01.22.19- Texas Now Produces More Oil Than Every Country in the World Besides Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq
Mark J. Perry

This “energy miracle” in the Lone Star State has to be one of the most remarkable energy success stories in history.

As a result of the impressive, "eye-popping," and ongoing surges in Texas’s oil production over the last decade, the Lone Star State recently surpassed Canada’s oil output for the first time this year (except for a few previous outlier months when production in Canada dropped sharply, see chart below), and now produces more oil (4.6 million barrels per day) than all other countries except for Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq (see map below). Read More

01.21.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Manifesto For A ‘Deplorable’ Party
Charles Hugh Smith

We want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and that is our only demand for global human justice.

The “deplorables” now include vast swaths of citizenry around the world:everyone who voted for Trump in the U.S. (and all those who haven’t virtue-signaled their contempt for everyone who voted for him); everyone who voted for Brexit in the U.K. (and all those who haven’t virtue-signaled their contempt for everyone who voted for Brexit), and more recently, everyone who wears a yellow vest in France, and everyone who has yet to virtue-signal their contempt for the yellow vest dissenters. Read More

01.19.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The White Man’s Burden... Reflections on the Custodial State
Fred Reed

A storm, methinks, is just over the horizon: The genetics of intelligence, perhaps of behavior. Geneticists know that intelligence is largely genetic. They know better than to say so. But research advances rapidly. Laboratories close in on the responsible genes. Things like genomic-sequence correlation proceed apace. Within ten or fifteen years, I will guess, the genetics of IQ will be firmly established. If the results turn out as seems likely…then what? What does a pseudo-democracy do when clearly stratified by intellectual capacity? Read More

01.18.19- Land Market Predictions for 2019
Randy Dickhut

As the calendar flips into a new year, farmers, ranchers, and landowners are pouring over the financial numbers of how their business totaled up for the past year. For producers, profit and loss is calculated, assets and liabilities are tallied, cash flows and loan needs are projected for the upcoming year, and everything is readied for the meeting with their lender. It is an important time of the year for farmers and ranchers as they evaluate their operations and seek capital to operate another year. Most non-operating landowners don't have the need for operating capital, so their year-end is different, but they are still valuing their main asset, land. Read More

01.17.19- Why Saudi Arabia Can Never Be
The King Of Solar
Tim Daiss

The often-used phrase “becoming all things to all people” may work well in many contexts but in the energy patch, particularly with Saudi Arabia, it’s falling flat. The de facto OPEC leader and world’s largest oil exporter and third largest oil producer has been pledging many things lately, including going long on more gas investment and development both at home and abroad (including increasing investment in the U.S.-liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector, as well as expanding its already massive downstream investments globally. The kingdom has also tried to present itself as a more moderate Arab state, but since the October killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, that image has largely been tarnished. Read More

01.16.19- Harvard's new organic flow battery uses a long-lived recipe of Biblical proportions
Michael Irving

Storing renewable energy is just as important as generating it, and flow batteries might be one of the most promising ways to do that. While there are plenty of hurdles to jump over in perfecting the tech, a team of Harvard engineers has been making strides over the past few years with organic flow batteries, and has now tested a new molecule that makes for the longest-lasting, high-performance organic flow battery so far.

Flow batteries are built with two liquid electrolytes that are stored in external tanks and piped into the cell as needed. During charging and discharging, they pass electrons back and forth through a membrane in the cell, and their storage capacity and power output can be tweaked by changing the size of the tanks and membrane, respectively. Read More

01.15.19- Bearish Bets On Diesel Tell
A Worrying Story
Tsvetana Paraskova

The mood in the crude oil and oil product futures market turned decisively sour in the fourth quarter of 2018 as building crude oil oversupply and signs of slowing global economic growth rate hit investor sentiment.

Hedge funds and other money managers liquidated a lot of bullish positions in crude oil and in middle distillates in October, November, and December.  

By the end of 2018, the net long position—the difference between bets that prices will rise and bets on a drop—in U.S. diesel futures had flipped to a net short position, where bets on a drop prevail over bets on price increases. Read More

01.14.19- The Shale Oil Revolution Actually Reflects a Nation in Decline
Chris Martenson

Faster consumption + no strategy = diminished prospects

Here in the opening month of 2019, as the US consumes itself with hot debate over a border wall, far more important topics are being ignored completely.

Take US energy policy. In the US press and political circles, there’s nothing but crickets sounding when it comes to serious analysis or any sort of sustainable long-term plan.

Once you understand the role of energy in everything, you can begin to appreciate why there's nothing more important to get right. Read More

01.12.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different:Ending the War on the Non-Drug
Known as Hemp
Chris Calton

With the recent legalization of hemp in the United States, one may ask the question of why it was ever illegal to begin with. Being a non-psychoactive form of cannabis, its uses were entirely industrial. One need not be a libertarian to recognize that the prohibition of hemp ranks among the most absurd and pointless laws our government passed in the twentieth century.

Prior to the War on Drugs, the United States had a long history of hemp production, going all the way back to the colonial era and Britain even before that. Before governments arrested people for growing hemp, they used to fine farmers for not growing it. In the sixteenth century, King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I fined English farmers who failed to contribute to the country’s hemp industry. Read More

01.11.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Mainstream Media Warns America Will Be Facing An “Economic Hellscape” If The Government Shutdown Continues
Michael Snyder

Is the mainstream media over hyping the economic impact of the government shutdown for political purposes?  Of course they are. Once upon a time the mainstream media in the United States at least attempted to maintain a facade of objectivity, but those days are long gone.  In this case, they want to stir up as much public resentment against President Trump as possible in order to try to force him to end the government shutdown.  And when NBC News breathlessly declared that the U.S. “would face an economic hellscape” if this shutdown stretches on for an extended period of time, their article quickly went viral all over the Internet. But will it really be “a hellscape”? Read More

01.10.19- Largest ever continuous oil and gas resource found in the United States
David Szondy

Some 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are estimated to be under Texas and New Mexico

As the United States becomes a net oil exporter for the first time in 75 years, the US Department of the Interior has announced the discovery of the largest continuous oil and gas field ever found. Situated in the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in Texas and the Permian Basin in New Mexico, the new resource is estimated to contain 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cu ft of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids worth trillions of dollars. Read More

01.09.19- U.S. Gasoline Prices Could Be
About To Skyrocket
Irina Slav

Gasoline prices at the pump are at more than a year’s low, but this may change in the coming months, according to the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, Patrick DeHaan, as quotedby MarketWatch.

DeHaan said that right now, the average price per gallon of gasoline in the United States was at the lowest for the start of a year since 2016, when the metric was also falling sharply to end up at a low of US$1.66 per gallon. “Americans are spending $260 million less on gasoline today than they did some 80 days ago,” the analyst said. Read More

01.08.19- What Apple’s Tailspin Means
For Oil Prices
Tim Daiss

Global equity markets are entering the New Year in the doldrums and are spooking traders and investors alike, closely mirroring the decline in manufacturing growth in both the U.S. and China amid ongoing trade tensions. Last Thursday, all three major U.S. stock indexes plunged by 2 percent after a dire revenue warning from Apple heightened fears of a global economic slowdown.

The development comes a day after Apple chief executive Tim Cook wrote in a letter to investors that the company had not foreseen the extent of China’s economic deceleration, which was exacerbated by U.S.-China trade tensions. The company’s shares dropped 10 percent after the disclosure. Apple’s problems are also impacting the overall technology sector. S&P Technology companies, meanwhile, dropped 5.1 percent yesterday, its biggest drop since August 2011. Read More

01.07.19- Geoengineering Watch
Global Alert News
Dane Wigington

View Video

01.05.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: President Xi Orders Chinese Army To "Prepare For War"
Tyler Durden

In just a few short days, China has proved that investors who have been underestimating the geopolitical risks stemming from the simmering tensions between the US and China over the latter's territorial claims in the South China Sea and paranoia over the fate of Taiwan - a de facto independent state that President Xi Jinping is aggressively seeking to bring under the heel of Beijing - have done so at their own peril.

Earlier this week Xi Jinping, the Chinese emperor for life president provoked an angry rebuke from Taiwan's pro-independence president when he demanded during a landmark speech earlier this week that Taiwan submit to "reunification" with Beijing. Read More

01.04.19- Oil Is At The Mercy Of Financial Markets
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices regained more ground on Wednesday, pushed higher after equity markets rebounded from an initial selloff at the start of 2019 trading.

The price gains are not entirely convincing. WTI and Brent posted strong gains, each up more than 3 percent by midday in New York, but come largely after U.S. equity markets shook off an earlier bout of pessimism.

In fact, the trajectory and health of the global economy has moved to the top of the list in terms of variables exerting influence on oil prices. On any given day, stock prices offer a clue into investor sentiment in this regard. “Energy markets are following lockstep with what the equity markets are doing here, and I think that’s going to continue to be the case,” Brian LaRose at ICAP Technical Analysis, told Reuters. Read More

01.03.19- Future batteries, coming soon: Charge in seconds, last months and power over the air
Max Langridge

While smartphones, smarthomes and even smart wearables are growing ever more advanced, they're still limited by power. The battery hasn't advanced in decades. But we're on the verge of a power revolution.

Big technology and car companies are all too aware of the limitations of lithium-ion batteries. While chips and operating systems are becoming more efficient to save power we're still only looking at a day or two of use on a smartphone before having to recharge. Thankfully, universities are getting involved. Read More

01.02.19- The New Oil Order
Nawar Alsaadi

In the decades preceding the arrival of U.S. shale oil, the oil market had only one stabilizing force, namely OPEC. The reason the oil market was structured as such was due to the nature of conventional oil production, most non-OPEC oil production prior to U.S. shale oil fell in one of two categories: major offshore projects that took 5 to 7 years to build (North Sea, Gulf of Mexico … etc.) or mature conventional onshore fields (U.S. conventional fields, Russian Siberian fields … etc.); both of these conventional oil supply sources were either non-responsive, or only slowly reactive, to changes in the oil price, major offshore oil projects tended to come online regardless of the oil price environment, while conventional onshore oil production with shallow decline rates (sub-10 percent) meant that even a slowdown in drilling would not impact total production in any meaningful way for an extended period of time. Read More

01.01.19- Imagine if We Paid for Food
like We Do Healthcare
Ryan Neuhofel

Imagine if you purchased food like most Americans obtained healthcare.

No, I really want you to try to envision it…

Struggling?

I am a family physician whose father worked in a grocery store, and I enjoy eating at Mexican restaurants, so maybe I can help. Read More

12.31.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Ghost Of Christmas Future
Chris Martenson

A frightening world awaits unless we change our ways

Here in the brief period between Christmas and New year’s, as a writer I am obligated to say happy, wishful things. I have to confess, I’m just not feeling it this year, so I’ll just do the minimum here and return to being a curmudgeon, because that’s what the times call for.

So, happy new year. I hope everything works out well for you in 2019.

There, with that behind us we can now return our attention to the true state of the world, which is deteriorating and getting worse. Read More

12.29.18- The most innovative
battery designs of the year
Nick Lavars

Access to energy wherever and whenever we need it is fundamental to much of modern society, keeping us warm in the winter, cool in the summer, entertained all year round, and making sure our food is safe to eat. How we store that energy is a constant work in progress, and while plenty of scientists are making important but incremental advances with inventive new materials and electrolytes, others are out to entirely reinvent what we think of as a battery. Here are five examples from 2018 that might open up new doorways in energy storage, and are thought-provoking concepts that came from thinking outside the square. Read More

12.28.18- The Mediterranean Pipeline Wars Are Heating Up
Viktor Katona

Things have been quite active in the Eastern Mediterranean lately, with Israel, Cyprus and Greece pushing forward for the realization of the EastMed pipeline, a new gas conduit destined to diversify Europe’s natural gas sources and find a long-term reliable market outlet for all the recent Mediterranean gas discoveries. The three sides have reached an agreement in late November (roughly a year after signing the MoU) to lay the pipeline, the estimated cost of which hovers around $7 billion (roughly the same as rival TurkStream’s construction cost). Yet behind the brave facade, it is still very early to talk about EastMed as a viable and profitable project as it faces an uphill battle with traditionally difficult Levantine geopolitics, as well as field geology. Read More

12.27.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Blessed Are The Warmongers
Paul Craig Roberts

As life on planet Earth enters its recorded year of 2019 the world has only one leader. He is Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. There are in office nowhere in the West any real leaders, only servants of the Oligarchy and vassals of the servants. Donald Trump intended to be otherwise and might yet break out of the orchastrated existence the military/security complex, Democratic Party and presstitute media have created for him.

Putin’s humanity and self-control, has maintained peace despite Washington’s aggression and provocative actions against Russia. It is Putin who has accepted insults that in the past would have resulted in war.  Read More

12.26.18- Oil Stabilizes At $50
After Christmas Crash
Irina Slav

Crude oil prices rose on Boxing Day after an extensive decline that saw West Texas Intermediate creep close to US$40 and Brent briefly fall below US$50 a barrel. Today at 09:35 AM ET, the international benchmark had recovered slightly, rising 1.34 percent to US$51.45 a barrel, after shedding as much as 6.2 percent in the previous trading session to close at US$50.47 a barrel, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, WTI recouped some of the losses suffered over the last few days, trading up 2.61 percent at US$43.64 a barrel at the time of writing, after losing 6.7 percent and closing at US$42.53 a barrel in the last session. Read More

12.25.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Something Wicked This Way Comes. Is it the Fed? Is it the President? Is it the Treasurer?
David Haggith

Make no mistake about it, there’s real fear and panic out there as markets are dislocating to the downside…. But note that on many charts we are showing 2008/2009 like conditions, something that is entirely inconsistent with the earnings and economic data we’re still seeing: It’s almost as if markets are pricing in a financial crisis that has yet to occur.… I see slowing growth and concerns about a coming recession, all of which is true, but I’ve yet to see evidence of a financial crisis. Read More

12.24.18- Sierra Nevada Snowpack On Track To Collapse 79%, New Study Warns
Tyler Durden

A new report by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) examined the headwater regions of California's ten major reservoirs, representing half of the state's surface storage, discovered each could experience a 79% decline in peak snowpack water volume by 2100.

Berkeley Lab used supercomputers to investigate current warming trends and carbon emissions. Read More

12.22.18- Paris Is Burning Over Climate Change Taxes -- Is America Next?
Chuck DeVore

The City of Lights, Paris, has been illuminated in recent days by cars set alight by thousands of protesting “Yellow Vests”—largely middle class people who earn their living by driving or who commute to get to work. The cause of their ire is a scheduled 25 cents-per-gallon increase in gas taxes, and about 10 cents on diesel, to fight climate change.

French President Macron, deeply unpopular, just reversed course on the new green tax—Parisians are already paying about $7.06 per gallon for gasoline, almost half of that in taxes. If Paris streets burned over a proposed 25 cents per gallon climate change tax, imagine the global conflagration over a $49 per gallon tax. Read More

12.21.18- Interest Rate Hike Hits Oil Hard
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices have been slammed over the past week, dragged down by a variety of forces, including soaring U.S. shale production, higher-than-expected output from Russia, and worries about global demand. On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to pile on.

The central bank hiked interest rates by a quarter-point yet again, the fourth time this year. That was largely expected. But the details that market watchers were more concerned with were the Fed’s intentions for 2019. Fed chairman Jerome Powell, in the face of withering pressure from the White House, signaled his intention to hike rates two more times in 2019. To be sure, that was down from a previous plan of three rate increases, but it wasn’t exactly the pullback that President Trump had wanted. Powell dismissed questions about political pressure from the President, saying that “nothing will cause us to deviate from” the job at hand. Read More

12.20.18- The U.S. Shale Oil Industry Bloodbath Spreads As Oil Price Meltdown Continues
Steve St Angelo

There is no better way to describe what is currently taking place in the U.S. Shale Oil Industry, then a bloodbath.  Unfortunately, if the situation wasn’t bad enough for the shale oil industry when prices were 30-40% higher, today it’s a complete disaster.   While some might think that a bit of an overstatement, I can assure you that these low oil prices are doing serious damage to an already weakened shale industry.

The major problem with the U.S. shale oil industry from the get-go was that the huge decline rates, indicative of horizontal fracking, devour a massive amount of capital.  Furthermore, capital expenditures that are used to frack a shale well is a much different animal than building a gold mine.  Read More

12.19.18- How Australia Is Looking to Develop a Hydrogen Economy
Jason Deign

Policymakers see hydrogen as a key carrier for exporting renewable energy.

Australia’s first hydrogen test station opened this month amid a wider strategy to use gas as a storage medium for renewable energy.

The station, established by energy provider Evoenergy and the Canberra Institute of Technology at a CIT facility in Fyshwick, a retail and light industry suburb on Canberra’s outskirts, is designed to test the use of pure hydrogen in existing gas infrastructure. 

The test results will be used to inform future implementation of hydrogen in the Australian Capital Territory and the rest of the country, CIT said in a press release. Read More

12.18.18- Big Oil Stocks Crash As
Crude Prices Tumble
Tsvetana Paraskova

Shares in the largest oil companies in Europe dropped to their lowest level in eight monthson Tuesday, dragged down by across-the-board equity sell-offs in global markets and tumbling oil prices due to fears of oversupply and slowing economic growth.

Shares in Shell, Total, Eni, and Equinor were all down in the early afternoon in Europe on Tuesday, while Aker BP led the losses in the oil sector with more than a 9-percent decline. Read More

12.17.18- 2019 Will Be A Wild Year For Oil
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices have bounced around in the week following the OPEC+ agreement, and the IEA says that the deal may have at least put a floor beneath prices. However, volatility is unlikely to go away.

There are a litany of variables that will have enormous impact on oil as we head into 2019, on both the supply side and the demand side, both bullish and bearish for prices.  Read More

12.15.18- Slipping Rig Count Can’t Keep Oil Prices From Falling
Julianne Geiger

Baker Hughes reported a 4-rig decrease for oil and gas in the United States this week—a loss in rigs for the third week in a row. The four-rig decline was all on the oil-rig side, with gas rigs holding steady.

The total number of active oil and gas drilling rigs now stands at 1,071 according to the report, with the number of active oil rigs decreasing by 4 to reach 873 and the number of gas rigs holding steady at 198.

The oil and gas rig count is now 141 up from this time last year, 126 of which is in oil rigs. Read More

12.14.18- A Very Rare Setup: Who Will Win The Tug Of War In The Oil Market?
Steve St Angelo

There has been a tug of war in the oil price over the past two weeks.  Due to a very rare setup in the market, the oil price has traded in a very narrow range as traders fight it out to see who will win control… the BULLS or the BEARS.  My bet is on the bet is on the bears.  Amazingly, the oil price is literally stuck right between two critical technical levels.

Ever since the oil price peaked at $77 at the beginning of October, it has fallen $25 and is now trading in a tight volatile range between $50-$53.  As we can see in the chart below, the oil price dropped to $50 at the end of November and now has been trading up and down with no clear direction: Read More

12.13.18- Why America is the new Middle East in terms of oil production: World’s largest reserves just discovered under Texas
Ethan Huff

For the first time since 1973, the United States now leads the world in terms of oil production. And according to reports, we have the ground underneath Western Texas and Eastern New Mexico to thank.

A new assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that untapped regions of what’s known as the Delaware Basin, a component of the greater Permian Basin, contain 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids – an amount two times larger than what was estimated in a 2016 assessment of just the Wolfcamp shale play in Permian’s Midland Basin. Read More

12.12.18- Has Peak Diesel Arrived?? The Data Doesn’t Look Good
Antonio Turiel

Has Peaked Diesel arrived?  Well, if so, it is terrible news for the automobile and trucking industry as well as the overall economy.  I came across this information from an article written by Antonio Turiel on his The Oil Crash website.  The article provides some sobering data suggesting that the global production of diesel fuel may have peaked.

Furthermore, due to the peak of conventional oil in 2005 and the considerable increase of U.S. shale light tight oil, the production of heavy fuel oil (not diesel, rather bunker fuel for ships, etc.) has also declined. Read More

12.11.18- Will China Turn Its Back On U.S. LNG?
Vanand Meliksetian

There was a sigh of relief from global markets when the leaders of China and the U.S. met on the side-lines of the G20 summit to agree upon a temporary truce in their trade war. However, despite the good news, the existing 10 percent tariff on U.S. LNG has remained unchanged. According to White House Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, China had agreed to immediately start importing more U.S. agricultural, energy, industry, and other products. The arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada, however, is set to be the first test of this new truce. Read More

12.10.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why is “Intelligence” the Mother of All Stupidity?
Gordon Duff

When listening to political leaders in the West, particularly when describing Syria or “Palestinian terrorists” or the threat from Russia and China, for those with critical thinking ability the statements heard are puzzling. One can’t help but ask, “How do humans get this stupid?

One might also ask, “How do they get elected to public office in supposedly ‘freedom loving democracies,’ but we don’t need to go there now.” Read More

12.08.18- Whisky is for drinking; water is for fighting over
Rick Mills

The problem of severe water stress in the United States - and elsewhere - is serious and getting worse. Water stress is what happens when the demand for water exceeds the amount available, or when poor quality restricts its use. It most commonly occurs in areas where available water supplies have been over-exploited, often due to agriculture or urban development.

Depending on diet and lifestyle, a person needs between 2,000 and 5,000 litres of water a day to produce their food and meet their drinking and sanitation requirements Read More

12.07.18- Could Iraq Be The Next
OPEC Member To Exit?
Tim Daiss

Even more cracks may be forming within OPEC, even as market pundits continue to analyze Qatar’s decision two days ago to withdraw from the oil producing cartel. Michael Cohen, head of energy markets research at Barclays bank, told CNBC on Tuesday that Iraq, OPEC’s second largest producer, could be the next member to withdraw from OPEC.

“I think in terms of all the OPEC countries, to me the one that stands out over the last six to eight months is Iraq,” he said. “Iraq has been out of line with its target frequently... so if restrictions to cut were too stringent, Iraq might feel it in its best interest to no longer be a member of the organization.” Read More

12.06.18- A “Little Ice Age” Is Where We Are Heading, According To Multiple Scientists
Arjun Walia

A common theme in our world is misinformation, and if you follow the brilliant work of independent scientists and journalists, you will see it’s currently plaguing the field of mainstream science in multiple areas. This is not just due to error on part of researchers, but the politicization of science, something scientists, especially with regards to medical and climate science, are gathering together and speaking up about every single year.

Credible, dissenting scientific voices go largely unheard by the mainstream media and education. As a result, most of our beliefs and thoughts about what is happening on our planet come from programming, brainwashing and mass marketing heavy with mainstream politicized science. Read More

12.05.18- Water-stabilized hydrogen fuel promises twice the range of gasoline at half the price, with zero tailpipe emissions
Loz Blain

Israeli-Australian company Electriq Global's new technology stabilizes hydrogen in a recyclable liquid that can be pumped and transported just like gasoline. That's huge news, because it enables long-range electric driving with fast refueling – and it plugs right into the existing fuel logistics model.

Plenty of people want to move on from gasoline and diesel. Some are environmentalists, some want to stop supporting the geopolitics of oil, some like the lightning-quick performance potential of electric motors. Whatever the reason, the fuel that powered the 20th century seems unlikely to maintain its transport lead through the 21st.  Read More

12.04.18- Food Recalls May Soon Be a Thing of the Past—Thanks to Blockchain
Phil Haunschild

It’s time for our food producers to realize that blockchain is the technology that will make sure the foods meant to keep us healthy aren’t the ones putting us at risk.

Since January, the CDC has issued multiple warnings of E. coli contamination causing hundreds of people to become infected across the nation. Of course, countless bags and heads of lettuce have since been pulled off of shelves and destroyed. On November 20, the CDC spoke out but gave no answers to the public on what caused the outbreak: “At this time, no common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand of romaine lettuce has been identified.” Read More

12.03.18- Qatar Quits OPEC
Irina Slav

Qatar will leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as of next month, its energy minister told media today, adding that the decision was part of a long-term strategy for growing its international presence on energy markets with a focus on gas.

Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, but it has Australia breathing down its neck as well as emerging competition from the United States and other, smaller, producers. Read More

12.01.18- 5G Experiment in the Netherlands is a Resounding... Failure
Joseph P. Farrell

Many regular readers here have been bringing articles to my attention for several months concerning 5G towers. Admittedly, this is not a subject with which I’m very familiar, save only to know that many people have been raising alarm about it. I’ve a steep learning curve here, so bear with me. But this article shared by Mr. S.D. caught my attention, largely for its assertion that a 5G test for “environmental harmfulness” was quietly conducted in The Hague, The Netherlands:

Hundreds Of Birds Dead During 5g Experiment In The Hague, Netherlands  Read More

11.30.18- Natural Gas Prices Fall Below Zero
In Texas
Nick Cunningham

Surging U.S. oil production in the Permian basin has helped crash oil prices. But the Permian is also home to skyrocketing natural gas production, and output is growing so fast that drillers are trying to give it away for free. When they can’t, they just burn it off into the atmosphere.

Unlike in the Marcellus shale, where natural gas is the main target, drilling in the Permian is focused entirely on crude oil. Natural gas is a nice bonus that comes along with the oil. But the drilling frenzy in West Texas and New Mexico has resulted in a glut of this associated natural gas. There is a pipeline bottleneck for crude oil, but there is also a shortage of pipeline space for natural gas. Read More

11.29.18- Impact of US Shale on Asian Producers
Paul Wightman and Owain Johnson

The resurgence of US crude oil production is driving change throughout the world’s energy markets. With increasing flows of light sweet crude oil, closely matching the crude diet of many Southeast Asian refiners, benchmark change could be forthcoming as producers re-evaluate how crude supplies are priced and question the validity of existing benchmarks.  

The US has become one of the world’s biggest crude oil producers and towards the end of 2017 surpassed both Saudi Arabia and Russia, which had held the top spot for years. US crude exports have risen sharply since the 2016 repeal of the oil export ban.  Asian nations have accounted for a large share of imports, ensuring the regional relevancy of US benchmark WTI in Asia. Read More

11.28.18- Mexico’s Oil Crisis Deepens
Irina Slav

Mexico’s state oil company Pemex said it produced an average 1.76 million bpd of crude in October, down 7 percent from October last year, Reuters reports, citing data released by the company. This is also one of the lowest monthly production rates since 1990 when records began.

The decline was attributed to the natural depletion of mature fields, highlighting the urgent need for new production in the country. The outgoing government of Enrique Pena Nieto launched a sweeping reform in Mexico’s energy sector, one of its aims being to open up the local oil wealth to foreign operators in order to stem this decline in production. The incoming government is currently reviewing oil contracts signed by the previous administration to make sure no corruption was involved in the deals. Read More

11.27.18- $50 Oil Puts Shale To The Test
Nick Cunningham

U.S. oil production has skyrocketed this year, leaving even the most optimistic forecasts in the dust. But, the recent crash in oil prices could do what the much-hyped pipeline bottlenecks could not – slow down shale production.

Between 2015 and 2017, shale drilling activity fluctuated with oil prices (though on a several-month lag), with drillers deploying rigs and adding output when prices rose, and scrapping rigs and dialing back on activity when prices dipped. Drilling and production has always fluctuated with prices, but the much shorter lead times for shale compared to conventional drilling, meant that the oil market was responding much quicker to price changes. Read More

11.26.18- Why Oil’s Crash Will Cause A Shale Energy Bust
Jesse Colombo

Despite this being a low-volume holiday week, crude oil continues to plunge. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil is down $3.69 or 6.75% and Brent crude oil is down $3.60 or 5.75% today alone, which further confirms the concerns I had when when I wrote the article “Is A Crude Oil Liquidation Event Ahead?” on November 6th. In that piece, I warned that WTI crude oil’s technical breakdown below its key $65 level would likely lead to even more bearish action, which could then cause speculators or the “dumb money” to violently liquidate their large bullish position of nearly 500,000 net futures contracts. In today’s update, I will show the next key technical levels to watch and discuss the economic implications of crude oil’s crash of the past two months. Read More

11.24.18- Titanium 3D-printed wheel provides a glimpse of the future
Ben Coxworth

In a demonstration of what could be commercially possible within the near future, California-based HRE Wheels recently teamed up with GE Additive's AddWorks team to create the first-ever titanium wheel to be 3D-printed via Electron Beam Melting. The process is said to be more efficient than traditional machining.

Electron Beam Melting involves shining a laser beam into a bed of titanium powder, selectively melting that powder to create fine successive layers of solid material that are fused together to form a single object. All the powder that isn't melted can still be used for subsequent builds. By contrast, when parts are machined out of a solid block of titanium, more of the material ends up being wasted. Read More

11.23.18- Oil Crashes To One Year Low, Brent Below $60 As Saudis Pump Record Crude
Tyler Durden

The first time oil tumbled two weeks ago when it crashed by 7%, Goldman - which has been telling its clients to keep buying crude all the way down from $80 - blamed it on "negative convexity" and other arcane reasons because the far simpler explanation, more supply, less demand, would be just too obvious for its brilliant strategists not to notice.

There was no "negative convexity" - Wall Street's catch phrase to explain anything that can not be otherwise explained -overnight, when oil resumed its plunge, sliding to the lowest in a year and dropping below $51 after Saudi Arabia signaled its output reached a record high, while growing U.S. inventories stoked fresh concerns over a global supply glut. Read More

11.22.18- Is California becoming a national security risk?
Alexander Trigaux

We all know there is no love lost between California and Washington politics. However, since California is the 5thlargest economy in the world, the policies and decisions made in California may be putting the U.S. at a national security risk.

Up and down the West Coast, California has numerous ports including those at: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Richmond, Port Hueneme, San Diego, Martinez, San Francisco, Benicia, Stockton, Crockett, Sacramento, Redwood City, Eureka, and Alameda. Read More

11.21.18- Scott Tinker: Can The World Energy Supply Become Fully Sustainable?
Adam Taggart

Will our global society be able to transtiton off of its extreme dependence on fossil fuels? And if so, can we do so without too much pain?

Scott Tinker is the Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, and founder of the non-profit Switch Energy Alliance, which is dedicated to helping humanity address these key questions.

Tinker remains confident a much better future energy-wise is possible; but will require a tremendous shift in behavoir, and technological innovation.  Read More

11.20.18- Murder Mayhem, Oil and Gas
Phil Flynn

Oil is trying to make a comeback against a backdrop of murder, and mayhem, not to mention some winter weather thrown in. While the oil rally Friday was slowed by a report that Iraq had restarted exports of Kirkuk oil, halted a year ago due to a standoff between the central government and Kurdistan's semi-autonomous region. Fears that the Kurds would see independence caused a shutdown of oil exports to Turkey. Yet, the new government in Baghdad agreed a tentative deal with Erbil to get the oil flowing. Read More

11.19.18- Commodities Are Sending a Distressing Signal
Komal Sri-Kumar

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Oil markets are sending a powerful message. After reaching a four-year high in early October, the price of crude has collapsed by more than 25 percent. This move is about more than just the ups and down of global supplies and whether OPEC and other producers can adjust. More importantly, it seems to speak to waning demand, which is worrisome.

These developments suggest the synchronized growth that the global economy has enjoyed in recent years is likely to be replaced by a generalized slowdown. Just take a look at the data out of Japan and Germany this week, which showed the world’s third- and fourth-largest economies contracted in the third quarter. Read More

11.17.18- Natural Gas Prices Soar To 9-Year Highs As Cold Forecast Bites
Julianne Geiger

Natural gas prices shot through the roof on Wednesday as weather forecasts called for an increasingly cold winter in what is looking like a tightly supplied market.

Natural gas spot prices had climbed by more than 10 percent shortly after 11:00am EST, to reach $4.512—a price that traders haven’t seen since Fall 2014.

The natural gas futures market had an exceptionally volatile trading morning, with prices surging about 35 percent since the beginning of the month, likely stemming from traders rushing to cover short positions as panic set in. Read More

11.16.18- Guess How Much CO2 Humanity Contributes to “Global Warming”?
Makia Freeman

You would think manmade CO2 output levels must be sky-high, given all the relentless guilt-tripping propaganda we are fed about how humanity is the cause of global warming. The agenda to push AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) or manmade global warming started around the 1980s and has been gaining momentum for decades, fooling many people along the way. Yet, despite all the publicity it has gotten, it has still failed to make clear a very fundamental point: exactly how much and what percentage of carbon or specifically CO2 (carbon dioxide) does humanity contribute to the atmosphere? If man is really driving global warming (now conveniently called “climate change”), surely this level must be pretty high or at least significant, right? The answer may shock you, and give new meaning to the term global warming hoax. Read More

11.15.18- New solar still claims near-perfect efficiency in purifying water
David Szondy

Access to clean water is one of the world's most pressing problems, but a team of University at Buffalo researchers has come up with a new take on an old technology that uses sunlight to purify water. Led by associate professor of electrical engineering Qiaoqiang Gan, the team has created a device that uses black, carbon-dipped paper to produce fresh water with what is claimed to be near-perfect efficiency.

Solar stills have been around for thousands of years, with references to them going back to Aristotle. They're a common survival kit item, especially for life rafts, and a quick browse of YouTube quickly turns up a surprising number of videos about how to use bits of common rubbish littering a beach to create a sun-powered still that can turn seawater or dirty water into something more potable. Read More

11.14.18- Global GDP Still Propped Up By A Massive Amount Of Debt
Steve St Angelo

While the government agencies and economists continue to publish strong GDP figures, they seem to overlook how much debt it took to produce that growth.  Or should I say, the “supposed growth.”  The days of adding one dollar of debt to get one dollar of GDP growth have been long gone for more than 40 years.  And, as global debt has increased, it has forced governments to lower interest rates.

Yes, it’s really that simple.  I get a good chuckle when I hear analysts talk about rising interest rates to 10-15%.  If the U.S. Government interest rate on the Treasury Bonds increased to just 5%, Uncle Sam would be paying over a trillion dollars a year just to service the debt.  So, no… we aren’t going to see 10-15% rates again. Read More

11.13.18- The Biggest Threat To Dollar Dominance
Irina Slav

Russian oil exporters are pressuring Western commodity traders to pay for Russian crude in euros and not dollars as Washington prepares more sanctions for the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Moscow, Reuters reported last week, citing as many as seven industry sources.

While it may have come as a surprise to the traders, who, Reuters said, were not too happy about it, the Russian companies’ move was to be expected as the Trump administration pursues a foreign policy where sanctions feature prominently. This approach, however, could undermine the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the global oil trade currency. Read More

11.12.18- Oil And General Electric Join
The Roll-Over Parade
John Rubino

First developing countries blew up. Then real estatetopped and started to roll over. Now oil has entered what CNBC just called its “longest losing streak in three decades.” 

The oil rout just became a bear market for U.S. crude

In a volatile turnabout, the U.S. crude benchmark fell into a bear market Thursday just five weeks after hitting a nearly four-year high.

West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $1, or 1.7%, to settle at $60.67 a barrel, marking its ninth straight losing session and the lowest close since March. The finish left U.S. oil down 20.6% from its Oct. 3 peak, meeting a widely applied definition of a bear market as a pullback of 20% from a recent high. Read More

11.10.18- New desalination membrane produces both drinking water and lithium
Michael Irving

Seawater is a complex cocktail of useful minerals, but it's hard to separate out the specific ones we need. Now, a team of scientists from Australia and the US has developed a new water desalination technique that can not only make seawater fresh enough to drink, but recover lithium ions for use in batteries.

The key to the process is metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which boast the largest internal surface area of any known material. Unfolded, a single gram of the material could theoretically cover a football field, and it's this intricate internal structure that makes MOFs perfect for capturing, storing and releasing molecules. Recent research into the material could see MOFs put to work as carbon emission sponges, high-precision chemical sensors, and urban water filters. Read More

11.09.18- The Achilles’ Heel Of Electric Vehicles
Global Risk Insights

Cobalt’s essential role in lithium-ion batteries has and will continue to make it increasingly important for the global consumer economy. Cobalt serves as a key component in battery-based devices by allowing them to operate over longer periods without overheating. With the global transition to electric vehicles (EVs), corporations are increasingly forced to rely on cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where a culture of corruption, unscrupulous mining practices, and political instability threaten supply security. Read More

11.08.18- The Trojan Horse In Oil Markets
Cyril Widdershoven

The U.S. sanctions on Iran are not biting yet, as global oil markets are well supplied. In the coming weeks, Iranian crude volumes should show a decline. At the same time, the success of Trump’s sanctions relies for a large part on the compliance of international buyers and the position taken by leading OPEC members. The three leading NOPEC countries have indicated that they are able and willing to open their taps to supply for possible gaps in volumes worldwide. Combined with increased U.S. production, this should dampen price increases. Stability is key for most it seems, but that may not always be the case. Read More

11.07.18- Why Oil Prices Will Fall In 2019
And Beyond
Nick Cunningham

The decision by the U.S. to grant waivers to eight countries, allowing them to continue to import oil from Iran, has helped ease the tension in the oil market. No longer are oil traders talking about $100 oil.

Iran’s oil exports stood at 1.7 million barrels per day in October and won’t fall to zero anytime soon. But that may not be the end of the story. “While consistent with our expectations, the granting of waivers does not imply that Iran exports will stabilize near current levels,” Goldman Sachs said in a research note on November 1. As more Iranian supply goes offline, the market will continue to tighten. Iran could lose nearly 600,000 bpd of exports by the end of the year, relative to October levels, the bank predicts. Read More

11.06.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What Causes a Normal Election to Spiral into Tribal Warfare
Joe Jarvis 

In 1966, Gao Jianhua (who later changed his name to Gao Yuan) was 14 years old.

At the Yizhen Middle School near Beijing, China, he witnessed and participated in the birth of China’s “Cultural Revolution.” He later recorded his personal account in a book called Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution.

The leader of Communist China, Chairman Mao, warned the country that revisionists were threatening to erase all the progress made since the Communist Revolution which brought Mao to power. Read More

11.05.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Sophia the Robot Gets a Visa...
Joseph P. Farrell

Ms. K.M. spotted this one, and it’s one of those articles that makes you go “Hmmm….”. By now most regular readers of this site and other sites such as former HUD Assistant Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts’ Solari website are aware of the growing cultural impact of the emergence of robotics. Her observation, made in the last Solari quarterly report wrap up with yours truly (available on the Solari website’s and this website’s “Members Area”), that the roll out of transgender identifications in several American states and various countries was really about extending the definition of personhood to robots, to make any income generated by them not only a source of profits, but taxable to legal jurisdictions, is a profound insight. Read More

11.03.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Three Events That Could Change The Face Of America
Brandon Smith

The past year in general has been a firestorm of news events, many of them misrepresented by the mainstream media but nevertheless important signals that the economic, social and geopolitical systems we are familiar with are changing or destabilizing rapidly. It is important to understand, however, that the implications of these events have been building for YEARS, not for mere weeks or months. They are not sudden and inexplicable consequences of “linchpin theory”, the outcome of these events was pre-planned and engineered far in advance. Read More

11.02.18- U.S. And OPEC Flood Oil Market
Ahead Of Midterms
Nick Cunningham

OPEC and the U.S. are together adding enormous volumes of new supply, which together have softened the oil market.

In October, OPEC hiked oil production to the highest level since 2016, back before the oil production cuts went into effect, according to a recent Reuters survey. The higher output, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, come just as Iranian oil is going offline. Also, Libya saw a sharp rebound in production, although the country is not part of the OPEC+ production cuts. Read More

11.01.18- China’s LNG Tariffs Are A Tactical Stroke Of Brilliance
Tim Daiss

Much has been written about how a Trump instigated trade war has hurt China, and with good reason. Numbers coming out of the country show that U.S. tariffs are taking a toll on Chinese economic growth and that dismal projection is likely to be exacerbated going forward.

China’s manufacturing sector in October expanded at its weakest pace in more than two years, hurt by both slowing domestic and external demand, in what Reuters called this morning a sign of deepening cracks in the economy from an intensifying trade war with the US. Read More

10.31.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: America Is On The Brink Of
A Nervous Breakdown
John Whitehead

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Yet another shooting.

Yet another smear of ugliness, hatred and violence. Read More

10.30.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Democracy In The Madhouse
Darryl Robert Schoon

As we approach the 2018 US midterms, interest in voting is the highest it’s been in decades. Republicans, Democrats, independents and even the disaffected are engaged; and with voting 10 days away, we should review democracy’s origins as it relates to the outcome of the midterms.

The success of self-government ultimately depends on the nature of the self to be governed.

Historians believe the earliest example of democracy occurred in India during the 6th century B.C. There is an earlier example, the story of which was lost for centuries and only recently rediscovered. Read More

10.29.18- Is A Diesel Crunch Coming?
Tsvetana Paraskova

The new ship fuel regulations coming into force at the start of 2020 are set to create an initial confusion on the refining market and crude oil and oil product trade flows, analysts and industry experts say.

We are now just 14 months away from January 1, 2020—the start date which the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set for the new rules on using only 0.5-percent or lower sulfur fuel oil on ships, unless said ships have installed the so-called scrubbers—systems that remove sulfur from exhaust gas emitted by bunkers. Read More

10.27.18- Gas Alert: Critically Low Storage Levels Ahead
Jody Chudley

I can’t believe I’m actually saying this…

But I believe the price of natural gas could DOUBLE in the next three months.

That’s right.

The theory behind my call is simple. All that is required is just a couple months of colder than normal weather.

And the best part… Investors that are positioned correctly could soon see a sizeable payday.

Let me explain… Read More

10.26.18- The Lucky Few In Canada’s Oil Patch
Irina Slav

In a fascinating twist of price trends, a barrel of Canadian heavy crude that is selling for less than US$20 a barrel in Alberta could sell for three times that on the Gulf coast, the Calgary Herald reports, citing an analyst from AltaCorp Capital.

“We’re not even talking about a different barrel,” Nickolas Lupick said. However, only a small portion of Canadian heavy crude reaches the Gulf coast. The companies that have the luck, or maybe privilege, to have pipeline and rail car capacity to ship their crude to the south are making out like bandits. MEG Energy corp. and Cenovus are probably among the lucky few who are selling some of their otherwise cheap crude at US$64.74 per barrel, while the competition is taking it on the chin. According to data the total is about 458,000 bpd. Read More

10.25.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Robert David Steele on Khashoggi, Midterms, Fed, Trump, Q & More!
Dustin Nemos

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10.24.18- Why Is Canadian Crude Selling For $20?
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices in Canada plunged late last month, with the losses continuing throughout much of October. Canadian oil producers exposed to the low prices are now fetching around $40 to 50 per barrel less than their counterparts in the United States.

Western Canada Select (WCS), which tracks heavy oil from Canada, typically trades at a discount relative to WTI. The lower price reflects quality issues, as well as the cost of transport from Alberta to refineries in the U.S. Read More

10.23.18- Oil Prices Tank Amid Global Stock Market Rout
 Julianne Geiger

Oil prices fell sharply in morning trade on Tuesday, with the key benchmarks WTI and Brent crude falling more than 4 percent as Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq futures came tumbling down.

The stock market correction of roughly 1.6% is due to a culmination of factors, including unfavorable earnings reports from Caterpillar and 3M, poor performing Asian markets, interest rate hikes, and the U.S./China trade dispute. Read More

10.22.18- Chinese City Wants To Launch Artificial Moon To Light Up Streets
Tsvetana Paraskova

China wants to launch a world-first ‘man-made moon’ over the southwestern city of Chengdu by 2020 to help illuminate the city at night.

If the first artificial moon experiment is successful, China will launch three more ‘moons’ in space in 2022, potentially saving electricity and conserving energy, China Daily reports.

The man-made moon that will be orbiting the Earth will have a reflective coating designed to deflect sunlight back to the earth’s surface similar to the shining of the Moon, Wu Chunfeng, head of Tian Fu New Area Science Society in Chengdu, told China Daily in an interview. Read More

10.20.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Experts Tell Us That A Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake And Tsunami Will Destroy Everything West Of Interstate 5
Michael Snyder

One day it will happen.  With little or no warning, the Cascadia Subduction Zone will produce a catastrophic earthquake and accompanying tsunami that will essentially destroy everything west of Interstate 5 in the Pacific Northwest.  It will be the worst natural disaster up to that point in American history, and as you will see below, the experts are saying that we are completely and utterly unprepared for it. Read More

10.19.18- Can carbon fiber car panels double as energy storage materials?
Nick Lavars

Carbon fiber as we know it is one of the most impressive materials in our toolkit. Its incredible lightness and strength has seen it take hold in everything from competitive cycling, to supercar design to cutting edge aircraft. But could it also play a role in energy storage? One team of scientists has been exploring the possibilities, and say that carefully engineered forms of the material do indeed boast the necessary electrochemical properties, raising some interesting possibilities for weight-saving vehicle design. Read More

10.18.18- $400 Oil… Is Not That Far-Fetched
Jody Chudley

For half a century it has been an act considered completely off limits…

A taboo subject…

Too dangerous to even mention.

Leave it to the world’s most dangerous man to change all of that.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. His father is the actual king, but he is in poor health and everyone knows the Crown Prince is running the show. Read More

10.17.18- Elon Musk Plans First Commercial Flights To Mars
Jon LeSage

While Elon Musk’s Tesla, Inc., is struggling to recover from its toughest year ever, Musk's SpaceX is seeing a better year in gaining business and striding forward on its grand vision of taking passengers to Mars.

Musk is moving forward on his company's Big Falcon Booster, with a factory being built in the Port of Los Angeles, 15 miles south of the SpaceX headquarters as the BFB gets ready to take customers on the 140 million-mile trip to Mars. SpaceX provides a great platform to continue sharing Musk’s grand vision of humanity’s future, and this time with government support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Read More

10.16.18- Is Uranium On The Way Back?
Eurasianet

Kazakhstan’s wholly state-owned uranium mining giant is capitalizing on high prices for its wares by announcing plans to list on the London Stock Exchange. 

The Financial Times reported on October 15 that Kazatomprom will sell off a 25 percent stake through an instrument called depository receipts. Rather than selling stock to investors directly, Kazatomprom will rely on a depositary bank that will hold the asset while selling certificates.

No timeline has been provided for when the listing might occur. Read More

10.15.18- Is Reliable Energy Storage On The Horizon?
Brigham A. McCown

Green and renewable energy markets are bringing power to millions with virtually no adverse environmental impacts, but before we can count on renewables for widespread reliability, one critical innovation must arrive: storage.

PetersenDean Inc. employees install solar panels on the roof of a home in Lafayette, California, U.S., on Tuesday, May 15, 2018. California became the first state in the U.S. to require solar panels on almost all new homes. Most new units built after Jan. 1, 2020, will be required to include solar systems as part of the standards adopted by the California Energy Commission. Read More

10.13.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Parkour Atlas
BostonDynamics

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10.12.18- Trump’s Ethanol Plans Double Down on Bad Environmental Policy
William Shughart

When Washington began subsidizing production of ethanol in the midst of 1970s’ fuel shortages, the aim was to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil, especially from OPEC countries. But the United States no longer relies heavily on OPEC. In fact, America is now on track to become a net oil exporter. Thanks to the shale revolution and more drilling offshore, U.S. oil production has grown significantly, while imported oil as a share of total domestic oil consumption has plummeted.

Yet, instead of terminating the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)—which going forward requires a sharp increase in the amount of ethanol mixed into gasoline, from 15 billion gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022—it appears the Trump administration has doubled-down on biofuels. Read More

10.11.18- Hurricane Michael Shutters 700,000 Bpd Of Oil Production
Irina Slav

Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle with winds of 155 mph yesterday and is now moving north, albeit as a weaker, tropical storm. The hurricane shut in more than 40 percent of oil production capacity in the Gulf of Mexico, according to data from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, as well as almost 32 percent of gas production capacity.

A total of 89 platforms were evacuated by the time Michael made landfall on Wednesday, as well as seven drilling rigs, with shut-in production totaling almost 718,900 bpd. Some 813 million cubic feet of natural gas production has also been taken offline this week. Read More

10.10.18- Move Aside Lithium – Vanadium Is The New Super-Metal
James Burgess

The lithium ride was a great one. Cobalt, too. All they needed was their Elon Musk moment, which came in the form of the Nevada battery gigafactory. The next Elon Musk moment won’t be about lithium at all—or even cobalt. It will be for an element that takes everything electric to its revolutionary finish line: Vanadium.

The one moment that will change everything … and that moment may be near.

Vanadium is lithium on steroids—wildly bigger and the only way forward from here. We may have already reached the peak of our electric revolution through batteries with lithium. Read More

10.09.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: I’m Coming Out Of The
‘Conspiracy Closet’
James McDougall

Hello, I’m James, and I’m coming out of the conspiracy closet, also known as the bunker.

I’ve been a free thinker since before I can remember, always asking questions and not just accepting the status quo. My Dad gave me the book “Was God An Astronaut?” when I was in my teens and I remember something about that book just really opening my mind to so many possibilities, thinking for days on end about how the pyramids were built, or wondering if humans were in fact somehow created by alien beings that seeded life on earth. Read More

10.08.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Fun Has Just Begun
Kerry Lutz

While the democrats lie bleeding, beaten up, exhausted and spent, President Trump is energetic, beaming and on an emotional high. The Kavanaugh confirmation is what winning is all about. While republicans of yesteryear would take this as a good time to rest upon their laurels, not so Donald Trump. Remember he’s the workaholic n’chief and he’s on the offensive, bigly. There’s blood in the water and now would be a great time to inflict near fatal damage upon his sworn enemies. Trump is the master of Churchill’s total war concept. When he rode down the escalator that fateful day in June 2015, he alone knew that it was a fight to the death. Read More

10.07.18- Should Energy Investors Be Worried By The Fed’s Latest Move?
Martin Tillier

Just in case you didn’t notice, stocks lost ground yesterday, and the reason du jour was a surge in interest rates. The yield on the benchmark 10-year T-Note climbed to around 3.2 percent, its highest level in years, and the jump extended out along the curve with the 30 year also hitting its highest level since 2014. That put pressure on stocks as traders weighed the potential slowing effects of higher rates on the economy and the fact that higher yields make bonds relatively more attractive, potentially diverting money from the stock market. The question here, though, is should energy investors be concerned? Read More

10.06.18- How Commodities Will Perform In The Impending Massive Credit Crunch...
Clive P. Maund

An enormous “sword of Damocles” hangs over all markets now. A massive liquidity drain is underway as global QE reverses into QT and rates rise against the background of immense ubiquitous crippling debt burdens. What this means is that the biggest credit crunch of all time is bearing down on us, which will involve markets crashing in the absence of bids, serious dislocation of capital markets and out of control interest rates.

This is probably the high point for Trump’s Presidency as the stockmarket enjoys its final “swansong rally” ahead of the crash, buoyed up the last of the stock buybacks before rising rates choke them off, and the dumbest of the dumb money who think that because the market has been in an uptrend for years it’s going to continue. Read More

10.05.18- Device that integrates solar cell and battery could store electricity outside the grid
Elsevier

Scientists in the United States and Saudi Arabia have harnessed the abilities of both a solar cell and a battery in one device -- a "solar flow battery" that soaks up sunlight and efficiently stores it as chemical energy for later on-demand use. Their research, published September 27 in the journal Chem, could make electricity more accessible in remote regions of the world.

Because of the intermittent nature of sunlight, the design of practical round-trip solar energy utilization systems requires both efficient solar energy conversion and storage. Compared with separated solar energy conversion and storage devices, combining the functions of separated devices into a single device allows us to bypass the intermediate step of electricity generation, which represents a more efficient, compact, and cost-effective approach to utilizing solar energy. Read More

10.04.18- Why The Oil Price Rally May Soon End
Nick Cunningham

Oil forecasters are falling over themselves, publishing new estimates on how high they think prices can go. The rise of Brent to $85 per barrel has forced a rethink among a long line of commodity analysts and investment banks, and the predictions for $100 oilare proliferating.

However, not everyone agrees. Barclays decided to take a contrarian approach, and went against the grain in recent note with its prediction that oil prices will begin to fall before the end of the year. “The recent increase in prices has gone too far, in our view. Although prices may continue to rise from current levels in October, the market is ripe for a correction,” the bank said in a note. Read More

10.03.18- What Drove Brent Above $85?
Tom Kool

Oil jumped on Tuesday morning after a busy geopolitical weekend was compounded by a flood of bullish news on Monday afternoon. 

Oil prices spiked on Monday on heightened fears of a supply crunch as more Iranian oil goes offline. Also, news reports suggesting that China is also cutting imports from Iran are only going to add to the bullish sentiment since China was expected to resist U.S. pressure regarding Iranian oil purchases. Brent topped $85 per barrel on Monday. “It shows that the market is not convinced about the ability of the producers’ group to replace Iranian barrels,” said Tamas Varga, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates Ltd., according to Bloomberg. Read More

10.02.18- Is Trump Eyeing A Coup In Venezuela?
Nick Cunningham

The Trump administration and some others in the U.S. government have sent some not-so-subtle hints lately that they are open to a military invasion of Venezuela to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

“It’s a regime that frankly could be toppled very quickly by the military, if the military decides to do that,” President Trump told reporters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

The words seem to offer some encouragement for a coup, which may not come as a surprise because the New York Times published an investigation in early September that found that the Trump administration met secretly with Venezuelan military officers over the last year to discuss an overthrow of Maduro. Read More

10.01.18- Ignore The Hype – Oil Prices Aren’t Going Back To $100
Arthur Berman

The breakout in Brent crude prices above $80 this week has prompted analysts at the sell side banks to start talking about a return to $100 a barrel oil. Even President Trump has gotten involved, demanding that OPEC ramp up production to send oil prices lower before they start to weigh on U.S. consumer spending, which has helped fuel the economic boom over which Trump has presided, and for which he has been eager to take credit.

But to hear respected petroleum geologist and oil analyst Art Berman tell it, Trump should relax. That's because supply fundamentals in the U.S. market suggest that the recent breakout in prices will be largely ephemeral, and that supplies will soon move back into a surplus. Read More

09.29.18- The Amazing Amount Of Solar Power Needed To Run The U.S. Transportation Sector
Steve St Angelo

The U.S. Solar PV Industry will never be able to grow large enough to power the transportation industry.  Why?  Because the amount of energy needed is well beyond the forecasted growth of U.S. solar power generation.  And, it’s even worse than that.  Industry analysts are making their forecasts based on rising fossil fuel production… the critical energy necessary to manufacture and build solar power plants.

There seems to be this notion by Americans, that in the future, they will just plug in their electric cars and drive to their heart’s desire.  It seems as if no one takes the time to do a bit of simple math.  While U.S. solar power generation has increased significantly over the past several years, it is still a fraction of the total energy supplied. Read More

09.28.18- $80 Oil: Increased Investment Or Demand Destruction?
Tim Daiss

Amid all of the talk and conjecture of where global oil prices are heading, Shell CEO Martin van Beurden said yesterday that $80 per barrel is not an unreasonable price. When asked in a CNBC interview if he agreed with a statement from the OPEC-meeting this past weekend that the oil market is well supplied, van Beurden said “the market was a little bit tight in general, if you compare that to where we were a few years ago, the market has been tightening up.”

“Of course the market is well supplied, but not running out of oil at this point in time but it’s also fair to say that first of all volumes in storage have come down as spare capacity has been lower than it has been before so I think there is a bit of tightness coming in the market and you see that reflected in prices.” Read More

09.27.18- Gold Through the Ages... Civilization’s Love Affair with the Yellow Metal
Justin Ziebart

The debate about Peak Oil Demand (POD) will likely rage on for quite some time. Years ago, Peak Oil theories on production and supply were constantly thrown around for general consumption. There was even an Association for the Study of Peak Oil. It seemed to culminate with the release of “Syriana” in 2005 staring George Clooney and Matt Damon. A few years later, the U.S. Shale Revolution began and economic potential of other large unconventional assets like Alberta’s oil sands entered public view. Many Peak Oil supply and production theories were put to rest, because oil is much more abundant and economically accessible than originally thought. Read More

09.26.18- $100 Oil Is A Distinct Possibility
Nick Cunningham

An oil price spike is starting to look increasingly possible, with a rerun of 2008 not entirely out of the question, according to a new report.

The outages from Iran are worse than most analysts expected, and bottlenecks in the U.S. shale patch could prevent non-OPEC supply from plugging the gap. To top it off, new regulations from the International Maritime Organization set to take effect in 2020 could significantly tighten supplies.

Put it all together, and “the likelihood of an oil spike and crash scenario akin to the one observed in 2008 has increased,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a note. BofAML has a price target for Brent at $95 per barrel by the end of the second quarter 2019. In 2008, Brent spiked to nearly $150 per barrel. Read More

09.25.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Let It Burn
Karl Denninger

I simply no longer care.

The actions of the Senate are beyond reprehensible at this point.  So are the actions of the USSC; Roberts and his Obamacare ruling, which was and remains blatantly unconstitutional (he re-wrote an unconstitutional fine into an unconstitutional direct tax, which nobody other than myself has pointed out for years despite it being black-letter in the Constitution!) should have been enough.

But I'm pretty tolerant, and had some hope.

I guess that's where this line came from..... it's real. Read More

09.24.16- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why These Five States Would Be Better Independent Countries
Joe Jarvis

States Can Insulate Themselves from DC

Trump scares me. But progressives terrify me.

Whoever comes next will be more extreme than Bernie Sanders.

Californians may hate Donald Trump now. But you can bet Texans will hate whoever comes next.

The federal two-party system ensures a perpetually unhappy populace. Each tries to force their will on the other when it is “their turn.” Read More

09.22.18- Why This Tech Will Kill the iPhone
Jeff Brown

Editor’s Note: Yesterday, Jeff Brown, Bill’s chief technology analyst, introduced you to augmented reality, “the next consumer electronics craze.”

Today, Jeff reveals why this little-known tech goes far beyond viral video games. In a few short years, it will make your iPhone obsolete. To find out why, and to learn how to profit, read on…

You may not know it, but the smartphone in your pocket will soon be obsolete…

I’m not saying that model of smartphone will be obsolete, or that you’ll have to get the latest iPhone or switch to a different brand. Read More

09.21.18- Photoelectrode that can harvest 85 percent of visible light
Hokkaido University

Scientists have developed a photoelectrode that can harvest 85 percent of visible light in a 30 nanometers-thin semiconductor layer between gold layers, converting light energy 11 times more efficiently than previous methods.

In the pursuit of realizing a sustainable society, there is an ever-increasing demand to develop revolutionary solar cells or artificial photosynthesis systems that utilize visible light energy from the sun while using as few materials as possible. Read More

09.20.18- Is uranium about to breakout?
Bill Bonner

On Friday, September 14, uranium increased to US$ 27.30 a pound. Is this going to be the breakout indicator? Historically, uranium reached an all time high of US$143 in May of 2007 and a record low of US$7.10 in December of 2000.

Uranium demand set to increase

A major percentage of all uranium is used in nuclear power plants to generate electricity. With mounting demand for electricity all across the globe and the growing capacity of nuclear reactors, the uranium market is set for significant expansion. China (with 18 reactors under construction) and Russia are the fastest growing markets for uranium. It is estimated that India, Europe, and the Middle East will also join the uranium party. Over the coming years all these regions are projected to expand their use of nuclear energy and invest in uranium mining operations, which will drive the global uranium market. Read More

09.19.18- Weather and Water... Weaponized.
Deborah Tavares

View Video

09.18.18- Evidence Is No Longer A Western Value
Paul Craig Roberts

Russia Provides Conclusive Proof That Ukraine Downed Malaysia Airlines MH17

Of course, proof, facts, evidence are no longer of any consequence in the Western World. Transparently false accusations can be leveled without any evidence provided, and the lie becomes a fact. “Russiagate” is a perfect example. 

Feminist students in Western universities, who find themselves “offended” by scientific fact, denounce scientists for speaking truth that contradicts feminist ideology, and the university administrations, obedient to feminish ideology, haul the scientists before hearings prepared to declare the scientist, if male, a misogynist. Read More

09.17.18- MIT discovery resurrects potential of molten salt batteries for grid level power storage
Loz Blain

One of the primary problems with renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, is that power gets generated when the wind or sun is available, rather than when it's most needed. This problem would more or less disappear if the world could come up with a massive, cheap, long-lasting battery design that could be used to store power at grid-scale levels and feed it back out when required.

Lithium batteries are the current darlings (heh heh) of the electric vehicle and consumer electronics industries, due to their high performance, power density and light weight. But lithium is way too expensive a material for grid-scale storage, and when you're talking about making batteries for a whole city, size and weight are far less important than making something super cheap, safe and reliable that will last for as long as possible. Read More

09.15.18- Dave Murphy: Will Monsanto's Loss Result In Less Poison In Our Food?
Adam Taggart

An update on the situation with glyphosate

In November 2016, a very concerning report -- Glyphosate: Unsafe On Any Plate -- was released by The Detox Project and Food Democracy Now!, raising the alarm of the high levels of glyphosate in the US food supply and the (deliberate?) low levels of awareness of its associated health risks.

Soon after its release, we brought Dave Murphy, executive director of Food Democracy Now!, on the podcast to explain the explosive findings within this report on the world's most-used herbicide (more commonly known by its retail brand: Roundup). We asked: Are we being poisoned in the pursuit of profit? Read More

09.14.18- Yet Another Trillion-Dollar Unfunded Liability: Too Many People In Hurricane Alley
John Rubino

One of the big recent changes in American life is the ongoing mass-migration from the middle of the country to the coasts, especially those of the Southeastern and Gulf States. Florida and the Carolinas, along with Houston and surrounding Texas counties, have gained millions of new residents seeking to trade snow and monotony for sun and water. Coastal state governments have by-and-large encouraged this immigration and the resulting construction, paving, and deforestation because new residents pay taxes and developers contribute to political campaigns. Read More

09.13.18- “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This”: Meteorologists Expect Florence To Stall
And Hammer The East Coast “For Days”
Michael Snyder

The bizarre story of Hurricane Florence just keeps becoming even more strange.  The good news is that meteorologists are telling us that the storm is expected to lose intensity as it approaches the east coast, but the really, really bad news is that it is now being projected that Florence will slow down and finally stall just off the coastline.  In a worst-case scenario, the Carolinas and Georgia could be pounded with wind and rain “for days”, and some areas of North Carolina could end up being buried under nine feet of water.  And even though the peak wind speed of Florence has diminished some, the storm just continues to expand in size. Read More

09.12.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How Things Fall Apart:
The Extremes Aren’t Stable
Charles Hugh Smith

A funny thing happens on the way to stabilizing things by doing more of what’s failed: the system becomes even more unstable, brittle and fragile.

A peculiar faith in pushing extremes to new heights has taken hold in official circles over the past decade: when past extremes push the system to the breaking point and everything starts unraveling, the trendy solution in official circles is to double-down, pushing even greater extremes. If this fails, then the solution is to double-down again. And so on. Read More

09.11.18- Nuclear Power Plants At Risk Of Direct Hit By Hurricane Florence 
Tyler Durden

North and South Carolina nuclear power plants are in line for a possible direct hit from Hurricane Florence.

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), there are twelve operating nuclear power plants in the Carolinas that make electricity by the continuous splitting of uranium atoms (i.e., a nuclear reaction). These plants generally reside near a body of water—a river, lake, estuary or ocean—because they require a constant source of water for cooling purposes. Without cooling water, a nuclear reactor will overheat, leading to core damage, containment failure, and release of harmful radiation into the environment. Read More

09.10.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Despite strong economy, many Americans struggling to get by
Associated Press

Despite a strong economy, about 40 percent of American families struggled to meet at least one of their basic needs last year, including paying for food, health care, housing or utilities.

That’s according to an Urban Institute survey of nearly 7,600 adults that found that the difficulties were most prevalent among adults with lower incomes or health issues. But it also revealed that people from all walks of life were running into similar hardships. Read More

09.08.18- Oil Likely To Find Support In Uptrend
Chris Vermeulen

I have focused my attention on the recent price rotation in the Crude Oil market.  I believe the recent downside rotation in price, while technically still in a bullish trend, is an excellent opportunity for traders to identify entry positions for a potential price rally to levels near of above $70~71 ppb.

My proprietary price modeling systems and price cycle systems are clearly illustrating that Oil prices should find support, bottom and rotate higher within the next 5~7+ days.  I rely on these proprietary indicators and modeling systems to help understand when opportunities exist in the markets.  When I can determine that price is moving counter to a primary trend and creating what I call a “price anomaly”, where enhanced opportunity exists for a profitable outcome, I attempt to determine if this trigger warrants alerting our followers. Read More

09.07.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What Causes Moral Hazard?
Jörg Guido Hülsmann

A central occupation of economists is to analyze the nature, causes, and effects of incentives—the circumstances that are held to motivate human action. Economists agree on the positive role that “good” incentives play to increase production. They also agree that “perverse” incentives have an opposite impact. One of these perverse incentives is called moral hazard.

Moral hazard is the incentive of a person A to use more resources than he otherwise would have used, because he knows, or believes he knows, that someone else B will provide some or all of these resources. The important point is that this occurs against B’s will and that B is unable to sanction this expropriation immediately. Read More

09.06.18- Mexico President Plans Massive New Oil Refinery In Blow To U.S. Refiners
Irina Slav

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has plans to build the country’s largest refinery with a capacity to produce 400,000 barrels of gasoline daily, Reuters reports, citing comments by Obrador during a meeting with businessmen in Monterrey.

The refinery would cost US$8 billion to build and construction could start soon, which would see it complete within three years. Though Reuters quoted Obrador as saying, “400,000 bpd of gasoline,” it added in its report that the comments did not made it clear whether he was referring to the crude oil processing capacity of the future facility or its gasoline production capacity. Read More

09.04.18- Oil Prices Have Been Rising And $4 A Gallon Gasoline Would Put Enormous Stress On The U.S. Economy
Michael Snyder

Thanks to increasing demand and upcoming U.S. sanctions against Iran, oil prices have been rising and some analysts are forecasting that they will surge even higher in the months ahead.  Unfortunately, that would be very bad news for the U.S. economy at a time when concerns about a major economic downturn have already been percolating.  In recent years, extremely low gasoline prices have been one of the factors that have contributed to a period of relative economic stability in the United States.  Because our country is so spread out, we import such a high percentage of our goods, and we are so dependent on foreign oil, our economy is particularly vulnerable to gasoline price shocks. Read More

09.04.18- Oil Could Jump To $95 This Winter
Irina Slav

West Texas Intermediate could rise as high as US$95 a barrel by this winter on the back of a number of factors, the leading among them the Iran sanctions, John Kilduff from Again Capital told CNBC.

According to Kilduff, founding partner of the investment company and a seasons energy trader, "The global market is tight and it's getting tighter, and the big strangle around the market right now is what's in the process of happening with Iran and the Iran sanctions. These Iranian barrels that we're going to lose, it's really going to hurt. It's really going to make a difference and tip the scale in my view to an upside surprise." Read More

09.03.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: If Cody Wilson Won’t Be Allowed To Give Files Away, He’ll Just Sell Them
Tom Knighton

There’s been this rampant fear over Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson and his desire to give away 3-D printer files that allow people to make firearm parts and, in one case, a full firearm. They have freaked out and screamed and gotten the courts involved. They’re terrified at the idea of people being able to hop on the internet and download files that may allow them to build a firearm without the government’s permission.

The fact that people have been doing just that for years is completely irrelevant, apparently. Read More

09.01.18- Earth’s ‘Big Freeze’ Approaches As Sun Remains Devoid Of Sunspots For Most Of 2018
Mac Slavo

Scientists believe that Earth could experience a “big freeze” as the sun goes through what’s known as “solar minimum.” During this time, sunspots are minimal and the globe could be in for a wicked cold snap.

Scientists are reporting that the sun has been free of sunspots for a total of 133 days this year, according to The Express UK. With only 241 days of 2018 passing, that means the sun has been blank for the majority of the year. Experts continue to warn that this is a sign that the solar minimum is on its way. “The sun is spotless again. For the 133rd day this year, the face of the sun is blank,” wrote the website Space Weather. “Solar minimum has returned, bringing extra cosmic rays, long-lasting holes in the sun’s atmosphere, and strangely pink auroras,” the website continued. Read More

08.31.18- Australia’s Newest ‘Clean Energy’ Source
 Irina Slav

Australia, one of the world’s top LNG exporters, has a bright future as a hydrogen economy. This is the conclusion of a brand new road map from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, a federal agency that has, with the road map, joined a growing interest in hydrogen as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels.

CSIRO believes hydrogen would greatly help Australia achieve its Paris Agreement targets—cutting emissions by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2030—and also solve a problem with domestic natural gas supply that has caused a price spike in eastern Australia. Clean hydrogen, the agency says, can do all that and more. Read More

08.30.18- Airlines Are Suspending Flights Because Fuel Is Too Expensive
Jim Sinclair

The price of jet fuel has continued to skyrocket over the last year, currently clocking in at a whopping 36.5 percent higher than at this time last year. In order to cope with the resulting massive increase in operational costs, commercial airlines have been reducing the number of flights run on select routes and are presently considering raising fares.

Just this month several major airlines have announced major cutbacks in flights. American Airlines announced it would be suspending all flights between Chicago and Shanghai during the month of October, as well as reducing the number of flights between Chicago and Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, cutting down from daily service to just three times a week, explicitly citing the current price of jet fuel as a prime reason for these decisions. Read More

08.29.18- The Single Biggest Breakthrough In Oil Tech This Year
Charles Kennedy

Utah holds the largest reserves of oil sands in the United States, but up until now, no company had the technology to exploit these vast resources.

Despite the potential, “only a few companies are pursuing the price-sensitive and water-intensive development of the state's oil shale and oil sand resources,” the EIA said in a 2017 report on the state, essentially writing off the region as a meaningful opportunity.

But that could change in the very near future. Petroteq Energy hopes to bring the first commercially profitable oil sands production online in the United States in the next few weeks. Read More

08.28.18- The Hunger Stones Have Appeared
Martin Armstrong

While the Global Warming fanatics are out in force saying “see” the heat in Europe is caused by humans driving their cars around, they continue to ignore history. The extreme heat in Europe this year is part of a cycle. The swings from extreme heat to extreme cold are also not unheard of. Another piece of historical evidence they ignore is known as the Hunger Stones.

Pictured here is a Hunger Stone from 1616 which has been exposed by the low level of water in the Elbe River. This is at Decin, in the Czech Republic. Throughout the centuries, there have been these cycles of extreme heat followed by extreme cold. Such events have been recorded when drought has resulted in the low level of water in the Elbe river. Read More

08.27.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: America, the Tyranny of the Stupid
Gordon Duff

People around the world are convinced that the United States is a nation run by criminal psychopaths and morons. A greater fear is that world leaders mistakenly assume that their American counterparts who do and say insane things continually are, in actuality, normal people operating inside some “master plan.”

Then, when time and time again, no such plan materializes, and it is demonstrated that America has blundered into a diplomatic, economic or military morass, for some unknown reason, a “reset” occurs, and the wrong assumptions are again made. Read More

08.25.18- A Saudi-Iran Oil War Could Break Up OPEC
Irina Slav

When OPEC and Russia shook on increasing crude oil production by a million barrels daily to stop the oil price climb that had begun getting uncomfortable for consumers from Asia to the United States, there was no sign of what was to come just two months later: slowing demand in Asia, ample supply, and a brewing price war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch-rival in the Middle East, has been a passionate supporter of President Trump’s intention to pull out of the nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions. This support is not simply on ideological or religious grounds, it also has a purely economic motive: the less Iran crude there is for sale, the more consumers will buy from Saudi Arabia. Read More

08.24.18- Not Enough Silver To Power The World Even If Solar Power Efficiency Were To Quadruple
Zoltan Ban

Even after factoring in an assumed quadrupling of solar panel efficiency, there is still not enough silver on earth to convert to a 100% solar-powered economy.

In a hypothetical world where all energy would be solar, it would take massive amounts of new silver supplies in order to keep the world running on solar.

Even relatively more modest goals, such as solar becoming the largest source of energy, remain out of reach as long as solar panel manufacturing depends on silver supplies. Read More

08.23.18- Bitcoin Can Fuel Green Energy Innovation
Michael Kern

If you’ve been following the cryptocurrency space for a while, chances are you’ve heard this one: “Bitcoin uses more energy than <insert country here>.” The story will hit the top of Google News every few months or so, helping the perma-bears pat themselves on the back while striking fear in the hearts of the true believers. But what if I were to tell you that it’s not that big of a deal?

Hear me out. Yes, Bitcoin does use a lot of electricity. Enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes in the United States, in fact. It’s just as they say. But this problem is not new. With every significant technological development comes a price. In Bitcoin’s case, it’s electricity. Read More

08.22.18- This Vital Oil And Gas Choke Point Could Be At Risk
Tim Daiss

Beijing is taking to task a Pentagon report, ”Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018” released last Thursday on China’s military activities.

The annual report issued by the Pentagon and presented to Congress, highlights growing Chinese naval capability, all the while underscoring the narrowing gap between China’s maritime forces and he U.S. Navy as well as China’s increased naval activity in the Western Pacific Ocean. The report states that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has global ambitions far beyond the traditional perimeters of its land-based defense systems, a claim that Beijing has always cleverly downplayed. Read More

08.21.18- BIG TROUBLE BREWING AT THE BAKKEN: Rapid Rise In Water Production Signals Red Flag Warning
Steve St Angelo

Big trouble is brewing in the mighty North Dakota Bakken Oil Field.  While oil production in the Bakken has reversed since it bottomed in 2016 and increased over the past few years, so has the amount of by-product wastewater.  Now, it’s not an issue if water production increases along with oil.  However, it’s a serious RED FLAG if by-product wastewater rises a great deal more than oil.

And… unfortunately, that is exactly what has taken place in the Bakken over the past two years.  In the oil industry, they call it, the rising “Water Cut.”  Furthermore, the increase in the amount of water to oil from a well or field suggests that peak production is at hand. Read More

08.20.18- Revos kit converts almost any bike into an e-bike in less than 10 minutes
Paul Ridden

Whether you're cycling to the office and don't want to arrive too sweaty and out of puff, or you just need some help getting up a steep hill, e-bikes can be a great way to get around. For many though, buying a brand new bicycle when you already have a perfectly good one just doesn't make sense. That's where add-ons like the Copenhagen Wheel and the Rubbee come in, transforming an existing two-wheeler into an e-bike. The latest to join the add-on kit party is UK-based Revolution Works, with the three-part Revos system.

Currently raising production funds over on Kickstarter, Revolution Works reckons that riders will be able to go from standard non-powered bicycle to pedal-assist e-bike in under 10 minutes with no special tools. The kit will come as a drive unit, a pedal-assist sensor and a battery. Read More

08.18.18- Trade War May Push China
To Russian Energy
Paul Craig Roberts

Although China has backpedaled on proposed tariffs on U.S. crude imports, the move is indicative of its need to diversify sources and steps may now be taken to enable China to play the oil card in the future – including imports from Iran despite sanctions, and drawing closer to Russia.

A reshuffle of crude oil exports to Asia

Asian oil refiners have been rushing to secure crude supplies in anticipation of an escalating trade war between the United States and China. Read More

08.17.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Ten Things You Should Know About Socialism
Thomas J. DiLorenzo

View Video

08.16.18- Russia Looks To Get Rid Of USD In Oil Trade – “Too Risky For Trade”
L Todd Wood

Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov declared today that Russia may get rid of the U.S. dollar when trading oil contracts internationally. 

It Was Bound To Happen: Russian Prime Minister Says US Conducting Economic Warfare Against His Country

The official stated this on the program “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev” on the TV channel “Russia 1”, reported Russian news outlet RIA Novosti. 

“We have significantly reduced our investments in US assets, in fact, already the dollar, which was considered a world currency, becomes a risky tool for settlements,” he said. Read More

08.15.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: 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.

Armadillo Day is the day of the year that our State Mascot, an Armadillo named Waxahatchie Juan, comes out of his hole and attempts to cross the highway. If he makes it across, without getting hit by a semi truck, we will have six more weeks of August.

Happy Armadillo Day Y'all! Read More

08.14.18- Is Global Warming the Greatest Lie in Human History? – G. Edward Griffin Interview
Crush The Street

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08.13.18- The Black Plague And Nuclear Energy
Chris MacIntosh

I wanted to share an article with you today because it explains so darn well how investment markets work... and yet it has nothing ostensibly to do with investment markets.

The black plague, also known as the black death, is a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It enters the body through the skin and travels via the lymph system. The bacteria live in the digestive tracts of fleas. The fleas, of course, live off blood from a host, and when the fleas swallow the blood, it becomes infected with the bacteria. As the bacteria multiply inside the flea, an intestinal blockage forms, starving the parasite because nutrients cannot be absorbed. The flea vomits in an effort to clear the blockage, and since the flea is starving, it feeds voraciously. When the infected flea vomits the diseased blood into a bite site on a host animal or human, the host becomes infected with black plague. Read More

08.11.18- Will Lockheed Martin Change The World With Its New Fusion Reactor?
Dan Denning

Lockheed Martin’s secretive Skunk Works® laboratory registered a patent in March for a revolutionary technology that could solve the world’s energy problems for good – but don’t pop the champagne yet. The design is for a compact fusion reactor (CFR) which theoretically produces cheap, clean, near limitless energy – all from a device that could fit on the back of a semi. If it sounds far-fetched, that’s because it is. The sustained generation of a fusion reaction has evaded scientists since the idea was first conceived over 70 years ago.

Lockheed Martin thinks they can change that. Read More

08.10.18- Canadian Oil Crisis Continues
As Prices Plunge
Nick Cunningham

Canadian oil producers are once again suffering from a steep discount for their oil, causing the largest spread between Canadian oil and WTI in years.

Western Canada Select (WCS) recently fell below $40 per barrel, dropping to as low as $38 per barrel on Tuesday. That put it roughly $31 per barrel below WTI, the largest discountsince 2013.

The sharp decline in WCS prices is a reflection of a shortage of pipeline capacity. Much of the talk about pipeline bottlenecks these days focuses on the Permian basin, and the unfolding slowdown in shale drilling, which could curtail U.S. oil production growth. But Canada’s oil industry was contending with an inability to build new pipeline infrastructure long before Texas shale drillers. Read More

Amid a steep correction in crude prices, China said on Wednesday that it would impose a 25-percent tariff on U.S. imports worth US$16 billion, including crude oil, diesel, cars, coal, and steel products, in retaliation to the U.S. list of US$16 billion worth of Chinese imports that will be taxed by U.S. authorities from August 23.

On Wednesday, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released a list of around US$16 billion worth of imports from China that will be subject to a 25-percent additional tariff as part of the United States’ response to China’s unfair trade practices related to the forced transfer of American technology and intellectual property, the office said. Read More

08.06.18- Goldman Sachs Expects “Very, Very Tight” Oil Market
Tsvetana Paraskova

Oil demand continues to be strong and the oil market is “eating very quickly” through OPEC’s spare capacity, so we are going into a “very, very tight oil market,” Michele Della Vigna, head of energy industry research at Goldman Sachs, told the Bloomberg Surveillance show on Monday.

There is no doubt that we are heading to slowing supply growth, according to Goldman’s expert. Venezuela’s oil production continues to decline, the heat on Iran could remove up to 1 million bpd off the market depending on how some countries like China react, Libya remains in a constant state of unpredictability, and U.S. supply growth is constrained by infrastructure—taken all together, Vigna sees those factors as “a substantial risk to supply.” Read More

08.04.18- Torchlight Illuminates
a New Texas Oil Basin
Bob Moriarty

Long patient shareholders of Torchlight Energy must have felt like it was a combination of Christmas and their birthday last week when the company finally announced positive drill results from a new and untested oil basin in far West Texas. In baseball terms the announcement would be called a home run out of the park with the bases loaded.

The Orogrande Basin project has been a work in progress since August of 2015. Back then the price of oil was collapsing to an eventual low of $26 a barrel in February of 2016. But the best deals are found at the bottom when even angels fear to tread and don't even think about investing. Torchlight Energy signed a deal with the University of Texas on the 172,000-acre Orogrande Basin in September of 2014. Read More

08.03.18- A Price Spike Looms For Natural Gas
Nick Cunningham

U.S. natural gas inventories are at low levels, raising the risk that prices could receive a jolt this winter if a cold snap hits.

The U.S. natural gas market is cyclical. Demand spikes in the winter as people and businesses turn up the heat, but consumption dips in spring and fall because of mild temperatures. That means that between November and March, gas inventories are drawn down, only to be replenished between April and October.

The peaks and valleys of this market fluctuate from year to year, but generally they follow a predictable pattern. However, at the same time, U.S. natural gas demand is rising on a structural basis, as coal plants shut down and more gas-fired generation comes online. Plus, gas exports in the form of LNG are steadily on the rise. That means that while demand continues to follow a cyclical pattern, both the peaks and the valleys of this pattern are rising steadily over time. Read More

08.02.18- Iran Preparing Massive Military Exercise To "Demonstrate Ability" To Block Persian Gulf: Report
Tyler Durden

After days of heated barbs exchange back and forth between Washington and Tehran, Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard forces are expected to begin a major exercise in the Persian Gulf as soon as the next 48 hours, which could be aimed at demonstrating their ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, CNN reports citing two US officials.

“We are aware of the increase in Iranian naval operations within the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman. Read More

08.01.18- Evidence Is Mounting that Fukushima Is a Progressive Extinction Level Event
Dave Hodges

TEPCO plans to dump all available radiation in the Pacific Ocean on an ongoing basis. This could be an extinction level event.

Ever since a huge 2011 earthquake off the coast of Japan resulting in  a massive tsunami crashing into a nuclear plant in Fukushima, the world has been fed a consistent dose of extreme under-exaggeration with regard to the resulting consequences.  In actuality, the world does not need a nuclear war in order to experience the consequences, we have Fukushima. Read More

07.31.18- An Unexpected Windfall For U.S. Solar
Irina Slav

U.S. solar power companies are benefiting from a slump in global PV panel prices following China’s decision to substantially reduce subsidies for the solar industry, which led to the quick build of excessive panel stocks, Reuters reports, citing a senior industry executive.

“If you are building a large power plant your pricing has certainly come back at least halfway to what it was pre-tariff if not all the way,” Tom Werner, chief executive of SunPower, told Reuters in an interview.

Early this year, when President Trump announced a 30-percent import tariff on Chinese PV modules, the local solar industry voiced serious concern that the tariffs would make their installations non-competitive and some could even go under. However, Beijing’s decision has helped to reverse the industry’s fortunes. Read More

08.30.18- Coke, Meth And Booze: The Flip Side Of The Permian Oil Boom
Tsvetana Paraskova

The fastest-growing oil region in the U.S. is fueling not only the second American shale revolution—it’s fueling a subculture of drug and alcohol abuse among oil field workers.

The Permian shale play in West Texas is once again booming with drilling and is full of oil field workers, some of which are abusing drugs and alcohol to help them get through long shifts, harsh working conditions, and loneliness and isolation. Read More

07.28.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: American Society Would Collapse If It Weren’t for These 8 Myths
Lee Camp

Our society should’ve collapsed by now. You know that, right? No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a “Star Wars” movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now worth a record $141 billion. He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than he could ever spend on himself. Worldwide, one in 10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has? 193 million years. (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our current world or even just our nation. Read More

07.27.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Fat fighting drug could let you lose weight without dieting
Ben Coxworth

Fat cells begin to overexpress a protein known as nicotinamide-N-methyltransferase (NNMT), as they get larger. NNMT acts as a metabolic brake which slows down fat cell metabolism, so the more of it that's expressed, the harder it is for the cells to burn fat – it's a vicious circle.

That's where the experimental new drug comes in. It blocks NNMT from operating in obese white fat cells, allowing their fat-burning metabolism to increase.

The researchers tested it by placing mice on a high-fat diet until they became obese, after which the animals received either the drug or a placebo. Read More

07.26.18- Citi: The Case For $45 Oil
Irina Slav

Oil could be back to US$45 a barrel within 12 months, Citigroup’s commodities chief Ed Morse said in an interview with the Financial Post, noting that the bullish case for crude is based on a faulty analysis.

The top oil forecaster who warned about the 2014 price collapse and also accurately predicted that the OPEC+ club would end its production cut deal earlier than everyone expected, has said that the capital efficiency and technological advancements that have improved oil recovery goes against the bullish scenario, because the better the recovery rate, the more oil that can be produced on the cheap. Read More

07.25.18- America’s 2010 Gulf Disaster: New Evidence of Its Devastation
Stephen Lendman

Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon, off Louisiana, in this handout photograph taken on April 21, 2010 and obtained on April 22. Eleven workers were missing and 17 injured in an explosion at the Transocean oil drilling rig, and crews were fighting the fire 16 hours later, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Wednesday. An estimated 126 people were aboard the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the explosion. Picture taken April 21, 2010. [image credit: REUTERS/U.S. Coast Guard/Handout]On April 20, 2010, an initial explosion, then a larger one ignited BP Oil’s Deepwater Horizon platform. Read More

07.24.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Ex-Rothschild Found
Hanging from Doorknob
Joseph P. Farrell

Every now and then I get one of those stories that I not only have to blog about, but that makes me – and I suspect, you, the reader – shake our heads in disbelief at the brazen double standards that obtain between “us plain folk” and the so-called “elite,” the vulgar, amoral, cultureless technocrats and financiers that run the world, and this is one of those stories. Mr. N. sent it along, and it really takes the breath away: Read More

07.23.18- Is The Oil World In Panic Mode?
Thorsten Polleit

Oil markets have shown tremendous weakness in recent days, losing nearly seven dollars before rallying back a bit on Thursday.

What’s causing it? Market analysts have been struggling to find a single reason for it, preferring to cite a cocktail of negative news and rumor to explain the downdraft.

There have been reports of increased Saudi production to Asian customers, which many cite as a breaking of the dam of OPEC production guidelines – a break that would have many in the oil world in full panic mode. Read More

07.21.18- Notes of nuclear? Fukushima radioactivity found in California wine
Oleg Popov

Radioactive levels are increasing in wine from California’s Napa Valley, thanks to the radioactive cloud that drifted from the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

Researchers from the University of Bordeaux Centre d’Études Nucléaires de Bordeaux-Gradignan (CNRS) in France tested California wine from before and after the Fukushima disaster and found there was double the amount of cesium-137 in its Cabernet Sauvignon after the 2011 tsunami caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors to leak. Read More

07.20.17- Engineers upgrade ancient, sun-powered tech to purify water with
near-perfect efficiency
Charlotte Hsu

The new water purification technique involves draping a sheet of carbon-dipped paper in an upside-down “V.” The paper’s bottom edges soak up water, while the carbon coating absorbs solar energy and transforms it into heat for evaporation. Credit: Huaxiu Chen

The idea of using energy from the sun to evaporate and purify water is ancient. The Greek philosopher Aristotle reportedly described such a process more than 2,000 years ago. Read More

07.19.18- Oil Prices At Risk Of Economic Downturn
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices have retreated as disrupted supply from Libya has started to come back online, threatening the recent gains in oil prices. But a bigger threat to crude over the second half of 2018 and into 2019 is a slowdown in the global economy.

The International Monetary Fund warned in its latest World Economic Outlook that a series of threats to economic growth are brewing. The Fund maintained its projection for solid global GDP growth of 3.9 percent for both 2018 and 2019 – rather robust figures – but said that “the expansion is becoming less even, and risks to the outlook are mounting.” Read More

07.18.18- Extreme Oil Price Volatility: Bad Sign That All Is Not Well In The Markets
Steve St Angelo

The markets are in serious trouble as the extreme oil price volatility continues to devastate the global economy.  Investors and analysts today are totally clueless because they have become the frogs burnt to a crisp in the frying pan.  Over the past several decades, the oil price has fluctuated tremendously, much like the EKG of an individual whose vital signs have run amuck.

Unfortunately, no seems to notice, and no one seems to care (George Carlin).  However, the market and traders have grown accustomed to the volatile trading insanity as the oil price rises and falls 3-5% in a day.  Today, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude oil price has been down more than 4%: Read More

07.17.18- The Best And Worst Oil Price Predictions
Julianne Geiger

There is only one sure thing when it comes to oil price forecasting—forecasts will inevitably prove to be wrong.

If it’s not too high, it’s certainly too low—at any rate, it’s never just right, because the odds that a forecaster, of all the possible numbers available, picked exactly the right number are literally one in infinity. This makes oil price analysis and forecasting a rather hopeless, and likely thankless, job. The only thing those analysts have to look forward to is being wrong—at best, they can look forward to being less wrong than their peers. Read More

07.16.18- How gold nanoparticles could improve solar energy storage
Rutgers University

Star-shaped gold nanoparticles, coated with a semiconductor, can produce hydrogen from water over four times more efficiently than other methods, opening the door to improved storage of solar energy and other advances that could boost renewable energy use and combat climate change, according to Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers.

"Instead of using ultraviolet light, which is the standard practice, we leveraged the energy of visible and infrared light to excite electrons in gold nanoparticles," said Laura Fabris, associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering who led the work with Fuat Celik, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering. Read More

07.14.18- These 5 Sectors Will Boom as Robots Take More Jobs
Joe Jarvis

Name something you could be happy doing every day. Imagine if your favorite hobby, or most intense intellectual interest, could be your full-time job. And imagine if full time meant spending just a few hours per day on your work.

That is the future with automation. Here’s how it works:

The Economics of Automation: Automation lowers the overall cost of goods and services by increasing efficiency. Robots can often perform tasks quicker than humans, and work around the clock. One estimate says by 2025, robots can decrease the cost of labor in the U.S. by 22%. And that estimate is accounting for only automating 25% of jobs that could be automated. Read More

07.13.18- US "Asleep At The Wheel" – As Nuclear Industry Faces Collapse
Tyler Durden

A new, shocking report by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), Harvard University, and the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy discovered that the US nuclear power industry could be on the verge of a collapse — a reality that many have yet to realize.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), “US nuclear power: The vanishing low-carbon wedge” examined 99 nuclear power reactors in 30 states, operated by 30 different power companies. Read More

07.12.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Danger
Bob Rinear

I feel horrible that I’m saying this stuff in my own country. I think you should be able to wear or support just about anyone or anything (that’s legal) that you like.

A week or so ago I wrote an article about what amounts to an upcoming Civil war. Well frankly it’s already going on, it just hasn’t reached the shooting stage. But I got wildly differing opinions about what we see happening out there. It was interesting to say the least.

On one hand, I got responses that completely agreed with me. That the rise of the really fringe far left, had gotten completely out of control, and on the other hand were emails suggesting that I was blowing this out of proportion. Read More

07.11.18- And Now, for Somethimg Entirely Different: A Nation Built On Lies
Jim Quinn

“The greatest want of the world is the want of men — men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.” – Ellen G. White

The world becomes more chaotic by the day. Good luck finding a politician, business icon, or religious leader who is not bought and sold by corporate or special interests. Finding truth telling honest leaders in today’s world is virtually impossible. Read More

07.10.18- Why The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World
Chris Martenson

And why we need a new energy strategy -- fast

My years working in corporate strategy taught me that every strategic framework, no matter how complex (some I worked on were hundreds of pages long), boils down to just two things:

1. Where do you want to go? (Vision)
2. How are you going to get there? (Resources) Read More

07.09.18- Energy Is The Key To Everything
Tom Chatham

When people are sitting around making lists and deciding what they need to survive or just get by in the future there is one thing they need to give great thought to. Energy is the basis of everything. Energy takes many forms such as food, electricity, liquid fuels, mechanical, nuclear, solid fuels, solar and wind to name a few. Without it your body will not function, you will have no light, no heat, no transportation or communication. Energy is the foundation of everything humans do in this world. Without energy in its many forms we cannot live. Read More

07.07.18- Crude Oil Makes Another
New High This Week
Andrew Hecht

Crude oil continues to be the strongest commodity out there these days. As precious metals recently fell to their lowest level of the year, copper fell below a critical support level, grains are feeling the pain of tariffs, and many other raw material prices are under pressure, crude oil keeps on grinding higher. After the correction that took the price to a low of $63.59 per barrel on the NYMEX active month futures contract early in the week of June 18, the path of least resistance for the energy commodity has been higher.

On Tuesday, July 3, the price of nearby August NYMEX crude oil futures rose to a higher high at $75.27 per barrel. Meanwhile, the Brent active month September futures contract has not been able to make it back above $80 per barrel since reaching a high of $80.50 on May 22. Read More

07.06.18- The New Oil Cartel Threatening OPEC
Irina Slav

When reports emerged that India and China are in talks about forming an oil buyers’ club, OPEC was probably too busy with its upcoming June 22 meeting to concern itself with that dangerous alliance. Now, it may be time for it to start worrying.

“The timing is right. The boom in U.S. oil and gas production gives us greater leverage against OPEC,” the Times of India quoted an Indian official as saying last month after the formal start of said talks. The two countries, after all, account for a combined 17 percent of global oil consumption and they are the ones that would be the hardest hit if prices rise as a result of OPEC’s actions. Read More

07.05.18- The End Of The Petroleum Age Will Thrust Us Back Into The 19th Century
Hugo Salinas Price

Hugo Salinas Price does not have a rosy outlook for the future. In fact, if this is correct, we’re all going to be in dire straits…

Here is what I have been able to gather, from reading Steve St. Angelo’s website, www.srsroccoreport.com:

Suppose you have the opportunity and the means to create a gold mine, and decide to undertake the challenge; you invest in the building and installations of the gold mine, and in all the related salaries to carry out the building of the mine, by paying for all expenses in gold; finally the gold mine is selling the gold it produces, in exchange for dollars. So now you have an abundant income in dollars, because your mine has been a successful venture. Hurray! Read More

07.04.18- The Energy Cliff Approaches: World Oil & Gas Discoveries Continue To Decline
Steve St Angelo

As the world continues to burn energy like there is no tomorrow, global oil and gas discoveries fell to another low in 2017.  And to make matters worse, world oil investment has dropped 45% from its peak in 2014.

If the world oil industry doesn’t increase its capital expenditures significantly, we are going to hit the Energy Cliff much sooner than later.

According to Rystad Energy, total global conventional oil and gas discoveries fell to a low of 6.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent (Boe). 
To arrive at a Boe, Rystad Energy converts natural gas to a barrel of oil equivalent.  In 2012, the world discovered 30 billion Boe of oil and gas versus the 6.7 billion Boe last year: Read More

07.03.18- This Is How Much U.S. Households Lose As Gas Prices Rise
Tsvetana Paraskova

U.S. gasoline prices are at a four-year-high this year as a result of the higher price of oil which has reached a three-and-a-half-year high in recent weeks.

The increased pump prices are now eating into the disposable income of the average American household that will have a total of $440 less to spend this year on other goods and services because this money is expected to go for buying higher-priced gasoline.

The higher spending on gas could offset one-third of the gains from the tax cuts, with low- and middle-income families feeling the pinch much more than higher-income earners, according to S&P Global economists Beth Bovino and Satyam Panday. Read More

07.02.18- Keynesian Economics Is an Artifact of Cheap Energy
Charles Hugh Smith

Printing / borrowing money to generate the unsustainable illusion of “growth” sets up the collapse of the entire Keynesian edifice.

Of the many delusions of modern economics, perhaps the greatest is that the dominant Keynesian model reflects permanent dynamics of advanced economies. Economics, along with other social sciences, makes an implicit claim that its econometric claims are the equal of the “hard sciences” of physics and chemistry. Read More

06.30.18- Crude Oil and Gasoline Prices –
Higher or Lower?
Gary Christenson

We can find many opinions stating crude oil and gasoline prices will rise… and fall. Let’s discuss.

Correlate the weekly prices of wholesale gasoline and crude oil over 30 years. The correlation is 0.987—near perfect. Rising or falling gasoline prices will follow rising or falling crude oil prices.

In My Opinion:

Crude oil and gasoline prices will continue to rise from their low ($27.56 for crude oil) in January 2016—for several more years. Corrections will occur along the way. Read More

06.29.18- Can Trump Counter Soaring Gasoline Prices?
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices surged to their highest level in more than three years on Thursday, as the number and volume of supply outages continues to rise. The odds of a significant shortfall in supply are also growing by the day. With U.S. midterm elections nearing, the more oil prices continue to rise, the more likely it is that President Trump decides to tap the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) to tamp down oil prices just ahead of the November vote.

The 180-degree turnaround in the oil market from May is pretty staggering, even for an oil market steeped in volatility and uncertainty. In late May, rumors of higher output from Saudi Arabia and Russia led to a crash in prices, and led to speculation of another lengthy downturn. By late June, however, it isn’t clear that even a massive 1-million-barrel-per-day increase from OPEC+ will be enough to fill the supply gap. Read More

06.28.18- Jeff Bezos Is Preparing To Sell Space Travel Tickets
John LeSage

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is offering a chance to buy tickets for space travelstarting next year — and is taking on SpaceX’s chief Elon Musk and Virgin’s Richard Branson in the all-new intergalactic transportation business.

Blue Origin, a space travel startup owned by Bezos, will start selling passenger tickets in 2019.

Rob Meyerson, senior vice president at Blue Origin, just made the announcement at an Amazon Web Services event. Meyerson wouldn’t comment on how much the space travel tickets will cost. Read More

06.27.18- WTI-Brent Spread Narrows On Canada Oil Crisis
Nick Cunningham

The difference between WTI and Brent narrowed significantly over the past few days, as the forces driving the two benchmarks apart seemed to have reversed course.

For the past few weeks and months, WTI suffered a steep discount relative to Brent, a reflection of a series of factors that made North America well supplied with oil, while the rest of the world saw supplies tighten significantly. U.S. shale production has soared over the past few years, but really accelerated at a blistering pace in 2018. North America has been overflowing with oil, and much of the additional supply has been routed through Gulf Coast export terminals, if producers can get their oil out of West Texas. Read More

06.26.18- And Now. for Something Entirely Different: Insurrection is Here... How Long do We have Until Civil War 2.0 Starts?
Peter Barry Chowka

Organized lawlessness is spreading to cities across the United States but the news is almost totally ignored and blacked out by the mainstream media.

These ominous uprisings are taking various forms but the most visible and aggressive ones involve Antifa-style “occupy” socialist and anarchist street mobs dedicated to taking down ICE – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government policing agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Read More

06.25.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Images of Children Crying
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

The two most viral photographs of the ‘Trump Separation Scandal’ have now been debunked, or at the very least been proven to have been used ‘out of context’. This is a dangerous development, as are the reasons to use them the way they have been. Both pictures are of children who had not been separated from their mothers at all. But both were used to depict just that: a child being taken away from its mother.

What’s dangerous about this is, first, that those who spread the narrative regardless of the truth may next permit themselves to use images from entirely different locations or times to make their point. Yes, children have been taken from parents at US borders. Read More

06.23.18- The End Of Growth
Chris Martenson

As I've written recently, I observe this is due more than anything else to a widespread demoralization society is suffering from.

Certainly the statistics reflect this. Suicides in the US are up 30% since the turn of the millennium, obesity is at epidemic proportions, mortality rates are rising especially among white working-class Americans, and our national opioid addiction is now the “epidemic of epidemics.”

To these we can also add falling birthrates and the truly startling shift towards a younger age for the onset of depression; declining from age 30 now to age…14(!)  Read More

06.22.18- What Will Follow The Age Of Oil?
Irina Slav

U.S. natural gas production will increase by 10 percent this year alone and by as much as 60 percent by 2037, a new report from IHS Markit has forecast. The market research company is extremely upbeat about U.S. gas because of the shale gas revolution, seeing the country becoming a leading LNG exporter thanks to this revolution as well.

Besides production, IHS analysts also raised their estimates of gas supply in the United States that is economical at prices below the US$4 per MMBtu Henry Hub benchmark price—from 900 trillion cubic feet in 2010 to 1,250 trillion cubic feet. Thanks to this consistent cost decline, IHS expects natural gas to come to account for almost half of power generation in the country by 2040, from about 42 percent today.Read More

06.21.18- U.S. Overtakes Saudi Arabia In Recoverable Oil Reserves
Tsvetana Paraskova

The United States has again outstripped Saudi Arabia as the holder of the world’s biggest recoverable oil resources with current technology, largely due to the doubling of fracking operations in the Permian, according to data by research consultancy Rystad Energy.

The U.S. added nearly 50 billion barrels in 2017 and now has an estimated 310 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which are equal to 79 years of U.S. production at the current pace of output, Rystad said.

Apart from the Permian, where more reserves per well are drilled, new areas and formations that have been geologically proved boosted the U.S. recoverable oil resources last year, according to the Norway-based energy consultancy. Read More

06.20.18- Oil, The Petrodollar, And The Next Emerging Market Crisis
John Rubino

Oil prices are up over the past year, which is bad if you’re, say, a developing country that imports a lot of the stuff. But the US dollar (aka the petrodollar) is also up, which compounds the problem because oil is priced in dollars. So Brazil, for instance, finds itself buying an appreciating necessity that’s priced in an appreciating currency. The result is serious trouble for at least some countries in that position. From Saturday’s Wall Street Journal: 

Steep Oil and Strong Dollar Make Toxic Brew for Global Economies

‘Brutal’ rally in dollar-priced crude hammers governments, strains consumers from U.K. to Brazil. Read More

06.19.18- Norway Looks To Build Its First Offshore Floating Wind Farms
Tsvetana Paraskova

Norway’s Petroleum and Energy Minister Terje Søviknes will meet next week with companies and other stakeholders to discuss the potential construction of offshore floating wind farms in Norwegian waters, Søviknes told Reuters on Friday.

“Wednesday next week I will have a meeting with different stakeholders in offshore wind and discuss both the opening process and the regulatory framework,” the minister said, adding that he hoped the parties could come up with a proposal by the fall. Read More

06.18.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Fourth Industrial Revolution Is On The Horizon
Michael Kern

Just a few short years after economists and social theorists declared that we had entered the Third Industrial Revolution, the next revolution is already on the horizon. Fueled by artificial intelligence, 5G, the internet of things and augmented reality, these next steps might be the biggest leap forward humanity has ever made. And make no mistake, this revolution will be built on data.

Increasingly, data is being harvested from every aspect of our day-to-day lives. From our purchases to the number of steps we take to our sleep habits or Facebook rants, it’s all being recorded. The information is then being used to advertise to us, to map our neighborhoods and even to sway elections. And this process of data extraction is only accelerating. It is the backbone of world being built around us. Read More

06.16.18- Areas Of The World More Vulnerable To Collapse
Steve St Angelo

Certain areas of the world are more vulnerable to economic and societal collapse.  While most analysts gauge the strength or weakness of an economy based on its outstanding debt or debt to GDP ratio, there is another factor that is a much better indicator.  To understand which areas and regions in the world that will suffer a larger degree of collapse than others, we need to look at their energy dynamics.

For example, while the United States is still the largest oil consumer on the planet, it is no longer the number one oil importer.  China surpassed the United States by importing a record 8.9 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2017.  This data came from the recently released BP 2018 Statistical Review.  Each year, BP publishes a report that lists each countries’ energy production and consumption figures. Read More

06.15.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Washed, Bleached and Rinsed
James Howard Kunstler

The FBI brass must have needed hazmat suits to scrub DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on agency misconduct around the 2016 elections. The result of their mighty exertions is something like 500 pages of pasteurized tofu. I will be surprised if a new scandal does not erupt over exactly how the scrubbing went down, and I wouldn’t count out the possibility of the original unscrubbed report emerging from deep inside the FBI itself. You have to wonder how embarrassed Mr. Horowitz is, and whether he, or others seeking to defend his integrity, might do anything about it. Read More

06.14.18- Europe Is Awash With
Oil Stored On Ships
Tsvetana Paraskova

While many analysts and agencies have already called the end of the global oil glut, oil held in floating storage in Europe is at an at least 18-month-high, also due to the booming U.S. oil exports that have displaced some of the traditional crude oil routes in the world.

Oil in ships around European shores was 12.9 million barrels on average in May, accounting for 26 percent of all global floating storage, and more than Asia-Pacific’s 9.7 million barrels of oil stored, according to estimates by oil analytics company Vortexa.  Read More

06.13.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Trouble Brewing in Emerging Markets
Jim Rickards

Emerging markets, EMs, have had an amazing run over the past two years. Moving in lock step with U.S. stock markets, the leading EM stock ETF has produced gains of over 50% since early 2016.

But just as U.S. stocks have run into higher volatility and major drawdowns in recent months, EM stocks have also encountered head winds. A major reversal of EM stock gains is emerging.

The reason U.S. stocks and EM stocks have moved together is not difficult to discern. Both asset classes are what economists call “risky” assets, in contrast to “safe” assets such as developed-market government bonds or even “risk-free” assets such as short-term U.S. Treasury bills. Read More

06.12.18- "Oil Shock!"
Brian Maher

Is the economy in for a jolting “oil shock”?

Today we wander out to the tail end of the bell curve… look around for black swans… and raise scandalous questions.

“Judging by internet searches for the term,” says Bloomberg commodities analyst David Fickling, “an oil shock is the last thing anyone should be worried about.”

It is true — “oil shock” is an orphan term, unloved, unwanted — and unsearched: Read More

06.11.18- Facing The (Horrible) Future
Chris Martenson

Our fate directly depends on our courage to change it

I’d like to tell you a short story based on a movie that has had a profound impact on me.

I'll get to the story in a moment, but first, a little background on the movie... 

It's called Griefwalker (by Tim Wilson) and it focuses on the life and wisdom of Stephen Jenkinson, a theologian and philosopher who worked as an end-of-life specialist for many years.  Because we all must face death in our lives, inevitably our own someday, I highly recommend this movie and Stephen’s work to everyone. Read More

06.09.18- "Its' Crazy": Texas Roiled By Unprecedented Labor Shortage As Shale Industry Hires "Just About Anyone"
Tyler Durden

Midland Mayor Jerry Morales says the boom is a double-edged sword; while the energy industry has increased sales-tax revenue by 34% year-over-year, an incredibly low unemployment rate of  2.1% has resulted in a severe shortage of low-paying jobs around town - such as the 100 open teaching positions, according to Bloomberg.

Morales, a native Midlander and second-generation restaurateur, has seen it happen so many times before. Oil prices go up, and energy companies dangle such incredible salaries that restaurants, grocery stores, hotels and other businesses can’t compete. -Bloomberg Read More

06.08.18- A Mini Fusion Reactor Reached Temperatures Hotter Than The Sun
Mac Slavo

A private company in the United Kingdom says it has successfully tested its prototype nuclear fusion reactor at temperatures that are hotter than the Sun.  The company hopes to use the nuclear fusion reactor to start supplying energy in 2030.

Over the past few years, there have been a number of nuclear fusion breakthroughs, with different teams sustaining hydrogen and helium plasmas for varying amounts of time. We’re still a way off useful nuclear fusion reactors, but it seems we’re taking steps in the right direction. Read More

06.07.18- Industrial Commodities vs. Gold – Precious Metals Supply and Demand
Dr. Keith Weiner

Last week, we showed a graph of rising open interest in crude oil futures. From this, we inferred — incorrectly as it turns out — that the basis must be rising. Why else, we asked, would market makers carry more and more oil?

Crude oil acts differently from gold – and so do all other industrial commodities. What makes them different is that the supply of industrial commodities held in storage as a rule suffices to satisfy industrial demand only for a few months at most. By contrast, gold inventories are in theory large enough to satisfy fabrication and industrial demand for 70 years (“in theory” because this is under the assumption that there is no monetary or investment demand for gold). This is in fact one of the reasons why gold is the money commodity. [PT] Read More

06.06.18- Why Have Oil Markets Turned So Bearish?
Tsvetana Paraskova

Oil prices slid early on Tuesday, as reports of the U.S. asking OPEC to lift oil production and hedge funds boosting their short positions added to bearish sentiment. Rising geopolitical concerns over Iran vowing to enrich uranium amid EU attempts to salvage the nuclear deal as well as heightened tensions in the Iranian-Israeli feud helped to boost prices in the afternoon.

At 09:16 a.m. EDT today, WTI Crude was down 0.05 percent at $64.72, while Brent Crude traded down 1.05 percent at $74.50. Brent prices touched their lowest in nearly a month, since May 8, the day on which the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. Read More

06.05.18- The South China Sea: A Geopolitical Powder Keg
JP Koning

It should come as no surprise that U.S. officials took China to task last weekend over its seemingly never-ending South China Sea build up.

Saturday at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, a much covered and annual international security forum in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis pulled no punches, stating that Beijing’s moves in the disputed body of water was intended to intimidate its neighbors.

The former Marine Corps four-star general, who served as the Commander of U.S. Central Command during the Obama Administration, said that the U.S. is willing to work with China on a "results-oriented" relationship. Read More

06.04.18- Why Oil Markets Should Fear
Trump’s Trade War
Nick Cunningham

“We're putting the trade war on hold,” U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday,” nearly two weeks ago. That didn’t go down well with President Trump who promptly restarted the trade war.

Not only did Trump step up trade penalties on China, announcing a few days ago that tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods would go forward, but he moved to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the European Union, the U.S.’ closest allies and trade partners. The tariffs will include a 25 percent levy on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. Months ago, Trump proposed these tariffs, but repeatedly offered exemptions to allies while U.S. officials negotiated with their counterparts to come up with a resolution. Read More

06.02.18- World’s Largest EV Battery Maker Sees IPO Valuation Plummet
Mining.com

Increased demand for battery materials used in electric vehicles and energy storage is what's supposed to reignite interest in the mining sector now that the China-induced supercycle in commodities demand are levelling off.

Prices for lithium and cobalt have soared. Graphite and rare earth prices are making a comeback. Nickel, where EV-related demand is still tiny, has been caught up in the euphoria and longer term the bellwether metal for the industry, may benefit the most. Read More

06.01.18- Is A Natural Gas Pipeline Between Alaska And China Realistic?
Irina Slav

When Alaska’s governor Bill Walker headed with a trade delegation to China earlier this week, he must have hoped to bring back good news about an 800-mile gas pipeline project that would see the state’s gas reserves flow into an increasingly gas-hungry Chinese economy. However, the only news the delegation brought home was that Sinopec and Bank of China were still interested in the project.

This declaration of interest is hardly worth a headline, but one outtake from the meeting with Sinopec’s president, as reported by Alaska’s Energy Desk Rashah McChesney, is worth mentioning. The president of China’s largest refiner said, “After some of the work we did, in terms of assessment and evaluation in technology, economics and in terms of the resources of Sinopec — I think there’s a lot more work for us to be done than originally imagined.” Read More

05.31.18- The Energy Model That Can Predict Gold Prices
Alex Kimani

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”--Albert Einstein

When trying to predict gold prices, investors usually look at one or several drivers: interest rates, U.S. dollar fluctuations, above-ground gold stocks, equities, bonds, commodity prices and even debt levels. But on their own, how reliable is each for predicting either short-or-long-term medium gold price movements?

For instance, you have probably heard that gold bears an inverse correlation to interest rates. The logic here is simple enough: Investors shift their money from non-interest yielding assets like gold to high-yield assets like bonds and stocks when interest rates are climbing. Read More

05.30.17- Art Berman: Think Oil Is Getting Expensive? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.
Adam Taggart

After issuing clear warnings on this program that sub-$50 oil prices were going to be short-lived, oil expert and geological consultant Art Berman returns to the podcast this week to explain why today's $70 oil prices will go higher -- likely much higher -- and start materially contricting world economic growth.

Art explains how the current glut of oil created by the US shale boom -- along with high crude output by both OPEC and non-OPEC  producers -- is a temporary anomaly. Fundamentally, we are not finding nearly as much oil as we need to continue the trajectory of the global demand curve. And at the same time, we're extracting our reserves at a faster rate than ever. That's a mathematical recipe for a coming supply crunch -- it's not a matter of if, but when: Read More

05.29.18- WTI Crude Futures Tumble,
Test Critical Support
Tyler Durden

WTI Crude futures are down almost 10% from their highs last week (near $73), testing back to a $65 handle, breaking below critical support levels and testing the major uptrendline...

As Saudi Arabia and Russia signal they will restore some of the production they’ve curbed to drain a global glut, Bloomberg notes that the market awaits a meeting of OPEC and its partners in Vienna late June as extreme positioning starts to get unwound...Read More

05.28.18- Crude Capitulation Continues: WTI Hits 6-Week Lows After Russia, Saudi Comments
Tyler Durden

WTI Crude futures plunged in early Asia trading - touching a $65 handle for the first time in over a month - after Saudi Arabia and Russia proposed easing output curbs. 

As Bloomberg notes, oil earlier this month rose to the highest level in more than three years after President Donald Trump’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran and plunging Venezuelan output fueled supply concerns. With OPEC and allies achieving a key goal of eliminating the global surplus despite record production in the U.S., traders now are weighing whether Saudi Arabia and Russia will go ahead with their plan to revive output without reaching consensus with allies. The group are set to meet in June to decide its next steps. Read More

05.26.18- China and Russia Envision a Yuan-Denominated World
Tom Luongo

Petroyuan is Only the Beginning, Pop Goes the Metals Market

No boom today.  Boom tomorrow.  There’s always a boom tomorrow” — Susan Ivanova “Babylon 5”

The petro-yuan on its own may well become enough of a disruptor to unseat the USD as the ruling currency of global trade.

But it turns out it was only the first what may be many Chinese incursions into markets previously monopolized by the greenback. Read More

05.25.18- Drought Conditions In The Southwest Are So Bad That They Are Already Being Compared To The Dust Bowl Of The 1930s
Michael Snyder

The worst drought to hit the Southwest in decades continues to grow even worse, and many are already comparing this current crisis to the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s.  Agricultural production is way down, major rivers are running dry, and horses are dropping dead from a lack of water.  The epicenter of this drought is where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico all come together, but it is also devastating areas of north Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas as well.  Portions of seven states are already at the highest level of drought on the scale that scientists use, and summer won’t even start for about another two months. Read More

05.24.18- Steel Tariffs Raise Costs For
Texas Oil Producers
Paul Craig Roberts

The imposition of steel import tariffs and quotas will directly burden Texas oil and gas producers with higher costs for oilfield steel goods, which could result in job losses, reduced activity, and smaller companies struggling to absorb additional costs, the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers (TAEP) said in comments on the U.S. tariffs on steel.

“Clearly the tariffs themselves will lead to cost increases for oilfield steel, Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) and line pipe (LP) in particular. Beyond that, shortages of oilfield steel products will develop – and are already developing – further driving up costs to oil and gas producers. A sizable number of products are simply not available domestically, OCTG in particular, and costs have already risen significantly and will likely continue to do so,” said John Tintera. Read More

05.23.18- Is Oil About To Become Front-Page News? “A Glut That Held Prices Down For Years Is Essentially Gone”
John Rubino

Here’s a new indicator for you: It seems that the difference between the price of oil here and abroad is a measure of tightness in the market, with a rising spread indicating higher prices in the future, with all the inflationary pressures that that implies. From today’s Wall Street Journal: 

Trans-Atlantic Oil-Price Spread Soars as Supply Glut Disappears

U.S. oil prices are lagging behind global oil prices climbing toward $80 a barrel, the latest sign of a market that has gone from glutted to exceptionally tight in the past year. Read More

05.22.18- The Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme Explained: How Lousy Shale Economics Will Pull Down The U.S. Economy
Steve St. Angelo

Few Americans realize that the U.S. economy is being propped up by the Shale Oil Industry.  However, the shale oil industry is nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme, so when it collapses, it will take down the U.S. economy with it.  Unfortunately, the reason few Americans understand how lousy the economics are in producing shale oil and gas is due to the misinformation and propaganda being put out by the industry and energy analysts. Read More

05.21.18- There is a water war brewing out West that will decide the fate of 40 million Americans
JD Heyes

“The situation hasn’t improved. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that a water war of sorts is close to breaking out throughout the West and Southwest…”

Everyone knows how important water is to sustain life, but we’re about to find out how important water is to sustain American life as we know it. 

Weather patterns and conditions have been changing for years throughout the American West — no, not due to “human-caused climate change,” but just normal, evolutionary climate change, which has taken place since the birth of our planet.  Read More

05.19.18- Seasonals And Cycles Confirming: Natural Gas Flashes A ‘Buy’ Signal
Chris Vermeulen

“It is our belief that Natural Gas will continue to climb higher moving well above the $3.00 level before the end of…”

Our research team has been following the energy sector quite intensely with Oil and Natural Gas making an impressive move.  A little known seasonal pattern in Natural Gas has setup recently and we have alerted our members to this play which is already up over 16%.  Our advanced price modeling systems and Adaptive Dynamic Learning Cycles have recently triggered another buy entry point which we share in this article but first look at the seasonal chart showing the month which Natural Gas is generally strong. Read More

05.18.18- $100 Oil Is One Explosion Away
Jody Chudley

If you wake up tomorrow and oil prices have spiked to $100 per barrel, here is what will have happened.

You will find out that a long range Burkhan – 2H missile will have directly hit the Saudi Royal Palace in Riyadh. The reaction to this missile will be swift and severe.

Within the hour Saudi Arabia will have declared war on Iran. And within 24 hours the Saudis will have retaliated through a direct attack on Iran.

Once that happens, all bets are off as to how high oil prices go Read More

05.17.18- Will $100 Oil Kill The U.S. Economy?
Nick Cunningham

Brent is nearing $80 per barrel and some analyst see $100 not far off. That raises the question about how much of a dent high oil prices will make in the U.S. economy.

$100 oil is not as painful as it once was. There are a few reasons for that. The U.S. is now a significant oil exporter, helping to lessen the damage to its trade balance. Also, the economy uses less energy per unit of GDP than it used to, becoming slightly more efficient with each passing year. Read More

05.16.18- China Aims For
1 Million EV Sales In 2018
David Craggen

Supported by a hard push by the Chinese government to drive up electric car sales, annual EV sales are on track to hit a one-million-unit milestone this year, as demand continues to rise significantly.

Chinese EV sales doubled in April, with the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showing 81,904 sold that month, or an 11.5-percent increase compared with the same period last year. In total, that means China sold 1.9 million vehicles. Read More

05.15.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How to Calculate the End of the World
Bill Bonner

Poor Florence Newton.

The young woman was tried as a witch in Youghal, Ireland in 1661. It was alleged that she kissed another woman “violently” and that the victim experienced fits, cramps, and visions.

In another instance, she kissed the hand of an imprisoned man who subsequently died.

Today, we think of “witchcraft” as hocus-pocus. We deny any cause-and-effect relationship between Ms. Newton’s kiss and the prisoner’s death.

Myth, in other words. Read More

05.14.18- Biofuel Breakthrough Uses Algae To Create Hydrogen
Brian Westenhaus

A research group from the University of Turku, Finland, has discovered an efficient way for transforming solar energy into the chemical energy of biohydrogen through the photosynthesis of green algae that function as cell factories. Molecular hydrogen is regarded as one of the most promising energy carriers due to its high energy density and clean, carbon-free use.

During photosynthesis, green algae utilize harvested solar energy to split water, release oxygen into the atmosphere and produce biomass that functions as an excellent feed-stock in the blue biorefinery.

During photosynthesis, the green algae utilize harvested solar energy to split water, release oxygen into the atmosphere and produce biomass that functions as an excellent feed-stock in the blue biorefinery. Read More

05.12.18- Weekend Rant: Trump Is A Disaster
Paul Craig Roberts

Trump is a disaster for the environment, for wildlife, and for human life. Trump has handed over to polluters oil and mineral rights in US National Monuments. Mining will now deface what was before Trump protected national monuments, and oil drilling will destroy the Arctic National Refuge. He has appointed polluters to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he has waived rules in order to comply with the polluting industries’ wish list. 

Trump wants to cut EPA funding by 23 percent and to cut funding for restoration programs for the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay by 90 percent. He wants to pay for the upkeep of national parks by expanding oil and gas exploration on public lands. Read More

05.11.18- Oil Is Back
Jim Rickards

In 45 years, the world has gone from energy shortage and fears of “Peak Oil” to an energy glut where it seems the world is drowning in oil and floating on a cloud of natural gas at the same time.

Yet that may not last. My models predict a long-term rise in energy demand and energy prices.

Of course, the same amount of energy has always been around. It’s just a question of technology, geopolitics and price as to whether the energy gets to where it’s needed when it’s needed. Read More

05.10.18- Another Step Towards Collapse of Petrodollar
Rory Hall

For the past year and half a major topic throughout the alternative press has been the new Chinese oil futures contract settled/priced in yuan. The fact that China is directly challenging the Federal Reserve Note, U.S. dollar, is quiet a significant change. For those that have been paying attention this new futures oil contract is nothing more than the next step in China moving completely away from the Federal Reserve Note, and the “world reserve currency” system and towards a multi-polar world with several currencies being used for international trade.

Ken Schortgen, Jr., The Daily Economist, recently penned an article about Nigeria approving a currency swap agreement with China, stating, Read More

05.09.18- Can Volkswagen Compete With Tesla?
Jon LeSage

Volkswagen AG’s new CEO, Herbert Diess, has taken on a corporate mission — to knock Tesla Inc. off its mantle as the global leader in electric vehicle innovation. To get there, the German vehicle manufacturer will double its capital investment in EV batteries.

During the April 3 annual shareholder meeting, Diess said VW is preparing to manufacture as many as 3 million EVs per year by 2025. To get there, the company will be spending 40 billion euros ($48 billion) on the lithium ion batteries needed to hit that sales volume. Read More

05.08.18- Arctic About-Face: Oil-Opposing Alaska Natives Now Lead Charge To 'Drill, Baby, Drill'
Tim Bradner

For years indigenous people living in small villages along Alaska’s Arctic coast fiercely fought offshore drilling. Now they want a piece of the action.

When Shell first showed up in 2007 with a fleet of drillships and support vessels, and parked them in the migration path of the bowhead whale in the eastern Alaska Beaufort Sea, the Inupiats went to court. An injunction from the US Ninth Circuit stopped the company and started a chain of problems that would ultimately defeat Shell’s multibillion dollar Arctic initiative. Read More

05.07.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Taking The Pulse Of A Weakening Economy
Charles Hugh Smith

“Perhaps these realities are seeping into the margins of the complacent herd. It certainly feels like…” 

Central banks have been running a grand experiment for 9 years, and now we’re about to find out if it succeeds or fails.For 9 unprecedented years, central banks have pushed the pedal of monetary stimulus to the metal: near-zero interest rates, monumental purchases of bonds, mortgage-backed securities, stocks and corporate bonds, injecting trillions of dollars, yuan, yen and euros into the global financial system, all in the name of promoting a “synchronized global recovery” that in many nations remains the weakest post-World War II recovery on record. Read More

05.05.18- Floating Solar Plants Gain
Momentum In India
AG Metal Miner

There’s a new trend on the solar energy harnessing front in India.

Like in China and a few of the Southeast Asian nations, India is seeing a spurt in what are called “floating solar plants.”

In late 2017, the country inaugurated its largest such floating plant, a 500 kw (kilowatt peak) by the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB). This one floats on 1.25 acres of water surface of a reservoir, and has 1,938 solar panels, which have been installed on 18 ferro cement floaters with hollow insides. The project uses high-efficiency solar panels and a floating substation has been set up on the reservoir itself to convert the output into 11 kV. Read More

05.04.18- Eight Geopolitical Risks That Could Send Oil Prices Surging
Tsvetana Paraskova

The geopolitical risk premium has taken center stage as one of the key drivers of oil prices in recent months, often trumping fundamentals to send prices soaring on concerns about where the next sudden oil supply disruption would come from.

In recent weeks, a perfect storm of nearly erased global oil glut and simmering—and at times flaring—tensions in the Middle East and the worst production loss without an armed conflict (Venezuela) have supported oil prices and boosted them to levels last seen in November 2014. Read More

05.03.18- OPEC Production Cuts: Is Russia Complying?
Tsvetana Paraskova

Russia’s oil production held onto an 11-month high in April, flat compared to March and above its quota under the OPEC/non-OPEC deal for a second consecutive month, according to data by Russia’s Energy Ministry.

Russia pumped a total of 10.97 million bpd of oil in April, unchanged from March, and slightly above its quota under the production cut deal, according to energy ministry data, as carried by Reuters.

Russia’s pledge in the OPEC/non-OPEC deal is to shave off 300,000 bpd from its October 2016 level, which was the country’s highest monthly production in almost 30 years—11.247 million bpd. Read More

05.02.18- Oil Prices Crash As U.S. Dollar Regains its Footing
Tom Kool

Oil prices dived on Tuesday morning as expectations of an interest rate hike sent the U.S. dollar soaring, countering bullish news regarding the Iran nuclear deal.

- U.S. federal subsidies for renewable energy, which includes biofuels as well as renewable electricity generation, has declined by 56 percent since 2013, dipping to $6.7 billion in 2016.

- Renewable energy receives about 46 percent of total energy subsidies.

- A great portion of the federal support in 2010 came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly referred to as the “stimulus” program following the financial crisis. Read More

05.01.18- Stable and scalable photo-electrode “strongest candidate yet” for renewable
hydrogen generation
Chris Marcus

Using the power of the sun to split water and produce hydrogen fuel is one of the most promising clean energy technologies being pursued. One of the biggest hurdles holding it back has been uncovering an efficient and stable semiconductor material for use in the water-splitting process, but that's just what a team from the University of Exeter now claims to have created. Not only does using an artificial photosynthesis process to split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms promise to be clean and produce zero carbon emissions, but the resulting hydrogen has more than double the energy density of fossil fuels and, when used, the only by-product is water. It would also provide an essentially limitless source of energy. Read More

04.30.18- The Oil Curse Comes to Washington
MN Gordon

Meandering Prices

Prices rise and prices fall.  So, too, they fall and rise.  This is how the supply and demand sweet spot is continually discovered – and rediscovered. When supply exceeds demand for a good or service, prices fall. Conversely, when demand exceeds supply, prices rise.

Producers use the information communicated by changing prices to make business decisions.  High demand and rising prices inform them to increase output.  Excess supply and falling prices inform them to taper back production. Read More

04.28.18- And Now, for something Entirely Different: Are Social Justice Warriors Snowflakes? Or Just Cold…
Shanu Athiparambath

Every evening, I walk through a steep, narrow road from McLeod Ganj, where Mr. Dalai Lama lives, to my home down the hill.

A large dog runs madly around his house like a wild animal, trying to jump over the fence whenever he sees me. I find this strange because I am no threat to him. If he wants to socialize with me, he could have politely negotiated with his Buddhist human. I think he is being victimized by himself.

I feel similarly towards people who are easily offended. I don’t know what is wrong with them. Read More

04.27.17- Geopolitics Beat Fundamentals
To Lift Oil Prices
Irina Slav

Geopolitical factors once again trumped fundamentals with the growing concern over new U.S. sanctions on Iran, keeping WTI and Brent crude prices high despite a build in crude oil inventories reported yesterday by the Energy Information Administration.

The EIA yesterday reported that U.S. drillers had produced an average 10.586 million barrels daily in the week to April 20, a record-breaking production rate. The authority added that in the same week crude oil inventories had increased by 2.2 million barrels, which went counter to analyst expectations of a draw or a much smaller build. Read More

04.26.18- This Discovery Is Changing Solar Energy Forever
Brian Westenhaus

Rice University scientists have discovered a novel phenomenon of light-induced lattice expansion in perovskite materials. The lattice expansion cures bulk and interface defects, which leads to an enhancement of perovskite optoelectronic properties.

In a collaboration led by Rice University and Los Alamos National Laboratory found that to be the case with a perovskite compound touted as an efficient material to collect sunlight and convert it into energy. The press release likens the discovery as some materials are like people. Let them relax in the sun for a little while and they perform a lot better. Read More

04.25.18- A New Lithium War Is About To Begin
James Stafford

It’s the modern gold rush. Around the world, the most sought-after mineral isn’t a precious metal, nor is it oil and gas…it’s lithium.

Lithium, or “white petroleum” as some call it, has become a crucial element in today’s high-tech economy.

Demand for lithium is soaring, and producers are frantically searching for new sources of supply. Prices have doubled in the last two years, rising as high as $16,500 per ton. Read More

04.24.18- Here’s Why Gas Prices Are Skyrocketing Right Now
M.K. Matthews

Global economy and geopolitics are underpinning the oil price surge and gas prices are going up.

Who recalls the oil embargo of 1973? That was when the Arab-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced they were cutting oil exports to the United States and other countries that provided military aid to Israel during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.

In six months’ time, gas prices had quadrupled. Prices remained higher even after the embargo ended in March 1974.

But that could never happen again…Or could it? Read More

04.23.18- The New Alaskan Oil Rush
Steve St Angelo

ConocoPhillips is coming off of an incredible exploration season, reportedly the best they’ve had in over a decade, and they have Alaskan oil to thank for it. The company stuck big in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) this winter, successfully finding oil at all six of their test wells (three exploration and three appraisal), which means chances are good that the trans-Alaska pipeline system could soon be seeing a lot more (much-needed) action.

The Houston-based supermajor has estimated that there are at least 300 million barrels of recoverable oil in its  "Willow Discovery" along Alaska's Western North Slope, and these appraisal wells seem to strongly support that projection. More importantly, this discovery could represent just a fraction of the available reserves along the North Slope, and ConocoPhillips plans to keep exploring the area over another busy exploration season next year. Read More

04.21.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Bad Bankers Drive Out Good Bankers: Wells Fargo, Wall Street, And Gresham’s Law
John Rubino

Back in the 1500s, a financial agent of Queen Elizabeth I named ThomasGresham observed that that “bad money drives out good.” That is, if two kinds of money are circulating at the same legal value, people will spend the lower-quality money and save the higher. The latter as a result ceases to circulate. This became known as Gresham’s law.

More recently, in our book The Money Bubble,James Turk and I extended this concept to bankers, observing that in times of very easy money, bad bankers drive out good: Read More

12.20.18- The One Man Who Could
Send Oil To $100
Cyril Widdershoven

The future of North Africa’s leading oil and gas producer Libya is once again under threat. International media reports that Libya’s strongman General Khalifa Haftar, leader of the LNA, the largest and strongest military power in the country, has had a stroke. Libyan and Arab news sites stumble over each other predicting the death or incapacitation of the Libyan military strongman, which would without doubt increase internal instability and could lead to a renewed power struggle in eastern Libya.

Political initiatives led by several Arab countries, the UN, U.S. and EU, are to all intense and purposes null and void at present, as without clarity about the power of the LNA these deals may well fall apart. A potential removal of Haftar from the delicate balance of power that has been created in Libya will also put anti-IS and Al Qaeda military operations in doubt. Read More

04.19.18- Amazing Energy Continues
Amazing Plans
Bob Moriarty

The UK, France and US have committed another series of war crimes in Syria, attacking a sovereign nation without even the pretense of UN or Congressional or Parliamental approval. In short the entire fiasco was illegal according to all international law. They did it on the basis of what was obviously a false flag operation that the Russians warned was being set up by the terrorists in Syria over a month ago. Read More

04.17.18- Is OPEC's Mission "Accomplished"?
Nick Cunningham

OPEC’s goal of draining the global inventory surplus has finally been achieved.

The International Energy Agency said in its latest Oil Market Report that the supply overhang has pretty much vanished, thanks to OPEC’s efforts at limiting production. “It is not for us to declare on behalf of the Vienna agreement countries that it is ‘mission accomplished’, but if our outlook is accurate, it certainly looks very much like it,” the Paris-based energy agency wrote.

Market fundamentals are on a similar track compared to last month’s report. The IEA kept its oil demand forecast at 1.5 million barrels per day (mb/d), although it noted that the back-and-forth on trade tariffs between the U.S. and China puts the demand outlook at risk. For example, a 1 percent decline in global GDP growth would result in a reduction in demand growth by 690,000 bpd. Read More

04.16.18- Continuously Rising Energy Costs Will Cripple The Economy
Gail Tverberg

The most prevalent view regarding future oil supply, as well as total energy supply, seems to be fairly closely related to that expressed by Peak Oilers. Future fossil fuel supply is assumed to be determined by the resources in the ground and the technology available for extraction. Prices are assumed to rise as fossil fuels are depleted, allowing more expensive technology for extraction. Substitutes are assumed to become possible, as costs rise.

Those with the most optimistic views about the amount of resources in the ground become especially concerned about climate change. The view seems to be that it is up to humans to decide how much energy resources we will use. We can easily cut back, if we want to. Read More

04.14.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Democracy: The God That Failed
James Howard Kunstler

Today we trample sacred ground… trumpet a message of heresy… and offend the wrathful gods…

In 2001, academic Hans-Hermann Hoppe scribbled a book bearing the soaring title Democracy: The God That Failed. Hoppe’s work amounts to a one-man war dance against that most holy of secular divinities.

Hoppe’s primary tort against democracy?

It wastes. It forever takes the short view. Hoppe uses the economic concept of time preference to nail home his point. Read More

04.13.18- World War III: The False Narrative that Fuels Conflict in Syria and Beyond
Daily Bell

The timing is fit for a movie plot climax!

Just as Trump announced intentions to get out of Syria, Assad did something unspeakable. According to Assad’s opposition, the Syrian government “once again” used chemicals weapons on civilians.

At a time when the war is almost won for Assad, he decided to re-ignite international calls for his ouster by senselessly murdering about the same number of civilians the Las Vegas Shooter killed. Seems logical, right?

Well, there goes the Syrian exit! Read More

04.12.18- The Oil Eating Bacteria That Can Clean Up Crude Spills
Irina Slav

It’s not a widely known fact that the 2010 oil spill caused by the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform could have been even worse were it not for bacteria. Several species of marine bacteria that feed on ingredients in crude oil and natural gas bloomed during the spill, feasting on Louisiana light, sweet crude. Now, one of these species has been found to be a particularly promising candidate for a champion against oil spills.

Meet Alcanivorax borkumensis, or A. borkumensis for short. This rod-shaped microbe lives in all of the world’s oceans with a special preference for oil-polluted areas, as it uses hydrocarbon molecules for food. The bacterium’s genome was sequenced more than 10 years ago by a couple of researchers from the German Research Center for Biotechnology. Read More

04.11.18- Oil Prices Likely To Soar
On Geopolitical Risk
Nick Cunningham

Brent crude prices rebounded to $70 per barrel during midday trading on Tuesday as fears of a trade war eased on conciliatory comments from both the U.S. and China. That allowed the prospect of geopolitical uncertainty to reemerge as a driver of oil prices.

Even as President Trump mulls $100 billion in additional tariffs on China, as reported last week, U.S. officials took to the airwaves over the weekend to downplay the significance of the trade dispute. Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, considered one of the main voices pushing for stiff tariffs, sounded more low-key (for him) on the Sunday talk shows. “We’re listening to the Chinese. We’re willing to work with them,” Navarro said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” Although he went on to add: “But we’re clear-eyed about this. We’re moving forward on a measured way with tariffs, with investment restrictions,” he said. “What we want from China is very clear. We want fair and reciprocal trade.” Read More

04.10.18- The Winter That Will Not Quit
Dr. Mark Sircus

It is time to pay attention to cold climate change—the reality of life we are all going to experience. This month, this year is the start to a cold that will chill the earth and all its inhabitants. This is spring in Manhattan in the above picture, where in Central Park they had their biggest April snowstorm in 36 years. Now we are well into Spring and cold, wintry conditions are still what most Americans are having to deal with.

As we move forward into spring it is a lot colder then we would expect in a seriously warming planet. The headlines for the weekend of the 7th of April read: Record-breaking, ‘ridiculous’ April cold and snow set to hit northeastern U.S. this weekend “Temperatures in the New York City are expected to drop as much as 20 degrees below normal. The Arctic blast will be cold enough to dump snow from Washington to Boston. Read More

04.09.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Will Civilization Collapse
Stefan Molyneux

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04.07.18- The Absurd Myth That Solar & Wind Power Will Solve Our Energy Predicament
Steve St Angelo

As the U.S. and global oil industry continues to disintegrate under the weight increased debt and the Falling EROI – Energy Returned On Investment, analysts are still suggesting that solar and wind power are the solution to our energy problems.  While there are many good reasons solar and wind can’t provide us with the necessary energy needs in the future, the most import one is that it takes the burning of a massive amount of coal, natural gas, and oil to manufacture renewable energy sources.

Thus, solar and wind power are nothing more than fossil fuel derivatives.  However, if you are an individual that does not believe in the fossil fuel terminology, then we can substitute it by saying solar, and wind power are nothing more than coal-natgas-oil derivatives. Read More

04.06.18- Bahrain Discovers Largest Oil Field With 80 Billion Barrels In Reserves
Paul Craig Roberts

Bahrain officials have revealed that the tiny gulf kingdom has discovered some 80 billion barrels of shale (otherwise known as tight) oil - the kingdom's largest oil and gas find ever. The field also discovered 14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas beneath an existing field.

Oil Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa said the kingdom has not yet determined how much of the oil can be easily extracted, according to the Associated Press.

The oil fields were discovered in the offshore Khalij al-Bahrain Basin, which covers some 770 square miles in the shallow waters off Bahrain's west coast. Read More

04.05.18- Why Oil Producers Are Liking $60/barrel Over $100/barrel
Paul Craig Roberts

Soaring cash flows, increased dividends and share buybacks…

These traits are a recipe for a successful investment.

And over the next several years, there is one surprising industry who could offer investors all three.

Can you guess which one I’m talking about?

Believe it or not, I’m talking about big oil! Read More

04.04.18- ‘Petroyuan’ to propel currency internationalization
Li Hong

The Shanghai debut of China's first yuan-denominated crude futures trading market on Monday proved a great success, with major domestic and foreign traders displaying active interest. Total turnover amounted to 18.3 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) on the first trading day. 

The market's better-than-expected performance is believed to have significantly contributed to the recent strength of the yuan on global currency markets. 

As China largely depends on crude imports, price volatility in the commodity market is a major impediment. It launched the crude futures market to address the problem and also to gain more pricing power over the crucial commodity. Read More

04.03.18- The Chinese Oil Futures Market Has Opened. Here's What It Means
James Corbett

Do you think there might be some similar shenanigans going on with this petrodollar "alternative?" If so, then might I just say you are an extremely jaded and skeptical person. You are also correct, so give yourself a cookie.

It has been promised for 25 years. Its coming has been heralded as a world-changing event. It has launched a thousand headlines in the last few months. And it happened this week. But if you blinked you would have missed it.

What am I talking about? Why, the launch of a Chinese yuan-denominated oil futures contracts on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, of course! Or, in more headline-appropriate terms: The Birth of the Petroyuan! Read More

04.02.18- Lockheed Martin Patents Nuclear Fusion-Powered Fighter Jet
Tyler Durden

Lockheed Martin has secretly been developing a game-changing compact nuclear fusion reactor that could potentially fit into a fighter jet. The Maryland-based defense contractor recently obtained a patent associated with its design for a fully compact fusion reactor, after filing for the patent in 2014.

If the latest patent from the defense company serves as a benchmark, nuclear fusion technology could revolutionize the aeronautic industry and eventually begin the quantum leap from fossil fuels to compact fusion reactors for the industry. Read More

03.31.18- Fusion a Step Closer: Lockheed-Martin Gets Patent for Portable Fusion
Joseph P. Farrell

Many people sent me this article, and it's worth looking at closely for what may be the real story here. Firstly, Lockheed's portable fusion reactor is not new news. In fact, I blogged about this little device some years ago, here: THE LOCKHEED MARTIN FUSION STORY, E-CAT, AND SOME HIGH OCTANE ....

Back then, I pointed out the basic resemblance of Lockheed's device with a much earlier patent of Philo Farnsworth, taken in 1964-1965, for IT&T, for a device about as big as a softball, and which, reportedly, was able to sustain a fusion reaction for about half a minute, an unbelievable accomplishment, especially for such a small device. Farnsworth's device, after some initial hoopla in the press, was shuffled right off the stage and was never heard from again. Read More

03.30.18- On The Yuan-Oil Futures Contract & Gold
Alasdair Macleod

"There can be little doubt that the introduction of the yuan-denominated oil future has been a major strategic step for China."

Regular readers will be aware that we were among the first to alert western financial markets that China would introduce a new oil futures contract priced in yuan, months before it was officially admitted that the plans for the contract were being finalised and a date for trading was being planned.

Trading in the new Shanghai oil future commenced last Monday, and on the first three days trading there were 151,804 contracts traded with a turnover value of 65bn yuan. It is the first futures contract listed on China’s mainland available to overseas users, putting them on the same footing as domestic investors. Read More

03.29.18- It’s Official: China Launches New Petroyuan Futures Contracts
Birch Gold Group

Since 2015, we have been reporting about China’s new gold-backed petroyuan and its imminent unveiling on the world stage. In fact, earlier this month we wrote:

On March 26 China will finally launch a yuan-dominated oil futures contract. Over the last decade there have been a number of “false-starts,” but this time the contract has gotten approval from China’s State Council.

So did China actually follow through? The answer is yes. Read More

03.28.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The War On Drugs is Far Deadlier than Most People Realize
Brian Saady

While accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said, “The manner in which this war against drugs is being waged is equally or perhaps even more harmful than all the wars the world is fighting today, combined.”

The death toll from the drug war is much less than the actual warfare throughout the world. However, his sentiment is quite appropriate because a significant percentage of the world’s violence could be prevented with a flick of a pen by ending the war on drugs. Read More

03.27.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Death Of Democracy
Alasdair Macleod

Yes, we live in deeply troubling times. I’m afraid the US is following history’s course to a tee, as a declining super power (or one certainly challenged by others) by ratcheting up all sorts of schemes to sabotage the other great powers, just to hold on to its “unipolar moment” since the end of the Cold War. The US will not succeed, but the results will be terrible for the American nation and catastrophic on a global scale. - A. Carlson

Anyone who thinks democracy doesn’t matter may be in for a rude shock later this year, when we know the result of America’s mid-term elections. The Deep State is on course to take control of Congress. Read More

03.26.18- Cracks Now Appearing in the World's Major Oil Industry
Steve St Angelo

As the sell-off in the broader stock markets intensifies, it will be bad news for the world’s largest oil companies.  Why?  Because cracks are already beginning to appear in the biggest and most profitable global oil companies.  While rising costs and higher debt levels have been plaguing the U.S. shale oil industry, these negative factors are now impacting the major oil companies as well.

When the oil price fell below $100 in 2014, it spelled doom for the U.S. and global oil industry.  As oil prices continued to decline, energy companies were forced to increase their debt and reduce their capital expenditures (CAPEX).  Cutting CAPEX spending while adding debt aren’t a good recipe for positive financial earning in the future. Read More

03.24.18- What Trump’s Tariffs Mean
For Global Oil And Gas
Nick Cunningham

President Trump is about to escalate the brewing global trade war with another round of tariffs, although he appears to be narrowing his sights on just China.

The Trump administration announced a suite of tariffs that could affect $60 billion worth of Chinese products, a move intended to step up pressure on what the administration argues is China’s efforts at intellectual property theft. The Washington Post reported that after President Trump’s aides brought him a package of $30 billion worth of tariffs on China, he told them to double the figure. Read More

03.23.18- Scientists Are One Step Closer To Nuclear Fusion
Brian Westenhaus

Colorado State University scientists, using a compact but powerful laser to heat arrays of ordered nanowires, have demonstrated micro-scale nuclear fusion in the lab. They have achieved record-setting efficiency for the generation of neutrons – chargeless sub-atomic particles resulting from the fusion process. This process, which powers the sun, happens when nuclear reactions between light elements produce heavier ones.

The work of these scientists is detailed in an open paper published in Nature Communications, and is led by Jorge Rocca, University Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering and physics. Read More

03.22.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How To Keep Yourself Perfectly Brainwashed In The Matrix
Bernie Suarez

I was thinking the other day, what if someone was so afraid of the truth that they wanted to stay in the matrix of lies their whole life, what would someone who loves fantasy and lies have to do to remain perfectly brainwashed all the days of their lives? You are probably thinking, why would someone want to be brainwashed their whole lives? It shouldn’t surprise us since we actually see this phenomenon every day. People want to remain in their fantasy paradigms instead of waking up to the truth only they don’t articulate it to themselves so bluntly. Instead people subliminally tell themselves they would rather not wake up to any truth. People regularly indulge in artificial pleasures and stories to keep their minds entertained, so entertained that they don’t have the ability to see the truth. Read More

03.21.18- Two Weeks Before Death, Stephen Hawking Predicted HOW The UNIVERSE WILL END
Mac Slavo

Two weeks before passing away peacefully, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking predicted the end of the universe. In his final work titled A Smooth Exit From Eternal Inflation, Hawking predicted how our universe would eventually fade to darkness as the stars run out of energy.

Hawking completed a theory outlining his prediction for the end of the universe just two weeks before his death and the work has emerged. According to CNBC, the world-famous physicist, who died last Wednesday at the age of 76, was a co-author of a mathematical paper in which he sought to prove the so-called “multiverse” theory. According to a report by U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times, this theory imagines the existence of many separate universes other than our own. Read More

03.20.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Triggering War. A Manufactured “Catalytic Event” Which Will Initiate An All Out War? Are We Going to Let this Happen Again?
Prof. Graeme McQueen

This carefully research article by Professor Graeme McQueen presents a timely historical viewpoint which is  routinely “censored” by the mainstream media as well by the search engines. The danger of World War III is not front-page news.

Kindly consider forwarding it Professor McQueen’s article to your friends and colleagues, crosspost it on alternative media and blog sites.

The threat of World War III is real, yet there is no anti-war movement in sight.  In the US, Canada and the EU, the peace movement is defunct, ignorant of the broader implications of nuclear war. Read More

03.19.18- Human agriculture laborers soon OBSOLETE: U.K. researchers grow the world’s first crops using nothing but drones and robots
David Williams

(Natural News) Although they first became known for their use as seemingly toy-like novelty gadgets, drones have now found a niche as small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for a bunch of random tasks. Most recently, a group of researchers from the U.K. have begun using drones to complement a new system of hands-free farming, and they are reporting that it has been a huge success.

The researchers claim to have successfully grown the world’s first crop of barley without any humans stepping foot in the entire land area covered by the crop. They managed to do all the seeding, spraying, monitoring, and even harvesting with nothing but drones and robot tractors, which means that the entire process was done with fully-autonomous vehicles and machinery. Read More

03.17.18- BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGH IN ENERGY: Investor Warning
Steve St Angelo

As the U.S. and global oil industry continue to cannibalize itself just to stay alive, the market is totally clueless because investors are being misled by the fallacy that technology will solve our peak oil crisis.  While technology has allowed more oil to make it to the market, it has done so at a very high cost.  Unfortunately, a significant percentage of the increased cost to produce this high-tech oil was subsidized by debt from unsuspecting investors.

Hundreds of billions of Dollars were invested in the U.S. Shale Energy Industry by investors who were looking for a higher return on their money than they could receive from banks or other financial institutions. Read More

03.16.18- The Dawn of Solar Windows
Andy Extance

Future skyscrapers will harvest energy from the sun with photovoltaic windows

The view from the office of Ioannis Papakonstantinou at University College London affords a great perspective on a wasted opportunity. He points to the university hospital, a tall oblong block adorned with decorative green glass strips. They look modern but serve no purpose. They don’t even let in light.

“What are they doing with these green surfaces?” he asks. “Nothing. Would you ever put a conventional solar panel there? Never.” Read More

03.15.18- Blockchain in action: stabilising the grid in Germany and the Netherlands
Jean-Baptiste Cornefert

Case study: Blockchain technology is being put to the test in northern Europe, writes Jean-Baptiste Cornefert of Sonnen.

A quick view into the future: it is the year 2030 and Paul, a homeowner with his own photovoltaic system and battery storage, checks his electricity bill. His neighbour Sam got 12kWh of solar power from Paul’s house roof today. Amanda, the elderly lady a few blocks away, has consumed 5kWh of solar power from Paul. Both charges Paul sees on his online portal. The transactions are registered with a blockchain and the compensation is immediately credited to Paul’s bank account. Read More

03.14.18- The Power Has Shifted In LNG Markets
Tim Daiss

One of the most influential figures in the LNG market has claimed that a return to long-term LNG contracts is crucial for the sector.

It was a statement that most liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers don’t necessarily want to hear; in fact, it goes against the fundamental changes currently underway in global LNG markets.

Yesterday, Yury Sentyurin, the new head of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), an industry group representing gas sellers, said, in comments carried by Bloomberg Markets, that LNG prices still need to be linked to oil prices to keep revenue predictable for producers, particularly since some US$8 trillion worth of investment in the fuel is needed by 2040. GECF members include Russia, Iran, Algeria and Qatar (currently the world’s largest LNG producer), and its headquarters are in Qatar. Read More

03.13.18- This Revolutionary Technology Could Deliver $22 Oil… In A $70 World
James Stafford

In the epic battle between OPEC and the U.S. for global market share - low cost producers are set to reap a stunning energy investor windfall.

We’re focusing on one little company - Petroteq Energy Inc. (TSX:PQE.V; OTCQX:PQEFF) - which is unlocking trapped oil in U.S. oil sands for as little as $22/barrel.

Technology is their key advantage. Their patented Liquid Extraction System is the first ever to generate production from Utah’s 32-billion-barrel heavy oil resource. Read More

03.12.18- The Rise and Coming Fall of the
Debt-Addicted Corporate Zombies
Daniel Lacalle

If you allow companies to borrow money at nearly zero interest, most will borrow as much as they possibly can. After all, if you can achieve a paltry ROIC of 2%, you’re making money that costs you 1% to borrow.

But if your business is struggling and you needed free debt in order to survive, you’re not going to make it in a rising-rate environment. That one in five US corporations faces bankruptcy when rates rise is a testimony to how much of an illusion the underlying health of the US economic landscape truly is. Read More

03.10.18- IEA Predicts Nightmare Scenario for OPEC
Nick Cunningham

The US will supply much of the world’s additional oil for the next few years, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Over the next three years, the US will cover 80 percent of the world’s demand growth, the IEA says in its newly-released Oil 2018 annual report. Canada, Brazil, and Norway will cover the remainder, leaving no room for more OPEC supply.

The irony is that the substantial gains in output from shale will only be possible because of the OPEC cuts, which has tightened the market and boosted prices. Read More

03.09.18- 44 Things You Didn’t Know About Oil
Viktor Katona

Whenever you see a headline like this, you know it will go along the lines of “did you know that petroleum stands for rock oil?” Yes you did, goes the reply of an overwhelming majority of readers. For this reason, the list below is one which holds the reader in high esteem, as a dear colleague on the road to broaden our knowledge of the oil industry. So here we go…

1.) Oil’s first use was for caulking – ruins from early Antiquity (5-6 000 BC) testify that Euphrates and Indus Valley civilizations built their houses with bitumen. Caulking their ships with bitumen logically followed soon afterwards.

2.) Both Tamerlane and Nadir Shah used camels laden with petroleum casks to frighten off Indian war elephants – once set on fire, the sight of fire made the elephants flee in panic. Read More

03.08.18- China’s Staggering Demand for Commodities
Jeff Desjardins

Over 50% of all steel, cement, nickle and copper goes there.

It’s said that in China, a new skyscraper is built every five days.

China is building often, and they are building higher. In fact, just last year, China completed 77 of the world’s 144 new supertall buildings, spread through 36 different Chinese cities. These are structures with a minimum height of 656 feet (200 meters).

For comparison’s sake, there are only 113 buildings in New York City’s current skyline that are over 600 feet. Read More

03.07.18- The Truth About U.S. Energy Dominance
Tyler Durden

President Trump tweet-gloated this morning: "We are getting it done - jobs and security!" - in response to the headlines that USA is set to become the world's largest oil producer.

While the 'news' about production is fact...

The bigger question is the narrative of US global dominance in the energy markets and the ugly narrative-bashing reality that USA is still a net-importing nation - somewhat battering the "security" meme Trump crowed about. Read More

03.06.18- IEA Predicts Nightmare Scenario
For OPEC
Mike Gleason

The U.S. will supply much of the world’s additional oil for the next few years, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Over the next three years, the U.S. will cover 80 percent of the world’s demand growth, the IEA says in its newly-released Oil 2018 annual report. Canada, Brazil and Norway will cover the remainder, leaving no room for more OPEC supply.

The irony is that the substantial gains in output from shale will only be possible because of the OPEC cuts, which has tightened the market and boosted prices. This fact is not lost on OPEC producers. "If you are a shale oil producer, who brought you back? It was OPEC," the UAE’s oil minister Suhail Al Mazrouei, said at a recent industry conference, "Without OPEC there’d be chaos in the market." Read More

03.05.18- Ukraine Freezes After
Russia Halts Gas Deliveries
Tyler Durden

Last week, Russia's state-run gas giant and quasi-monopolist when it comes to European natgas supplies, Gazprom, announced it would not restart shipments of natural gas to Ukraine's Naftogaz starting March 1 after the two sides failed to reach an agreement, Gazprom deputy chairman, Alexander Medvedev, told journalists.

Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine were supposed to restart on Thursday following a foreign court ruling aimed at ending years of disputes between Kiev and Moscow, including two halts to Russian gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine. But Gazprom unexpectedly refused to resume deliveries, returning the prepayment for supplies made by Kiev, claiming amendments to a contract had not been completed. Read More

03.03.18- The World’s Largest “Virtual Power Plant”
Tyler Durden

After building the world's largest lithium battery in Australia nearly 40 days ahead of schedule, Tesla has announced plans to build the world's largest "virtual power plant" by outfitting 50,000 homes in South Australia with solar panels and Tesla battery storage units over the next four years, slashing participants' energy bill by 30 percent.

Beginning with a trial of 1100 Housing Trust properties, a 5kW solar panel system and 13.5kWh Tesla Powerwall 2 battery will be installed at no charge to the household and financed through the sale of electricity. Read More

03.02.18- The Shocking True Story of How Global Warming Became the Biggest FakeNews Scare of All Time
James Delingpole

Why do so many apparently informed, intelligent, educated people still believe in ManBearPig?

For the same reason that the U.S. underestimated the Japanese threat before Pearl Harbor; that General MacArthur stupidly advanced north of the 38th parallel in Korea; that JFK got embroiled in the Bay of Pigs disaster; that LBJ dragged the U.S. deeper and deeper into the Vietnam War.

A phenomenon known as ‘groupthink’. Read More

03.01.18- Rising geopolitical tensions in Middle East and Asia ‘key risk to oil prices in 2018’
Noor Nanji

Rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and Asia could have a major impact on oil prices in 2018, according to a new study.

Oil markets have been well supported recently, thanks to production curbs by Opec since the beginning of last year, as well as robust demand growth.

The weakness in the dollar has also supported oil prices, as it makes oil and other greenback-denominated commodities cheaper for countries using other currencies at home. Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicts the price of Brent to average $64 a barrel this year, while Goldman Sachs forecasts it will rise to $75 a barrel in three months and average $75 in the next six to twelve months. Read More

02.28.18- Solar power is the new "cool"
NZ Herald

It used to be that "keeping up with the Joneses" involved conspicuous consumption, often environmentally harmful.

Now it seems solar power is the new "must-have" – and it's powered by Google.

That's the trend emerging in the US, along with China the world's leading solar power exponents, though experts here say the same pattern is likely to apply in New Zealand.

So how come the sun has become so cool? It began with a study by Yale University by Dr Ken Gillingham(involving about 4000 solar photovoltaic systems in Connecticut in 2015) which showed peer pressure, not cost, was the single biggest driving factor in installing solar power. Read More

02.27.18- How The Fed Could Hammer Oil Producers
Kent Moors

The bond market is about to enter a phase we haven’t seen in over 70 years…

A rising interest rate cycle.

A trend that has only been accentuated by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive plans to accelerate interest rate hikes and ongoing concerns over an impending major stock market correction.

And while it is too early to jump on the “Death of the Bond Bull Market” sentiment swirling around Wall Street, the current direction of interest rates could be worrisome for U.S. oil producers. Read More

02.24.18- U.S. And China To Face Off
Over Aramco IPO
Andrew Pickford

Speculation continued into early 2018 about who — or which organization — would be the ultimate buyer of the five percent stake being offered for sale in Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco.

As political and economic crises mounted in Saudi Arabia, and oil prices continued to remain relatively low on world markets, there was also speculation as to whether the offering in Saudi Aramco would even be viable.

While courted by Western stock exchanges due to the size and prestige of the listing, it has been suggested that a trade sale to a People’s Republic of China (PRC) consortium would serve the objectives of both the PRC and Saudi Arabia. Read More

02.23.18- Why The Next Oil Boom Will Be
Fueled By Blockchain
Meredith Taylor

Big Oil is due for a disruption.

The world’s most important industry has been carrying on without any significant changes in its day to day routine for far too long.

But now, the new tech on the block has its sights set on the multi-trillion-dollar oil and gas sector.

It’s official: Blockchain technology has infiltrated Big Oil. Read More

02.22.18- Canada’s Oil Crisis Continues To Worsen
Irina Slav

Canadian oil producers can’t get a break. First it was the pipelines — there are not enough of them to carry the crude from Alberta’s oil sands to export markets. This pipeline capacity problem has been forcing producers to pay higher rates for railway transportation, which has naturally hurt their margins in no small way. Now, there is a shortage of rail cars as well.

The situation is going from bad to worse for Canadian producers who can’t seem to catch a break. Canadian railway operators are fighting harsh winter weather and finding it hard to supply enough cars to move both crude oil from Alberta and grain from the Prairies. Read More

02.21.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different:Panama: Still an Easy
Second Residency to Acquire
Mark Nestmann

It was 5:00 pm on a Monday afternoon in Panama City. Walking up Avenida Balboa – the main drag that hugs the coastline – I came to a busy intersection with no crosswalk or even a traffic light. I needed to cross it to get to a 5:15 pm meeting. All four lanes were jammed with rush-hour traffic.

I’ve learned that if you’re traveling and you don’t know how to proceed, watch what the locals are doing. After a few moments, I saw a woman dart into the street across two lanes of traffic. She paused briefly in the middle of the street, while cars whizzed by in both directions only inches away. When traffic paused for a moment, she sprinted across the remaining two lanes to the other side. Read More

02.20.18- How To Avoid Blackouts Using 100% Renewable Energy
Futurity

Researchers have proposed three different methods for providing consistent power in 139 countries using 100 percent renewable energy.

The inconsistencies of power produced by wind, water, and sunlight and the continuously fluctuating demand for energy often hinder renewable energy solutions. In a new paper, which appears in Renewable Energy, the researchers outline several solutions to making clean power reliable enough for all energy sectors—transportation; heating and cooling; industry; and agriculture, forestry, and fishing—in 20 world regions after all sectors have converted to 100 percent clean, renewable energy. Read More

02.19.18- Coal Fueled Teslas
Larry LaBorde

Several countries are making proclamations that state all new cars shall be electric by a certain date.  Who decided on electric cars?  I know they sound “clean” but where does that electricity come from?

About 30.4% of electricity in the United States is generated from coal.  About 19.7% is generated from nuclear.  So over 50% of the US power is from coal and nuclear. The remaining is as follows:  natural gas = 34%, hydro = 6.5%, wind = 5.6%, biomass = 1.5%, solar = <1% plus other misc. sources. Read More

02.17.18- Clean Oil That Only Costs $20
James Stafford

The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution.

Oil production has risen by 5 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2010, an increase of nearly 100 percent. New technology, particularly techniques in shale oil drilling, has opened up vast new opportunities for oil and gas companies.

The proof is in the numbers. In 2017, the United States averaged 9.3 million bpd. This year, the EIA predicts that U.S. oil and gas production will reach record levels, averaging 10.3 million barrels bpd to surpass the record reached in 1970 (9.6 million bpd). Read More

02.16.18- Russia Is Taking Over Syria’s Oil And Gas
Viktor Katona

If finally happened…

In accordance with an energy cooperation framework agreement signed in late January, Russia will have exclusive rights to produce oil andgas in Syria.

The agreement goes significantly beyond that, stipulating the modalities of the rehabilitation of damaged rigs and infrastructure, energy advisory support, and training a new generation of Syrian oilmen. Still, the main international aspect and the key piece of this move is the final and unconditional consolidation of Russian interests in the Middle East. Read More

02.15.18- Is History Repeating Itself In Oil Markets?
Nick Cunningham

Back in 2014, U.S. shale production was growing so fast that it ended up crashing the market. Now, history could be repeating itself.

That was the warning from the International Energy Agency, which said in its latest Oil Market Report that a “second wave” of shale supply threatens another downturn.

Total global oil supply is expected to grow faster than demand this year, which could lead to another downturn. It’s a conclusion that the IEA tried to emphasize in previous reports, but the message finally seems to be sinking in. Read More

02.14.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Former Defense Minister: Illuminati is Real & Secretly Running the World
Jamie White

‘Preferred ideal was an inclusive one-world economy dominated by the United States,’ he says

Former Canadian Minister of Defense Paul Hellyer said a secretive global elite is running the world and is determined to introduce a One World government.

“You have a got secret cabal that’s actually running the world and they’ve managed to keep this technology under wraps until they can cash in the trillions of oil assets that they’ve got,” he said at an Alien Expo conference last June that recently surfaced on social media. Read More

02.13.18- Geoengineering Watch Global Alert News
Dane Wigington

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02.12.18- Party On, Dudes
James Howard Kunstler

As of this week, the shale oil miracle launched US oil production above the 1970 previous-all-time record at just over ten million barrels a day. 

Techno-rapturists are celebrating what seems to be a blindingly bright new golden age of energy greatness.

Independent oil analyst Art Berman, who made the podcast rounds the last two weeks, put it in more reality-accessible terms: “Shale is a retirement party for the oil industry.” Read More

02.10.18- Weekend Rant: Bombshell Testimony of FBI Informant Implicates Many for Treason
Greg Hunter

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02.09.18- Future U.S. Oil Production Will Collapse Just As Quickly As It Increased
Steve St Angelo

While U.S. oil production reached a new peak of 10.25 million barrels per day, the higher it goes, the more breathtaking will be the inevitable collapse.  Thus, as the mainstream media touts the glorious new record in U.S. production that has both surpassed its previous peak in 1970 and Saudi Arabia’s current oil production, it’s a bittersweet victory.

Why?  There are two critical reasons the current record level of U.S. oil production won’t last and is also, a house of cards.  First of all, oil production profiles tend to be somewhat symmetrical.  They rise and fall in the same manner.  While this doesn’t happen in every country or every oil field, we do see similar patterns.  For example, this similar trend is taking place in both Argentina and Norway: Read More

02.08.18- FBI Informant Testifies: Moscow Routed Millions To Clinton Foundation In "Russian Uranium Dominance Strategy" 
Tyler Durden

• Undercover FBI informant William Campbell has given written testimony to Congressional investigators after an "iron clad" gag order was lifted in October
• Campbell was a highly valued CIA and FBI asset deeply embedded in the Russian nuclear industry while Robert Mueller was the Director of the FBI
• Campbell was required by the Russians, under threat, to launder large sums of money - which allowed the FBI to uncover a massive Russian "nuclear money laundering apparatus" Read More

02.07.18- The Extent of Global Warming Deception and the Damage is Not Hyperbole
Dr. Tim Ball

Normally, I don’t respond to comments about my articles. However, comments about my last article raise questions that I think require context and explanation in the ongoing search for openness and free debate on climate. This applies to even the most extreme challenges to the status quo. Many of the comments are predictable because they come from people who constantly beat the same old drum. It is usually possible to predict who will respond to any subject and what they will say. They are not necessarily trolls, although trolls are ever present, and are usually called-out or ignored. The critical issue is the danger of skeptics becoming a narrow-minded, tunnel-vision group that attacks, rejects, or simply ignores skepticism about the skeptic’s position or views. Read More

02.06.18- Oil Prices Ravaged By Financial Turmoil
Nick Cunningham

Oil prices fell back suddenly over the last few trading sessions, dragged down by some forces beyond the oil market.

The steady decline of the U.S. dollar has helped drive up crude prices for weeks, but that came to an abrupt halt last week. A rebound for the greenback led to a steep decline in oil prices on Friday.

At the same time, sudden turmoil in the broader financial system also bled over into the oil market. Volatility in the stock market flared up on Friday, sparking the sharpest single-day upheaval in years. Read More

02.05.18- US oil production hits 10 million barrels per day for first time since 1970
Josh Siegel