01.19.21- The Miraculous Material Transforming Energy Storage
Tsvetana Paraskova

A material discovered less than two decades ago could become the key to safer, faster-charging and lighter batteries that power electronic devices, electric vehicles, and stationary energy storage.    Since the ‘supermaterial’ graphene was first isolated in 2004 by researchers at The University of Manchester in the UK, a growing number of graphene-making start-ups have been developing battery technologies which, the companies say, will usher in a future of fast-charging devices and electric vehicles (EVs), with higher energy capacity and without risks of overheating.  Read More

01.18.21- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Illusion of Freedom
Jim Quinn

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” – Frank Zappa

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.” - George Orwell, 1984  Read More

01.16.21- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: NRA Files For Bankruptcy, "Dumps" New York, Will Reincorporate In Texas
Tyler Durden

Less than a week after President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 8 promised to "defeat" the National Rifle Association while he’s in office, the organization said in a statement tonight that it has filed bankruptcy petitions in U.S. court as part of a restructuring plan.

The NRA says the plan can be summed up quite simply: We are DUMPING New York, and we are pursuing plans to reincorporate the NRA in Texas. Read More

01.15.21- And Now, for Something Entirely Diferent: Clowns & Jokers
Jusin O Smith

As I look back over the so-called “insurrection” and all the censorship and moves being made towards more infringements upon our Bill of Rights, it is all so apparent that America is witnessing the end of their freedom and liberty being implemented at lightening quick speed, by a Democratic Party power machine so afraid of ever losing power again, that it is now prepared to set mechanisms in place, that essentially guarantee their lock on power, unless Conservative Americans reach down deep in their gut and do what so many fear to do.  Read More

01.14.21- Wind Power Overtakes Coal In Texas For The First Time Ever
Haley Zaremba

For decades, the Lone Star State has been essentially synonymous with fossil fuels. While shale oil and gas have long reigned supreme in Texas, coal has also long been a prominent part of the state’s energy mix, currently clocking in at about an 18% share. But not for long. The winds of change are blowing through Texas. In 2020, for the first time ever, wind power overtook coal in the state’s overall energy mix, “the latest sign of renewable energy’s rising prominence in America’s fossil fuel heartland” according to reporting by the Financial Times this week. As the shale revolution that put Texas on the global energy map has been cooling down, the state has been fervently building up its wind power capacity. In fact, Texas has been one of the leaders in the wind power movement across the nation, “pulling in tens of billions of dollars in capital investment over the past decade and rapidly expanding electricity generation from the fuel.” Read More

01.13.21- Renewables To Dominate New U.S. Power Capacity In 2021
Tsvetana Paraskova

Renewable energy, mostly solar and wind, are set to account for more than two-thirds of the new electricity generation capacity that the United States will install this year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest inventory of electricity generators on Monday. Read More

01.12.21- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Of UFOs, Covid Relief, and "Disclosure"
Joseph P. Farrell

One of the strangest stories that I kept getting during the holiday break was about that committee attachment to the Covid “relief” bill that was snaking (pun intended) its way through Congress, until it slithered its way to the White House, where Orange Man Bad’s initial response was “what? Millions for Pakhistan but only $600 for Americans?” Or something like that. Amid all that pork that Congress likes to stuff into such bills for relief of their friends and cronies, was a very odd rider, and I’m sharing the version of the story that S.Z. sent to me: Read More

01.11.21- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Without Freedom Of Speech, What Is Going To Happen To America?
Michael Snyder

It is quite ironic that many of those that are always telling us that we need “diversity” in our society are also some of the strongest voices against a “diversity of viewpoints” on social media.  The founders of this nation wanted to make sure that nobody would ever take the right to freedom of speech away from us, and that is why it was enshrined in the Bill of Rights.  Unfortunately, courts have greatly eroded that right over the last several decades, and now we are facing an all-out assault on freedom of speech that is unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  And once freedom of speech is completely gone, all of our other rights will soon follow, because there will no longer be any way to defend them. Read More

01.09.21- 3 Reasons To Go All In On Lithium
Alex Kimani

The last decade has been brutal for commodities, with the sector posting declines in 7 out of 10 years. Last year was not much better, merely remaining flat after managing to claw back most of its early year losses. Few commodities, however, have been more disappointing than lithium, a metal that was supposed to make investors rich as EVs replace their dirtier ICE brethren. Lithium enjoyed a meteoric rise in the 2016-2017 period, with prices doubling since the beginning of 2016 and nearly quadrupling since the turn of the decade. The fact that the rally coincided with a sharp rise in the value of the U.S. dollar makes it all the more remarkable. Read More

01.08.21- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Descending Dystopias:
America Faces 2021
Alan Ned Sabrosky

It is given to few countries to face a future without any bright sides. Those that have done so in the past, have usually confronted overwhelming external challenges, perhaps compounded by internal difficulties. In the case of the United States today, that is not the case. To be sure, there are external challenges with both allies and competitors. But in a very real sense, America today – like so many Western countries – is its own worst enemy, and it may well portend the death of our Constitutional order if not the country itself. Read More

01.07.21- Covid Is an Orchestration for Serving an Agenda - The Destruction of Freedom
Paul Craig Roberts

The accumulated evidence is overwhelming that Covid is an orchestration the purpose of which is to eliminate human autonomy and make the concept of freedom a dirty word that will bring you Covid illness and death.  

As physical currency is one necessity for human autonomy, globalists are working on its replacement with digital money. Paper currency, coins, money orders, and checks pass hand to hand and allegedly carry possible infection with Covid. In contrast, digital money is virtual.  No one touches it. More importantly for the globalists, It cannot be drawn out of an account in physical form and horded or hidden.  You cannot make anonymous payments with digital money.  Privacy leaves your life. You become totally transparent. Read More

01.06.21- A Time for Choosing:
A Test for Our Souls
Epoch Times

The political crisis the United States faces brings into the open a contest for the soul of our country. As important as this recent election is, the stakes transcend particular political arrangements. They go to fundamental issues about which each of us must make a choice and take a stand.

A peculiarity of our current situation: While every American is intricately familiar with the pandemic and the effect it has had on our lives, this is not the case for voter fraud. The evidenceis overwhelming. Read More

01.05.21- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Entire world controlled by pedophile extortion and blackmail schemes
Mike Adams

Attorney Lin Wood has been peeling away the layers of evil, revealing the truth about how the entire world is controlled by a global cabal of extortionists who blackmail top leaders with video tapes that capture their acts of pedophilia and child murder.

This has been covered by the independent media for years, but the corporate media, Big Tech and courts have covered it up (because they are all complicit). Read More

01.04.21- The Russian Energy Giant Mining Bitcoin With Virtually Free Energy
Haley Zaremba

Two things that seem futuristic: Bitcoin and energy efficiency. Two things that are diametrically opposed: Bitcoin and energy efficiency. Mining Bitcoin might not sound like a resource-intensive process, but in fact it requires almost unbelievably vast amounts of energy. In order to track the shocking energy footprint of Bitcoin mining, the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Alternative Finance created an online tool that measures this consumption to its best ability and compares it to the energy consumption of other entities to put the shocking quantities into perspective. 

Thanks to the climbing price of Bitcoin, this week the cryptocurrency’s energy consumption topped that of Pakistan--a nation of more than 200 million people. Read More

01.02.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Patrick Byrne: China Is Taking Us Out From Within
Li Hai

Patrick Byrne, founder and former CEO of Overstock, said that China is “taking us out from within” during an interview with Dr. Jerome Corsi on Monday.

“The greatest way to fight a war, in the Chinese way of thinking, is not to have to fight at all. That’s what they’ve done here,” Byrne said.

Byrne studied Chinese history at Beijing Normal University from 1983 to 1984. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese studies from Dartmouth College. Read More

01.01.21-And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What an “Average Day” Is REALLY Like When the SHTF
Selco Begovic

Did you ever think about how different your day to day life would be after an SHTF event? The little things we take for granted now, like making a meal, staying warm, or having water to drink and bathe in would suddenly become a whole lot more complicated.

Who better to tell us what that is like than Selco? For those who don’t know, Selco spent a year in a city in Bosnia that was blockaded. During that year, he and the other residents lived without our normal amenities like heat, running water, electricity, and supplies that could be purchased at the stores. Read More

12.31.20- 20 And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Numbers From 2020 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe
Michael Snyder

2020 has been a year that none of us will ever forget.  We experienced the worst global pandemic in 100 years, we witnessed the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, civil unrest erupted in major cities all over America, and we had one of the wildest presidential elections in our history.  Other than that, it was a pretty quiet year.  For a few moments, let’s take one more look back at the past 12 months. Read More

12.30.20- KSTAR fusion device maintains 100 million degrees for record 20 seconds
Darren Quick

While harnessing the power of the Sun has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years, harnessing the process that powers the Sun is proving a tough nut to crack. However, progress continues to be made on the various approaches to practical nuclear fusion being pursued, of which tokamak reactors remain a frontrunner. In another promising development for the technology, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) fusion device has set a world record by maintaining plasma at over 100 million °C (180 million °F) for 20 seconds. Read More

12.29.20- Hydrogen: The Beginning
Of A New Era In Energy
Dr. Fares Kilzie

2020 was a year of radical shifts in energy markets. The first, but not the most important one, was the deliberate failure of the OPEC+ deal in March. This was largely predetermined by the reallocation of standings of the major players in the oil market. In 2016, when the first OPEC+ deal was announced, the share of OPEC in global oil and liquid hydrocarbon production was 37.8%, but in 2019 it was only 34.4% according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The share of the United States in the same period increased from 15.2% to 19.3%, while that of the OECD (Organization of Co-operation and Development) countries combined increased from 27.5% to 31.4%. The dissent within the cartel and the loss of market share forced OPEC to tighten its output reduction policy, which increasingly threatened economic feasibility and the national interests of its own members. Read More

12.28.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The-Bill Gates Multi-Billion-dollar Briberies of Academia, Big Vaccine, Big Pharma, WHO, the NIH/CDC/Fauci and the World Economic Forum's Great Reset
Gary G. Kohls, MD

Thanks to Dr Betty Martini for the great chart below that illustrates just a part of Bill Gates’ unjust economic influence over the global over-vaccination agendas of so many government agencies, academic institutions, and Big Pharma for the past several decades. (Dr Martini, D. Hum., is one of the most knowledgeable scientists in the world that understands the dangerous toxicities of Aspartame, that ubiquitous artificial sweetener (Diet Coke, et.ad) that has a multitude of toxic adverse effects. Read More

12.26.20- Is The Green Hydrogen Hype Justified?
AG Metal Miner

Has the time for the “fuel of the future,” green hydrogen, arrived? Recently, some of the world’s biggest green hydrogen project developers and partners joined hands to launch the “Green Hydrogen Catapult” initiative that aims to drive down costs to below U.S. $2 per kg to help change energy across carbon intensive industries, including steel.

The seven founding partners include the Saudi-based ACWA Power, CWP Renewables, Envision, Iberdrola, Ørsted, Snam and Yara. Read More

12.25.20- 8 New Energy Technologies That Will Blow Your Mind
Julianne Geiger

New energy tech is undergoing a metamorphosis at breakneck speed, whether it’s the stock-boosting driverless Apple car or even masks for cows. Sometimes it’s simply mind-blowing and other times it’s sheer comic relief. More often than not, it’s lucrative, either way because clean energy is the buzzword that keeps attracting all the big money.  

And the buzz--for better or worse--is around these top 8 new energy technologies of this year, and next: Read More

12.24.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why Are Hospital Workers So Afraid Of The Vaccine?
Ron Paul Liberty Report

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12.23.20- The World’s First Hydrogen Hubs Are In The Making
Alan Mammoser

While hopes for hydrogen as a major energy carrier go back decades, a new generation of hydrogen plans are now coming forth from companies, industry groups and countries. The EU’s ambitious plan for hydrogen is complemented by a growing number of national and regional plans in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.  The remarkable number of hydrogen plans around the world indicate that a significant threshold has been reached. They cover an extensive range of applications. But they share a perspective that sees hydrogen as an indispensable energy intermediary in a future 0-carbon economy, one that carries the power of renewable solar and wind sources to diverse end uses. Read More

12.22.20- The Collapse Of U.S. Shale Oil Production Has Now Begun
Steve St Angelo

It’s Official.  The collapse of U.S. shale oil production has begun.  The mighty Shale Oil BOOM has now finally turned into a BUST.  While the pandemic shutdowns sped up the process, the collapse of the U.S. shale industry was going to occur, regardless. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, shale oil production will continue to decline below 7.5 million barrels per day in January. Read More

12.21.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Gyre Widens
James Howard Kunstler

The mind-numbing weirdness of Joe Biden’s insertion into the election of 2020 — like the furtive groping of an intern in a cloakroom — only signals the Democratic Party’s reckless drive to self-destruction, dragging the republic over the edge of an abyss with it. How did this hollowed-out figure of a grifting old pol find himself pretending to national leadership, and in an historic moment of crisis that goes far beyond the mere wrecking of an election? Who wanted him there so badly, and why? Read More

12.19.20- Wind-powered vertical veggie farm harvests first crops
Thierry Meyssan

The Nordic Harvest vertical farm on the outskirts of Copenhagen in Denmark is expected to scale up production to 1,000 tonnes of salads and herbs per annum during 2021

The first phase of construction on one of Europe's largest vertical farm projects is now complete, and the first crop of organic salads and herbs is reported ready for delivery to local businesses. Read More

12.18.20- Modular nuclear reactors promise cost-competitive hydrogen production
David Szondy

NuScale Power has released the results of a new evaluation that indicates that a single small nuclear NuScale Power Module (NPM) could economically produce almost 50 tonnes of hydrogen fuel per day. The study, originally conducted by the Idaho National Laboratory, says that the improved power output of the NPM allows it to produce 20 percent more hydrogen from water than previously. Read More

12.17.20- Solar Energy Is On The Brink Of A Golden Age
Haley Zaremba

Solar power is heading into a golden age thanks to an unlikely culmination of forces. A new axis of energy has emerged with the United States, the European Union, and China leading the charge toward a global energy transition to renewable energies and especially solar power.The United States has certainly not been a poster child for green energy in the last few years or, indeed, most of the nation’s history. Under the Trump administration, the country pulled out of the Paris climate accord and dragged its feet to put together a green stimulus package even as the rest of the world started to seriously edge into renewable energy markets, threatening to leave the U.S. behind. Under the new administration, led by incumbent president Joe Biden, the prognosis for U.S. renewables has improved drastically. Read More

12.16.20- World Bank Sees Oil Prices
Averaging $44 In 2021
Tsvetana Paraskova

Oil prices, defined as an average of Brent, West Texas Intermediate, and Dubai prices, are expected to rise to an average of $44 per barrel next year and $50 a barrel in 2022, up from expected $41 in 2020, the World Bank said on Wednesday in its latest report on Russia.

According to the World Bank, the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to impact global oil demand, with consumption still below pre-pandemic levels next year. Oil consumption is expected to remain around 5 percent lower than in 2019 by the end of 2021. Read More

12.15.20- Could This Cathode Breakthrough Make Batteries Cheaper?
Tsvetana Paraskova

More energy- and cost-efficient batteries will be key to accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and increasing the share of renewable power generation as many countries pledge to make their economies greener in the aftermath of the pandemic.   So the race to find the next breakthrough in the most widely used kind of batteries, the lithium-ion battery, is on. 

Researchers have been at work for years to develop longer-lasting and cheaper batteries that can store more energy. Read More

12.14.20- Solar Energy Boom
Fuels Demand For Silver
Tyler Durden

Saxo Bank projects silver will soar to a record $50 an ounce in 2021,powered by loose Federal Reserve monetary policy and a weak dollar, and turbocharged by surging demand for the white metal in the solar energy sector.According to the Saxo Bank report, the “usual suspects” will continue to power silver upward, referring to the extraordinary monetary policy we’ve seen in response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Saxo analysts expect the US dollar to continue to weaken even as the pandemic eases with the rollout of a vaccine next year. Read More

12.12.20- New method quickly converts natural gas into solid form for storage
Michael Irving

A new method creates solid hydrates of "combustible ice" that can store natural gas safely and at practical temperatures

Engineers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a new way to convert natural gas into a solid form, allowing it to be stored and transported more safely and easily. The process can be done in just 15 minutes using a low-toxicity mixture. Read More

12.11.20- Tunable Coating for Nanoparticles
Joseph P Farrell

Back when the covid planscamdemic first started, the odd “behavior” of the thing coupled with the arrest of Harvard professor Dr. Charles Lieber for allegedly concealing his financial ties to the Wuhan laboratory, plus his expertise in nanotechnology, led me to speculate that the virus’ odd behavior might indicate that it was some sort of bioweapon, and possibly one activated electromagnetically. Now, in calling the whole affair a planscamdemic, I do not mean to suggest that there are no deaths from it, any more than I would suggest other flus and respiratory contagions do not cause deaths. Read More

12.10.20- Oil prices stumble as
Brent reenters contango
Sharon Cho

(Bloomberg) --Oil swung between gains and losses as the market weighed the outlook for demand as coronavirus vaccines begin.

Futures in New York traded below $46 a barrel, driven by fluctuations in the dollar and equities. The UK issued its first Covid-19 vaccinations on Tuesday and there are signs that European demand is recovering after a renewed wave of lockdowns in the winter. Poland’s road use, for example, has climbed sharply since the start of last month. Read More

12.09.20- Will China Win The Nuclear Fusion Race?
Haley Zaremba

China is on a quest for world domination. Beijing has been making assertive moves into global energy markets for a while now, stepping into energy market power vacuums in largely untapped markets around the world. Chinese president Xi Jinping has made major inroads with his ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, started in 2013, which is a massive-scale, globe-spanning infrastructure development program that now includes approximately 70 countries and international organizations.  Beijing has a lot of irons in the global energy market fire, facing off against Russia for nuclear energy dominance in Africa, ramping up coal-fired capacity abroad while simultaneously touting its lofty decarbonization plans back at home, and now, powering up a brand new, cutting-edge “artificial sun.” The so-called sun is a nuclear fusion reactor which came online for the first time last week, “marking a great advance in the country's nuclear power research capabilities.” Read More

12.08.20- Massive 853-foot-tall wind turbines are coming to America's East Coast
Loz Blain

America's first "commercial scale" offshore wind energy project has decided to use GE's colossal Haliade-X turbines, the world's largest and most powerful. Standing 853 ft (260 m) high – as tall as an 85-story building – with a 722-foot (220 m) rotor, each one can power a home for two days with one spin.

Each Haliade-X will stand 260 meters (853 ft) tall, with a 220-meter (722-ft) rotor incorporating three 107-meter (351-ft) blades Read More

12.07.20- The Hemp Conspiracy: Why U.S. Hemp Farming was Banned
Alex Pietrowski

(Editor's Note: A recurring theme on this web site addresses the ongoing misinformation campaigns that have been, and continue to be, waged by the the government. These campaigns are not waged out of any concern for the well being of the population (most result in a diminished state of well being) but rather they are products of a propaganda machine that is disseminated on behalf of private industrial donors who ply corrupt politicians with contributions to their re-election campaigns. If you believe that marijuana is dangerous and those that possess it should be prosecuted, then you are one more example of someone who has been successfully dumbed down by the lies spread by agents of the state. Hemp cultivation and production do not harm the people or the environment. In fact, the cultivation of hemp could result in an economic miracle that would bring this country out of the throes of depression, right now! Recent denouncements of any harm provided by its use have emancipated marijuana in Colorado, Washington, California, Maine, Nevada, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, Vermont, Arizona,Montana, and South Dakota. Several other states will soon follow. We have all been collectively duped. The USDA concluded that hemp produces 4 times as much pulp with at least 4 to 7 times less pollution than any comparable fiber producing plant. - JSB) Read More

12.05.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Your Conservative Vote Won’t Save America From Socialism
Ron Ewart

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the [socialist Democrat city] folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright [senile, corrupt, socialist] moron.” ~ Henry Louis Mencken, American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, (1880 – 1956)  Read More

12.04.20- Who Will Foot The $40-Trillion Energy Transition Bill?
Tsvetana Paraskova

The pandemic has multiplied the calls for ‘building back greener’ energy systems as economies recover from COVID-19. From the UK to China, governments around the world are racing to announce net-zero emission targets within three to four decades, and they are unveiling green stimulus packages to help economies to decarbonize and the world to stave off an unsustainable rise in global temperatures.   

The fight against climate change and the need to curb were already prominent features of government plans even before the coronavirus. The pandemic accelerated the momentum as governments pledged all kinds of “Green Deals” and green stimulus packages for economic recovery. Read More

12.03.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Stasi Comes to America
Brian Maher

IS the tattle-tale the new American patriot?

This Thanksgiving weekend, we hosted family members. One afternoon — having explored fully our own hamlet — a spirit of wanderlust seized them.

Washington, D.C., some 25 miles distant, was the destination selected.

We stepped into our waders, plugged our nostrils… and trekked into the foul, treacherous swamp. Read More

12.02.20- Century Old Space Science Revives Solar Power Dream
Haley Zaremba

The economic and industrial turmoil created by the novel coronavirus pandemic will forever be associated with the year 2020, but its impact will be much farther reaching and longer lasting than just one anomalous calendar year. COVID-19 is changing the global economy as we know it, and fewer sectors are being as thoroughly battered, challenged, and transformed as the energy industry.  Until this year, decarbonization of the global economy seemed like an idealistic environmentalists’ pipe dream. Now, it seems an inevitable and fast-approaching reality as veteran oil empires crumble and renewable energies pick up steam. Headlines dramatically but earnestly reference the previously utopian “end of oil” while global leaders design green stimulus packages and organizations as influential and lauded as the World Economic Forum call for a “new energy order” and a “great reset.”Read More

12.01.20- Oil Markets Face
A 200 Million Barrel Glut In 2021
Rystad Energy

As the world is aching to put an end to a devastating 2020, oil producers are now assessing the lasting effect of the pandemic into 2021 – and in particular, the consequences of oil demand destruction to global balances. The existing OPEC+ group deal saved the market from collapsing earlier this year, but then Covid-19 came back with a second-wave. If output increases as planned from January, the world will have to face a new 200-million-barrel surplus through May, Rystad Energy calculates. The OPEC+ group will be debating whether or not to maintain its currently curtailed oil production levels to 2021 or to increase them as planned by nearly 2 million barrels per day (bpd). The existing plan was drafted during the pandemic’s first wave and under a more optimistic forecast for end-year oil demand, which turned out to be too high as the pandemic’s second wave brought new lockdowns globally. Read More

11.30.20- Coal Country Can Retool Itself To The New Energy Future
James Conca

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute came out with a really interesting study on how Coal Country can, and must, redefine itself in the energy future that is emerging.

Coal Miners

Coal mining is a way of life in historically coal-producing communities. While decarbonizing the economy is a driving force for decreasing the use of fossil fuels, the steadily decreasing use of coal in America has occurred because of the favorable economics and unanticipated abundance of natural gas through fracking, and will continue regardless of climate policies or environmental regulations, which have played only a small role. Read More

11.28.20- Covid-19 and the Beast System to Come
Catherine Austin Fitts & Dr. Sherri Tenpenny

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11.27.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Decline and Fall of the West
Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Good morning Mr. Armstrong,

We need more pics like Winnipeg Costco out in the news: They might wake up the sleeping herd!

I’m writing from Toronto where we are in a lockdown since 12:01 today for the next 28 days… and probably more!

Our Premier, Doug Ford, clearly mention in his Friday announcement that Big Box retailers would remain open. Read More

11.26.20- Sugary droplets turn algal cells into miniature hydrogen factories
Nick Lavars

An image of a sugary droplet packed with hydrogen-producing algal cells Prof Xin Huang, Harbin Institute of Technology>>>

Hydrogen holds great potential as a clean energy source, largely because it produces no CO2 and only emits water vapor when used in a fuel cell. Most production, however, requires the use of fossil fuels, which has motivated much research into cleaner methods. A research team working in this area has made a discovery that could help these efforts along, demonstrating how algal cells can be turned into tiny hydrogen-producing factories by immersing them in sugary droplets. Read More

11.25.20- How residential energy storage could help support the power grid
Sean Kane, and Matt Rogers

Household batteries could contribute to making the grid more cost effective, reliable, resilient, and safe—if retail battery providers, utilities, and regulators can resolve delicate commercial, operational, and policy issues.

The growth of battery storage in the power sector has attracted a great deal of attention in the industry and media. Much of that attention focuses on utility-scale batteries and on batteries for commercial and industrial customers. While these larger batteries are critical segments of the energy-storage market, the rapid growth of residential energy storage is outpacing expectations, and these household systems will likely become important assets sooner than many expect. The growth trajectory and potential value of these household systems to customers and the power grid warrants a closer look. Read More

11.24.20- Laser Guided Lightning Strikes
Joseph P. Farrell

We end this week’s blogs with something a bit different than the previous days’ forays, with this article shared by W.G. concerning the use of lasers to guide lightning strikes. This is a subject that intrigues me as it does many readers here, for I and some other researchers have questioned the public narratives about the wildfires in California and Australia. For the most part, these questions have surrounded the very anomalous damage that appears to have occurred in these fires, for example, houses burned to the ground, while nearby trees and shrubbery appear more or less undamaged.  Read More

11.23.20- Working prototype generates electricity from moving vehicles
Darren Quick

April 10, 2009 The United States has about 250 million registered vehicles, which adds up to a lot of pollution and burning of fossil fuels. New Energy Technologies, Inc. prefers to look at it another way, however – they see those 250 million vehicles as a potential energy source and have developed a prototype engineered to harness some of the kinetic energy being generated, and wasted, by moving cars and light vehicles. Read More

11.21.20- The EV Boom Is Sending Battery Metals Into The Stratosphere
Mining.com

The MINING.COM EV Metal Index, which tracks the value of battery metals in newly registered passenger EVs (including hybrids) around the world surged to an all-time high in September, rebounding from two-year lows struck at the height of the pandemic in April.

There was a massive sequential jump in battery raw material deployed in September, according to data from Adamas Intelligence, which tracks demand for EV batteries by chemistry, cell supplier and capacity in over 90 countries. Read More

11.20.20- Middle East Oil Producers Are Drowning In Debt
Tsvetana Paraskova

Arab Gulf oil producers are losing billions of U.S. dollars from oil revenues this year due to the pandemic that crippled oil demand and oil prices. Because of predominantly oil-dependent government incomes, budget deficits across the region are soaring.  

Middle East’s oil exporters rushed to raise taxes and cut spending earlier this year, but these measures were insufficient to contain the damage. Read More

11.19.20- The 3 Hottest Electric Vehicle Stocks
Of The Year
Jeff Everett

The $5-trillion global transportation industry is going green, and the result of the U.S. election only solidifies that fact.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) might be too expensive a play to offer the upside we’re all looking for in the EV sector…

But some of the absolute best growth opportunities right now are in this sector--and anything that ties into it. 

EV-linked stocks are blowing away the S&P 500 and the Dow.  Read More

11.18.20- Newly discovered mineral offers a blueprint for next-gen battery parts
Nick Lavars

Dubbed “petrovite,” the new mineral is a bright blue aggregation of sodium sulphur, copper and a “very rare” coordination of oxygen atoms, seen only in a couple of other compounds

Just like standard lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries work by sending ions back and forth between a pair of electrodes in a liquid electrolyte, but current designs have their limitations. A research team in Russia has discovered a new bright, blue mineral they say could solve one of the problems with these experimental devices, which shape as a far more cost-effective form of energy storage than today's solutions. Read More

11.17.20- Process Banned By President Carter Could Solve U.S. Nuclear Waste Problem
Irina Slav

The reprocessing of nuclear waste—a banned process—could solve the problem of its buildup in the United States, according to the head of the Nuclear Energy Institute, Maria Korsnick.

"Reprocessing is a very interesting part of the solution set," Korsnick told Reuters in an interview, noting that it closed the nuclear power cycle in a useful way. Read More

11.16.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Illegitimate President
Jim Quinn

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” – H.L. Mencken

It’s now almost two weeks since the most crooked, rigged, fraudulent election in U.S. history. The engineered elevation of a handsy, sniffy, senile, empty portal, trojan horse by billionaire oligarchs, their Silicon Valley techno-geek social media censorship police, and the corporate media propaganda mouthpieces looks like it might succeed. Republican cucks like Romney and even the pliable Fox News talking heads have acquiesced to this third attempt during this ongoing coup like obedient lapdogs positioning themselves to profit from doing the bidding of their global oligarch masters. Read More

11.14.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Release The Kraken
Sidney Powell With Lou Dobbs

View Video

11.13.20- Graphene tractor beams could one day redirect lightning strikes
Michael Irving

Lightning strikes are a major trigger for wildfires, including the record-breaking blazes that devastated Australia, California and other regions this year. An international research team has now demonstrated a method that could effectively control where lightning strikes, using graphene microparticles trapped in a “tractor beam.”

A bolt of lightning can become hotter than the surface of the Sun – so it’s no surprise that when they hit dry grass, shrubs or trees, they can spark fires. Couple that with the fact that climate change is reducing rainfall in already fire-prone areas while potentially increasing the intensity of lightning storms, and you’ve got a dangerous recipe. This year’s devastation could become a regular occurrence. Read More

11.12.20- Nuclear vs Solar: The Race For Renewable Dominance
Alex Kimani

Back in October, Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw opined that solar and wind "don't work," calling them "silly solutions." Instead, nuclear energy would be a "far better energy resource than solar and wind if [Democrats] cared about zero emissions." Crenshaw will likely be challenged on this - quite seriously.  

On Nov. 4, the day after the election, the United States officially withdrew from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a global pact it helped create in an effort to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change. Newly elected president Joe Biden has vowed to rejoin the accord on the first day of his presidency, a task that does not require Congressional approval. Read More

11.11.20- Is This The Perfect Battery
For Electric Vehicles?
Irina Slav

Imagine an electric car that’s lightweight and fast, and can go for hundreds of miles on a single charge. This car would not have a battery pack to weigh it down. Its batteries would be part of its body. Structural batteries have been around at least since the 2000s when the U.S. military designed the first ones out of carbon fiber, which is a conductive material. It is also notoriously lightweight, and things can be built from it, including car bodies.

Tesla’s Elon Musk announced at the company’s Battery Day it was going to start incorporating the batteries into the chassis of the cars. It was time to do away with the “skateboard” pack and mold the battery cells into the body of the vehicle. Musk called it revolutionary. Scientists who have been working on structural batteries for years must have rolled their eyes. Read More

11.10.20- The Mother of all Seneca Cliffs… And Virtually No One Is Prepared
Steve St Angelo

The world is heading full steam ahead towards the ENERGY CLIFF, and virtually no one seems to be prepared.  After watching the U.S. Presidential Election and the circus sideshow that followed on both Mainstream media outlets, I am quite surprised how much Americans have invested their time, energy, and emotion in either political party when the world is getting ready to enter a GLOBAL DEPRESSION the likes of which we never recover.

Sure, I imagine I will upset a few people with that remark, but those are the FACTS.  Of course, we can hem-&-haw about the ENERGY CLIFF’s exact timing, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter if we are off by a few years… DOES IT?  Gosh, it has been 11 years since the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis.  How fast did that go by?? Read More

11.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How the Presidential Election
Was Stolen
Pepe Escobar

A gaming exercise of the perfect, indigenous color revolution, code-named Blue, was leaked from a major think tank established in the imperial lands that first designed the color revolution concept.

Not all the information disclosed here about the gaming of Blue has been declassified. That may well elicit a harsh response from the Deep State, even as a similar scenario was gamed by an outfit called Transition Integrity Project. Read More

11.07.20- Study reveals potential of hydropower dams topped with floating solar
Nick Lavars

Hydropower plants that leverage the force of falling water to generate electricity are already an important part of the global energy mix, but a new study suggests they may have much more to offer. Scientists have carried out an analysis of the energy potential of combining these facilities with floating solar panels, calculating these hybrid plants could meet a “significant” portion of the world’s current electricity needs. Read More

11.06.20- No Matter Who Wins
Nate Hagens

Modern elections—despite their social and political importance—have become more like sporting events than referendums around ideas. We so intensely identify with our partisan tribe, that we focus on the slogans, the rooting against the ‘other guy’ and other us-vs-them dynamics, and often lose sight of the issues, the context, and how ‘winning’ for our country (and world) might actually be influenced by our choices. Read More

11.05.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Does the Presidential Election Matter?
Kevin Barrett

It’s Not Who Wins - It’s the Chaos, Stupid

Will the 2020 elections change history? If they do, it won’t be because one or the other candidate won, but because they accelerated the polarization that brought down the American empire.

Political partisans, including most of the mainstream media (MSM) are screaming from the rooftops that the fate of the known universe depends on the outcome of Trump v. Biden. The dominant anti-Trump MSM faction casts Trump as a new Hitler who has exterminated more than 200,000 Americans in a coronavirus holocaust. (Why not say six million and imprison anyone who disagrees?) Read More

11.04.20- "Non-Lethal" EM Weapons:
A Strange Report From Tass
Joseph P. Farrell

We start out this week – election week in the USA – with a bang. I say “a bang” because my inbox this week was stuffed with numerous articles about one thing: electro-magnetic weapons and their uses. In fact, I was first tempted to blog about all of them, because they’re all quite interesting (even the one spotted by M.W. that’s now 16 years old!). I decided, however, to limit my attention to two of them that caught my eye, and reserve the others for today’s tidbits. Read More

11.03.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: 'The Great Reset' For Dummies
Tessa Lena

What is “the Great Reset”?

The Great Reset is a massively funded, desperately ambitious, internationally coordinated project led by some of the biggest multinational corporations and financial players on the planet and carried out by cooperating state bodies and NGOs. Its soul is a combination of early 20th century science fiction, idyllic Soviet posters, the obsessiveness of a deranged accountant with a gambling addiction—and an upgraded, digital version of “Manifest Destiny.” Read More

11.02.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: America Is a Dead Man Walking Because American Youth, or Their Minds,
Have Been Stolen
Paul Craig Roberts

The United States is a screwed-up country.  It this regard, the US has few rivals.

The legal voting age in the US is 18 years of age, which is also the age of female sexual consent and military enlistment.  So at 18 years of age youth can affect the governance of the country, get legally laid, kill and die in combat, but are considered too irresponsible to imbibe alcohol and purchase a pistol from a licensed dealer until three years later at age 21. Read More

10.31.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Up to 300 million planets in the Milky Way may be habitable
David Szondy

Based on data from the Kepler Space Telescope and the Gaia mission, there may be up to 300 million habitable planets in the Milky Way galaxy, according to a team of scientists from the SETI Institute, NASA, and other international organizations. The research not only gives a measurement of how many potentially life-bearing planets there are, it also provides a key factor in the Drake equation that estimates how many extraterrestrial civilizations may exist. Read More

10.31.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Up to 300 million planets in the Milky Way may be habitable
David Szondy

Based on data from the Kepler Space Telescope and the Gaia mission, there may be up to 300 million habitable planets in the Milky Way galaxy, according to a team of scientists from the SETI Institute, NASA, and other international organizations. The research not only gives a measurement of how many potentially life-bearing planets there are, it also provides a key factor in the Drake equation that estimates how many extraterrestrial civilizations may exist. Read More

10.30.20- Will a New Glass Battery
Accelerate the End of Oil? 
 Mark Anderson

New low-cost, nonflammable, high-capacity, rapid-charging solid-state battery could pose threat to the internal combustion engine

Electric car purchases have been on the rise lately, posting an estimated 60 percent growth rate last year. They’re poised for rapid adoption by 2022, when EVs are projected to cost the same as internal combustion cars. However, these estimates all presume the incumbent lithium-ion battery remains the go-to EV power source. So, when researchers this week at the University of Texas at Austin unveiled a new, promising lithium- or sodium-glass battery technology, it threatened to accelerate even rosy projections for battery-powered cars. Read More

10.29.20- Oil Prices Plunge 5%
As Demand Fears Intensify  
Tsvetana Paraskova

Oil prices plummeted early on Wednesday, with Brent falling below $40 a barrel, dragged down by estimates of a surge in U.S. inventories and the surge in coronavirus cases in the United States and Europe.

As of 9:44 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, before the EIA inventory report, WTI Crude was down by 5.66 percent at $37.33, and Brent Crude prices were dropping by 4.85 percent at $39.19, after the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported on Tuesday a bigger build than expected in crude oil inventories of 4.577 million barrels for the week ending October 23. Read More

10.28.20- Microscopic sponge turns dirty cooking oil into biodiesel on the cheap
Nick Lavars

Scientists at Australia’s RMIT have developed a tiny sponge with big potential, and say the micron-sized material can be used to convert discarded cooking oil into biodiesel in a very cost-effective manner. And the catalyst is no one-trick pony, with the ability to also turn other waste products into valuable building blocks for a range of materials.

The sponge-like material is a new type ofefficient catalyst for turning complex molecules into raw materials. The RMIT team behind it actually describes it as the first of its kind, in that the ability to carry out a series of different chemical reactions within the one material while offering a high degree of control over the output is unprecedented. Read More

10.27.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Last Round-up at the Wokester Corral
James Howard Kunstler

I have some questions for former friends who have dumped me on account of my support for Mr. Trump’s re-election — which is mostly a vote to prevent the Democratic Party and its fellow travelers from running the government. On the whole, these former friends are college-educated, mature in experience, and cultured. Some of them are well-acquainted with history, which is to say, they ought to know better than to support the obviously illiberal motives of the political Left. Read More

10.26.20- Hydrogen Boom Could Lead To New Platinum Bull Market
Alex Kimani

The diesel industry is dying, and it's taking platinum down with it. Platinum prices have merely been treading water since the Dieselgate scandal thanks to diesel vehicle sales in Europe going on a five-year freefall. The automotive industry is the biggest consumer of platinum, with 44% of the world's supply of the precious metal going into catalytic converters.  But with a dramatic fall in demand, and now Covid-19, the prognosis appears bleak for platinum bulls.

Or, maybe not. Read More

10.24.20- Another Major Breakthrough
For Solar Energy
Alex Kimani

During America's last election cycle, one of President Trump's key campaign promises was to revive the dying coal sector and bring back coal jobs. But even intense lobbying by the president has done little to stem the tide as coal plants continue to drop out at a steady clip.  The recent retirement of TVA's giant 1,150 megawatt-Paradise 3 coal plant, despite Trump's impassioned pleas, serves as a grim reminder that coal's best days are behind it, with the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledging as much in its latest report. Read More

10.23.20- So Donald Trump just got Joe Biden to admit that he wants to ban
the entire U.S. oil industry…
Michael Snyder

Can you imagine how Joe Biden’s campaign team must be feeling right now?  They have been working night and day for months to put their candidate in a position to win the election, and he has been leading in most national polls.  Over the last several days they spent many hours carefully rehearsing every potential question, and they just needed Joe to get through one last debate without making some sort of colossal game-changing mistake.

And he almost did it. Read More

10.22.20- Smart windows darken and become solar cells when heated
Michael Irving

Researcher Lance Wheeler holds samples of the team's new thermochromic photovoltaic windows, which can switch colors in response to heat and generate electricity from sunlight

Windows are great for letting in light, but in summer months that comes with an unwanted side order of heat, causing many people to run the air conditioning non-stop. Now, researchers have developed windows that can change color automatically when heated by sunlight, to keep buildings cool – and to top it off, they’re solar panels as well.

Color-changing glass has been around for a long time, most commonly as transition lenses for eyeglasses that tint automatically under bright light. Read More

10.21.20- Super-white paint reflects 95.5 percent of sunlight to cool buildings
Michael Irving

Researchers from Purdue University have developed a new white paint that can reflect over 95 percent of sunlight, which can cool the surface even lower than the ambient temperature. Painted on a building, the new paint could help cut cooling costs and energy use.

It’s a basic fact of physics that white surfaces and objects reflect more light, and therefore remain cooler. Theoretically, that could be harnessed to help keep buildings cool – after all, air conditioning is one of the biggest guzzlers of energy in the summer months, and studies suggest that painting buildings white can cool entire cities. Read More

10.10.20- U.S. Renewable Energy Consumption Hits Record
Charles Kennedy

Renewable energy consumption in the United States continued to rise for the fourth year in a row in 2019, with wind energy and wood and waste energy each accounting for 24 percent of all renewable energy used in America, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday.

Last year, U.S. consumption of renewable energy reached a record 11.5 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu), or 11 percent of total U.S. energy consumption, the EIA has estimated. Read More

10.19.20- ISIS Calls For Attacks On Saudi Oil Industry
Irina Slav

The Islamic State has called on its members to start targeting Saudi Arabia oil infrastructure as punishment for the Kingdom warming up to Israel.

“Targets are plenty…Start by hitting and destroying oil pipelines, factories, and facilities which are the source (of income) of the tyrant government,” a spokesman for the terrorist group said in a recorded message cited by Reuters.

Saudi Arabia opened its air space for flights between Israel and several neighbors in a historic move for the Middle East. According to the statement of Islamic State, that was enough to turn the Kingdom into a target of the group’s attention. Read More

10.17.20- The Hydrogen Boom Will Provide A $200B Boost To Wind And Solar Energy
Alex Kimani

The renewable energy sector has lately been sizzling with very bullish projections--and a few bearish ones--coming from Wall Street. Solar stocks have especially been shooting the lights out as a Biden presidency is increasingly being viewed as a big win for clean energy. 

However, one corner of the market has really been hogging the limelight: The hydrogen sector. Read More

10.17.20- The Hydrogen Boom Will Provide A $200B Boost To Wind And Solar Energy
Alex Kimani

The renewable energy sector has lately been sizzling with very bullish projections--and a few bearish ones--coming from Wall Street. Solar stocks have especially been shooting the lights out as a Biden presidency is increasingly being viewed as a big win for clean energy. 

However, one corner of the market has really been hogging the limelight: The hydrogen sector. Read More

10.16.20- A Biden Presidency Could End
The U.S. Oil Boom
Dan Doyle

To talk about a Biden-Harris administration let's first talk about the Obama-Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch administration. Back in 2015 and 2016, when Holder and Lynch were President Obama’s Attorney Generals, my frack company was beset with an IRS audit, an International Fuel Tax (“IFTA”) audit and a Department of Labor investigation. Not to be excluded, I was also personally audited by the IRS. Fortunately, me and my company cleared the IRS audits without penalty (other than paying our accountant). The Department of Labor audit got us for something less than $250, based on some arcane back of the book calculation on arbitrarily given bonuses.  Read More

10.15.20- What’s Behind
The Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflict?
Defense and Foreign Affairs

By October 2020, Turkey seemed closer than at any time since the Cold War to unambiguous and overt hostilities with Russia. But, then, Turkey was already in some form of conflict with at least 21 adversaries. Turkey and Russia are strategically interdependent, but simultaneously remain great rivals and with deep, historically-developed, mutual animosities. Not surprisingly, the Turkish Government of Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan moved yet again to carefully instigate a crisis with Russia, this time by triggering a military escalation between Azerbaijan (a U.S., Israeli, and Turkish client state) and Armenia (a Russian and Iranian client state). Read More

10.14.20- $1.7 Trillion Green Energy Spending Spree Could Send Solar Stocks Soaring
Alex Kimani

The shift from high-carbon fuels to clean energy is in full swing, and solar stocks are enjoying their moment in the sun. Solar ETF, Solar Invesco ETF (NYSEARCA:TAN), has been surging with blue wave prospects as Wall Street grows more bullish on the odds of a decisive Democratic victory that could provide a big push towards renewable energy. Read More

10.13.20- WTI Tumbles Below $40
Tyler Durden

As production ramps up following the Gulf of Mexico shut-ins, reports that Libya took a major step toward reopening its biggest field have sparked concerns among oil investors (adding fuel to the weakness following the cancelation of Norway's oil worker strike).

With the passing of the hurricane and the resolution of the strike in Norway, "investors are more concerned about the higher output in the face of subdued demand," said Mihir Kapadia, chief executive of Sun Global Investments. Read More

10.12.20- The Battle Between Renewables And Nuclear Is Heating Up
Irina Slav

Many proponents of a zero-emission grid are firm opponents to nuclear power. It is not emission-free, they argue. It is dangerous because it uses radioactive materials. Now, one team of researchers has taken it one step further, suggesting that nuclear has no place at all in a zero-emission future. In a study published in Nature, the team, from the University of Sussex, the team argues that renewables and nuclear are mutually exclusive, and nuclear needs to be shunned in favor of solar and wind to advance the world’s emissions-cutting agenda. Read More

10.10.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: One Out Of Every Five Americans Could Be Out Of Money “By Election Day”
Michael Snyder

This week we learned that there won’t be any more stimulus checks for the American people before the election, and that prompted tremendous eruptions of anger all over social media.  At first I didn’t understand why people were so angry, but now I do.  It turns out that a substantial portion of the population is desperate for another round of checks because they are almost entirely out of cash.  In fact, a very alarming survey that was just conducted found that one out of every five Americans “could be out of money by Election Day”… Read More

10.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The one lesson I hoped the left would learn from Trump
Joe Jarvis

Since Donald Trump is apparently rushing a COVID vaccine to production in the hopes of reelection, can I assume that the left now opposes forced government vaccinations?

Since August, the percent of people who say they are likely to get the first generation COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is available dropped from about 47% to 39% overall.  Read More

10.08.20- Crimes against Humanity
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich

View Video

10.07.20- The Biggest Obstacle
For Nuclear Energy
Haley Zaremba

Nuclear has long been touted as one of the most promising”clean” energy alternatives to fossil fuels. As a form of energy production with zero carbon emissions, it’s commonly seen as key to decarbonization and an effective global clean energy transition in order to combat climate change.  It may come as no surprise, then, that China’s own ambitious plan to bring the nation’s carbon footprint all the way down to zero by the years 2060 relies heavily on the bolstering of its nuclear energy industry, which is on track to become the biggest in the world.  Read More

10.06.20- MIT Scientists: Nuclear Fusion Energy Could Be Closer Than Thought
Tsvetana Paraskova

The decades-old dream of many scientists and science fiction writers may come true at some point over the next decade.  Researchers at MIT and a startup spun out of MIT are working on a nuclear fusion experiment, which they are fairly certain will achieve its goal of creating a hot burning plasma to produce for the first time ever fusion energy more than the energy consumed to generate that fusion energy.  Read More

10.05.20- The Fourth Circle
Dr T.P. Wilkinson

In 1973, the world economy was brought almost to a halt by a supposed shortage of oil. The ostensible trigger for this alleged shortage was the so-called Yom Kippur War in which the armed forces of the Anglo-American Empire’s settler-colonial offshore enterprise in Palestine, also known as the State of Israel, repelled the forces of Egypt and Syria, which had moved to reoccupy the territory stolen from them by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. One response to the Anglo-American Empire’s support of its client state against those states Israel wished to conquer was an oil embargo proclaimed by OPEC, with the largest producer — the autocratic Anglo-American protectorate Saudi Arabia at the lead. Read More

10.03.20- Oil Prices Slide As OPEC Opens The Valves
 Julianne Geiger

Oil prices took another dive on Thursday, with the price of WTI falling more than 6% by late morning as OPEC’s production increased in September over August.

Spot prices for WTI had fallen by 6.04% to $37.79 by 11:28 a.m. EDT, while Brent had dropped 5.22% to $40.09. Read More

10.02.20- Are “Energy Communities”
The Future Of Renewables?
Haley Zaremba

There is a new emerging trend in renewable energy with a rather idyllic sounding name: energy communities. These communities are designed as a model for the brave new world of producer-consumers--individuals that not only take energy from the grid, but feed back into it via their personal energy production devices, most commonly solar panels. These “prosumers” are transforming the way that utilities function within and interact with communities, and have raised questions about how to move forward in a rapidly changing energy landscape. There are several approaches to this energy evolution. One, which Oilprice reported on way back in January of 2018, is the use of blockchain technology to manage prosumers’ interaction with the local energy grid in an efficient and transparent manner. Read More

10.01.20- A Major Supply Shortage Is Set To Hit Lithium Markets
Tsvetana Paraskova

Lithium producers do not feel threatened by Tesla’s plan to produce lithium in Nevada. Miners, as well as analysts, believe that despite the recent drop in lithium prices, the industry is in for a supply shortage after 2025 as automakers significantly ramp up electric vehicle (EV) production.   Massive amounts of additional lithium supply will be needed to support not only the EV revolution but also the expected surge in stationary battery storage to support the wider adoption of renewable energy. Read More

09.30.20- Could Thorium Revive The Nuclear Energy Industry?
Alex Kimani

For decades, the nuclear energy sector has been regarded as the black sheep of the alternative energy market thanks to a series of high-profile disasters such as Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. But recently, the sector has received the backing of the Trump administration, which has sought a $1.5B bailout of America's flagging uranium industry in a bid to create sufficient federal stockpiles for national security purposes.

Yet, nuclear energy could soon receive yet another shot in the arm that might significantly improve its standing in the eyes of the public: Substituting thorium for dangerous uranium in nuclear reactors.Read More

09.29.20- From Pistol-Dollar To Petro-Dollar
To Pharma-Dollar...
Dr. T.P.Wilkinson

In 1973, the world economy was brought almost to a halt by a supposed shortage of oil. The ostensible trigger for this alleged shortage was the so-called Yom Kippur War in which the armed forces of the Anglo-American Empire’s settler-colonial offshore enterprise in Palestine, also known as the State of Israel, repelled the forces of Egypt and Syria, which had moved to reoccupy the territory stolen from them by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. One response to the Anglo-American Empire’s support of its client state against those states Israel wished to conquer was an oil embargo proclaimed by OPEC, with the largest producer– the autocratic Anglo-American protectorate Saudi Arabia at the lead. Read More

09.28.20-Natural Gas Will Rule The US Energy Market For Decades
Irina Slav

Natural gas was first hailed as the bridge between the fossil fuel past and the renewable future. Then it came under fire because although cleaner than oil and coal, it is not entirely emission-free. But according to a new report from Energy Market Advisors, it will rule the energy mix of the United States even 20 years from now. 

The reasons for this continued dominance are simple enough even if they may be unpleasant for the most hard-line supporters of renewables such as solar and wind. Gas is not only cheap, but its supply is also continuous, so, importantly, it does not need battery storage the way solar and wind do, which increases the total costs of such installations even if other costs are falling, which they are. Read More

09.26.20- Why Natural Gas Prices Are Set To Soar
Tsvetana Paraskova

The highly volatile U.S. natural gas benchmark prices are set to trend higher in the coming months amid lower domestic production, higher demand in the winter, and recovering global gas prices in Europe and Asia—America’s key export destinations for liquefied natural gas (LNG).   The coming winter season and the end of the hurricane season that has disrupted LNG operations and exports along the U.S. Gulf Coast, coupled with recovering gas demand for industrial activities in Asia and Europe, are likely to send natural gas prices to above $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in the winter months, the natural gas futures curve and EIA estimates show. Read More

09.25.20- Working prototype generates electricity from moving vehicles
Darren Quick

April 10, 2009 The United States has about 250 million registered vehicles, which adds up to a lot of pollution and burning of fossil fuels. New Energy Technologies, Inc. prefers to look at it another way, however – they see those 250 million vehicles as a potential energy source and have developed a prototype engineered to harness some of the kinetic energy being generated, and wasted, by moving cars and light vehicles. Read More

09.24.20- Everything Points To More Natural Gas Demand This Decade
Tsvetana Paraskova

Natural gas has often been vilified as just another fossil fuel contributing to the climate crisis. 

While gas-fired power generation and the natural gas value chain do emit greenhouse gases, natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, most notably coal, and can play a major role in replacing coal-fired power generation, immediately contributing to lower emissions from the electricity sector.  Read More

09.23.20- Skeleton and KIT promise graphene SuperBattery with 15-second charging
Loz Blain

Estonia's Skeleton Technologies and Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have partnered up to complete development on what they're calling the SuperBattery for EVs – "a groundbreaking graphene battery with a 15-second charging time."

So what is it? Well, it appears it's a hybrid pack combining regular lithium-ion cells and Skeleton's own ultracapacitor cells, which feature a curved graphene construction, working in tandem, each part playing to its strengths. Read More

09.22.20- Nat Gas Plummets 10%, Slides Under $2 In Biggest One-Day Drop In 20 Months
Tyler Durden

Natural gas futures tumbled below $2 amid a broad rout in commodity markets and on speculation that Tropical Storm Beta may spur power outages and curtail LNG exports along the Gulf Coast (as Bloomberg notes, Beta is a slow-moving storm that will bring flooding rains in Louisiana as it toward Texas to come ashore near Corpus Christi). Read More

09.21.20- Why Trump Will Win
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

I was going to make this the shortest essay I’ve ever written. “Trump Will Win Because of Energy. Period.” But wouldn’t you know, things start popping up on exactly the topic it was going to be about… The difference in energy between Donald Trump and Joe Biden should be obvious to everyone, including Biden supporters, though they will try to ignore it, as well as the role energy plays in a campaign, as it does in life in general -not just human life either-. Read More

09.19.20- The Holy Grail of Endless Energy: Harvesting Blackholes
Alex Kimani

A year ago, House representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, proposed the Green New Deal, a nonbinding congressional resolution that lays out a grand plan for tackling climate change by meeting 100% of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources. Read More

09.18.20- Twilight in the Desert for
Saudi and MBS?
F. William Engdahl

It appears as if Saudi de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is on a mission to destroy the world oil giant by one after the other ill-conceived economic decisions. Now, as MBS orders yet new desperation cuts in Saudi oil prices, his economy is imploding from all sides—from the stupid Vision 2030 plan to even the traditional oil sector, the source for 87% of the Kingdom budget. The economic decline of Saudi Arabia will have huge geopolitical consequences beyond the Middle East. Read More

09.17.20- RMIT's new cost-effective, carbon-capturing poop-to-hydrogen reactor
Loz Blain

A team from Australia's RMIT University says it's figured out a cost-effective way to produce hydrogen using wastewater and sewage. The process not only produces clean H2 gas, it also captures all the carbon in human poop and puts it to valuable use.

In doing so, it could not only generate clean power from a virtually limitless human waste resource, it could also lead to a completely emissions-neutral wastewater sector. If hydrogen is to play a serious part in the future green energy economy, production methods like this could kill multiple birds with one stone. Read More

09.16.20- Why GM’s Wireless Battery Could Be A Gamechanger
Irina Slav

Batteries are a hot area of research, and it has only been getting hotter as the EV space begins to fill up with companies eager to stake their claim in what many continue to see as an EV revolution. It is, however, more of an evolutionary process. The latest stage in that evolution was recently unveiled by GM: wireless batteries. Typically, an electric vehicle’s battery is connected to the car’s onboard management system through wires, and there’s a lot of them. GM has dispensed with that in its Ultium battery packs. Instead of wires, the battery connects to the onboard management system via antennas in a way similar to how Bluetooth works, IEEE Spectrum magazine writes after an exclusive look at the new batteries. Read More

09.15.20- Solar Windows Will Soon Become A Commercial Reality
Alex Kimani

Last year, the United Nations sent out a grim warning: The world has a very short 10-year window to act to avert catastrophic and irreversible climate change. Not surprisingly, the clean energy drive has gone full circle as the ongoing ESG investment craze is now proving amidst the worst pandemic in modern history.  By and large, fossil fuels still power the global economy, but are rapidly being shunned in favor of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal. At a time when the oil and gas sector is facing its worst existential crisis in modern history, the demand for renewable energy has continued to grow unabated. Read More

09.14 20- Funny how global warming hovers the globe - but only lands in California
Monica Showalter

According to California's governor, Gavin Newsom, global warming did the big fires raving his state, as well as its two ideological sidekicks, Washington and Oregon:

"The debate is over around climate change," Newsom said as he toured a burn area in Northern California. "Just come to the state of California. Observe it with your own eyes. It’s not an intellectual debate. It’s not even debatable any longer." Read More

09.12.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Future of the United States of America: Light after Darkness
Hugo Salinas Price

I haverelied on no particular source of information in the process of forming an opinion regarding the causes and the promoters of the present disturbances in the US, and their objectives. I browse the Internet like anyone else. My opinion regarding events in the US is the result of my personality: my opinions are what they are, because I am the way I am.

I cannot regard events in the US as spontaneous expressions of anger and dissatisfaction regarding present social conditions. Disorderly events of this duration and magnitude cannot possibly be - in my opinion - spontaneous expressions of popular discontent. Read More

09.11.20- Ditching the diesel:
Hydrogen Microgrids
by Thomas Chrometzka, Tanai Potisat & Aoibhin Quinn

The world looked on in disarray as oil prices went negative for the first time in history. This wasn’t the only covid-induced consequence, an economic global recession followed. Now, thought leaders are witnessing a reversal in globalisation. With so much emphasis on the principle of efficiency and the global production of goods, should maintaining resilience for local economies and energy systems not prevail? Read More

09.10.20- Oil’s Luck Runs Out
As Driving Season Ends
Irina Slav

This year’s driving season was a disappointment for those who hoped and expected it to pull oil prices higher, helped by the pandemic that, those optimists reasoned, would motivate people to rely more heavily on personal transportation than public transit.

Yet prices have remained low throughout the summer despite a modest improvement. This week, the first week after the end of driving season, prices started with a loss, with WTI falling below $40 a barrel. The trend is likely to continue as pessimism prevails. Is that justified? Read More

09.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Here Comes The Next Round Of Tyranny... Big Pharma
Dave Kranzler

Where this goes next is anyone’s guess, but the path to Totalitarianism is unavoidable unless the public rallies and revolts.  Brace yourself because…

“The unsustainable will not be sustained, except through ever-increasing force and fraud.” –   “Jesse,”  Jesse’s Cafe Americain

Here come the greed-head Vax’ers. We know after many decades that the flu vaccine has limited – if not unverifiable – efficacy.  But Big Pharma will use its corruption and political muscle in an attempt to force the public to accept a hastily devised COVID “vaccine”. Read More

09.08.20- The One Big Problem
With Green Hydrogen
Irina Slav

From a rarely mentioned, modest member of the renewable energy family to a headline-hogging clickbait, hydrogen has quickly turned from a prop to a star. There is a good reason for it: the most abundant chemical element in the universe can be harnessed to produce and store energy without fear of supply shortage. And it can even be produced entirely from renewable sources, which makes it near-perfect.

Near, because green hydrogen comes at a cost. Several U.S. utilities have revealed big plans for green hydrogen, according to a Wall Street Journal report. NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy are among these, and they plan to invest in the production of hydrogen from solar and wind electricity even though it is one of the more expensive ways to produce hydrogen, to be in turn used to produce electricity. Read More

09.07.20- And Now for Something Entirely Different: The End of Sports
David Solway

Turning on the TV the other night for my ailing mother-in-law, a devotee of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team, we were pummeled by the public address announcer’s sanctimonious spiel about Black Lives Matter, the social sickness of “systemic racism,” and how these issues were “bigger than the game.” Some of the players were featured delivering solemn, not-entirely lucid homilies about justice for the oppressed and the need for brotherhood among the races. One could sense Saint Kaepernick kneeling in the background. Read More

09.05.20- WTI Drops Below $40 Amid Stock Market Rout
Julianne Geiger

Oil prices tumbled on Friday morning, preparing to finish out the week $3 per barrel less than last Friday’s level. It is the largest weekly drop since June.

U.S. oil futures were already at their lowest point since July on Wednesday.

At 11:00 am EDT, the WTI spot price was $40.26 (-2.68%), nearly $3 under last week’s level. Brent crude was trading $43.04 (-2.34%), roughly $2 per barrel less than last week. Read More

09.04.20- What Are Anti-Solar Panels?
Irina Slav

Solar panels have been hailed as one of the most important energy technologies of our time for their ability to theoretically produce infinite energy. But solar panels only work during the day and even then only if there is enough sun for them to convert into electricity. Well now there is a new kind of panel, and it could well solve that problem.

This new tech is called the anti-solar panel, and it doesn't absorb heat from the sun to turn into electricity. Instead, these panels capture the heat that the earth radiates into the atmosphere at night as it cools off and radiates it out in turn. This radiated heat is then used to produce electricity with a thermoelectric generator. Read More

09.03.20- 3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming The Energy Industry
Alex Kimani

Back in 2017, Bill Gates penned a poignant online essay to all graduating college students around the world whereby he tapped artificial intelligence (AI), clean energy, and biosciences as the three fields he would spend his energies on if he could start all over again and wanted to make a big impact in the world today. Read More

09.02.20- Nuclear Power Could Win Big In U.S. Elections
Jon LeSage

The world’s largest nuclear power market is ready to gain more government backing for the energy — no matter who wins in November.

For nearly a half century, the Democratic Party’s election year party platform has excluded nuclear energy, but that’s not the case this year. The newly-released party platform says It favors a “technology-neutral” approach that includes all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage. Read More

09.01.20- What The UAE-Israel Deal Really Means For The Middle East
Simon Watkins

The announcement on 13 August that Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will normalise relations, around the same as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he was suspending plans to annex more areas of the West Bank that it seized during the 1967 ‘Six Dar War’, has naturally raised the adjunct question about what this deal means for the two powerhouses of the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran? As with so many queries relating to the Middle East, the answer is not as straightforward as many might imagine, but it is outlined below. Read More

08.31.20- Fossil Fuels Are Here To Stay
Irina Slav

Following energy news these days is exciting: there is so much about new batteries, more efficient solar panels, cheaper wind energy, and dozens of EV models coming to a market near you any day now. The future looks bright, emission-free, and electric. All it takes to ruin the vision is a single report, in this case from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Titled Key World Energy Statistics 2020, the report provides an in-depth look at energy production and consumption trends spanning a period between the early 1970s and 2018. And the data shows that we are still heavily reliant on oil and gas, despite all the progress renewables have made. In fact, the portion of oil and gas in the world’s energy mix is so massive it is doubtful we will ever be fossil fuel-free. Read More

08.29.20- "Return Of The Dust Bowl? The "Megadrought" In The Southwest Is Really Starting To Escalate
Michael Snyder

Much of the southwestern portion of the United States has been gripped by a drought that never seems to end, and there is a tremendous amount of concern that patterns that we witnessed back during the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s may be starting to repeat. 

In a previous article, I discussed the extreme heat that we have been seeing in the region lately.  Phoenix has never had more days in a year when the high temperature has hit at least 115 degrees, and other southwestern cities have been smashing records as well.  At the same time, precipitation levels have been very low, and the combination of these two factors is starting to cause some major problems. Read More

08.28.20- The U.S. Energy Storage Boom
Is About To Begin
Tsvetana Paraskova

The rise of renewable energy sources and the decarbonization of the grid will need new energy storage installations in the coming years to provide flexible energy and capacity. Alongside rising shares of solar and wind power in the electricity mix, the U.S. is set to see increased energy storage installation as storage is critical to ensuring more solar and wind power generation.

America has the potential to see 100 gigawatts (GW) of new energy storage deployed by 2030, the U.S. Energy Storage Association (ESA) said in a new white paper this month. Read More

08.27.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Breathtaking Ignorance and Gullibility of America’s Elites
Steve McCann

Those of us that immigrated to the United States from various hellholes over the decades find one characteristic of the current American populace astonishing and disturbing.  That is the breathtaking level of gullibility and ignorance of many ostensibly well-educated native-born Americans.

Over the years, this growing naïveté and obliviousness has been a source of amusement and head-shaking incredulity.  However, these traits have now become so dominant among an ever-growing segment of the upper classes within American society that the future of this nation as a prosperous and freedom loving country is in serious jeopardy. Read More

08.26.20- Building The World’s First Nuclear Fusion Reactor
Haley Zaremba

70 years after the first energy was made using nuclear power at an experimental station near Arco, Idaho, nuclear energy remains at the heart of a contentious debate. Nuclear power holds enormous potential as a solution to curbing emissions that contribute to global warming, as splitting atoms to make energy is extremely efficient and produces absolutely greenhouse gas emissions. What it does produce, however, is hazardous waste that remains radioactive for millennia. And then there is the issue of public mistrust, as high-profile nuclear disasters like those at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island have seared themselves into the global community’s collective memory. Read More

08.25.20- Three Reasons Why Oil Prices Won’t Rally Anytime Soon
Alex Kimani

It’s been disheartening for the bulls that oil prices have failed to break out over the past few weeks despite a flurry of positive news including declining inventories and reports that OPEC+  producers have mostly been sticking to their pledged cuts.

And now the pendulum has swung to the opposite end and oil markets have to climb a new wall of worry. Read More

08.24.20- What Will It Take For Americans To Switch To EVs?
Irina Slav

One and a half million electric cars on the roads of the U.S. West and Midwest by 2030: this is the vision of regional power utility Xcel Energy, and part of its aim to be emissions-free by 2050. Those EVs are certainly enjoying a lot of attention on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, some companies are even giving them away for free to encourage people to go electric. Xcel Energy is not going this far, however. It will simply encourage people to switch to an EV. Read More

08.22.20- Oil Nosedives On Poor Economic Data
Tom Kool

With so much bullish news in recent weeks, the fact that oil prices have failed to break out does not bode well for markets in the coming weeks.

For Global Energy Alert members there are now two new free reports available in your dashboard. The first of these reports is on how to interpret stock charts and the second outlines the three biggest mistakes made by traders today. Make sure you become a member to read these reports and more. Read More

08.21.20- Trump Touts "Making Very Big Oil Deals" As Condition For Rapid Troop
Exit From Iraq
Tyler Durden

President Trump has again vowed that all US troops will soon be out of America's second longest occupation in Iraq (behind the longest running war in Afghanistan).

But curiously, like in neighboring Syria, he tied concluding the US mission there directly to the possibility of oil and resource benefits for American companies: Read More

08.20.20- China Is The Biggest Winner Of The U.S. Renewables Boom
Alex Kimani

Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the 1970s oil crisis, the U.S. has relentlessly pursued the utopia of becoming energy independent. But with persistent oil crises and severe oil price shocks, it has become glaringly obvious that Washington will never achieve true energy independence by relying solely on fossil fuels, even if the United States finally becomes a net oil exporter.  The majority of America’s citizens also feel that the government should ‘‘...focus on developing alternative sources of energy over expansion of fossil fuel sources’’ in a bid to alleviate climate change. Read More

08.19.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Welcome To The Global Gulag...
Clive Maund

In case you haven’t noticed, we now live under tyranny, and over the next several years, thanks to the unquestioning zombielike submission of the masses, it is set to get a whole lot worse.

When this whole bizarre virus plandemic, or scamdemic, started to gather momentum I instinctively knew that something wasn’t right, that the official explanations didn’t add up, and that society at large was “being played” by those in power with an agenda. To anyone with even a modicum of real intelligence, the whole thing stinks of an elaborate plot. Read More

08.18.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: It’s Time for America’s Hard Men... America’s Very Survival Is At Risk
Justin O. Smith

Forward

The days grow darker with each passing minute, as we hear black nationalist anti-white racists screaming, “We’re coming for everything You took from Us”, as if they have ever really done an honest day’s work themselves or actually had anybody take anything from them. Nine times out of ten, these radicals are the criminals responsible for the massive crime sprees and looting we currently see all across the nation. Read More

08.17.20- Natural Gas Prices Soar As Heat Wave Hits Large Parts Of U.S.
Julianne Geiger

Natural gas prices spiked on Friday by nearly 9%, even as the weekly storage report showed little movement.

Natural gas prices hit $2.367 by 2:26 pm EDT, an increase of 8.48% or $0.185, even as the EIA’s weekly storage report a day earlier showed a small increase of 58 Bcf in working gas in storage. The market had anticipated a larger build. Read More

08.15.20- Happy Armadillo Day
JSB

Today, August 15th, is Armadillo Day. Armadillo Day is not yet a widely known holiday (the Banks are still open), and is only celebrated in Texas.Read More

08.14.20- IEA Sees 2020 Oil Demand
Down 8.1 Million Bpd
Irina Slav

The International Energy Agency expects crude oil demand this year to be 8.1 million bpd lower than it was in 2019, a downward demand forecast revision of 140,000 bpd, the authority said in its latest Oil Market Report.

“Global oil demand is expected to be 91.9 mb/d in 2020, down 8.1 mb/d y-o-y. In this Report, we reduce our 2020 forecast by 140 kb/d, the first downgrade in several months, reflecting the stalling of mobility as the number of Covid-19 cases remains high, and weakness in the aviation sector,” the IEA said. Read More

08.13.20- Upcycling technique turns plastic bottles into supercapacitor material
Nick Lavars

Scientists at the University of California, Riverside have come up with a new technique to turn plastic bottles into a material for supercapacitors

Supercapacitors hold incredible potential when it comes to energy storage, with an ability to charge and discharge almost instantly being one of their major selling points. Were key components for these next-generation devices to come from sustainable sources that would only add to the appeal, and scientists at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) are offering up this possibility in the form of a nanomaterial made from upcycled plastic waste. Read More

08.12.20- Smart bricks store energy in the walls themselves
Michael Irving

Boring old bricks might not seem like something that can really be made high-tech, but researchers keep proving us wrong. Now, a team has found a way to turn bricks into energy storage devices, using them to power a green LED in a proof of concept study.

A brick wall doesn’t exactly do much – sure it holds up the roof and keeps the cold out, but maybe the bricks could pull their weight a bit more. That was the goal for a team of scientists at Washington University in St Louis, who wanted to test whether bricks could be used to store electricity. Read More

08.11.20- WTF is Zero Point Energy and How Could it Change the World?
Neel V. Patel

Energy will never cease to be a concern for human beings, so long as our species plans to keep growing and expanding. There’s no shortage of scientists and engineers trying to come up with solutions that might help us avoid a catastrophic energy shortage. Some of these ideas seem pretty feasible, such as switching to renewables like wind and solar. Some are incredibly farfetched and probably impossible, like cold fusion. And then there are some ideas which are downright bonkers — but if true, could essentially change everything we know and love about human civilization. Read More

08.10.20- Going Green Is Easier Done
Than Said For The U.S.
Haley Zaremba

As the rest of the world follows the global trajectory toward an energy transition, moving away from fossil fuels to alternative forms of energy, whether in the interest of creating a decarbonized future or staying afloat in a decarbonized economy that is looming on the horizon, the United States is falling behind. COVID-19 has presented the world with an unprecedented and largely unanticipated disruption to the industrial and economic status quo, and many experts think that these extraordinary circumstances provide an unmissable opportunity to reorient the global economy toward decarbonization and construct what the World Economic Forum has advocated as a “new energy order” and a “great reset.” The World Economic Forum is not alone. Read More

08.08.20- New catalyst rearranges carbon dioxide and water into ethanol fuel
Loz Blain

Researchers at the US Dept of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, working with Northern Illinois University, have discovered a new catalyst that can convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol with "very high energy efficiency, high selectivity for the desired final product and low cost."

The catalyst is made of atomically dispersed copper on a carbon-powder support, and acts as an electrocatalyst, sitting in a low voltage electric field as water and carbon dioxide are passed over it. The reaction breaks down these molecules, then selectively rearranges them into ethanol with an electrocatalytic selectivity, or "Faradaic efficiency" higher than 90%. The team says this is "much higher than any other reported process." Read More

08.07.20- Can Renewables Fully Sustain Our Current Way Of Life?
Tsvetana Paraskova

“The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to. One interesting question is why anybody ever thought they could.”

Michael Shellenberger, Time magazine “Hero of the Environment,” wrote this commentary in an article in Forbes.

According to Shellenberger, president at Environmental Progress and an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), renewables are simply incapable of sustaining our current way of life. Read More

08.06.20- Energy Giants Race For 'Green Hydrogen' Market Share
Haley Zaremba

Green hydrogen is red hot. While hydrogen has long been touted as a virtually inexhaustible source of clean energy, with zero carbon emissions since this first element on the periodic table burns clean, leaving behind only water vapor. This makes hydrogen highly marketable as a promising fuel source option for a decarbonized economy of the future. The idea of a new energy order has gained a ton of attention in the wake of the novel coronavirus’ unprecedented interruption to the energy sector status quo, with such influential organizations as the World Economic Forum calling for a “great reset”. Not all hydrogen is created equal, however. Hydrogen power is not a novelty; it is already widely used in commonplace industrial processes such as ammonia production, in refineries and as a feedstock for chemicals. Read More

08.05.20- The truth about “clean” electric vehicles: Here’s what tech giants like Tesla are not telling you
Virgilio Marin

Battery-powered cars, or electric vehicles, are touted as the future of automobiles with its purportedly clean and green energy usage. The cars emerged as the conversation on carbon dioxide or CO2 emissions worldwide snowballed in recent years, and many experts are encouraging the use of renewable energy as a substitute for fossil fuel.

Indeed, several governments and international agencies are calling for efforts to reduce CO2 emissions within the next three decades, encapsulated in the mantra “net zero by 2050.” Read More

08.04.20- Why Natural Gas Prices Just Exploded
Juliann Geiger

The weather is going to be hot after all in the short term, forecasts now predict. That prediction sent natural gas prices soaring on Monday by nearly 20 percent as traders hold out hope for anything that will contribute to a reduction in nat gas stockpiles.

Natural gas prices have been trading under $2.50 since December on weak demand and oversupply.

Other bullish factors on Monday highlight the increased LNG/feedgas export figures provided over the weekend, with Genscape estimating a 740 MMcf/d increase on Saturday. Read More

08.03.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Disturbing GPS Hack...
Joseph P. Farrell

This very unusual article isn’t so unusual, at least, from one perspective. But it is big, and given the context of my speculations lately, i.e., that there’s some sort of massive covert war going on, it may be another data point to consider. I don’t know, and therefore, this is one for the “You Tell Me” category. It was spotted and shared by M.H., and it’s a doozie:

As the article notes, Garmin, and major GPS firm, was hacked and their system actually went down (and I’m citing the entire article, composed by CNN business reporter Oliver Effron):  Read More

08.01.20- What’s Holding Geothermal Energy Back?
Irina Slav

It’s abundant, and it’s emissions-free: the heat from the earth’s mantle that reaches well into the crust and gives deep drillers a headache occasionally is the new star on the renewables block. Nevertheless, oil and gas companies have been somewhat reluctant to embrace it. Let’s first clarify: geothermal energy is only “new” in terms of the media attention it has been getting. Researchers - including people from the oil and gas industry - have been working for decades on technologies to extract the heat from the earth and either use it directly or turn it into electricity. It is only gaining prominence now as these technologies advance and the world’s attention becomes increasingly focused on alternatives to fossil fuels. Read More

07.31.20- The Calm Before
The Next Oil Price Storm?
Jason Burack

View Video

07.30.20- America’s Big Plan To Bring Nuclear Energy To Space
Haley Zaremba

The United States nuclear power sector has been in steep decline for years. Even though nuclear energy, which produces zero greenhouse gas emissions, stands to have a huge advantage as the world moves toward decarbonizing the global energy industry, U.S. nuclear just can’t catch a break. While the nuclear energy sector is booming in countries like Russia and China, which are constantly adding new plants to their fleets, nuclear energy plants in the United States have been shutting down or relying on hefty government subsidies just to stay afloat. In a domestic energy sector absolutely flooded by cheap natural gas from the West Texas shale revolution, nuclear just hasn’t been able to compete for years. What’s more, the sector has largely failed out of public and political favor as nuclear energy has become largely associated with high profile disasters like the tragedies as Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island.  Read More

07.29.20- Oil Markets Face New Glut As OPEC Prepares To Open The Taps
Rystad Energy

The upcoming partial return of curtailed OPEC+ oil production from August is set to create a new four-month supply glut of around 170 million barrels, a Rystad Energy analysis reveals. The analysis is based on the assumption that oil demand will not rebound as quickly as previously thought due to the persistent expansion of the Covid-19 pandemic in key markets, or what we call a mild second wave of the virus. Read More

07.28.20- How The Fed Is Artificially
Propping Up Oil Prices
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices have stabilized at $40 per barrel, despite global oil demand remaining sharply below pre-pandemic levels. Everyone knows the significant role that OPEC+ has played in balancing the oil market, along with the sharp drop in production elsewhere, including in U.S. shale. But looking further out, another institution could play an even larger role in driving up oil prices: the U.S. Federal Reserve. Oil prices have historically moved in close concert with inflation. Recent examples include 2003-2008, which saw loose monetary policy, inflation and an incredible run up in crude oil prices. After the financial crisis, the Fed took extraordinary action to revive the collapsed economy – and crude prices shot up between 2009 and 2011. Read More

07.27.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Bombshell: Fauci’s NIH Study Reveals 5G Tecnology Can Produce Coronavirus
In Human Cells
Suzanne Hamner

Remember when the coronavirus outbreak first hit in Wuhan, China?  Remember that Wuhan, China had just rolled out 5G technology around the same time?  Remember the theory postulated that 5G might have something to do with the outbreak of coronavirus?  If you do, you will be pleased to know that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s National Institute of Health (NIH) just released the findings of a study that indicates 5G technology can produce coronavirus in human cells.

The abstract and explanation follows from the website. Read More

07.25.20- Russian Gas Giant Gazprom To Start Producing Clean Hydrogen
Irina Slav

Russia’s gas giant Gazprom will start producing “clean”, that is, zero-emission, hydrogen beginning in 2024 under a new government plan to develop a hydrogen economy.

The plan sees Gazprom building and beginning to test a methane-hydrogen-powered turbine next year, and until 2024 it will also study different applications of hydrogen as a fuel, both in things such as gas boilers and gas turbines, and as fuel for vehicles. Read More

07.24.20- It's All Downhill from Here: U.S. Oil Production Peak Already In The Rear-view Mirror
Steve St Angelo

It’s a shame that the drive for U.S  Energy Independence only lasted for about a year.  Even worse, U.S. Shale Oil Industry...

It’s a shame that the drive for U.S  Energy Independence only lasted for about a year.  Even worse, U.S. Shale Oil Industry responsible for the country’s energy independence is now in serious trouble as the companies have cut drilling by 75% while they are drowning in debt up to the eyeballs.  This is a “No-Win” scenario.  So, watch over the next 3-6 months as the mighty U.S. Shale Industry begins to implode in glorious 3D-Technicolor. Read More

07.23.20- Soft, solid battery electrolyte could see EVs go great distances
Nick Lavars

Lithium metal batteries, in which the graphite material in the anode is swapped out for pure lithium metal, could be a game changer when it comes to energy storage, potentially offering far greater capacity and an ability to charge much faster. Scientists are reporting a new breakthrough in this area, demonstrating how an electrolyte made of soft and solid materials can prevent the formation of tree-like growths that normally prove fatal to the battery’s performance. Read More

07.22.20- Surge In Gold Prices Could Be Bad News For Oil
Haley Zaremba

The world may soon return to an international gold standard thanks to a project that European central banks have been quietly preparing for decades. This month Seeking Alpha reported that “since the 1970s, policies that paved the way for an equitable and durable monetary system have gradually been implemented,” leading us closer and closer to being able to reinstate the classic gold standard. The European Central banks predicted 50 years ago what is happening today in the international monetary system--the current fiat system is on the decline, and “unconventional monetary policy has entered a dead end street and can't reverse” Jan Nieuwenhuijs wrote for Seeking Alpha. Read More

07.21.20- Infinite Carbon-Free Energy Is Closer Than Ever
Haley Zaremba

As long as science fiction writers have been imagining it, scientists have been trying to make it a reality. The holy grail of clean energy. The silver bullet solution to global warming. The power of the sun brought down to Earth. That’s right, nuclear fusion. 

Nuclear fusion, if and when it becomes a reality, will change the energy industry, and the world, as we know it. It is, essentially, the key to limitless, renewable, and carbon-free energy. And not only is it many times more powerful than nuclear fission. it does not require any radioactive materials, and therefore does not produce any radioactive nuclear waste. And, there is no risk of the nuclear meltdowns that have become synonymous with nuclear energy thanks to the tragedies at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. Read More

07.20.20- Small Lab Makes Big Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion Tech
Jon LeSage

Nuclear power has high hopes of coming back as a serious competitor in the utility sector through nuclear fusion, but it’s been requiring massive investments and several more years of development before it wins regulatory approval. Dense plasma focus (DPF) could open the door to fusion being adopted much faster and for being economically feasible.

Middlesex, NJ-based Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc., known as LPPFusion, may soon be leading the way in transitioning over to nuclear fusion through DPF. Read More

07.18.20- Weekend Rant: The Next Phase of the GMO Discussion
Joseph P. Farrell

Last week I blogged about I.G. Farbensanto’s latest gimick to avoid legal entanglements when it (Bayer) bought out Mon(ster)santo, to become I.G. Farbensanto.

I won’t go into the latest gimick all over again. Rather, there’s something else coming down the pike that M.W. spotted and shared(and again, thank you!), and it’s such a whopper doozie I have to pass it along. That something is “gene drive organisms”, and if that sounds to you a little “scary and creepy”, it’s because it’s far worse than that: Read More

07.17.20- Is This The Best Way To Produce Cheap Hydrogen?
Irina Slav

When the European Union recently announced large-scale hydrogen production plans as part of its green energy future, many in the solar, wind, and natural gas industry rejoiced. But there is also an emerging avenue for hydrogen production and its rubbish. Literally.

Hydrogen has already established itself as an inseparable part of the energy world of tomorrow when emissions will, hopefully, be minimal of not completely absent. Yet not all hydrogen is created equal: most of the hydrogen produced in the world today—as much as 95 percent—is produced from natural gas, which compromises its “clean” credentials. The rest is produced through electrolysis, using solar and wind power. Read More

07.16.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: This Is A Financial Extinction Event
Charles Hugh Smith

The lower reaches of the financial food chain are already dying, and every entity that depended on that layer is doomed.

Though under pressure from climate change, the dinosaurs were still dominant 65 million year ago--until the meteor struck, creating a global "nuclear winter" that darkened the atmosphere for months, killing off most of the food chain that the dinosaurs depended on. (See chart below.) Read More

07.15.20- There Are Nationwide Shortages Of Aluminum Cans, Soda, Flour, Canned Soup, Pasta And Rice
Michael Snyder

I had no idea that things had gotten so bad.  Earlier today, my wife spoke with the manager of a local grocery store because she wanted to place a large order for some canned goods.  What she was told surprised her, and it certainly surprised me.  The manager of this local grocery store told her that there are numerous nationwide shortages going on at this moment, and he indicated that there are lots of products that he simply cannot get right now.  When my wife told me what he had said, I decided that I had to look into this, because I hadn’t heard that canned goods were in short supply.  Well, it turns out that the manager that my wife spoke with was right on target, and that should deeply alarm all of us. Read More

07.14.20- Why The Hydrogen Boom Is Good News For Natural Gas
Alex Kimani

After decades of stagnation and multiple false dawns, the hydrogen economy is finally taking off, with some experts predicting that hydrogen could become a globally-traded energy source, just like oil and gas. A growing number of countries and industries are proactively investing in hydrogen technologies; none, however, can rival the EU's zeal.

The European Union has set out its new hydrogen strategy as part of its goal to achieve carbon neutrality for all its industries by 2050. Read More

07.13.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How the Left Uses "Public Health Crises" to Get What It Wants
Ryan McMaken

After insisting for weeks that leaving one’s home or gathering in groups was “irresponsible” and a “slap in the face” to medical professionals…

After insisting for weeks that leaving one’s home or gathering in groups of any size was “irresponsible” and a “slap in the face” to medical professionals, doctors and nurses completely changed their minds. The prohibitionist view toward gatherings was specifically applied to those who protested the stay-at-home orders. “Shame on you!” was the general attitude of many medical professionals who opposed the protests. “How dare you not follow the edicts of science!” But, when protests and riots broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s apparent murder by Minneapolis police officers, many doctors, nurses, pundits, and activists completely changed their tune. These protests, the doctors and nurses assured us, were perfectly fine. Read More

07.11.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: "I Could Live With That": How The CIA Made Afghanistan Safe For The Opium Trade
Jeffrey St.Clair

“I decided I could live with that.”

– Stansfield Turner, Jimmy Carter’s CIA director, on the extreme level of civilian casualties in the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan.

The first indelible image of the war in Afghanistan for many Americans was probably that of CBS anchorman Dan Rather, wrapped in the voluminous drapery of a mujahedin fighter, looking like a healthy relative of Lawrence of Arabia (albeit with hair that seemed freshly blow-dried, as some viewers were quick to point out). From his secret mountainside “somewhere in the Hindu Kush,” Rather unloaded on his audience a barrowload of nonsense about the conflict. Read More

07.10.20- Japanese Firm Develops Battery That’s 90% Cheaper Than Lithium-Ion
Julianne Geiger

APB Corp founder Hideaki Horie has received backing from a swath of Japanese firms to develop a new kind of battery that would significantly decrease production costs and improve safety, Bloombergreported on Wednesday.

The battery, which would replace the intricate battery parts such as metal-lined electrodes and liquid electrolytes with a resin material, would be more like mass producing steel instead of the complex production process that lithium-ion batteries undergo today. Read More

07.09.20- Big Oil Should Focus On The World’s Cleanest Energy Source
Irina Slav

Big Oil majors have been scrambling to make the most ambitious climate commitments in the industry, planning a pivot to clean energy, talking about net-zero emission bills, solar, and wind. However, there is another clean energy source that has remained out of the spotlight--one that may eventually rise to prominence: geothermal.

Geothermal energy is, simply put, the heat from the Earth’s mantle brought to the surface to use for heating and, more importantly, electricity generation. Iceland is the usual example of successfully harnessing geothermal energy. Iceland, however, is not the only place where geothermal can be tapped. In fact, it’s everywhere. You just need to know exactly where and how to drill for it. Read More

07.08.20- Why The Bakken May Not Come Back
Nick Cunningham

The Bakken shale is already declining because of financial struggles and the oil market downturn, but the potential shuttering of the Dakota Access pipeline could close off the possibility of a rebound.

The 570,000-barrel-per-day oil pipeline carries Bakken oil to the Midwest. On Monday, a federal judge ordered the pipeline to shut down within 30 days after vacating authorization for the project. Energy Transfer immediately appealed for a “provisional stay,” but U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg shot down that request. Read More

07.07.20- Water-filled windows could both heat and cool buildings
Ben Coxworth

When it comes to keeping buildings energy efficient, windows certainly pose a challenge. It was with this quandary in mind that a British scientist has created a new type of window – one that's filled with water.

There are two main problems with conventional windows. For one thing, most of them allow heat to escape during cold weather, causing the building's furnace to run more frequently. For another, they allow sunlight to stream in during hot weather, creating heat that causes the air conditioning to kick in. Read More

07.06.20- Battery Metal Sector Sees Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Robert Rapier

The world is in transition between a lead-acid battery past, and a future in which lithium-ion batteries are poised to supplant lead-acid batteries and to displace increasing volumes of transportation fuels. But will this year’s Covid-19 pandemic affect this transition? Today’s article explores the impact the pandemic is having on the battery sector.

Lead-Acid Versus Lithium-Ion

In a previous article — Lead-Acid Batteries Are On A Path To Extinction — I speculated that falling costs and better performance from lithium-ion batteries posed an existential threat to the 160-year reign of the lead-acid battery. Read More

07.04.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: New Intel: Communist China providing automatic weapons to Antifa, Black Lives Matter… some stored in democrat-run government buildings including East End Complex Capitol building in Sacramento
Mike Adams

We have bombshell new intel to share with you today that connects some recent dots on the emerging violence (and civil war attempt) from Black Lives Matter, the militant terrorism wing of the Democrat party.

Summary of what you’ll find in this article: Read More

07.03.20- Satellite Data Exposes A Massive Methane Problem
Alex Kimani

The fossil fuel industry has received plenty of flak over the past decade for its conspicuous role in climate change. The usual script goes something like this: Fossil fuels - which currently supply 80 percent of the world’s energy needs - release large amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere when burned. CO2 traps large amounts of heat in our atmosphere, directly contributing to global warming and climate change. But now a new script has emerged: Leaky oil and gas infrastructure has been playing an outsized role in climate change by spewing out far more quantities of an even more potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than earlier thought. Read More

07.02.20- Eco-Genocide and the Genetically Engineered Mosquito Army
Whitney Webb

The enemies of life are breeding their own agents of ecological destruction aided and abetted by an incompetent EPA and a rubber-stamp government in Florida, which just gave unanimous approval for the release of hundreds of millions of genetically modified mosquitoes by a company with deep ties to Bill Gates, the US military, and Big Ag.  Read More

07.01.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Think The "Cancel" Mobs Can't Get Any Worse? Think Again
Harlan Hill

America is in the midst of one of the great moral panics in our nation’s history. If we don’t stand up for our nation’s core values, the situation could get even worse – and soon. If you’ve spent any time on social media in the last three weeks, you’ve probably noticed the organized campaigns to get college and even high schoolstudents expelled or denied admission based on their political views. You’ve also seen gleeful mobs celebrating as Americans lose their jobs for running afoul of someone’s momentary political obsessions. Read More

06.30.20- Imploding Car Sales Weigh On
Battery Metals Market
Mining.com

Car sales are tanking the world over: Europe is likely to experience a 20–25% drop in overall sales, the US is running at an annualized rate of little over 12m units – 5m below last year’s total, while the Chinese market went into reverse long before covid-19.

For automakers burnishing their green credentials there is a positive spin: Electric vehicle sales – or better still – penetration rates.  In Western Europe, according to Schmidt, a market researcher, for the first five months of 2020, 300,000 EVs (including plugin-hybrids) were sold, giving battery-powered cars a 8.3% penetration rate (in Norway it’s 69%). Read More

06.29.20- Russia Benefiting from Oil Market Turmoil
Tom Luongo

An interesting couple of posts from Southfront.org this week gives us some insight as to what’s happening in international oil markets.

Demand for Russian Urals grade oil is so strong that is has been trading at a pretty steep premium to Brent Crude this month. Southfront references this report from Argus research.

This means that the Russian Urals crude is trading at a premium to the European benchmark Brent. The premium is $1.55 per barrel in North-Western Europe and $2.55 – in the Mediterranean. Read More

06.27.20- Oil Prices Fall Back Below $40 On New COVID Fears
Tom Kool

• The two-month oil rally has stalled, with WTI falling back to $38 per barrel. 
• The resurgence of Covid-19 across the U.S. has halted the market’s positive momentum.
• Natural gas prices fell below $1.50/MMBtu this week, the lowest level since the 1990s. 

Oil prices have fallen below $40 as the U.S. sees a record spike in COVID-19 cases and fears of demand weakness increase. Read More

06.26.20- How Viable Are Net Zero Strategies For Energy Companies?
Leonard Hyman & William Tilles

This sounds like the old motto of the 1859 Colorado gold rush, “Pike’s Peak or Bust!” But regardless of potential riches, “Net Zero by 2050” has become the unofficial environmental motto of much of the utility and fossil fuel industry. The list of corporations aiming for net zero carbon emissions in thirty years includes BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and Repsol, as well as US and foreign electricity producers CMS Energy, DTE, Dominion Resources, Duke, Enel, Iberdrola, National Grid, Pinnacle West, Public Service Energy Group, Southern Co. and XCEL. A few companies are aiming to reach this environmental target sooner while two major holdouts, ExxonMobil and Chevron, have yet to commit. Read More

06.25.20- Building Puerto Rican Resiliency with LPG-Fueled Engines
Gabriel Craig

After Hurricane Maria left the island of Puerto Rico in ruins, the ProCaribe liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) hub continued to operate, ensuring vital energy resources were available even in the wake of this major natural disaster. Still, the hurricane exposed risks, so to further enhance the terminal’s capabilities, Empire Gas adopted a resiliency strategy that included the addition of a captive LPG-fueled engine. Read More

06.24.20- MHPS Secures First Order for Hydrogen-Capable J-Series Gas Turbines
Sonal Patel

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) has bagged an order for the first advanced-class gas turbines designed to transition to renewable hydrogen fuel from Utah’s state-owned Intermountain Power Agency (IPA).

MHPS’s Lake Mary, Florida–based subsidiary MHPS Americas (MHPSA) on March 10 said that the contract for two M501JAC power trains are the first in the industry “specifically designed and purchased as part of a comprehensive plan to sequentially transition from coal, to natural gas and finally to renewable hydrogen fuel, and creates a roadmap for the global industry to follow.” Read More

06.23.20- Is This The Future Of Energy Storage?
Tsvetana Paraskova

Scintists have been trying for years to make lithium-oxygen batteries a viable energy storage solution by overcoming some of the challenges to the commercial use of this type of batteries. So far, the challenges have been greater than the sum of the potential solutions.   In what could be a breakthrough in this type of battery technology, researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) say that they have developed a new strategy to address the limitations of the lithium-oxygen battery by stabilizing the electrocatalysts at the atomic level within metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).

According to the team of scientists, "This new strategy ensures high performance for lithium-oxygen batteries, acclaimed as a next-generation energy storage technology." Read More

06.22.20- California Fires: PG&E Takes the Fall
 Joseph P. Farrell

It’s been almost eighteen months since the last of the big – and highly anomalous – California fires. True to form, the state’s principal utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has taken the fall according to this story shared by G.B.:

PG&E Pleads Guilty To 84 Counts Of Manslaughter Tied To Deadliest Wildfire In California History

As the article indicates, the New York Times reported that PG&E has pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of 84 people during the Paradise fire. Read More

06.20.20- A Perfectly Sustainable World
Is Within Our Grasp
Adam Taggart

No technological breakthroughs needed

You can pretty much reduce all of the big problems and predicaments facing the human race down to resources.

The over-indebted global economy? We’ve been living beyond the means of our current resources, stealing prosperity from the future to fund today’s demands and desires.

Society’s addiction to fossil fuel? Nothing will come close in our lifetime to replacing the energy we get from hydrocarbons. And as they deplete further over the coming two decades, higher prices, supply shortages and wars will result. Read More

06.19.20- Update on the WTF Collapse of Demand for Gasoline, Jet Fuel, and Diesel
Wolf Richter

No “V-shaped recovery back to normal.”

Demand for gasoline collapsed in a stunning and historic manner, starting in mid-March when the measures to slow down the spread of the pandemic took effect, when working from home became the new thing, and when millions of people lost their jobs on a weekly basis and stopped driving to work. Gasoline consumption, after bottoming out in the week ended April 3 with a year-over-year plunge of -48%, to 6.7 million barrels per day, the lowest in the EIA’s data going back to 1991, the great recovery began – and fizzled. Read More

06.18.20- The Destruction of the Shale Oil Industry Begins: Massive Impairment Write-offs
Steve St Angelo

If the carnage that took place in the U.S. shale oil patch during the first quarter of 2020 is any indication of the financial health of the industry, just wait until the second-quarter results are released.  Yes, there’s going to be serious BLOODSHED in the shale industry come early August.

While I knew several shale companies posted significant impairment write-offs last quarter, I had no idea of the extent of the damage.  Just about every shale oil company posted an impairment write-off in their Q1 2020 results.  And, when we add up the total for the leading twelve shale companies, it was a stunning $40 billion: Read More

06.17.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Joys of Diversity and Multicullturalism Have Come Home to Roost
Paul Craig Roberts

Hi Dumbshit American. Have you had enough of diversity and multiculturalism?  If not, vote a Democrat president, and the second wave of peaceful protests will loot and burn down your homes and neighborhoods.  Be sure you understand that diversity means no more white statues and white history, because they are racist.  Multiculturalism means no more white civilization, which is racist. You may have to give up your language as well, because English is racist.  

I have been telling you for years that you are living The Camp of the Saints.  Having failed to become aware, you have no idea what is happening. When it finally dawns on you, it will be too late. Read More

06.16.20- Chesapeake May Go
Bankrupt This Week
Charles Kennedy

Chesapeake Energy could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection later this week, according to unnamed sources who spoke to Reuters.

A separate report by MarketWatch also cited an unnamed source as saying that this week was the week for Chesapeake to throw in the towel. Read More

06.15.20- IEA: The Energy Sector Will Never Be The Same Again
Alan Mammoser

In its annual report World Energy Investment 2020, published late last month, the International Energy Agency describes ‘drastically altered’ energy markets in the wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic. It documents the largest fall in energy sector investment ever and uncovers historic shifts along the way, such as that for the first time ever there will be more consumer spending on electricity than on oil. More crucially, it asserts that the sudden fall in investment flows, in all energy sectors, leaves a troubling legacy for the future, for conventional and for ‘clean’ energy. Read More

06.13.20- Solar hydrogen production: Splitting water with UV is now at almost
100% quantum efficiency
Shinshu University

Scientists have successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen using light and meticulously designed catalysts, and they did so at the maximum efficiency meaning there was almost no loss and undesired side reactions. This latest breakthrough in solar hydrogen production makes the likelihood of scalable, economically viable hydrogen production more than likely, paving the way for humanity to make the switch to clean energy. Read More

06.12.20- New Solar Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel
Irina Slav

Plants and their ingenious way of turning light and air into fuel have been an inspiration for many scientists. Now, photosynthesis has made the basis for a possible solution to our carbon dioxide problem. Researchers from the Swedish Linköping University have found a way to use solar power to convert carbon dioxide into other chemicals for use as a fuel. They did this by devising what they called a photoelectrode covered in a layer of graphene—the much-hyped material that is basically a single layer of carbon atoms—which captures solar energy and creates charge carriers. Next, they convert carbon dioxide and water into methane, carbon monoxide, and formic acid. Read More

06.11.20- Bulls Beware: A Dark Cloud Is Forming Over Oil Markets
Alex Kimani

Bullish sentiment appears to have returned to the stock markets with a vengeance. In a historic rally that has taken even die-hard bulls by surprise, the S&P 500 has managed to claw back all of its 2020 losses, taking just 53 sessions for the index to fully restore the nearly $10T in value it shed in an epic bear market. The oil markets have been nearly as impressive.

After entering negative territory for the first time in history, U.S. WTI prices have briefly touched $40/bbl amid record production cuts and an uptick in global demand. Oil and gas stocks have doubled from their March 23 nadir, marking a sharp reversal from the precipitous drop that wiped out nearly two decades of gains. Read More

06.10.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Engineering a Race War... Will This Be the American Police State’s Reichstag Fire?
John W. Whitehead 

Watch and see: this debate over police brutality and accountability is about to get politicized into an election-year referendum on who should occupy the White House.

The Deep State, the powers-that-be, want us to turn this into a race war, but this is about so much more than systemic racism. This is the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst. Read More

06.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: CORRUPTION... Coronavirus Shows Why We Need Separation Of Medicine And State!
Ron Paul

Health “experts” who told us we must not gather in crowds or there will be millions of Covid-19 deaths issued statements supporting gathering in crowds…

It seems like only yesterday. Americans were denied the right to go to their churches. They were denied the right to visit their loved ones in the hospital. They were denied the right to open their businesses and go to work to provide for themselves and their families. Read More

06.08.20- A ‘Biblical’ Plague Of Locusts Has Put Millions On The Brink Of Famine: “We Have Never, Ever Seen What We Have
In The Last Six Months”
Michael Snyder

Billions upon billions of voracious desert locusts are ravenously devouring crops over a vast portion of the globe that stretches from eastern Africa all the way to India.  This unprecedented plague was supposed to be subsiding by now, but instead a fourth generation of locusts has emerged that is producing swarms that are “up to 8,000 times larger” than what we witnessed earlier this year.  Some of these swarms are the size of major cities, they can travel up to 150 kilometers a day, and when they descend upon a farm they can literally eat everything there in as little as 30 seconds. Read More

06.06.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Differrent: Gun sales skyrocket amid coronavirus pandemic AND engineered riots
Arsenio Toledo

(Natural News) By the end of May, more than five million guns were sold in the U.S. as people began to fear the possibility of widespread unrest over the outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). Now, gun sales have spiked once again as rioting, protests and civil unrest over the death of George Floyd continue to spread across America and the rest of the world. Several gun stores across the country have already reported an increase in gun sales. Read More

06.05.20- A Perfect Storm For Petrochemicals
Nick Cunningham

The oil majors have made huge bets on plastics and petrochemicals in recent years, but those investments look increasingly shaky following the COVID-19 pandemic and economic downturn.

Some economies are slowly rebounding from earlier shutdowns, and the oil and petrochemical industry succeeded in ramming through rollbacks of plastic bag bans in the wake of the pandemic. But the hit to the global economy could more than overwhelm those wins. Read More

06.04.20- How Quickly Will Bakken Oil Production Decline?? Mush Faster Than American Realize
Steve St Angelo

What goes up, must come down.  And, this is most certainly true for the mighty North Dakota Bakken… the second-largest shale oil-producing region in the United States.  Even after the global contagion fades away, the North Dakota Bakken has likely reached peak production.

According to a new chart by Jean Laherrere, from his recent work titled, Negative WTI on 20 April 2020: an accident or a trend?, the estimated oil production decline at the North Dakota Bakken will destroy the notion of U.S. Energy Independence, once and for all.  Here is Laherrere’s chart showing the ultimate recovery of 5.5 billion barrels from the North Dakota Bakken, and what that would like on the downside of the decline slope: Read More

06.03.20- Will Sodium Batteries
Replace Lithium-Ion?
Irina Slav

While everyone else was worrying about cheap oil and the future of electric cars, sodium batteries just got closer to becoming mainstream. This challenger to lithium ion technology has been around for a while but it has also been plagued by some inherent problems. Now, another one of these has been solved by researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Washington State University.

The problem with sodium batteries are their limited capacity. Read More

06.02.20- Will America Win The Race
For Nuclear Fusion?
Anes Alic

An MIT spin-out company is planning to cross the commercial nuclear fusion finish line before anyone else, and big money is backing this game-changing tech that will dictate our energy future by promising unlimited zero-carbon energy--the holy grail.  By 2025, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS)--an MIT spin-out--plans to see is SPARC project become the first fusion reactor to show "net energy gain" by 2025. By 2030, it intends to make nuclear fusion a commercial reality, disrupting all those nuclear fusion experiments elsewhere in the world that have been working towards this a lot longer, and disrupting energy--forever. Read More

06.01.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Right On Schedule: George Floyd Was Deliberately Murdered To Unleash Chaotic Race Riots Across America
Mike Adams

The question isn’t whether George Floyd was murdered — he clearly was — the real question is why he was murdered…

(Natural News) After reviewing the videos surrounding the arrest and killing of George Floyd, it’s clear to me that he was deliberately murdered. I understand there are different interpretations of what happened, and new evidence may emerge that will alter my view, but based on what I’ve seen so far, it seems abundantly clear that Mr. Floyd was deliberately murdered in broad daylight. Read More

05.30.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: This Is A Full Societal Breakdown
MN Gordon

This week’s standard refrain was one of pessimism.  The quick return to economic health mantra that was popular not long ago has disappeared faster than you can say lickety-split.  But there was one notable outlier this week.  In fact, one leading economist stepped forward with assurances that renewed prosperity lays just ahead. On Wednesday, Nobel prize economist Paul Krugman looked up from his liquidity trap graphs long enough to tell Noah Smith at Bloomberg that the 1979-82 economic slump “would suggest fast recovery once the virus is contained.  I don’t see the case for a multiyear depression.” Read More

05.29.20- Oil Is Unlikely To Go Much Higher
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices have climbed nearly uninterrupted since late April, but the gains could be coming to an end.  On Friday, oil prices fell sharply, hitting the pause button on a rally that saw WTI rebound from -$37 per barrel on April 20, to nearly $34 per barrel on May 21, a more than $70-per-barrel swing in just a few weeks. Of course, the plunge deep into negative territory was likely a unique, one-off phenomenon. Nevertheless, the rally back into (positive) $30 territory has been impressive. 

Of note, China’s oil demand has climbed back to about 13 million barrels per day (mb/d), a swift rebound that undergirded improving market sentiment. With China’s demand back to about 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, oil traders are clearly holding out hopes of a quick rebound elsewhere. Read More

05.28.20- From Boom Town To Ghost Town: Texas Grapples With Low Oil Prices
Haley Zaremba

Times are tough in the Permian Basin. The massive shale play that stretches across West Texas and southeastern New Mexico has gone from boom to bust in a swift downturn that began even before the spread of the novel coronavirus. The gushing Permian Basin created a shale revolution and jettisoned the United States to the top of the world’s oil-producing charts, surpassing even Saudi Arabia, but production has been slowing down over the last couple of years. “The nature of shale wells is that the decline in production much more rapidly than conventional wells, leading to inevitable slowdowns such as what we are currently witnessing in the once almighty Permian,” Oilprice reported last September. But while the U.S. shale industry was already in decline, the COVID-19 pandemic may just be the sector’s coup de gras. Read More

05.27.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Coin-Toss Election
James Rickards

The political climate is fragile and feverish, with the nation amid a crisis that is both fast-changing and unparalleled in living memory.

The biggest change in my election forecast is that Trump’s chances of reelection in November have plunged from 74% (the pre-COVID forecast) to 50% as of today.

This does not mean Trump will lose; he could very well win. But it will be a very close election. Deciding the outcome between Trump and Biden as of now is basically a coin toss. Many factors, some foreseeable and some unforeseen, could tip the balance. Read More

05.26.20- Floating ocean platform harvests wind, solar and wave energy
Loz Blain

German company Sinn Power has proposed a hybrid offshore power generation platform that combines wind turbines, solar panels and wave energy harvesters to generate off-grid electricity for people living close to the coast.

It's conceived as a modular system that can be specified with any or all of these features, depending on where it's being deployed and what your power needs are. Designed to handle waves up to six meters (19.6 ft) in height, it can harvest energy from waves up to 2 m (6.5 ft) high without the platform itself moving much at all, thanks to a series of floats that move 10-ft (3-m) pushrods up and down in response to wave activity. Read More

05.25.20- And Now, for Somethng Entirely Different: Brave New Normal
CJ Hopkins

My columns haven’t been very funny recently. This one isn’t going to be any funnier. Sorry. Fascism makes me cranky.

I don’t mean the kind of fascism the corporate media and the fake Resistance have been desperately hyping for the last four years. God help me, but I’m not terribly worried about a few hundred white-supremacist morons marching around with tiki torches hollering Nazi slogans at each other, or Jewish-Mexican-American law clerks flashing “OK” signs on TV, or smirking schoolkids in MAGA hats. Read More

05.23.20- Why The Covid Crisis Is A Pivotal Moment For Renewables
Alex Kimani

The global energy and travel industries have been some of the hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis, with the energy market experiencing its biggest shock post-WWII. Widespread lockdowns have resulted in energy demand plummeting, dwarfing the decline recorded during the 2008 financial crisis. 

A new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), based on analysis of 100 days of data, states that global energy demand in the current year is set to plunge 6% Y/Y, the equivalent of losing the entire energy demand of India. Read More

05.22.20- Oil May Never Fully Recover
From This Crisis
Irina Slav

It’s a rule of thumb among epidemiologists that every epidemic is different and could be laden with surprises. It now seems the same applies to economic crises. During the last downturn, the one that started from the subprime mortgage crisis, the hardest-hit industries were, understandably, real estate and banking. Now, it’s oil and gas in the crosshairs, and nobody knows if the industry will ever be able to recover fully. Just like the coronavirus epidemic that started in China and within two months spread all over the world forcing people to stay at home, the March OPEC+ meeting that was supposed to lead to a deeper round of production cuts ended in a price war. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, but nobody could anticipate the lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders at the time. Read More

05.21.20- Why The Future Of Oil Rests On China
Tsvetana Paraskova

The pace of oil demand recovery in China and the entire world could be shaped by China’s top policy-setting meetings, which begin on Friday to chart the course for the Chinese economy hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

The National People’s Congress (NPC), the most important policy-setting annual event in the Communist country, is expected to decide what stimulus to inject into the economy after it markedly slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the potential decisions for supporting infrastructure and railroads and other commodity-intensive sectors could drive up China’s demand for crude oil, fuels, and other commodities, including steel and copper, according to Bloomberg News. Read More

05.20.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Trump Derangement vs. Trump Enablement
Donald Jeffries

As the world continues its draconian slide through the plandemic psyop, our country has divided itself firmly into two misguided camps. As has been the case since the election of Donald Trump, that division is centered around his impossibly cartoonish personality.

Those who suffer from the very real Trump Derangement Syndrome disorder have taken the side of the virus, clinging to it like desperate leeches. They are emotionally invested in the virus, and in the medical and scientific “experts” who promote its dangers, and advocate more authoritarian means to combat it. Read More

05.19.20- Is Hydrogen The Jet Fuel Of The Future?
Irina Slav

Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, has been touted as a superior alternative to lithium-ion batteries in cars, but adoption has been painfully slow. For all the hype, one would think most cars would be running on hydrogen already, yet they are not.  So where are hydrogen proponents going wrong?

According to some, they may be focusing on the wrong sort of vehicles to power with hydrogen. True, there are billions of passenger cars on the roads around the world. But there are also millions of aircraft in the skies – or there used to be. The aviation sector may well be the game-changer for hydrogen. Read More

05.18.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Those Who Planned the Enslavement of Mankind Warn of "A Dark Winter" for Us
Mac Slavo

The elitists who planned this scamdemic from the beginning are now warning us that we are going to face a “dark winter.” This is not about health and hasn’t been from the beginning.  This is about control and they are trying to use fear to manufacture your consent to enslavement. Do not fall for it.

Straight from the biggest player in propaganda and fake news, CNN,comes an article designed to terrify.  It says Rick Bright has warned Congress of the “darkest winter in modern history” without a ramped up coronavirus response. Meaning, unless you submit to even more tyranny and fully enslave yourselves to the ruling class, it’ll be “dark winter.”  The lies coming from CNN it’s contributions are unbelievable at this point.  Do not let these puppets of the tyrannical ruling class scare you anymore. Read More

05.16.20- The Holy Grail Of
Electric Vehicle Charging
Alex Kimani

For all their hype and techno-wizardry, EVs still bow down to their gas-powered cousins when it comes to driving range, not to mention that they take much longer to refuel. But what if you could not only charge your EV wirelessly but also be able to do it on the fly? Suddenly, the EV glass ceiling would be forever shattered, leaving piston heads green with envy. That’s why a new technology that allows EV drivers to recharge their batteries on the go is bound to thrill EV buffs everywhere.

Stanford University researchers have unveiled a wireless charging technology that employs magnetism to seamlessly charge EVs, drones, and robots during operation.  Read More

05.15.20- Fragile Oil Markets Under Threat From 50 Million Barrels Of Saudi Crude
Irina Slav

Some 50 million barrels of Saudi crude oil are approaching U.S. shores just as the Energy Information Administration reported the first inventory decline in months. This, according to Bloomberg, could reverse a tentative recovery in oil prices.

On Wednesday, the EIA reported that commercial crude oil inventories had declined by some 700,000 barrels in the week to May 8. The modest draw gave hope that the oil storage problem may soon begin to resolve itself even if total stockpiles were still above the five-year average for the season. Read More

05.14.20- Oil glut closes Middle East’s largest crude terminal
Anthony Di Paola and Verity Ratcliff

DUBAI (Bloomberg) - With the coronavirus choking fuel demand and the world awash in surplus crude, even the Middle East’s main oil-trading hub has run out of room to store unwanted barrels.

Terminal operators at Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates say they’re turning down requests from traders and refiners to store crude and refined products, whereas a year ago they had ample space. The port’s 14 million barrels of commercial crude-storage capacity is just a fraction of what Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi provide for their state oil companies. Read More

05.13.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Differeny: Why Does The Mainstream Media Seem So Desperate To Keep The COVID-19
Lockdowns Going?
Michael Snyder

Something doesn’t smell right.  The number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. each day has been declining, as has the number of deaths.  This is great news, and we should be hoping that the falling numbers are a sign that the pandemic is beginning to subside.  But the mainstream media has been relentlessly pumping out stories that warn of “disaster” if the lockdowns are lifted “too soon”.  According to the mainstream media, by “ignoring science” we are inviting a “second wave” which will be even deadlier than the first one.  Read More

05.12.20- Trump’s Corn Crisis Is Back
Nick Cunningham

A bipartisan group of two dozen U.S. Senators sent a letter to President Trump, urging him to reject the demands of the oil refining industry, which has called for exemptions to biofuel blending requirements.  It’s the latest chapter in a perennial war between ethanol producers, corn growers, and politicians from the Midwest on the one hand, and oil refiners and their allies from the Gulf Coast and Pennsylvania on the other. 

The global pandemic and the collapse of oil prices has devastated both sides. Demand for ethanol tracks gasoline consumption, so the steep drop in fuel consumption has hit ethanol producers very hard. But refiners are also curtailing processing and shutting down some facilities temporarily as demand has fallen off of a cliff. Read More

05.11.20- Are Diamonds The Answer To Our Nuclear Waste Problem?
Haley Zaremba

Nuclear energy is often touted as an answer to climate change for its potential as an efficient means of energy production in a decarbonized energy industry of the future. We already have nuclear energy infrastructure around the world, it releases no greenhouse gases, and it’s a potent means of energy generation, but nuclear is still a hard sell in much of the world.  This is in part due to high profile nuclear disasters, such as Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl, which loom large in the public consciousness. It’s also due to the fact that spent nuclear fuel, while it doesn’t contribute any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, is nevertheless a huge hazard to public health and safety, as it stays radioactive for many, many more generations than will benefit from the energy it produces. Read More

05.09.20- THE END OF A U.S. OIL GIANT: ExxonMobil’s Days Are Numbered
Steve St Angelo

ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the U.S. and a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, days are numbered.  The once-great profitable oil giant is now borrowing money just to pay dividends.  How long can this charade go on?

Good question.  Now, some may believe that ExxonMobil was forced to borrow money to pay dividends due to the collapse in oil prices as a result of the global contagion.   However, the company hasn’t been able to pay shareholder dividends from its cash from operations over the past four quarters, even with much higher oil prices. Read More

05.08.20- Why This Oil Rally Won't Last
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices have rallied as traders believe the depths of demand destruction may be coming to an end with economies beginning to reopen. But some analysts are warning that the oil price rally may be premature.

WTI prices have doubled from $12 to $24 in a little over a week. There is evidence that demand has bottomed out and has begun to rise from recent lows. U.S. gasoline demand has ticked up for two consecutive weeks, rising from 5.31 million barrels per day (mb/d) in mid-April to 6.66 mb/d on May 1.  Read More

05.07.20- "Artificial leaf" device turns water and sunlight into hydrogen fuel
Michael Irving

Researchers from Rice University have built a simple new solar-powered device that can create hydrogen for fuel by splitting water. The system is very similar to other “artificial leaf” designs, but the team says it’s self-sufficient and relatively cheap to produce.

The system is made up of a perovskite solar cell, hooked up to electrodes made of a catalyst that electrolyzes the water. When sunlight hits the solar cell, it produces electricity that powers the catalyst, which then splits the water into oxygen and hydrogen. These bubble up to the surface where they can be collected for use.  Read More

05.06.20- Could Renewable Spending Solve The Unemployment Crisis In Oil?
Haley Zaremba

Last week the World Economic Forum published a report imploring the energy industry to use this unprecedented disruption of the status quo to consider building a “new energy order.” While the novel coronavirus has caused major damage (in some cases irreparably) to vast swaths of the global energy industry, this could be a great opportunity to dedicate resources, investment, and research and development into renewable energy ventures.“Though this is the worst possible way to begin a decade, the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse of oil prices also offer an opportunity to consider unorthodox intervention in the energy markets and global collaboration to support the recovery phase once the acute crisis subsides,” stated the World Economic Forum. Read More

05.05.20- World-first "impossible" rotating detonation engine fires up
Loz Blain

A Florida team working with the US Air Force claims that it's built and tested an experimental model of a rotating detonation rocket engine, which uses spinning explosions inside a ring channel to create super-efficient thrust.

The vast majority of engines, of course, use combustion rather than detonation to achieve their output goals. Combustion is a relatively slow and controlled process resulting from the reaction between fuel and oxygen at high temperatures, and it's very well understood and mature as a technology. Read More

05.04.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Beware of Tyranny More Than Covid-19
Steve Apfel 

To fight a pandemic responsible for fewer deaths than the Asian flu of 1957­–58, we've been schooled to think and behave like the abject oppressed of North Korea.

• We let bureaucrats decide for us what businesses are more important than others to society.
  
  
• Without a squeak we acquiesce to being put under de facto house arrest.  Read More

05.02.20- The Next Perovskite Solar Breakthrough Could Give Us Endless Energy By 2025
Alex Kimani

Harnessing the motherlode of the sun’s power is almost within our reach. 

The sun, our primary source of energy, bathes our Blue Planet in more solar energy than we can ever hope to reasonably use. Each hour, the sun sends 430 quintillion Joules of energy our way, more than the 410 quintillion Joules that humans consume in a whole year. With the sun likely to be around for another five billion years or so, we have a virtually unlimited source of energy--if only we could tap it efficiently. Read More

05.01.20- Fleet Of 28 Saudi Oil Tankers Could Send U.S. Oil Prices Crashing In May
Rystad Energy

With the Covid-19 pandemic reducing global oil demand by devastating numbers, oil storages are filling quickly in the US, forcing producers to start shutting output in the country and creating a big tanker congestion on its coasts. A Rystad Energy analysis reveals that 28 tankers with Saudi oil, including 14 VLCCs and carrying a total of 43 million barrels, will arrive on the US Gulf and West coasts between 24 April and 24 May. Read More

04.30.20- Rare metalloid quadruples lifespan of lithium-sulfur batteries
Nick Lavars

A device used by University of Texas at Austin researchers to test a new lithium-sulfur battery, which offered a four-fold increase in lifespan over conventional designs 

Lithium-ion batteries are the backbone of modern energy storage in consumer devices, but there are alternatives in the pipeline that could offer us considerable advantages moving forward. Among the candidates are lithium-sulfur batteries, which can hold many times the energy of their lithium-ion counterparts but quickly degrade and die. Scientists at University of Texas at Austin have devised a solution to this problem, integrating a protective layer that enables the lithium-sulfur battery to last four times longer. Read More

04.29.20- Are Solar Windows The Next Big Renewable Breakthrough?
Irina Slav

Windows that let in light and produce electricity at the same time: a recipe for a perfect life and an idea as fascinating as unattainable. At least until recently. Making a thin solar-cell film to stick on a window glass is easy enough. Making it convert sunlight into electricity at any meaningful level of efficiency was the hard part. And now scientists from Australia say they’ve cracked it.

The team, led by materials chemistry professor Jacek Jasieniak, developed a new kind of semi-transparent solar cell that featured one important difference from other semi-transparent cells: they had a component replaced with an organic conductor that can be transformed into a polymer, much more stable than the original—and common—solar cell component. Read More

04.28.20- $110 Trillion Renewables Stimulus Package Could Create 50 Million Jobs
Alex Kimani

As the world continues to grapple with the worst global pandemic in living memory, economists everywhere are warning that we are witnessing the unraveling of something far grimmer than the 2008 financial crisis: the Great Depression 2.0. 

The signs are legion: Unprecedented levels of job and capital destruction, decimated consumer spending, underperformance by nearly all major financial markets, and a breakdown in the world fiscal order. Read More

04.27.20- Oil Prices Crash 24%
As Storage Fears Mount
Matt Stoller

Oil prices look to be facing yet another harrowing Monday, with the price of WTI sliding by more than 20 percent in early morning trading.

Global oil storage is inching closer and closer to reaching its capacity, and worse, the problem is being exacerbated as more local governments across the world extending COVID-19 lockdown recommendations, weighing on crude demand. According to Goldman Sachs, global oil storage could be completely full within the next three weeks, and another dramatic crash could follow. Read More

04.25.20- First Shale Oil Domino to Fall: More to Follow
Steve St Angelo

In a stunning news release, Continental Resources, the largest shale producer in the Bakken, is shutting in most of its production in the region.  That is one hell of a lot of output to shut-in as Continental Resources was producing over 200,000 barrels per day in the Bakken at the end of 2019.

From the data on Shaleprofile.com, Continental Resources had over 2,200 wells in the North Dakota and Montana Bakken producing oil and gas during February this year.  How many wells will Continental’s Harold Hamm shut in the Bakken??  And how many will be brought back online, at to what cost, when the market recovers??  Read More

04.24.20- What Happens If Oil Storage Runs Out In The Permian?
Dwayne Purvis

Fears of running out of storage capacity drove oil prices down over $40 in single day, forcing sellers to pay their buyers to take the product, and these fears were not unfounded. Yesterday the EIA released the latest weekly installment of its authoritative data on liquid volumes stored in the United States, and the data paints an urgent picture. 

Only about 3% of the stored oil volumes have historically resided on production leases while roughly half sits upstream of refineries. Since refineries can make storage space for crude by processing it and storing it as products, the system can hold about as much more oil as refined products waiting for shipment. It is safe to assume that storage capacity is no less than its recent high, but it is not clear how much more space may exist.  Read More

04.23.20- Oil: The Storm Before
The Really Big Storm
Peter Zeihan

West Texas Intermediate, the oil grade most associated with American production, plunged down to -$40 April 20. You read the right. For a while this week, sellers had to pay people forty bucks to take a barrel of crude.

As with any product, the business of oil isn’t a once-and-done. It must be produced, shipped and processed, and then the refined product must be shipped and retailed. What happened April 20 is a bottleneck in that process. Production surged ahead of pipeline shipping capacity, leaving some producers with nowhere to put their crude. Read More

04.22.20- The Worst Is Yet To Come For Oil Prices
Nick Cunningham

Dashing hopes for some oil producers who may have thought negative prices were a weird quirk, the June WTI contract fell sharply on Tuesday.

During intraday trading June contracts collapsed by more than 45 percent, falling close to $11 per barrel. The selloff demonstrated that the ruinous supply glut is not going away, and that the meltdown for the May contract was not just a bizarre anomaly, but representative of an acute state of oversupply in North America. Read More

04.21.20- Here Is The Full Explanation Behind Today's Unprecedented Negative Oil Price
Roger Diwan

How did you end up with negative oil prices today?  This happens when a physical futures contract find no buyers close to or at expiry. 

Let me explain what that means:

A physical contract such as the NYMEX WTI has a delivery point at Cushing, OK, & date, in this occurrence May.  So people who hold the contract at the end of the trading window have to take physical delivery of the oil they bought on the futures market.  This is very rare. Read More

04.20.20- Futures Plunge As WTI Crashes By Most On Record, Tumbling To $11 Per Barrel
Tyler Durden

Oil prices crashed the most on record with the May WTI futures contract hitting its lowest level since 1999, plunging as low as $11 or down 38%, as nobody wants to take actual physical storage amid widespread fears crude storage will soon be full; meanwhile companies prepare to report the worst quarterly earnings since the financial crisis, while tens of thousands of people continue to get sick every day with the coronavirus.

While Brent was only down $1.12, or 4%, at $26.96 a barrel on Monday morning, the carnage took place in the landlocked WTI, whose May contract fell $5.70 to its lowest since March 1998 though the sell-off was exaggerated by the contract’s Tuesday expiry because no one wants to be left long to take delivery as there is nowhere to put the physical product. In any case, the 37% drop was the biggest one-day drop on record!  Read More

04.18.20- U.S. Energy Consumption
Falls To 16-Year Low
Haley Zaremba

As the fight to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus shuts down economies across the globe, we have had to change the way that we live as broad swaths of the worldwide population shelters in place. Already, we have seen massive implications for peoples’ employments and livelihoods, sweeping announcements of bankruptcy across a multitude of market sectors, and huge disruptions to global supply chains.  While the coronavirus has been a tragedy of massive proportions, having killed nearly 150,000 people across the globe and financially devastated many more, there have been some silver linings to the shutdown of the global economy. In China, the dramatic decrease in air pollution has actually saved more lives than COVID-19 has taken. Read More

04.17.20- The Big Shale Short: Twitter Traders Make Millions On The Oil Price Crash
Tsvetana Paraskova

If one day Hollywood picks up a movie to make about this year’s decline in the U.S. oil industry, it could call it ‘The Big Shale Short,’ after the 2015 film ‘The Big Short.’

The blockbuster from 2015 tells the true story of a bunch of investors who bet against the U.S. housing market before the subprime mortgage crisis and the market collapse in 2008, making millions of US dollars from their shorts.

‘The Big Shale Short’ may have just found its lead characters. On Twitter. Read More

04.16.20- Two new solar cells break records, including highest efficiency ever
Michael Irving

Solar cells are constantly improving on the road to maximum efficiency. Now, three records have been broken by two different devices, including one that pushes the highest overall solar conversion efficiency towards the 50-percent mark.

The top honor was claimed by researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), who have developed a new solar cell with an efficiency of 47.1 percent. That makes it the most efficient solar cell of any kind in the world – for now, at least. These records have a tendency to be broken pretty regularly. Read More

04.15.20- How COVID-19 Is Impacting The Ethanol And Corn Producers
Robert Rapier

Kansas farmer Jon McClure and his son Derek are preparing to plant this year's corn crop as the ... [+]>>>

In the previous article, I reported that gasoline demand had plummeted to the lowest demand number in more than 50 years.

But the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t just impacting the nation’s refiners and oil producers. The U.S. is also subject to a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) which consumes most of the nation’s corn ethanol. The steep drop in gasoline demand has had a domino effect, also crushing the nation’s ethanol demand, and subsequently corn demand. Read More

04.14.20- The Oil Price Crash Could Trigger A Geothermal Energy Boom
Tsvetana Paraskova

Geothermal is America’s untapped energy giant,’ the U.S. Department of Energy said in a report last year, highlighting in its analysis that this kind of “always-on” flexible renewable energy resource could grow 26-fold to generate 8.5 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050.  

Unlike wind and solar, geothermal energy is a 24/7 energy resource, but the technologies to explore and drill for resources and build facilities make geothermal more expensive than other renewables. Read More

04.13.20- The Reality Of The End Of Oil
Robert Rapier

The Oil Age has powered the world for well over a century. There have been two general schools of thought about how it will ultimately end.

There were those who believed that oil production would peak and begin to decline in the face of high global demand. This is essentially the peak oil argument, which many laymen mistakenly understand as “The world is running out of oil.” Read More

04.11.20- Flow battery could make renewable energy storage economically viable
Paul Ridden

Researchers at the University of Southern California looking to crack the renewable energy storage problem have developed a new version of a redox flow battery from inexpensive and readily-available materials.

Though there are huge lithium-ion battery installations from the likes of Tesla that can store energy harvested from renewables like wind and solar, they're not exactly cheap. The USC researchers looked to an existing design that stores energy in liquid form. Read More

04.10.20- And Now, for Someting Entirely Different: Why America Leads the World
in Covid-19 Cases
Eric Zuesse

At of the start of the day on April 9th, the United States, which has 4.2% of the world’s population, had 28.7% of the world’s known Covid-19 (or “coronavirus-19”) cases.

This infection-rate tends to be higher in cities than in rural areas. 82% of America’s population is urban. 55% of the world’s population is urban. The most-urbanized nations (100% urban), and their respective number of Covid-19 cases as of April 9th (shown in parentheses), are Bermuda (39), Cayman Islands (45), Gibraltar (120), Hong Kong (961), Kuwait (855), Monaco (81), Nauru (none shown), and Singapore (1,623). Read More

04.09.20- The opportunities in this crisis might be right under your nose
Joe Jarvis

Central planning in the Soviet Union caused massive shortages.

But government incompetence and corruption had its silver lining.

For instance, housing shortages kept people cooped up in small crowded quarters. But that meant tight-knit communities formed, where people could rely on one another for mutual aid during the hard times.

And there were plenty of hard times. Read More

04.08.20- $1 Oil: Saudi Arabia's Attempt
To Crush U.S. Shale
Tom Kool

After having crashed nearly 70 percent in the first three months of 2020, benchmark WTI prices are trying to form a bottom around $20 per barrel. 

But this psychological threshold is looking increasingly shaky as global crude storage facilities are filling up at an unprecedented pace. OPEC and its partners officially ended their output cut deal today, following the words of Russian Energy Minister Novak that every producer is ‘’free to pump at will’’. Read More

04.07.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Was COVID-19 intended for biological & economic warfare?
Mat Staver

Many have speculated that COVID-19’s “escape” from the Wuhan lab was simply an accident. Others are speculating that China launched COVID-19 in part as retaliation for Trump’s pro-America trade agreements. Whether by accident or design, it is clear that China was working on biological warfare, and it was unleashed on the world.

China is now taking full advantage of the resulting chaos to enact the next phase of the communist country’s 20-year campaign of economic warfare against the United States. Read More

04.06.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Differeny: Rabobank: "There Will Be Attempts To Go Back To Normal After This Crisis, But It Will Be Impossible"
Michael Every

The Grand National-ists

The weekend’s world-famous UK horse race, the Grand National, was won by Potters Corner, trained in Wales and ridden by Jack Tudor, at 18-1. That’s a little unusual – but not as much as the fact that this was all a virtual race run on a computer because the actual Grand National was cancelled for the first time since WW2 due to COVID-19. Read More

04.04.20- The Ocean Could Be The Ultimate Renewable Energy Source
Alex Kimani

For all their hype as the biggest and final frontier in clean energy production, tidal and wave power have never quite lived up to their potential. The IEA estimates that we harnessed just 1.2TWh of energy from the world’s vast oceans in 2018--a minuscule fraction of the ~170,000TWh in global primary energy consumption.  This sad situation is not for lack of trying, though. 

More than 70 companies have developed various technologies to generate electricity from ocean tides or the kinetic power of waves, leading to global ocean energy production rising tenfold over the last decade. Yet, most never advance past the pilot stages into full commercialization. Read More

04.03.20- What Really Caused Oil
To Rally By 25%?
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices spiked 25 percent on Thursday after President Trump tweeted that Saudi Arabia and Russia would cut production by 10 to 15 million barrels per day (mb/d), but there are a variety of reasons why a cut of this size faces steep odds. 

This should be prefaced with the fact that nobody knows what will happen and that the onset of a global pandemic means that all of the old rules are thrown out the window. Anything can happen in the context of the greatest public health and economic crisis in a century. Read More

04.02.20- The US Can't Afford To Let Shale Fail
Robert Rapier

It’s no secret that the growth of U.S. shale oil has been a thorn in the sides of both Saudi Arabia and Russia. They have seen their market shares erode as the shale boom made the U.S. the world’s largest producer of crude oil. But Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, is a single entity that produces 13 percent of the world’s oil and controls 17 percent of the world’s proved reserves. That puts them in a very powerful position. They can withhold a lot of oil from the market, or they can flood the market with oil and crash the price. Read More

04.01.20- Oil Markets Are On
The Brink Of Armageddon
Mitchell McGeorge

“Two boys are in a closed garage with several inches of gasoline on the floor. One has six large matches, the other has seven smaller ones. They debate as to who is strategically superior”.  J.K. Galbraith

The world’s oil markets are at a crisis point arguably not seen in its history. 

Since the last meeting of OPEC/OPEC+ concluded, global oil prices have collapsed to close Friday at 53.14% down for WTI and 51.14% down for Brent. These prices are the lowest seen in almost twenty years. Oil prices have tumbled as the fallout of that meeting compounded the unprecedented hit to consumption from the coronavirus pandemic. Read More

03.31.20- Oil Majors Are Preparing for $10 Oil
Wall St For Main St

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03.30.20- The Unthinkable Is Happening: Oil Storage Space Is About To Run Out
Tyler Durden

In the past three weeks, oil plunged and has continued to plunge even more in the aftermath of the oil price war declared between Saudi Arabia and Russia, and where US shale (and its junk bonds) has been caught in the crossfire. However, as we reported last week, we may get to the absurd point when the price of a barrel of oil not only hits $0 but goes negative. Read More

03.28.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: All The Craziest Things About America Are Being Highlighted By This Virus
Caitlin Johnstone

“Corona is a black light and America is a cum-stained hotel room,” comedian Megan Amram colorfully tweeted a couple of weeks ago. Her observation has only grown more accurate since.

The corporate cronyism of America’s political system has been highlighted with a massive kleptocratic multitrillion-dollar corporate bailout of which actual Americans are only receiving a tiny fraction. Instead of putting that money toward paying people a living wage to stay home during a global pandemic, the overwhelming majority of the money is going to corporations while actual human beings receive a paltry $1,200 (which they won’t even be getting until May at the earliest) at a time of record-smashing unemployment. Read More

03.27.20- The Energy Disaster Kicking into Full Gear: World Is Totally Unprepared For What’s Ahead
Steve St Angelo

There’s more evidence finally surfacing in the media of the dire energy predicament the world is now facing.  The negative ramifications of peak oil and the falling EROI were going to hit the world economy within the next 2-5 years, but the global contagion has sped up the process considerably.  Unfortunately, the world will never return back to the energy consumption and GDP growth experienced in 2019.  I believe the peak of unconventional oil production has finally arrived… FOREVER. Read More

03.26.20- Don’t Believe The Oil Bulls
Nick Cunningham

The world surplus could reach 20 million barrels per day (mb/d) in the next few weeks, threatening not only to top off storage tanks everywhere, but to crash prices even further and shut in oil production.  The shutdown orders in the U.S. continue to multiply, confining tens of millions of people to their homes. Much of Western Europe remains on lockdown as well. 

The impact of this pandemic will only grow as the U.S. has failed to contain its spread. Cases are doubling every few days, and state governments are rushing to impose stay-at-home orders. The response is scattershot, much too late and still much too permissive to stop the spread. But large-scale home isolation is now the only option to mitigate the damage. Read More

03.25.20- Oil Prices Are Set To Plunge Again
Irina Slav

Oil prices have been on the slide for more than two weeks now, and they will, in all likelihood, continue downward despite the respite from the United States legislators who raised hopes that they could agree on a $2-trillion economic stimulus package in response to the pandemic.  But will this be enough?

Reuters' John Kemp wrote in his latest column on hedge fund oil positions that global consumption of fuels had dropped by as much as 10 million bpd. He also said hedge funds had tried to feel the inflection point for oil prices twice since the crisis began and had failed both times. The final nail in the coffin of hopes: the economic situation, according to Kemp, is the worst since the Second World War. Read More

03.24.20- And Now, for Someting Entirely Different: So Far, The Number Of Americans That Have Died From The Coronavirus Is Greater Than The Number That Have Recovered
Michael Snyder

The information that I am about to share with you is quite disturbing, and it has some very alarming implications.  One of the great mysteries of this coronavirus pandemic has been the widely varying death rates that we have been witnessing all over the world.  For example, South Korea has had 8,981 confirmed cases so far.  Of those cases that have been resolved one way or the other, 111 victims have died and 3,166 victims have recovered.  So that would seem to indicate a very low death rate in that nation.  But in Italy, things are very different.  Up to this point, there have been 59,138 confirmed cases.  Of the cases that have been resolved, 5,476 victims have died and 7,024 have recovered.  Read More

03.23.20- U.S. Oil Price Collapse =
U.S. Economic Collapse
Steve St Angelo

The oil price collapse is a bad omen for much worse things to follow.  The global contagion is impacting the U.S. economy and the domestic oil industry far greater than I realized just two weeks ago.  As I try to allow my analysis to “Catch Up” to the gravity of the situation, my new forecast of the U.S. economy and oil industry is quite dire indeed.

I don’t say this to panic anyone, but to provide a more “realistic and pragmatic” view of where we go from here over the next few weeks and months.  The rapid collapse in the U.S. oil price suggests BIG TROUBLE ahead for the domestic shale oil industry.  While the low oil price is causing havoc in the shale industry, it’s only one component of the overall equation. Read More

03.21.20- Weekend Rant: "This Is Not A Recession. It's an Ice Age..."
Annie Lowery

We can’t say we’re in a recession yet, at least not formally. A committee decides these things—no, really. The government generally adopts the view that a contraction is not a recession unless economic activity has declined over two quarters. But we’re in a recession and everyone knows it. And what we’re experiencing is so much more than that: a black swan, a financial war, a plague.

Maybe things feel normal where you are. Maybe things do not feel normal. Read More

03.20.20- The Inevitable Outcome Of
The Oil Price War
Simon Watkins

One might reasonably posit that when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) signalled that Saudi Arabia was once again going to produce oil to the maximum to crash oil prices in a full-scale oil price war, Russian President Vladimir Putin probably fell off the horse he was riding bare-chested somewhere in Siberia because he was laughing so much. There is a phrase in Russian intelligence circles for clueless people that are ruthlessly used without their knowledge in covert operations, which is ‘a useful idiot’, and it is hard to think of anyone more ‘useful’ in this context to the Russians than whoever came up with Saudi’s latest ‘plan’. Whichever way the oil price war pans out, Russia wins. Read More

03.19.20- Oil Could Crash To $10 As World Runs Out Of Storage
Irina Slav

The growing supply glut in oil markets could end up filling all storage tanks worldwide, potentially causing prices to drop even further

Global oil storage could overflow in the coming weeks as the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a severe blow to demand while Saudi Arabia has promised to supply 12.3 million bpd—not just in April but also over the next few months. Read More

03.18.20- Is $10 Oil On The Horizon?
Andreas de Vries

According to a number of cognitive scientists, mankind uses its unique ability to reason primarily for justifying pre-held convictions, rather than for forming convictions. It is of critical importance for strategists to understand and acknowledge this human tendency, as it causes one to easily fall prey to a number of cognitive biases, which prevent one from seeing things how they really are, and more important for the strategist, how they are likely to become.

One of the most famous cognitive biases is confirmation bias. As we prefer to be proven correct, we naturally incline towards information that confirms our views and try to ignore or reason away information that does not. Read More

03.17.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: I could face six months in jail for walking to the beach
Joe Jarvis

President James Garfield was shot at a train station on July 2, 1881.

But it took 80 days for the best doctors in the country to complete his assassination.

These doctors decided that the most important thing was to remove the bullet. So they stuck their dirty unwashed finger into the wound, cut incisions, and poked and prodded. Read More

03.16.20- And Now, foe Something Entirely Different: GET READY: Ten new predictions covering what will happen in America over the next 12 weeks due to the coronavirus
Mike Adams

Two days ago, Alex Jones called me, “The Oracle” on his show and the name sort of stuck. It turns out that when you run good mathematical projection models, you really can sort of “see the future” to the astonishment of many. In truth, I’m just running the numbers and reporting what the math tells me. There’s really no voodoo involved.

That math, by the way, leads me to some rather sobering predictions and warnings that I will share with you here. I probably should have shared these two weeks ago, but nobody would have believed me then. Read More

03.14.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Goodbye to All That... The Demise of Globalization and Imperial Pretensions
Charles Hugh Smith

The decline phase of the S-Curve is just beginning. 

Globalization and Imperial Pretensions have been decaying for years; now the tide has turned definitively against them. The Covid-19 pandemic didn't cause the demise of globalization and Imperial Pretensions; it merely pushed the rickety structures over the edge. Read More

03.13.20- Should You Sell Your Oil Stocks Now?
Alex Kimani

There are three questions tormenting investors in the oil and gas industry right now: 

Why did Icahn double down on Occidental Petroleum? Is Warren Buffett right when he says “turnarounds seldom turn”? And how much longer can oil and gas companies hold out in this unrelenting storm?

And they all lead to the ultimate question: Should we be getting rid of our oil holdings? Read More

03.12.20- Oil Crashes Again On U.S. Travel Ban
Irina Slav

After a brief respite following reports of central bank economic stimuli in the United States and the UK, crude oil slumped once again after on Wednesday, President Donald Trump instituted a 30-day travel ban on most European countries because of the coronavirus pandemic.

At the time of writing Brent crude was trading down by more than 8 percent at $32.71 a barrel, with West Texas Intermediate at $30.27 a barrel, also down by more than 8 percent. Read More

03.11.20- Don't Be Fooled By The Oil Price Rebound
Irina Slav

A mild winter in the northern hemisphere, the COVID-19 outbreak, and now the price war that Saudi Arabia declared last weekend have combined to produce an all-new oil price crisis just four years after the last one. And things might get worse before they get better.

After last week data from hedge funds showed a slowdown in the selloff of oil and fuel contracts, as reported by Reuters’ John Kemp, this week’s data, for the first week of March, indicated a serious acceleration of sales. During that week, Kemp reported in his weekly column, fund sold the equivalent of 133 million barrels of oil across the six most traded oil and fuel contracts. This compares with sales of just 11 million barrels of oil equivalent across the six contracts just a week earlier. Read More

03.10.20- In Crashing the Oil Price,
Russia Just Told the World, ‘No!’
Tom Luongu

There is real power in the word “No.”

In fact, I’d argue that it is the single most powerful word in any language.

In the midst of the worst market meltdown in a dozen years which has at its source problems within global dollar-funding markets, Russia found itself in the position to exercise the Power of No. Read More

03.09.20- Saudi Arabia Starts All-Out Oil War: MbS Destroys OPEC By Flooding Market,
Slashing Oil Prices
Tyler Durden

With the commodity world still smarting from the Nov 2014 Saudi decision to (temporarily) break apart OPEC, and flood the market with oil in (failed) hopes of crushing US shale producers (who survived thanks to generous banks extending loan terms and even more generous buyers of junk bonds), which nonetheless resulted in a painful manufacturing recession as the price of Brent cratered as low as the mid-$20's in late 2015/early 2016.  Read More

03.07.20- Oil Price Armageddon As OPEC+ Disintegrates
Tom Kool

It appears that the OPEC+ alliance may soon be over as Russia refuses to cut and its oil minister hints at increasing production.

Oil prices plunged by more than 8 percent after the OPEC+ meeting broke up with no deal. Saudi Arabia and Russia negotiated behind closed doors in Vienna, but Moscow refused to sign on to deeper production cuts. Now there is uncertainty about whether the OPEC+ alliance will survive. A day earlier, OPEC essentially issued an ultimatum, calling for 1.5 mb/d of production cuts, but suggested that no deal would occur without Russia. At the time of this writing, oil prices were in freefall. WTI was below $43 and Brent near $46. Read More

03.06.20- China Could Start A New Solar Price War
Haley Zaremba

The solar market is becoming supersized, with the size and scale of solar projects soaring and some of the biggest names in the tech industry getting behind the renewable energy boom. Despite the high-profile failure of the $1 billion Crescent Dunes solar plant developed by SolarReserve way out in the Nevada desert, which was going to be the biggest solar plant in the world, the solar industry is moving forward in its belief that, in most cases, bigger is better.  Read More

03.05.20- The Risk For Oil Is Shifting To The Upside
Irina Slav

The oil price slide that prompted several weeks of oil contract selling amo­ng hedge funds could be coming to a close, according to the latest data on hedge fund oil buying and selling, as reported by Reuters’ John Kemp. News from the oil industry has also helped spark some optimism. Unfortunately, chances are this would only be temporary as the outlook for oil remains rather pessimistic.

Sales of the six most popular oil contracts slowed down to 11 million barrels of oil equivalent during the last week of February, Kemp reported, noting that this was before another wave of concern about the spread of the Chinese coronavirus rattled the oil market. Read More

03.04.20- Why Hydrogen Stocks Are Soaring
Vanand Meliksetian

For decades climate change was a topic for predominantly environmentalists. Since the early 2010s, this has changed dramatically. The transformation culminated in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 where the world agreed on a comprehensive path to tackle an existential threat. Consequentially the energy transition has strongly gained in importance as countries around the world are racing to replace their carbon-intensive economies with green alternatives. Read More

03.03.20- Self-healing potassium batteries: A cheap, long-life rival to lithium
Loz Blain

American scientists say they've solved the dendrite formation problem that's held back the development of cheap, powerful, high-density potassium batteries

Lithium is expensive, environmentally questionable in large volumes, and tends to catch on fire from time to time. It's the best solution we've currently got for EV and device battery storage, but other alternatives are starting to surface, and one that could actually make a fair bit of sense is the potassium metal battery. Read More

03.02.20- Oil Market Meltdown Sends Energy Stocks Crashing
Nick Cunningham

The market meltdown continued on Thursday, with stocks across the board in retreat. Oil prices were down more than 4 percent in early trading, falling to their lowest levels in more than a year.

WTI plunged below $47 per barrel, and at the time of this writing, Brent was flirting with sub-$50.  Read More

02.29.20- Rust and light combine for a 25x boost in hydrogen production
Loz Blain

Scientists at the Tokyo University of Science have used rust as a catalyst in light-assisted hydrogen production from organic waste, finding it produces 25 times more hydrogen than previous titanium dioxide catalysts.

Japan and Korea, in particular, see hydrogen as the clean fuel of the future, and are reorganizing themselves to make way for a zero-emissions "hydrogen economy" in which transport will mainly be driven by fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen-burning engines, which emit only water as their end product. Read More

02.28.20- Techrules looks to power everyday EVs and grids with micro-turbines
Chris Weiss

Those that know Techrules at all know it as the Chinese company behind the micro-turbine-powered, fighter jet-inspired Ren supercar, but it's making a push to be known far outside of supercar fanatic circles. The company is working to transform the range-extending micro-turbines powering up the motors of the 1,300-hp Ren into standalone generators for commercial and passenger car use. It'll start with a 45-kW version to wire into commercial electrical grids before shrinking the tech down even more to put inside everyday electric passenger cars. Read More

02.27.20- The Dark Side Of Hydropower
Irina Slav

Hydropower is the largest single source of renewable electricity in the world, dwarfing solar and wind. As such, it has established a positive reputation in the media and many academic papers. But that’s not the whole story ... 

Hydropower has a darker side that is threatening freshwater ecosystems more than oil, more than gas, and more than any other form of energy. Read More

02.26.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Early American Militias: The Forgotten History of Militias from 1776 until the Civil War
Sam Jacobs

The United States militia is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. And while the militia movement of today is widely known, its history – and the history of independent Constitutional militias stretching back to the dawn of the republic – is far less well known.

Why does this matter nowadays? Because understanding the historical roots of America's militias helps modern-day members appreciate the role they play in our federal system of government. Read More

02.25.20- Two Innovations That Could Make CO2 Fuel A Reality
Irina Slav

Carbon capture technology has been garnering more and more attention as one way to solve the world’s human-made emissions problem, but costs remain an obstacle. But another technology might help: turning CO2 back into fuel.

Two recent inventions are giving hope, and both have to do with nanocatalysts. 

As the name suggests, these are microscopic catalysts-hemicals that accelerate a chemical reaction between elements-and these catalysts can be used in hydrogenation to produce useful gases. Read More

02.24.20- Two Abundant Elements That Could Create A Superbattery
Alex Kimani

For decades, scientists have been on the prowl for advanced battery materials with features such as superior energy density or those that confer extra-long battery life leading to such futuristic designs as bendable batteries that mimic the human spine, to breathable nanochain structures. 

But maybe they have been looking in the wrong places, with nature’s own biological kingdom providing a potential solution. Read More

02.22.20- Can The U.S. Compete With China In The Energy Storage Race?
Haley Zaremba

Last year Oilprice reported that the energy storage industry was about to explode in China. We wrote that “China is set to become the single biggest energy storage market in the Asia Pacific region by 2024,” citing a Wood Mackenzie report that said China was in the midst of a global energy storage market takeover with “cumulative energy storage capacity projected to skyrocket from 489 megawatts (MW) or 843 megawatt-hours (MWh) in 2017 to 12.5 gigawatts (GW) or 32.1GWh in 2024.” Read More

02.21.20- Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech
Loz Blain

Australian company HB11 says it's well on the way to nuclear fusion energy generation without the radioactive fuels or super-high temperatures

"We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century," says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected. Read More

02.20.20- Researchers achieve a 10x supercapacitor energy density breakthrough
Loz Blain

Supercapacitors can charge almost instantly, and discharge enormous amounts of power if needed. They could completely erase the Achilles heel of electric vehicles – their slow charging times – if they could hold more energy. And now Chinese and British scientists say they've figured out a way to store 10 times more energy per volume than previous supercapacitors. Read More

02.19.20- Europe's Largest Economy Is Betting Big On Hydrogen
Vanand Meliksetian

The energy transition is a herculean challenge that is being thwarted by the world’s addiction to fossil fuels. Fortunately, the IEA had some good news recently when it announced that CO2 emissions in 2019 did not increase compared to 2018 while the world economy grew by 3 percent. The unexpected stabilization is primarily the result of the rapid growth of renewables and the substitution of coal by natural gas. The biggest contributor to the reduction of CO2 emissions is the EU, with a decrease of 5 percent. Germany’s share was the largest of the OECD countries with a decrease of 8 percent. Read More

02.18.20- Trump, Saudi Arabia and the End of the Petrodollar
Nick Giambruno

• The end of Saudi Arabia means the end of the petrodollar which will likely lead to the dollar falling severely against gold resulting in severe inflation, nationalisation of retirement savings and other forms of wealth confiscation
  
  
• There are straightforward steps you can start taking today to protect your savings and yourself from the financial and sociopolitical effects of the collapse of the petrodollar.
  
  
• The sad truth is, most people have no idea how bad things could get, let alone how to prepare… Read More

02.17.20- The Next Renewable Energy Source Could Be Rain
Irina Slav

The quest for the next source of renewable energy is well under way, with no natural phenomenon overlooked. We have already harnessed the power of flowing water, wind, and sunlight, and the search for the next clean source of energy is far from over.

The latest potential breakthrough in renewable energy comes in the form of rain. Read More

02.15.20- Coronavirus Outbreak Hits Solar Power Development In Asia
Tsvetana Paraskova

The coronavirus outbreak is impacting the energy sector beyond the depressed oil demand in the world’s top oil importer and key oil demand growth driver, China.

Due to factory shutdowns and production disruptions, exports of solar panels and other components out of China are being delayed, disrupting the supply chain of the solar power industries and affecting solar projects in Asia.  Read More

02.14.20- The Metal Trump Wants More Than Gold
Charles Kennedy

Global dominance at this point in the game means control of the rare earths elements that form the backbone of existing technology and the future of technology, and while everyone is busy playing at war with oil and gas, Beijing is busy sitting on a monopoly of our most precious strategic metals. 

There are 16 metals in total that form the world’s strategically critical rare-earth elements--and China controls the supply of every single one because it controls 96% of production. 

One of these crucial metals is Cesium.  Read More

02.13.20- The Shale Oil Bubble Accounted For 99% Of U.S. Oil Production Growth Since 2007
Steve St Angelo

Without the unprofitable and unconventional shale oil supply, U.S. oil production would still be below 5 million barrels per day.  While we can applaud the shale industry for allowing the American Leech & Spend Suburban Economy to continue for another decade, I wouldn’t count on it lasting another ten years.  If we are lucky, we may get another 1-2 years before the entire U.S. Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme comes crashing down.  Read More

02.12.20- Can Hydrogen Trucks
Kill Diesel Demand?
Irina Slav

Hydrogen, once touted as the fuel of the future and then slipping into near oblivion as electric cars gained popularity, may still have a future as a fuel, just not for passenger cars. Hydrogen, it seems, could become the preferred fuel for a category of vehicles that currently account for a significant share of oil demand: long-haul trucks.

S&P Global Platts Analytics recently made the case for hydrogen fuel as an economical replacement of diesel in semi trucks by arguing that it was potentially a cheaper alternative to both electric trucks and compressed natural gas vehicles. Read More

02.11.20- Could This Be The Decade Of Green Hydrogen?
Tsvetana Paraskova

Of those alternatives, renewable energy is already making steady progress in electricity generation capacity, while another source of energy—hydrogen is also gaining momentum and is being touted as a key fuel in the energy transition.

Hydrogen has the potential to become a key clean fuel source in the future that could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions—this could be the perfect solution to supplying growing amounts of low-carbon fuel and energy.  Read More

02.10.20- Global Warming's 50 Years of Fraud
Jack Hellner

The theory for those pushing the green new deal or some other radical energy policy that will destroy tens of millions of jobs and greatly harm the poor and middle class is that humans, CO2, and fossil fuels cause warming and climate change. This warming causes the ice to melt in Alaska, then the melting ice causes sea levels to rise and the rising sea levels will cause coastal cities to under water.

They have predicted the coastal cities to disappear for the last 100 years and they have been wrong for 100 years. Read More

02.08.20- U.S. Top Shale Oil Fields Decline 10 Times Faster Than Global Oil Industry
Steve St Angelo

The Global Economy is heading for serious trouble when the disintegration of the U.S. Shale Oil Industry begins, likely within the next few years.  With Global GDP growth based on world oil production growth, the main driver has been the U.S. shale oil industry. This is terrible news because the top U.S. shale oil fields are declining ten times the rate as are the world’s mature oil fields. Read More

02.07.20- Oil Demand Under Siege As Airlines Cancel Over 50,000 Flights
Julianne Geiger

Over 54,011 airline flights scheduled to, from, and within China between January 23 and February 4 were canceled, according to Cirium data cited by CNBC, creating a ripple effect for global oil demand.

The 50,000+ flights account for 28% of all scheduled flights to, from, and within China, and 14% of those flights that were canceled were international flights.

And more cancellations are coming. Read More

02.06.20- New ‘Solar Panels’ Harness
The Energy Of Deep Space
Haley Zaremba

Solar power is cheaper than ever, it’s ultra-abundant, and it emits zero greenhouse gases. But it’s far from perfect--for now. One of the biggest limitations of solar energy (which applies to wind power as well) is that it is variable and is not dispatchable. Variability refers to the fact that solar power is dependent on a completely unreliable factor: the weather. Solar panels don’t generate energy if the sun isn’t shining, meaning that they don’t function for an entire half of every day and function far under capacity during overcast daylight hours. They also can’t be turned on and off according to the grid’s needs, known as dispatchability. Instead of being able to respond to the energy needs of the grid, the grid has to work around the productivity of the solar panels. Read More

02.05.20- Brace For A Global Crisis In 2020
Gregory R. Copley

The year 2020 could emerge as the start of the era of relative global chaos or major upheaval. It is the era we have been anticipating, as the impact of core population decline meets economic dislocation, and security and structural uncertainty.

Changes in the fundamental sociological framework of global society, due to the end of the population growth cycle - and with it the end of the economic growth cycle based on expanding market size - were beginning to become evident by the beginning of 2020. It was apparent that 2020 was likely to see an evolution in this transformation. Read More

02.04.20- Harvester pulls record amount of drinking water out of thin air
Michael Irving

Clean water is all around us, and more literally than you might think – it's floating around in the air most of the time. Of course, it’s not particularly drinkable in that form, but now researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) have found materials that can collect huge amounts of water from the air.

As is the case with similar systems we've covered previously, the key lies with a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF). These structures have the highest surface area of any known material – in fact, if you were able to unfold just one gram of an MOF, it would be enough to cover a football field. Read More

02.03.20- Pipeline or a Pipe Dream: Israel, Turkey Hydrocarbon Conflict is Brewing in the Mediterranean
Ramzy Baroud

Massive natural gas discoveries off the eastern coast of Israel and Palestine is slated to make Tel Aviv a regional energy hub. Whether Israel will be able to translate positive indicators of the largely untapped gas reserves into actual economic and strategic wealth is yet to be seen.

What is certain, however, is that the Middle East is already in the throes of a major geostrategic war, which has the potential of becoming an actual military confrontation. Read More

Russian Oil Firm Could Sign Fuel-For-Diamonds Deal In This African Nation
Tsvetana Paraskova

Russian oil firm Tatneft could strike a deal with Zimbabwe to supply fuel to the crisis-stricken African country in exchange for diamonds, the Zimbabwe Independent reportedon Friday, describing the potential deal as ‘murky’ because Zimbabwe’s Minister of Mining, Winston Chitando, told the news outlet that he was not aware of any such development. 

“It is the first time I am hearing of that. The bottom line is that it is not true. I maintain that it is not true,” Chitando told the Zimbabwe Independent. Read More

01.31.20- Can Seawater Batteries Replace Lithium?
Irina Slav

Lithium and cobalt: the two components of a rechargeable battery that have spurred a research and development rush may eventually meet their match in the future, in a simple element available in abundance in seawater.

Sodium, unlike lithium is widely available everywhere there is saltwater. And since saltwater makes up the bulk of the Earth’s surface, it’s safe to say that it is quite abundant and easy to access. It also has properties that make it an excellent substitute for the lithium in batteries. Read More

01.30.20- US Oil Exports Could Explode After Once In A Lifetime Power Shift In China
Simon Watkins

The consensus of opinion is that China’s commitment to buy an additional US$52.4 billion in U.S. energy products in 2020/21 as part of the Phase 1 trade deal between the two countries is impossible to achieve. The consensus is wrong, as a paradigmatic shift currently taking place in the core power structure of China means that the new energy products import targets are eminently achievable. Whether China wants to achieve them, though, is another issue entirely. Read More

01.29.20- GM Claims To Have The Next Model T
Jon LeSage

General Motors has a grand, visionary concept vehicle up its sleeve that could replace Henry Ford launching the Model T — but where will it be legal to drive?

Cruise, GM’s self-driving vehicle division, last week launched the Cruise Origin, developed with Honda Motor Co. The large white, boxed minivan with an orange roof will be autonomous and designed to carry groups of passengers — and the vehicle will lack a steering wheel or brake pedal. It will bring together a self-driving car with competitive, affordable shared-ride services. Read More

01.28.20- Which Is Safer For The Environment? Lithium-Ion Or Lead-Acid Batteries?
Robert Rapier

Following recent articles I wrote on both lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries, I received significant correspondence about the environmental pros and cons of both types of battery. In this article I will use some of the feedback and references I received in an effort to compare and contrast some environmental impacts of these two types of battery.

Because of the long history of lead-acid batteries, there is a significant body of literature discussing their impact on the environment. But lithium-ion batteries are newer to the market, and their environmental impact is still being worked out. Read More

01.27.20- Seriously – how deluded and gullible are people who subscribe to this nonsense?
Robert W. Felix

“32 years and billions of wasted dollars later they best they can come up with is fake data, fake graphs, a child advocate who dropped out of school…

Seriously – how deluded and gullible are people who subscribe to this nonsense?” - Rosco Mac Read More

01.25.20- How To Solve Nuclear Energy’s
Biggest Problem
Haley Zaremba

Nuclear waste is a huge issue and it’s not going away any time soon--in fact, it’s not going away for millions of years. While most types of nuclear waste remain radioactive for mere tens of thousands of years, the half-life of Chlorine-36 is 300,000 years and neptunium-237 boasts a half-life of a whopping 2 million years. 

All this radioactivity amounts to a huge amount of maintenance to ensure that our radioactive waste is being properly managed throughout its extraordinarily long shelf life and isn’t endangering anyone. And, it almost goes without saying, all this maintenance comes at a cost. In the United States, nuclear waste carries a particularly hefty cost. Read More

01.24.20- Why The Coronavirus Is A Real Threat To Oil Markets
Julianne Geiger

It impairs your breathing, causes extreme fatigue and fevers. It kills. And beyond that, it’s keeping oil prices low by threatening to stifle oil demand in one of the world’s largest oil markets.

It’s SARS CoV, better known as the SARS Coronavirus, and it’s shaping up to be the oil market’s biggest nemesis this year. And there’s no cure.

SARS, which stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome, is not only deadly, but highly contagious—more contagious than originally thought, and this coronavirus-inspired fear has now decisively spilled over into the oil market. Read More

01.23.20- Broad-spectrum solar breakthrough could efficiently produce hydrogen
Loz Blain

A new molecule developed by Ohio State University scientists can harvest energy from the entire visible spectrum of light, bringing in up to 50 percent more solar energy than current solar cells, and can also catalyze that energy into hydrogen.

Hydrogen is viewed by many folks, particularly in Japan and Korea, as the clean-burning fuel that might power our vehicles in a low-emissions future. One way to produce hydrogen is to split it out of water. This is typically done by splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity, but a potentially simpler and more efficient way to do it may be through photocatalytic water splitting, which uses light itself as the energy source instead of electricity, removing electricity production from the process altogether. Read More

01.22.20- Goldman: China Coronavirus Could Push Oil Down By $3
Irina Slav

The outbreak of a coronavirus in China that is now an international threat could cut oil demand by 260,000 bpd, which would translate into a price drop of almost $3 per barrel, Goldman Sachs has said.

Most of the demand loss will come from jet fuel as the risk of disease discourages travelers from getting on a plane, according to the investment bank, whose analysts qualified the outbreak’s effect on oil prices as modest, Bloomberg reports. Read More

01.21.20- Has Natural Gas Hit Rock Bottom?
Nick Cunningham

U.S. natural gas prices fell below $2/MMBtu on Friday for the first time in nearly four years.

The gas market is suffering from oversupply, as the shale industry has drilled the market into another bust. The share prices for top gas players were deep into red territory on Friday. Range Resources, for instance, was off by more than 8 percent. Read More