The International Energy Agency (IEA) has revealed China’s demand for oil soared by an “astonishing 28% year-on-year in January”. According to the IEA, global oil demand this year will be fuelled by non-OECD countries – with non-OECD Asia representing half of all growth. China’s thriving economy has seen oil imports surge and earlier this week, OPEC said

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If a person were to listen to Energy Secretary Steven Chu or National Geographic’s Aftermath: World Without Oil , one might think that our energy problems are fairly minor and distant. We can easily add sufficiently renewable energy to substitute for fossil fuels in a fairly short time frame. All we need to do is put our minds (and pocketbooks) … Read More

Oil Production to Peak in 2014, Scientists Predict Predicting the end of oil has proven tricky and often controversial, but Kuwaiti scientists now say that global oil production will peak in 2014. Their work represents an updated version of the famous Hubbert model, which correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil reserves would peak within 20 years. Many researchers have … Read More

The US Department of Energy granted a US$1.37 billion loan guarantee to Brightsource Energy last week which could help clear the way for over 15 gigawatts of solar thermal power projects in California. Brightsource built a pilot plant in Israel to prove their technology and has tested it over the past 18 months. Their flagship Ivanpah project in California got … Read More

John Michael Greer: Barbarism and good brandy Think of it this way. The individual photons that heat the planet Mercury each contain, on average, the same quantity of energy as the individual photons that heat the planet Neptune. Is Neptune as warm as Mercury? Not hardly, and the reason is that by the time they get out to the orbit … Read More

Oil giant BP has announced a deal with US independent oil and gas producer Devon Energy Corp which will allow it to begin exploring off the coast of Brazil. The deal, worth $7 billion (£4.7 billion), includes almost a dozen exploration blocks in Brazil, which comprises some of the world’s biggest deepwater oil fields. It

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This is a guest post by Richard Heinberg. It is a shortened version of a longer post published by the Post Carbon Institute. What if the economy doesn’t recover? In 2008 the U.S. economy tripped down a steep, rocky slope. Employment levels plummeted; so did purchases of autos and other consumer goods. Property values crashed; foreclosure and bankruptcy rates bled. … Read More

Oil King Warns Of ‘Green Bubble’ It’s Ghawar that is of utmost interest to the industry. The biggest oilfield ever found, it has been producing for five decades, often putting out more than 5 million bpd, a level that Aramco has been able to maintain by injecting millions of barrels a day of water into the field to push up … Read More

After showing you pictures of offshore wind turbine foundations in this story , I am pleased to be able to now post pictures of the above-the-water parts, before their installation at sea: Left: nacelles with the hubs being installed Right: blades (45m long) stacked Part of the Wind power series . More below: If you remember, there were ovality issues … Read More

Energy world is in a new mode The title of this year’s conference, “Energy: Building a New Future,” reflects that renewed optimism. But it also suggests that, while the worst of recession may be over, what’s ahead for the industry is unlikely to look anything like the past. That’s true not only in the short term, when the biggest issue … Read More