Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Douglas Frantz fter years of giving tacit support and back-channel financing to Islamic extremists, the Saudi government has joined forces with the United States in an intensive battle against Al Qaeda in the desert kingdom.
Surprise! We’re in the midst of an oil shock and its impact could be as nasty as the first three, writes David Potts.
White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday said the United States could not rule out taking covert action against Iran to disrupt its nuclear weapons programme.
No oil company wants to be the first to face stock market meltdown by announcing their production is in decline, no government wants to be voted out for such bad news.
One expert has picked an Armageddon date for the peak of oil production: Thanksgiving 2005. The slow decline in world supplies will start then.
The RES thermal depolymerization plant was shut down production after complaints about the smell were raised. They later resumed production, then shut the plant down again after the smell resurfaced.
Thailand hopes to export Thai sugar to Iran in return for copper and oil from Tehran, the industry minister told journalists here.
Although the former Soviet Union has pumped crude for years, only recently has Russia emerged as the world’s second-biggest oil exporter and — if the Bush administration has its way — a potentially important new supplier of both oil and gas to the United States. Russia’s crude oil production rivals that of Saudi Arabia, and analysts say its reserves could provide the output answer for the United States, China, South Korea and Japan, which have grown increasingly wary of their dependence on producers in the Middle East.
“Powerdown” is a strategy that will require tremendous effort and economic sacrifice in order to reduce per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develop alternative energy sources, distribute resources more equitably, and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time.
Caryl Johnston argues that the Rare Earth Hypothesis is indispensable to the development of an ethic of stewardship in an era of energy descent.
The United States is pressuring Japan to invest in Libya’s oil industry instead of a project to tap Iran’s giant Azadegan oilfield that has provoked the wrath of Washington, a Bush administration official said, Reuters reported on Friday.
As the oil price rose to a new high of more than $44 a barrel this week, amid concerns about supply, OPEC’s president said the cartel was unable to pump more oil and thus bring down the price. He later contradicted these comments, but observers remain sceptical about OPEC’s ability to turn on more taps.
