Kurt Cobb

Latest articles from Kurt

• The Real Reason The U.S. Is Interested In Iran

  Published 07 January 2020 | viewed 55,607 times

  The American obsession with Iran is about oil and natural gas. If these two resources had been absent, it is hard to imagine such an…

• The Glaring Problem With Ocean Floor Mining

  Published 24 December 2019 | viewed 24,750 times

  A recent article on undersea mining in The Atlantic brought back a detailed childhood memory. When I was in fifth grade, my class put on a sort of…

• The Unintended Consequences Of Qatar’s Outdoor Air Conditioning

  Published 12 November 2019 | viewed 11,440 times

  Qatar is both a country and a peninsula that juts out about 100 miles into the Persian Gulf. It is precisely this geography which makes…

• The Oil Mystery Undermining An Aramco IPO

  Published 28 October 2019 | viewed 14,861 times

  It's what you can't see—the oil beneath the Arabian sands—that potential investors in Saudi Aramco's on-again, off-again initial public offering (IPO) ought to focus on.…

• Greed Or Incompetence: What’s Behind The California Power Cuts?

  Published 14 October 2019 | viewed 7,445 times

  Most of the news surrounding the electricity shutoffs in California—done to avert the ignition of additional wildfires by aging electrical infrastructure—has focused on two things:…

• Can Oil Survive The Looming Economic “Ice Age?”

  Published 13 September 2019 | viewed 6,576 times

  Albert Edwards turned bearish on stocks back in 1996—well, not exactly bearish, but cautious. He recommended to clients that they overweight long-term, high-quality bonds and…

• Will Shale Rise From The Dead?

  Published 12 August 2019 | viewed 45,755 times

  A flurry of coverage about the gloom and outright calamity in the shale oil business appeared last week. Low prices continue to dog the industry.…

• The Dark Side Of The Digital Revolution In Energy

  Published 08 July 2019 | viewed 5,838 times

  The U.S. Senate passed a bill last week that would form a government-industry working group to "examine ways to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies, like manual…

• Shale Industry Has Destroyed 80% Of Its Value Since 2008

  Published 04 July 2019 | viewed 15,798 times

  Recently, the former CEO of the largest shale gas producer in the United States told a roomful of conference goers what any competent financial analysis would…

• IEA: CO2 Levels Hit Another Record High

  Published 27 May 2019 | viewed 13,910 times

  When the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported in late March that energy consumption in 2018 rose at the fastest rate in a decade, it confirmed…

• The World’s Most Unorthodox Oil Nation

  Published 15 April 2019 | viewed 9,799 times

  In what seemed like an episode of the Norwegian television drama Occupied, Norway's largest political party joined smaller ones in the nation's parliament to prevent oil…

• Can Anything Slow Down U.S. LNG?

  Published 07 February 2019 | viewed 20,243 times

  It is the legally mandated purpose of a for-profit corporation to make money for its owners and to prioritize that goal above all else. So,…

• Is The Permian Bull Run Coming To An End?

  Published 28 January 2019 | viewed 33,646 times

  The bad news coming out of the shale oil fields of America could all be put down to slumping oil prices. That is certainly a…

• Can U.S. Shale Overcome Its Cash Flow Problem?

  Published 01 November 2018 | viewed 18,699 times

  I'm tempted to say the following to the writers of two recent pieces (here and here) outlining the continuing negative free cash flow of companies fracking for…

• Was The Aramco IPO Destined To Fail?

  Published 01 August 2018 | viewed 19,603 times

  Since late 2016 the financial media has been abuzz about what would likely be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) ever: The sale of 5…

• Is The Oil Industry Repeating A Critical Error

  Published 14 July 2018 | viewed 100,929 times

  Ten years ago this week—July 11, 2008 to be exact—the price of a barrel of oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit an intraday high…

• The Harsh Reality Of A Global Energy Transition

  Published 19 March 2018 | viewed 14,345 times

  I recently asked a group gathered to hear me speak what percentage of the world's energy is provided by these six renewable sources: solar, wind,…

• The Truth About U.S. Energy Dominance

  Published 05 March 2018 | viewed 18,022 times

  Much of the media coverage of the American energy industry implies that America has become a vast and growing exporter of energy to the rest…

• Justifying Blockchain’s Energy Usage

  Published 22 January 2018 | viewed 7,014 times

  The near vertical rise and fall in price of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in recent months has been accompanied by reporting about the energy used to run…

• How Vulnerable Is The Electrical Grid?

  Published 07 October 2017 | viewed 13,608 times

  When the electricity stops in modern civilization, pretty much everything else stops. Not even gasoline-powered vehicles can get far before they are obliged to seek…