week outflow since February 2011. Some $2.5 billion flowed out […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Selloff’s Spread to Europe Is Sign of Broad Fear

Until this week, European emerging markets had largely dodged the vicious selloff that has swept through their peers elsewhere. Now, they are showing cracks . The Hungarian forint took a heavy blow early Thursday, dropping as much as 1% against the dollar. The Polish zloty and the Czech koruna also stumbled. The currencies clawed back some ground late in the day, but analysts cited Thursday’s gyrations as a sign that the market’s fear of investments seen as risky is broad. Whether bouts of weakness in such countries persist will be a barometer of wider emerging-market strains. The turmoil in emerging markets also has spilled over to stock funds. Emerging-market stock exchange-traded funds saw their second-biggest withdrawal on record last week. The ETFs had $2.7 billion in net outflows in the week ended Jan. 29, according to Lipper, the largest one-week outflow since February 2011. Some $2.5 billion flowed out […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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John Michael Greer: A Bargain with the Archdruid

My anomalous position as a writer and speaker on the future of industrial society who holds down a day job as an archdruid has its share of drawbacks, no question, but it also has significant advantages.  One of the most important of those is that I don’t have to worry about maintaining a reputation as a serious public figure. That may not sound like an advantage, but believe me, it is one. Most of the other leading figures in the peak oil scene have at least some claim to respectability, and that pins them down in subtle and no-so-subtle ways. Like it or not, they have to know that being right about peak oil means that they might just pick up the phone one of these days and field an invitation to testify before a Senate subcommittee or a worried panel of long-range […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Obama's Hopelessly Wrong on the Environment — Here's the Reality of What We Face

Are there any self-respecting environmental organizations out there that are still behind President Obama? After his State of the Union on Tuesday it’s hard to imagine there could be. In his address, Obama proudly declared, "The ‘all the above’ energy strategy I announced a few years ago is working, and today America is closer to energy independence than we have been in decades." Based what we know from the most recent climate science, Obama’s "all-of-the-above" energy policy is actually suicidal. To say that we’re approaching a dangerous precipice would be too optimistic or simply unrealistic. For a decade we were peering over the edge, but now we’re falling—how long and how hard depends on what we do this year and in the next few years. The biggest reason for our desperate situation is our failure to address climate change. Obama acknowledges that the problem is real, but his approach […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Obama’s Hopelessly Wrong on the Environment — Here’s the Reality of What We Face

Are there any self-respecting environmental organizations out there that are still behind President Obama? After his State of the Union on Tuesday it’s hard to imagine there could be. In his address, Obama proudly declared, "The ‘all the above’ energy strategy I announced a few years ago is working, and today America is closer to energy independence than we have been in decades." Based what we know from the most recent climate science, Obama’s "all-of-the-above" energy policy is actually suicidal. To say that we’re approaching a dangerous precipice would be too optimistic or simply unrealistic. For a decade we were peering over the edge, but now we’re falling—how long and how hard depends on what we do this year and in the next few years. The biggest reason for our desperate situation is our failure to address climate change. Obama acknowledges that the problem is real, but his approach […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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WTI Rises to Four-Week High as U.S. Chill Boosts Demand

West Texas Intermediate rose to its highest level in four weeks as cold weather in the U.S. boosted demand for heating fuel in the world’s largest oil consumer. Futures advanced as much as 0.6 percent in New York. Demand for distillates, which includes heating oil, surged to the highest level in almost six years amid colder weather in the U.S., data from the Energy Information Administration showed yesterday. WTI slipped yesterday as the Federal Reserve said it would continue stimulus cuts. Brent crude was little changed as a Chinese manufacturing gauge signaled the first contraction in six months in January. “Now we have extreme cold in the U.S., it does increase demand for refined products and that will lower crude stockpiles,” Hans van Cleef, an energy economist at ABN Amro Bank NV in Amsterdam, said by telephone. “We see Fed tapering going on. At some point the strong recovery […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Global stocks hit 2-1/2 month lows as EM selloff continues

Global equities hit 2-1/2 month lows on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve pushed ahead with reducing stimulus, raising concern about more emerging markets weakness and pushing investors towards safe-haven bonds. The Fed trimmed its monthly bond-buying program by $10 billion and made no mention of the turbulence in emerging markets which some investors had thought might delay the widely-flagged policy move. The prospect of a steady withdrawal of stimulus coupled with improving economies in the developed world has attracted funds away from many emerging markets, particularly those with current account deficits or political troubles – or a combination of the two. "I think there is a lack of positive triggers right now, and there is a growing concern about what happens. It’s no 1998 … we have a very cautious stance on all emerging market equities and currencies at the moment," said Hans Peterson, global […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple