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Venezuela’s socialists win majority in local polls

CARACAS (Reuters) – President Nicolas Maduro’s government won a majority of votes in Venezuela’s local elections on Sunday, disappointing the opposition and helping his quest to preserve the late Hugo Chavez’s socialist legacy. With votes in from three-quarters of the nation’s 337 mayoral races, the ruling party and allies had combined 49.2 percent support, compared with the opposition coalition and its partners’ 42.7 percent, the election board said. Since taking power in April, Maduro, a 51-year-old former bus driver, has faced a plethora of economic problems including slowing growth, the highest inflation in the Americas, and shortages of basic goods including milk and toilet paper. Yet an aggressive campaign launched last month to force businesses to slash prices proved popular with consumers, especially the poor, and helped Maduro’s candidates on Sunday. "The father of the revolution has gone, but he left the son who continued helping the poor," said […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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The U.S. energy independence story: Will anyone be punished if it turns out to be wrong?

” Will anyone who is currently predicting U.S. energy independence be punished if the story turns out to be wrong? I ask because the story– and that’s all it is right now –appears to be driving public policy and business planning practically worldwide. Often implied with that narrative is a corresponding abundance of oil globally. In fact, some are predicating worldwide abundance on a continuous rise in U.S. oil output . This is despite the fact that even many optimistic forecasts make such ideas seem foolish. The actual data for crude plus condensate (which is the definition of oil) show oil production in the rest of world declining almost as much as the United States has increased its production […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Now the world needs new energy systems

On December 9th, the day before the Nobel Prizes are handled out in Stockholm, there is a “Nobel Week Dialogue” in Gothenburg. This year’s theme is “Exploring the Future of Energy” and participating Nobel Laureates are presented by the organizers. My contribution to the dialogue is now published by Svenska Dagbladet on “Brännpunkt” under the heading “Now we need new energy systems” ( Read the article in Swedish on Brännpunkt ). An English translation of the debate article can be found below. Now the world needs new energy systems Kjell Aleklett, Professor University of Texas at Austin and Uppsala University, Global Energy Systems NASA has just released a new image showing lights on the Earth’s surface at night. If one zooms in on Texas in the image it is easy to identify the cities of Austin, San Antonio and Houston. South of San […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Oil industry R&D deactivates ‘peak’

Many energy observers believe that the global Petroleum Engineering Industry had successfully managed deactivating the famous Peak Oil theory through developing new advanced technologies that resulted in significant additional reserves as a result of the exponential increase in the Research and Development (R&D) investment in the last decade as compared to the last century. The Peak Oil theory attracted media headlines at the beginning of this century through the book “Twilight in the Desert: Shock Saudi Oil and the Global Economy”  written by the famous banker Matthew Simon, who died few years ago. The exponential increase in the R&D investment by national, international and service oil companies generated several new advanced technologies that helped the oil industry discover more oil and gas fields and increase the recovery factor from existing and new discovered fields to reach a level that was never thought of in the past. Indeed, it was […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Oil industry R&D deactivates ‘peak’

Many energy observers believe that the global Petroleum Engineering Industry had successfully managed deactivating the famous Peak Oil theory through developing new advanced technologies that resulted in significant additional reserves as a result of the exponential increase in the Research and Development (R&D) investment in the last decade as compared to the last century. The Peak Oil theory attracted media headlines at the beginning of this century through the book “Twilight in the Desert: Shock Saudi Oil and the Global Economy”  written by the famous banker Matthew Simon, who died few years ago. The exponential increase in the R&D investment by national, international and service oil companies generated several new advanced technologies that helped the oil industry discover more oil and gas fields and increase the recovery factor from existing and new discovered fields to reach a level that was never thought of in the past. Indeed, it was […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Collapse: The Post-peak Narrative

Page added on December 6, 2013 A consensus appears to have been reached that the world’s production of conventional oil peaked in recent years. And to many observers, it means that from this time forward the supply of oil and natural gas, along with peaking coal and uranium, will decrease toward zero, leaving global Industrial Culture without the precious energy that made that culture possible. With such a precipitous future awaiting the Industrial Tribe, it is curious that one does not hear much about declining energy supplies in the mainstream media. Instead, we are bombarded daily with the “Industrial Progressive Narrative” (Princen et al , 2013), a comforting meme that portrays society as having ever-more energy resources that will drive never-ending growth into the future: “This month Continental Resources told investors that the [Bakken Formation] contains enough recoverable oil to double the official count of U.S. reserves and enough […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Noam Chomsky on Peak Oil

Page added on December 6, 2013 Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline. Global production of oil fell from a high point in 2005 at 74 mb/d, but has since rebounded setting new records in both 2011 and 2012. There is active debate as to when global peak oil will occur, how to measure peak oil, and whether peak oil production will be supply or demand driven. The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows until the rate peaks and then declines—sometimes rapidly—until the field is depleted. This concept is derived from the Hubbert curve, and has been shown to sometimes be applicable to the sum of a nation’s domestic production rate, and similarly to the global rate of petroleum production. However, the discovery […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Transition Town: A Tonic for the Peak Oil Blues

The term “Peak oil” warns of the end of cheap and plentiful energy. An expanding world population of 6.5 billion suggests a limit for growth will eventually be reached (if it hasn’t been already) and no combination of current alternative energy sources will sustain the world’s accelerating thirst for power. As oil production inevitably declines and resources become scarce, the world faces a turbulent descent. We depend on a globalized economy that is completely reliant on ready supplies of this non-renweable resource. But envisioning a life without the luxuries afforded by abundant oil can quickly lead one to denial. It’s much easier to absolve our responsibility to some higher authority – the government, the oil companies, technology, God. The exact tipping point in world oil production cannot be plotted exactly until a clear decline can be seen, by which time it will be too late. Experts analyzing this situation […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Study: Which Sectors of U.S. Economy Will ‘Peak Oil’ Imperil?

This is what I’ve been talking about here, over and over again. We are not paying attention to this, and yet it’s the most important concern we are facing in Hawaii today. The Big Island’s anti-GMO bill, Bill 113, is just moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. The issue is so much bigger: According to a press release from the University of Maryland: “Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks (“Peak Oil”). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors.” The study looked at how vulnerable different aspects of the U.S. economy are to the effects of Peak Oil. In the United States, the research concludes, such sectors would include […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Study: Which Sectors of U.S. Economy Will 'Peak Oil' Imperil?

This is what I’ve been talking about here, over and over again. We are not paying attention to this, and yet it’s the most important concern we are facing in Hawaii today. The Big Island’s anti-GMO bill, Bill 113, is just moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. The issue is so much bigger: According to a press release from the University of Maryland: “Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks (“Peak Oil”). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors.” The study looked at how vulnerable different aspects of the U.S. economy are to the effects of Peak Oil. In the United States, the research concludes, such sectors would include […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple