As Canadians are becoming all too aware, the spectre of a recession, no matter the definition, looms large during an election campaign. Despite such prominence, the recent debate made it abundantly clear that none of the candidates understand why the economy stopped growing in the first half of the year and they have even less [...]
Heading down to Washington to speak at the Association for Peak Oil-USA‘s Truth in Energy conference on Nov. 2, I sense a general malaise within the peak oil movement. The pequists, as they have become known, appear to be on the defensive these days as they once again roll back their dating of the dreaded [...]
It was only two years ago that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia cautioned consumers that, without $75-per-barrel oil, there was no incentive for his kingdom to bring on new production. Today, apparently, even that price no longer works. Recently, the King announced that he has ordered a halt to all further underground oil exploration, arguing [...]
It’s not its carbon trail that stands in the way of the Alberta tar sands’ picking up the supply ball dropped by deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. After all, tar sands fuel is no dirtier than coal, and Americans haven’t let that fossil fuel’s carbon trail stand in the way of its generating [...]
Whether Hurricane Alex hits the Gulf oil spill or not, it’s only a matter of time before one will. Alex is, after all, only the first storm in a year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting will be an abnormally active one for hurricanes. In case you’d forgotten, blow-outs of deep-water wells [...]
America’s Plan A for the future of its oil supply was shaky to start with. Hurricanes, and the devastation they’ve brought to offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, had already put the kibosh on earlier dreams of reversing the nearly 40-year decline in domestic oil production. Ironically, oil production in the Gulf had [...]