Tom Whipple - The Peak Oil Crisis: The Saudi Op-Ed

The Saudis could, however, bring pressure without doing anything so provocative as a major production cut. Simply ratcheting down production in an unobtrusive manner should be enough to scare Washington into reconsidering leaving Riyadh, as the leader of the world's Sunnis to deal with the mess on its own.

Peak Oil Theory Analyzed by CERA - A CERA press release "debunking" peak oil. Or, why a plateau is not a peak.

EIA: Oil cost won't rise to $70/bbl anytime soon

A prolonged period of colder-than-normal winter temperatures may put a dent in heating oil supplies and drive up U.S. oil prices, but crude costs won't hit $70 a barrel in the near future, the federal Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

OPEC should wait to decide new cuts - IEA's Mandil

- OPEC should not cut oil production further when the group meets on Dec. 14 but should wait until winter demand data becomes available at the end of January, the head of the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

Iraq's Draft Hydrocarbon Law Recommends PSAs

Iraq's first postwar draft hydrocarbon law recommends the government sign production sharing agreements and other service and buyback contracts to upgrade the country's war-ravaged oil industry.

Mighty Servant 3 Sinks Offshore Angola

On the morning of December 6, 2006, the semisubmersible vessel Mighty Servant 3 developed a list and sank after the offloading of the drilling rig, GSF Aleutian Key. The vessel is resting at the sea bottom in approximately 62 meters of water.

Gunmen kidnap 3 at Nigerian oil plant

LAGOS, Nigeria - Gunmen attacked a southern Nigerian oil installation belonging to a subsidiary of Italy's Eni SpA early Thursday, taking three Italians hostage and killing another person, Italian and Nigerian officials said.

Venezuela Taxes Total, Statoil

Venezuela's tax agency said Tuesday it has billed an oil operation partially controlled by France's Total and Norway's Statoil for roughly $880,000 in back taxes.

To Sow the Oil, or Give it Away?

Canada and Venezuela are pursuing very different oil policies. In the war of the wells, whose investment will bring the biggest return?

Saudi Aramco's gas exploration activities moving aggressively

India 'disappointed' by foreign help with climate change

Rich countries have not transferred technology to combat global warming to India as promised under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, a top environment official has said.

Global warming to have major impact on ocean food web

A new study of the oceans suggests that phytoplankton -- the vital first link in the food chain of the seas -- will be hugely affected by global warming.

Fisheries in the tropics and mid-latitudes could be badly hit by the loss of these micro-organisms as a result of warmer waters, the paper implies.

Search for crops that can survive global warming

An unprecedented effort to protect the world's food supplies from the ravages of climate change will be launched today by an international consortium of scientists. The move marks a growing recognition that serious changes in weather patterns are inevitable over the coming decades, and that society must begin to adapt.

The origins of peak oil doomerism

My earliest hypothesis was that a person’s chosen energy future was based more on personality than on data: Given the same information, people I knew to be optimists generally envisioned a positive future, while pessimists descended into doomerism. But in this simplistic reasoning, I was leaving out a growing mass of critiques of civilization itself by authors such as Joseph Tainter, Derrick Jensen, and Daniel Quinn, and others esteemed by many Peak Oil adherents. While these writers argue that civilization is evil, unsustainable, and must collapse, they also posit that human beings deserve something better that can only arise after this culture dies. This death-and-rebirth thinking didn’t fit my “optimist versus pessimist” hypothesis. And seeing how vehemently and urgently people argue for doom-and-gloom — I’ve literally had my lapels grabbed — made me suspect that neither individual psyche nor the cold logic of pure reason was at work here.

Ahead of the Wind

And, for sustainable, it is a euphemism that has encapsulated everything from gas-charged windows (windows being, whatever the ridiculous cost, the greatest compromise in energy-efficiency in any building) to car-sharing programs, which might well print giant magnets for the sides of the vehicles that read, "Hey, We're Trying."

Energy crisis seen for tech

The nation's biggest technology companies sat down with federal regulators Wednesday to assess the industry's thirst for power amid fears that volatile and expensive energy could hinder the growing sector.

..."I think we may be at the beginning of a potential energy crisis for the IT sector," Victor Varney, a vice president for Silicon Graphics, told the regulators. "It's clearly coming."

My Back to the Land Fantasy

A big lie maintains we can continue to have our consumptive lifestyle, and stave off environmental chaos, if we use only one coffee cup at Starbucks, turn off the lights, walk to work and recycle plastic bags. We can have our cake, and everyone else's cake too.

Oil Industry Poll Sees Little Help - No Faith in Washington

The survey, by consulting firm Deloitte & Touche, showed that almost 80 percent of the respondents believe U.S. energy policy is not heading in the right direction,

In addition, 70 percent cited government policy concerns, particularly those that restrict drilling on resource-rich federal lands, as "the biggest obstacle that is blocking energy progress in America."

New oil production technology is tested

A technology developed with U.S. Department of Energy funding has revived oil production in two abandoned oilfields on Osage Indian tribal land in Oklahoma.

Officials say the technology can potentially add billions of barrels of additional domestic oil production in declining fields.

The Department of Energy said production has jumped from zero to more than 100 barrels of oil daily in the two Osage County, Okla., fields, one of which is more than 100 years old.

That success suggests the method might be able to revitalize thousands of other seemingly depleted U.S. oilfields.

ExxonMobil Exec: US Gas Demand Will Be 90 Bcf/d by 2030

Daily demand for natural gas in the U.S. will jump almost 40% by the year 2030, and half of that demand is expected to be met by imports of liquefied natural gas from abroad, an ExxonMobil Corp executive said Tuesday.

Lawmaker pushes alternative ethanol program

The government should pay farmers to grow 5 million acres of switchgrass, a possible new feedstock for the booming ethanol industry, the incoming chairman of the House Agriculture Committee said Wednesday.