US: Housing mania will end in tears
Today’s tales of rampant real-estate speculation sound just like what we heard at the peak of the tech bubble. And we all know what happened when that bubble burst.
Bill Fleckenstein
China to set up energy task force as planner warns of dire power shortage
China said it intends to set up a special task force to handle energy issues as its top economic planner painted a dire picture of the nation’s desperate power shortages.
Willful blindness
America has a problem bigger than social security, or the price of prescription drugs, or gay marriage. America is heading into a situation in which it will no longer have an economy. The Republicans at least have an excuse for their willful blindness — they’ve already taken the position that the life of extreme car-dependency and everything it implies is not negotiable.
What if oil cost $200 a barrel?Â
IN TWO years’ time the price of oil could reach $200 a barrel. Farfetched? Maybe. Although estimates of oil and gas reserves vary widely, geologists Anders Sivertsson, Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell, of Uppsala University in Sweden, are the latest in a growing group of experts who believe that oil supplies will peak by 2010, if not before, and gas soon after.
Biodiesel Boom Raises Ethical Issues -Analyst
High crude oil prices may have galvanized bio-diesel production, but some questions are now being asked in industry circles about the ethics of using a limited edible resource to meet the world’s energy needs, said an influential edible oils industry analyst.
Back off or suffer oil shock: Tehran
OIL-rich Iran has raised the stakes in the standoff over its nuclear program, warning that any attempt to impose sanctions on its activities would lead to an energy crisis in the US and Europe.
Onward to Iran
There are good reasons to assume that a US campaign against Iran will commence within months and that this will serve to open the next and much expanded phase of what is actually the Global Oil War of the 21st century.
Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management
“Waiting until world conventional oil production peaks before implementing crash program mitigation leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for two decades or longer,” according to a report prepared for the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) by Science Applications International Coporation (SAIC). [Link to the full report mentioned in ASPO Bulletin #51]
Indonesia tests oil dispute waters
INDONESIA’S President plans to visit an island near the Malaysian border after he sent warships there, following Malaysia’s move to award oil exploration rights there, a government official said yesterday.
US: Natural gas reserves slashed
Citing disappointing drilling results in two locales, ChevronTexaco Corp. slashed its U.S. natural gas reserves by 13 percent in 2004, the third year in a row in which it suffered a substantial reserves hit in the region.
Chavez proclaims era of cheap oil over
The Venezuelan president said OPEC could set prices between US$40 and US$50, while the US said its oil imports from the country were replaceable
Dependence on Phantom Carrying Capacity
Because the people of industrial nations did not recognize themselves as hunters and gatherers, they adhered to premises that were becoming more and more false. Franklin D Roosevelt spoke for all believers in those premises in the next-to-last sentence he ever wrote: “The only limits to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today”. [Chapter 3 from William Catton’s classic book Overshoot]
