While the West is pummeled by China’s rising economy, neighbors fear possible Beijing territorial claims. The dazzling rise of the Chinese economy over the last decade has been the 21st…
The natural gas market’s underperformance in the investment world hampers its current role as (at least an investment) alternative to crude oil, effectively making the abundant fuel take a backseat.…
The amount of oil that is extracted from the ground each year has been close to flat since 2005, regardless of what has happened to price. Since world population has…
The wide-ranging Al Fin hit upon a graph that will stun the peak oil believers. You’ll want to save this. The flip side is it comes from the International Energy…
At the moment México has multiple mining operations and many are operated by transnational corporations, in a country known for its aversion to any form of foreign presence within its…
Crude oil futures erased losses on Thursday, re-approaching a two-week high as optimism European leaders would reach an agreement to solve the region’s debt crisis boosted demand for riskier assets.…
The 17th century English philosopher, Francis Bacon, once observed that, "knowledge is power." So, here’s some power knowledge that the West has overlooked, but may well contain critical information for…
I now make it a staple of my public talks on energy to ask who in the audience has been to Europe. Usually many hands rise. I then explain that…
What spreads the sea floors and moves the continents? What melts iron in the outer core and enables the Earth’s magnetic field? Heat. Geologists have used temperature measurements from more…
As noted by Richard Heinberg on June 22nd, 2011, the media has lacked the ability to connect the economic situations in the Middle East and their uprisings to what is…
The latest set of data and various reports confirm that metals demand is strong and growing in China. Even as Beijing escalated efforts to close less energy-efficient and smaller smelting…
Russia and Ukraine resemble nothing so much as Siamese twins that have grown up, now detest each other, but share organs difficult, if not impossible, to separate. The two…
Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) is the state-owned oil company (and natural gas) of México, which since the 90’s has been discussed for privatization like many other state-owned companies in México. The…
The climate problem has moved from the abstract to the very real in the last 18 months. Instead of charts and graphs about what will happen someday, we’ve got real-time…
The United Nations approves new rules that mandate energy efficiency and carbon emissions improvements for the shipping industry. Roughly 50,000 ships carry 90 percent of the worlds trade cargo every…
Phosphate is a mineral that is used in fertilizer to boost agricultural productivity. It is greatly responsible for the "green" revolution and the increased output of farms around the world.…
One can describe the corn market as distorted since subsidies began under the Carter administration back in the 1980’s. Arguably, however this decade has seen the most severe distortion with…
Crude oil futures extended gains on Tuesday, jumping to a three-day high after stronger-than-expected U.S. housing data boosted future demand expectations from the world’s largest oil consumer. On the New…
The December 1991 collapse of the USSR was an unmitigated disaster for all 15 nations emerging from the desiccated carapace of the Soviet Union. Now, like a plate of mercury…
World energy policy is gripped by a fallacy — the idea that coal is destined to stay cheap for decades to come. This assumption supports investment in ‘clean-coal’ technology and…