Category:

U.S. and Europe Are Struggling With Response to a Bold Russia

WASHINGTON — American and European officials are struggling to devise a response as Russia bears down on Ukraine, searching for new measures that will have more impact than the economic sanctions imposed so far, without risking major damage to their own industries or a military escalation that could spiral out of control. The officials are meeting this week to assemble a new package of sanctions targeting Russia’s banking, energy and defense sectors, but expressed skepticism that the measures would force Moscow to reverse course. President Obama faced rising calls from advisers and from Congress to move beyond economic actions to provide arms and more intelligence to Ukraine’s beleaguered military. The frustration at the inability to deter Moscow follows a shift on the battlefield, where Russian troops have turned the tide in favor of Ukrainian separatists. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who last week suggested “statehood” for parts of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Why Peak Oil Refuses to Die

Pumpjacks image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission. Perhaps you’ve seen one of the recent barrage of articles claiming that fears of an imminent peak and decline in world oil production have either been dispelled (because we actually have plenty of oil) or are misplaced (because climate change is the only environmental problem we should be concerned with). I’m not buying either argument. Why? Let’s start with the common assertion that oil supplies are sufficiently abundant so that a peak in production is many years or decades away. Everyone agrees that planet Earth still holds plenty of petroleum or petroleum-like resources: that’s the kernel of truth at the heart of most attempted peak-oil debunkery. However, extracting and delivering those resources at an affordable price is becoming a bigger challenge year by year. For the oil industry, costs of production have rocketed; they’re currently soaring at a rate of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

WTI Drops as Global Manufacturing Misses Estimates; Brent Steady

West Texas Intermediate crude fell on speculation that weakening manufacturing from Germany to China will cap demand for oil. Brent was steady in London. Futures dropped as much as 0.5 percent in New York from the Aug. 29 close. Floor trading in the U.S. was closed for the Labor Day holiday and transactions will be booked with today’s for settlement purposes. Purchasing Manufacturing Indexes for Germany, Italy, the U.K. and China all came in below estimates for August. Brent slid yesterday as OPEC production rose to a one-year high last month. WTI for October delivery lost 20 cents to $95.76 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 10:04 a.m. Sydney time. Prices decreased 2.3 percent last month and are 2.7 percent lower this year. Brent for October settlement was down 7 cents at $102.72 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Libyan Militias Seize Control Of Capital As Chaos Rises

CAIRO — The government of Libya said Monday that it had lost control of its ministries to a coalition of militias that had taken over the capital, Tripoli, in another milestone in the disintegration of the state. “The government reiterates that these buildings and the public headquarters are not safe and inaccessible, because they are under the control of armed men,” the government said in a statement. It was issued from the eastern city of Tobruk, where the recently elected Parliament has convened in territory controlled by a renegade general who has tried to stage a coup d’état. The statement indicated the emergence of two rival centers of government — one in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk — each all but powerless. Over the last two months, the fractious militias that have dominated the country since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi three years ago — variously local, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Germany to Arm Kurds Battling ISIS

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers on Monday that her government had decided to break with a taboo on delivering weapons to conflict zones because Germany and all of Europe faced a security threat from the extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Ms. Merkel and top ministers decided Sunday to deliver thousands of machine guns, as well as antitank missiles and armored vehicles, to Kurdish forces battling ISIS in northern Iraq. The deliveries — from existing German Army stocks, and worth an estimated 70 million euros, or almost $92 million — will take place in stages in the coming weeks, the Defense Ministry said. On what was the 75th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Ms. Merkel went before Parliament on Monday to justify the arms decision. She evoked scenes of mass terrorism and killings in the Middle East, and said of ISIS, “Anything […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Better Technologies Needed for Emissions to Start Falling

What does this recent (possible) dip auger for future emissions and energy trends in China? I think it’s safe to say the answer is far more complicated than “clean energy is the future,” as Guay and Myllyvirta write at the end of their post. First things first: it’s far from agreed upon that coal consumption has peaked in China. The International Energy Agency does not expect Chinese demand to peak this decade. The US Energy Information Administration projects Chinese coal consumption rising through 2035. Wood Mackenzie expects coal consumption in China could double by 2030. And Bloomberg New Energy Finance , despite a bullish posture towards renewables, expects China to add between 340 and 450 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants over the next 15 years – an addition larger than all of America’s coal plants combined. And yet, there are signs that growth in Chinese coal consumption could be […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Ukraine Warns of Europe’s Worst Conflict Since World War II

Ukraine warned of an escalating conflict in its easternmost regions as a rebel leader said talks this week may include negotiations for a truce. The country’s military will take on Russia’s “full-scale invasion,” Defense Minister Valeriy Geletey said on Facebook today, a shift away from the government’s earlier communication that focused on an offensive against insurgents. Ukraine “must urgently build up defenses against Russia,” which is seeking “to advance to other areas in Ukraine,” Geletey said. Ukraine and its allies in the U.S. and Europe are accusing Russia of dispatching troops and backing militias to open a new front in the conflict that the United Nations estimates has claimed 2,600 lives. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the unrest. Talks today between representatives from Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the separatists will continue Sept. 5. “We can truly imagine some very dark […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Salmond Tells Cameron Support Gaining for Scots Breakaway

Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland. Scottish nationalist leader Alex Salmond said U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is right to be nervous ahead of this month’s independence referendumm, as support grows for the Yes campaign. With little more than two weeks before the Sept. 18 ballot and postal voting already under way, Salmond told Sky News in an interview yesterday that the pro-independence campaign is gaining momentum and “a huge number of Labour voters are supporting Yes.” “The Yes support is rising in this campaign,” Salmond said. “We’re still the underdogs, we’ve still got a distance to travel, but if we’re making the prime minister nervous, I suspect we’re doing something right.” Polls have narrowed since Salmond’s performance on Aug. 25 in the second televised debate against Alistair Darling , the former chancellor of the exchequer who heads the anti-independence Better Together campaign. While support for […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Brent Oil Extends Two-Month Slump Amid OPEC Expansion; WTI Falls

Brent crude dropped, extending a two-month slide, as OPEC’s oil production was seen increasing to the highest level in a year. West Texas Intermediate fell in New York . Futures slid as much as 0.4 percent in London, having retreated more than $9 in July and August. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries boosted output by 891,000 barrels a day to 31 million in August, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. Iraqi forces entered the town of Amirli, ending a siege imposed by Islamic State militants that lasted for more than two months, a senior Shiite-Muslim cleric said. Floor trading in the U.S. is closed for the Labor Day holiday today. “Representatives of OPEC countries have been surprisingly quiet following the $10-per-barrel drop in oil prices over the last two months,” JBC Energy GmbH, Vienna-based analysts, said in a report today. The organization will contemplate output cuts in the coming […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Sources: Saudi Aramco Seeks Interest For Work On Unconventional Gas

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Four companies have expressed interest in bidding for work on unconventional gas in Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil exporter pushes ahead with plans to develop challenging shale deposits, industry sources said. The companies are South Korea’s GS Engineering and Construction, Italy’s Maire Tecnimont, Japan’s JGC and Canada’s SNC-Lavalin, the sources told Reuters. State-run Saudi Aramco’s project will involve building processing facilities, wellheads and pipelines for the gas in Turaif in the northern part of Saudi Arabia where the big mining project Waad al-Shamal is under development, the sources said. Saudi Aramco, SNC-Lavalin, JGC and GS declined to comment, while Maire Tecnimont was not available for comment. The search for gas has been a priority for Saudi Arabia as it struggles to keep pace with rapidly rising domestic demand. Aramco plans to produce as much as 200 million cubic feet per […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple