On Friday the British Prime Minister David Cameron signed a new energy pact with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that will lead to the construction of more nuclear power plants in the UK and attract more than £500 million ($791 million) of private sector investment. Cameron said that, “as two great civil nuclear nations, we will combine our expertise to strengthen industrial partnership, improve nuclear safety and create jobs at home. Deals signed today will create more than 1,500 jobs in the UK.” After the Fukushima incident…

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In January President Barack Obama delayed any decisions on the Keystone XL Pipeline, citing that he needed more time to assess the environmental impacts. He has not rejected the pipeline, which gives TransCanada, the company behind the proposal, hope for a permit grant in the future. Many believe that Obamas delay is merely a political ploy to avoid making a controversial decision during an election year, which is bound to upset many people no matter which way he votes. As such, the belief is that talks will reopen after the presidential election…

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The general energy objective in the US is to achieve energy independence, because they believe it will ensure energy security. In Obamas State of the Union speech he proclaimed that “with only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, oil isn’t enough. This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.” Mitt Romney showed his agreement that energy independence is linked to energy security when he said “it doesn’t make sense to me to send $1 billion a day out of our…

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Beijing for years has relentlessly projected a benign image in its foreign policy, but as its maritime neighbors are discovering, China’s pacifist representations do not extend to energy issues, most notably in the disputed South China Sea. Now, Chinese “imperial” overreach may bring U.S. naval forces once again into the western Pacific, as Beijing’s southeast Asian neighbors feel increasingly threatened by China’s overarching territorial claims in the South China Sea. China currently contends sovereignty of the Spratly…

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Beijing said recently it wanted to increase the amount of oil it gets from Russia through a major oil pipeline running to the Pacific Ocean. Beijing, however, would likely have to fend off other Asian economies, as well as the United States, in order to get that extra crude. With the Pentagon talking about shifting its pressure points to the Asia-Pacific region, Beijing’s growing energy appetite highlights the broader geopolitical realignment toward the East. The United States and China together sit on top of the international economic hierarchy.…

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As economies contract, a global popular uprising confronts power elites over access to the essentials of human existence. What are the underlying dynamics of the conflict, and how is it likely to play out? 1. PrologueAs the world economy crashes against debt and resource limits, more and more countries are responding by attempting to salvage what are actually their most expendable features—corrupt, insolvent banks and bloated militaries—while leaving the majority of their people to languish in “austerity.” The result, predictably,…

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The depletion of world rock phosphate reserves will restrict the amount of food that can be grown, a situation that can only be compounded by the production of biofuels, including the potential large-scale generation of diesel from algae. The world population has risen to its present number of 7 billion in consequence of cheap fertilizers, pesticides and energy sources, particularly oil. Almost all modern farming has been engineered to depend on phosphate fertilizers, and those made from natural gas, e.g. ammonium nitrate, and on oil to run tractors…

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April Natural Gas futures finished at a three week high while continuing its base-building process. This is important from a technical perspective because typically, the wider the base, the stronger the impending breakout. Now that the market has crossed over to the bullish side of a pair of steep downtrending Gann angles, traders are probably setting their sights on the next Gann angle at 2.8050. Breaking through this price along with the January 30 high at 2.9420 is likely to trigger an acceleration to the upside. The week-ending January 27,…

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