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IEA Says North America to Be a Products Titan

So Peak Oil is dead, yeah? Well, to a point. The Financial Times editorializes that while the “bell-curve” theory of production has been broadly disproved, the oil price remains stubbornly high because Peakists were right about the easy oil having been already found and drilled. North America is on course to produce 20% of the world’s oil supply by the end of this decade, and become a “titan of unprecedented proportions” in oil-products markets. So says the International Energy Agency, which points out that just a decade ago the U.S. was the largest importer of refined products. All this is thanks to that shale revolution, of course. U.S. crude-oil production in 2013 increased by a massive 15% from a year earlier , reaching the highest level since oil tycoons looked like Larry Hagman . In 2015, output should be close to the 1970 historical peak. The effect has been so […]

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Ukraine forces battle separatists after truce 'refused'

Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists were locked in fierce fighting in the east of Ukraine on Thursday after rebels rejected a call to lay down their arms in line with a peace plan proposed by President Petro Poroshenko, government forces said. Heavy fighting broke out at around 4 a.m. near the town of Krasny Liman, which itself has been under government control since early this month. "We issued an ultimatum to the terrorists overnight to surrender their weapons. We guarantee their safety and investigation in line with Ukrainian law … They refused," said government forces spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov. "Now we are trying to narrow the encirclement. They are trying to break out," Seleznyov said. No details of the fighting were immediately available from the rebels side. Poroshenko, installed as a president on June 7, is pushing a peace plan to end the separatist rebellion including an […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Ukraine forces battle separatists after truce ‘refused’

Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists were locked in fierce fighting in the east of Ukraine on Thursday after rebels rejected a call to lay down their arms in line with a peace plan proposed by President Petro Poroshenko, government forces said. Heavy fighting broke out at around 4 a.m. near the town of Krasny Liman, which itself has been under government control since early this month. "We issued an ultimatum to the terrorists overnight to surrender their weapons. We guarantee their safety and investigation in line with Ukrainian law … They refused," said government forces spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov. "Now we are trying to narrow the encirclement. They are trying to break out," Seleznyov said. No details of the fighting were immediately available from the rebels side. Poroshenko, installed as a president on June 7, is pushing a peace plan to end the separatist rebellion including an […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Rebels Reject Ukrainian Leader’s Cease-Fire Idea

After Ukraine’s new president, Petro O. Poroshenko, told reporters in Kiev on Wednesday that he might soon order a temporary, unilateral cease-fire as part of a broader 14-point peace plan, it took all of several seconds for pro-Russian militants to rule it out. “I am a condemned man,” said a stick-thin fighter who, like many others here, identified himself only by an alias, Tarik, for security reasons. Sipping tea in the gloom of the lobby of Donetsk’s rebel-occupied administration building on Wednesday afternoon, he patted the magazine of the automatic rifle slung across his chest. Any cease-fire would certainly be violated by the Ukrainian Army, he said, adding that he and other pro-Russian separatists would be arrested the minute the government had the opportunity. “What peace can they possibly offer me?” he asked. “If they want peace, then they can leave.” Tarik and a dozen other […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Putin Advisor Proposes “Anti-Dollar Alliance”

It has been a while since both Ukraine, and the ongoing Russian response to western sanctions (which set off the great Eurasian axis in motion, pushing China and Russia close together, and accelerating the “Holy Grail” gas deal between the two countries) have made headlines. It is still not clear just why the western media dropped Ukraine coverage like a hot potato, especially since the civil war in Ukraine’s Donbas continues to rage and claim dozens of casualties on both sides. Perhaps the audience has simply gotten tired of hearing about mixed chess/checkers game between Putin vs Obama, and instead has reverted to reading the propaganda surrounding just as deadly events in the third war of Iraq in as many decades. However, “out of sight” may be just what Russia’s political elite wants. In fact, as VoR’s  Valentin Mândr??escu reports, while the great US spin and distraction machine is […]

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The Third Russia-Ukraine Gas War

At 10 am on Monday, June 16, 2014, Gazprom, a Russian gas monopoly, cut off supplies of gas to Ukraine. This is the third time in the last ten years when Gazprom has tried to use a cut-off to force the Ukrainian government to accept a deal it did not want to accept. In the previous two cut-offs —in January 2004 and January 2009, that is, in the middle of bitter cold winters—Ukraine bowed to the pressure and agreed to unfavorable contracts with high prices, tough clauses, and heavy penalties. Each time, Russia used Gazprom and energy prices as a political instrument to pressure pro-Western governments in Ukraine. Although the current cut-off is motivated by the same political factors, the outcome could be different this time. In a nutshell, Gazprom wants to sell gas to Ukraine at $485 per thousand of cubic meters. Ukraine insists on the price of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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End of Oil and Gas Still Many Decades Away

With the June 16 release of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014, there is some continuing good news. The end of oil and natural gas is still at least a half-century or more away. The reserves-to-production (R/P) ratios for both fossil fuels are well above 50 years. The end of oil is further away than ever. Back in 1980, the R/P ratio (a.k.a., time to depletion at current production rates) for global oil reserves was less than 30 years — now it has increased to more than 53 years. In other words, over the past 35 years we have been discovering new oil reserves at a far faster rate than we have been depleting old reserves. 14 Comments on "End of Oil and Gas Still Many Decades Away" No, we’ve simply been adding things to the list of what we call “oil.” As I said elsewhere, the […]

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Climate Change: The Bigger Picture

several cars submerged by floodwaters I’ve noticed some parallels among three defining institutions of our civilisation: money, war, and mainstream religion. All three demand, in one way or another, the sacrifice of the immediate, the human, or the personal in service to an overarching ulterior goal that trumps all. Disciplined by economic exigency, millions of people sacrifice time, energy, family, and what they really care about in pursuit of money. Disciplined by an existential threat, a nation at war turns away from culture, leisure, civil liberties, and everything of no utility to the war effort. Disciplined by the promise of heavenly rewards or hellish punishments, the believer distances themself from unimportant worldly things. Anyone who is wary of these institutions might also be wary of the standard climate change narrative, which lends itself to the same mentality of sacrifice to an all-important end. If we agree that the survival […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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IEA says ‘peak oil demand’ could hit as early as 2020

Little more that a year after the International Energy Agency added its voice to the chorus chiming that peak oil was dead , a new report from the uconservative adviser to industrialised nations suggests it has changed its tune. Only this time it is not peak supply that is on its radar, but peak demand. The IEA’s Medium-Term Oil Market Report 2014 has predicted that global growth in oil demand may start to slow down as soon as the end of this decade, due to environmental concerns and cheaper alternatives, and despite boosting its 2014 forecast of global demand by 960,000 barrels per day. oil comp While supply is forecast to remain strong – thanks largely to the unconventional, or “tight” oil revolution currently underway in north America – the IEA says it expects the global market to hit an “inflexion point”, by the end of 2019, “after which […]

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Brent Oil Drops as Iraq Conflict Seen Sparing South; WTI Steady

Brent fell from the highest price in nine months amid speculation that violence in Iraq won’t spread to the main oil-producing areas in the nation’s south. West Texas Intermediate was steady in New York . Futures dropped as much as 0.4 percent in London . Islamist militants fought with the army in a town near Baghdad and with Kurds in the oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk, as the U.S. weighed options to stem an offensive that threatens to fracture OPEC’s second-biggest producer. U.S. crude inventories probably slid by 750,000 barrels last week, a Bloomberg News survey shows before an Energy Information Administration report today. “Until we see something happen in the south of Iraq, I suspect we’ve seen the top of any significant price surge for Brent,” David Lennox , a resource analyst at Fat Prophets in Sydney, said by phone today. “It’s really become a sectarian conflict and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple