Monday, June 27, 2005
Oil Shortage Warnings from TomDispatch.com
Exxon quietly issued a report - The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View. The report predicted the moment of "peak oil" is only a five-year hop-skip-and-a-pump away.
'Oil Shockwave', a 'war game' recently conducted by top ex-government officials in Washington, including two former directors of the CIA, found the United States "all but powerless to protect the American economy in the face of a catastrophic disruption of oil markets," which was all too easy for them to imagine. The participants concluded almost unanimously that they must press the president to invest quickly in promising technologies to reduce dependence on overseas oil.
The Impending Decline of Saudi Oil Output - By Michael T. Klare
We ordinary folk are being fed the story by the oil community, including Bush and Cheney, that not only will the Saudis pump extra oil now to alleviate global shortages, it is claimed, but they will keep pumping more in the years ahead to quench our insatiable thirst for energy. And when the kingdom's existing fields run dry they will begin pumping from other fields that are just waiting to be exploited. We need have no worries about oil scarcity, because Saudi Arabia can satisfy our current and future needs. This is, in fact, the basis for the administration's contention that we can continue to increase our yearly consumption of oil, rather than conserve what's left and begin the transition to a post-petroleum economy.
But now, from an unexpected source, comes a devastating challenge to this powerful dogma: In a newly-released book, investment banker, Matthew R. Simmons, convincingly demonstrates that, far from being capable of increasing its output, Saudi Arabia is about to face the exhaustion of its giant fields and, in the relatively near future, will probably experience a sharp decline in output. "There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption," he writes in Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. "Saudi Arabian production," he adds, italicizing his claims to drive home his point, "is at or very near its peak sustainable volume . . . and it is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future."
In addition, there is little chance that Saudi Arabia will ever discover new fields that can take up the slack from those now in decline. "Saudi Arabia's exploration efforts over the last three decades were more intense than most observers have assumed," Simmons asserts. "The results of these efforts were modest at best."
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Exxon quietly issued a report - The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View. The report predicted the moment of "peak oil" is only a five-year hop-skip-and-a-pump away.
'Oil Shockwave', a 'war game' recently conducted by top ex-government officials in Washington, including two former directors of the CIA, found the United States "all but powerless to protect the American economy in the face of a catastrophic disruption of oil markets," which was all too easy for them to imagine. The participants concluded almost unanimously that they must press the president to invest quickly in promising technologies to reduce dependence on overseas oil.
The Impending Decline of Saudi Oil Output - By Michael T. Klare
We ordinary folk are being fed the story by the oil community, including Bush and Cheney, that not only will the Saudis pump extra oil now to alleviate global shortages, it is claimed, but they will keep pumping more in the years ahead to quench our insatiable thirst for energy. And when the kingdom's existing fields run dry they will begin pumping from other fields that are just waiting to be exploited. We need have no worries about oil scarcity, because Saudi Arabia can satisfy our current and future needs. This is, in fact, the basis for the administration's contention that we can continue to increase our yearly consumption of oil, rather than conserve what's left and begin the transition to a post-petroleum economy.
But now, from an unexpected source, comes a devastating challenge to this powerful dogma: In a newly-released book, investment banker, Matthew R. Simmons, convincingly demonstrates that, far from being capable of increasing its output, Saudi Arabia is about to face the exhaustion of its giant fields and, in the relatively near future, will probably experience a sharp decline in output. "There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption," he writes in Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. "Saudi Arabian production," he adds, italicizing his claims to drive home his point, "is at or very near its peak sustainable volume . . . and it is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future."
In addition, there is little chance that Saudi Arabia will ever discover new fields that can take up the slack from those now in decline. "Saudi Arabia's exploration efforts over the last three decades were more intense than most observers have assumed," Simmons asserts. "The results of these efforts were modest at best."
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