100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil

EnergyBulletin.net

By Sharon Astyk

SPRING

1. Rethink your seed starting regimen. How will you do it without potting soil, grow lights and warming mats. Consider creating manure heated hotbeds, using your own compost, building a greenhouse, or coldframe, direct seeding early versions of transplanted crops, etc...
2. Your local feed store has chicks right now - even suburbanites might consider ordering a few bantam hens and keeping them as exotic birds. Worth a shot, no? You can grow some feed in your garden for them, as well as enjoying the eggs.
3. Order enough seeds for three years of gardening. If by next spring, we are all unable to get replacement seed, will you have produced everything you need? What if you can't grow for a year because of some crisis? Order extras from places with cheap seed like www.fedcoseeds.com, www.superseeds.com, www.rareseed.com.
4. Yard sale season will begin soon in the warmer parts of the country, and auctions are picking up now in the North. Stocking up on things like shoes, extra coats, kids clothing in larger sizes, hand tools, garden equipment is simply prudent - and can save a lot of money.
5. The real estate "season" will begin shortly, with families wanting to get settled in new homes during the summer, before the school year starts. If you are planning on buying or selling this year, now is the time to research the market, new locations, find that country property or the urban duplex with a big yard.
6. Once pastures are flush, last year's hay is usually a bargain, and many farmers clean out their barns. manure and old hay are great soil builders for anyone.
7. Check out your local animal shelter and adopt a dog or cat for rodent control, protection and friendship during peak oil.
8. As things green up, begin to identify and use local wild edibles. Eat your lawn's dandelions, your daylily shoots, new nettles. Hunt for morels (learn what you are doing first!!) and wild onions. Get in the habit of seeing what food there is to be had everywhere you go.
9. Set up rainbarrel or cistern systems and start harvesting your precipitation.
10. Planning to only grow vegetables? Truly sustainable gardens include a lot of pretty flowers, which have value as medicinals, dye and fiber plants, seasoning herbs, and natural cleaners and pest repellants. Instead of giving up ornamentals altogether, grow a garden full of daylilies, lady's mantle, dye hollyhocks and coreopsis, foxgloves, soapwart, bayberry, hip roses, bee balm and other useful beauties.
11. Get a garden in somewhere around you - campaign to turn open space into a community garden, ask if you can use a friend's backyard, get your company or church, synagogue, mosque or school to grow a garden for the poor. Every garden and experienced gardener we have is a potential hedge against the disaster.
12. Join a CSA if you don't garden, and get practice cooking and eating a local diet in season.
13. Eggs and greens are at their best in spring - dehydrated greens and cooked eggshells, ground up together add calcium and a host of other nutrients to flour, and you won't taste them. We're not going to be able to afford to waste food in the future, so get out of the habit now.
14. Make rhubarb, parsnip or dandelion wine for later consumption.
15. Now that warmer weather is here, start walking for more of your daily Needs. Even a four or five mile walk is quite reasonable for most healthy people.
16. Start a compost pile, or begin worm composting. Everyone can and should compost. Even apartment dwellers can keep worms or a compost bin and use the product as potting soil.
17. Use spring holidays and feasts as a chance to bring up peak oil with friends and family. Freedom and rebirth are an excellent subjects To lead into the Long Emergency.
18. Store the components of some traditional spring holiday foods, so that in hard times your family can maintain its traditions and celebrations.
19. With the renewal of the building season, now is the time to scavenge free building materials, like cinder blocks, old windows and scrap wood - with permission, of course.
20. Try and adapt to the spring weather early - get outside, turn down your heat or bank your fires, cut down on your fuel consumption as though you had no choice. Put on those sweaters one more time.
21. Shepherds are flush with wool - now is the time to buy some fleece and start spinning! Drop spindles are easy to make and cheap to use. Check out www.learntospin.com
22. Take a hard look back over the last winter - if you had had to survive on what you grew and stored last year, would you have made it? Early spring was famously the "starving time" when stores ran out and everyone was hungry. Remember, when you plan your food needs that not much produces early in spring, and in northern climates, A winter’s worth of food must last until May or June.
23. Trade cuttings and divisions, seeds and seedlings with your neighbors. Learn what's out there in your community, and sneak some useful plants into your neighbors' garden.
24. If you’ve got a nearby college, consider scavenging the dorm dumpsters. College students often leave astounding amounts of Stuff behind including excellent books, clothes, furniture, etc…
25. Say a schecheyanu, a blessing, or a prayer. Or simply be grateful for a series of coincidences that permit us to be here, in this place, as the world and the seasons come to life again. Try to make sure that this year, this time, you will take more joy in what you have, and prepare a bit better to soften the blow that is about to fall.

SUMMER

1. If you don't can or dehydrate, now is the time to learn. In most climates, you can waterbath can or dehydrate with a minimum of purchased materials, and produce is abundant and cheap. If you don't garden, check out your local farmstand for day-old produce or your farmer's market at the end of the day - they are likely to have large quantities they are anxious to get rid of. Wild fruits are also in abundance, or will be.
2. Consider dehydrating outer leaves of broccoli, cabbage, etc..., and grinding the dried mixture. It can be added to flours to increase the nutritional value of your bread.
3. Buy hay in the summer, rather than gradually over the winter. Now is an excellent time to put up simple shelters for hay storage, to avoid high early spring and winter prices.
4. Firewood, woodstoves and heating materials are at their cheapest right now. Invest now for winter. The same is true of insulating materials.
5. Back to school planning is a great time to reconsider transportation in light of peak oil. Can your children walk? Bike? If they cannot do either for reasons of safety (rather than distance) could an adult do so with them? Could you hire a local teenager to take them to school on foot or by wheel? Can you find ways to carpool, if you must drive? Grownups can do this too.
6. Also when getting ready to go back to school, consider the environmental impact of your scheduling and activities - are there ways to minimize driving/eating out/equipment costs/fuel consumption? Could your family do less in formal "activities" and more in family work?
7. Consider either home schooling or engaging in supplemental home Education. Your kids may need a large number of skills not provided by local public schools, and a critical perspective that they certainly won‘t learn in an institutional setting. Teach them.
8. Try and minimize air conditioning and electrical use during high Summer. Take cool showers or baths, use ice packs, reserve activity when possible for early am or evening. Rise at 4 am and get much of your work done then.
9. Consider adding a solar powered attic fan, available from Real Goods www.realgoods.com.
10. Don’t go on vacation. Spend your energy and money making your home a paradise instead. Throw a barbecue, a party or an open house, and invite the neighbors in. Get to know them.
11. Be prepared for summer blackouts, some quite extensive. Have emergency supplies and lighting at hand.
12. Practice living, cooking and camping outside, so that you will be comfortable doing so if necessary. Everyone in the family can Learn basic outdoors person skills.
13. Make your own summer camp. Instead of sending kids to soccer camp, create an at-home skills camp that helps prepare people for Peak oil. Invite the neighbor kids to join you. Have a blast!
14. Begin adapting herbs and other potted plants to indoor culture. Consider adding small tropicals - figs, lemons, oranges, even bananas can often be grown in cold climate homes. Obviously, if you live in a warm climate well, be prepared for some jealousy from the rest of us come February ;-).
15. Plant a fall garden in high summer - peas, broccoli, kale, lettuces, beets, carrots, turnips, etc… All of the above will last well into early winter in even the harshest climates, and with proper techniques or in milder areas, will provide you with fresh food all year long
16. Put up a new clothesline! Consider hand washing clothes outside, since everyone will probably enjoy getting wet (and cool) anyhow.
17. If you have access to safe waters, go fishing. Get some practice, and learn a new skill.
18. Encourage pick-up games at your house. Post-peak, children will need to know how to entertain themselves.
19. For teens, encourage them to develop their own home businesses over the summers. Whether doing labor or creating a product, you may rely on them eventually to help support the family. Or have them clean out your closets and attic and help you reorganize. Let them sell the stuff.
20. Buy a hand pushed lawn mower if you have less than 1 acre of grass. New ones are easy to push and pleasant, and will save you energy and that unpleasant gas smell.
21. Keep an eye out for unharvested fruits and nuts - many suburban and rural areas have berry and fruit bushes that no one harvests. Take advantage and put up the fruit.
22. Practice extreme water conservation during the summer. Mulch to reduce the need for irrigation. Bathe less often and with less water. Reduce clothes washing when possible.
23. This is an excellent time to toilet train children - they can run around naked if necessary and accidents will do no harm. Try and get them out of diapers now, before winter.
24. Consider replacing lawns with something that doesn’t have to be mown - ground covers like vetch, moss, even edibles like wintergreen or lingonberry, chamomile or mint.
25. If it is summer time, then the living is probably easy. Take some time to enjoy it - to picnic, to celebrate democracy (and try and bring one about ;-), To explore your own area, walk in the nearby woods.

FALL

1. Simple, cheap insulating strategies (window quilts and blankets, draft stoppers, etc...) are easily made from cheap or free materials - goodwill, for example, often has jeans, tshirts and shrunken wool sweaters, of quality too poor to sell, that can be used for quilting material and batting. They are available where I am for a nominal price, and I've heard of getting them free.
2. Stock up for winter as though the hard times will begin this year. Besides dried and canned foods, don't forget root cellarable and storable local produce, and season extension (cold frames, greenhouses, etc...) techniques for fresh food when you make your food inventory.
3. Thanksgiving sales tend to be when supermarkets offer the cheapest deals on excellent supplements to food storage, like shortening, canned pumpkin, spices, etc... I've also heard of stores given turkeys away free with grocery purchases - turkeys can then be cooked, canned and stored. Don't forget to throw in storable ingredients for your family's holiday staples - in hard times, any kind of celebration or continuity is appreciated.
4. Go leaf rustling for your garden and compost pile. If you happen into places where people leave their leaves out for pickup, grab the bags and set them to composting or mulching Your own garden.
5. Plant a last crop of over wintering spinach, and enjoy in the fall and again in spring.
6. Or consider planting a bed of winter wheat. Chickens can even graze it lightly in the fall, and it will be ready to harvest in time to use the bed for your fall garden. Even a small bed will make quite a bit of fresh, delicious bread.
7. Hit those last yard sales, or back to school sales and buy a few extra clothes (or cloth to make them) for growing children and extra shoes for everyone. They will be welcome in storage, particularly if prices rise because of trade issues or inflation.
8. The best time to expand your garden is now - till or mulch and let sod rot over the winter. Add soil amendments, manure, compost and lime.
9. Now is an excellent time to start the 100 mile diet in most locales - Stores and farms and markets are bursting with delicious local produce And products. Eat local and learn new recipes.
10. Rose hip season is coming - most food storage items are low in accessible vitamin C. Harvest wild or tame unsprayed rose hips, and dry them for tea to ensure long-term good health. Rose hips are delicious mixed with raspberry leaves and lemon balm.
11. Discounts on alcohol are common between Halloween and Christmas - this is an excellent time to stock up on booze for personal, medicinal, trade or cooking. Pick up some vanilla beans as well, and make your own vanilla out of that cheap vodka.
12. Gardening equipment, and things like rainbarrels go on sale in the late summer/early fall. And nurseries often are trying to rid themselves of perennial plants - including edibles and medicinals. It isn't too late to plant them in most parts of the country, although some care is needed in purchasing for things that have become rootbound.
13. Local honey will be at its cheapest now - now is the time to stock up. Consider making friends with the beekeeper, and perhaps taking lessons yourself.
14. Fall is the cheapest time to buy livestock, either to keep or for butchering. Many 4Hers, and those who simply don't want to keep excess animals over the winter are anxious to find buyers now. In many cases, at auction, I see animals selling for much less than the meat you can expect to obtain from their carcass is worth.
15. Most cold climate housing has or could have a "cold room/area" - a space that is kept cool enough during the fall and winter to dispense with the necessity of a refrigerator, but that doesn't freeze. If you have separate fridge and freezer, consider disconnecting your fridge during the cooler weather to save utility costs and conserve energy. You can build a cool room by building in a closet with a window, and insulating it with styrofoam panels
16. Now is a great time to build community (and get stuff done) by instituting a local "work bee" - invite neighbors and friends to come help either with a project for your household, or to share in some good deed for another community member. Provide food, drink, tools and get to work on whatever it is (building, harvesting, quilting, knitting - the sky is the limit), and at the same time strengthen your community. Make sure that next time, the work benefits a different neighbor or community member.
17. Most local charities get the majority of their donations between now and December. Consider dividing your charitable donations so that they are made year round, but adding extra volunteer hours to help your group handle the demands on them in the fall.
18. Many medicinal and culinary herbs are at their peak now. Consider learning about them and drying some for winter use.
19. If there is a gleaning program near you (either for charity or personal use) consider joining. If not, start one. Considerable amounts of food are wasted in the harvesting process, and you can either add to your storage or benefit your local shelters and food pantries.
20. Dig out those down comforters, extra blankets, hats with the earflaps, flannel jammies, etc... You don't need heat in your sleeping areas - just warm clothes and blankets.
21. Learn a skill that can be done in the dark or by candlelight, while sitting with others in front of a heat source. Knitting, crocheting, whittling, rug braiding, etc... can all be done mostly by touch with little light, and are suitable for companionable evenings. In addition, learn to sing, play instruments, recite memorized speeches and poetry, etc... as something to do on dark winter evenings.
22. While I wouldn't expect deer or turkey hunting to be a major food source in coming times (I would expect large game to be driven back to near-extinction pretty quickly), it is worth having those skills, and also the skills necessary to catch the less commonly caught small game, like rabbits, squirrel, etc...
23. Use a solar cooker or parabolic solar cooker whenever possible To prepare food. Or eat cool salads and raw foods. Not only won’t you heat up the house, but you’ll save energy.
24. A majority of children are born in the summer early fall, which suggests that some of us are doing more than keeping warm ;-). Now is a good time to get one’s birth control updated ;-).
25. Celebrate the harvest - this is a time of luxury and plenty, and should be treated as such and enjoyed that way. Cook, drink, eat, talk, sing, pray, dance, laugh, invite guests. Winter is long and comes soon enough. Celebrate!

WINTER

1. Your local adult education program almost certainly has something useful to teach you - woodworking, crocheting, music training, horseback riding, CPR, herbalism, vegetarian cookery... take advantage of people who want to teach their skills
2. Get serious about land use planning - even if you live in a suburban neighborhood, you can find ways to optimize your land to produce the most food, fuel and barterables. Sit down and think hard about what you can do to make your land and your life more sustainable in the coming year.
3. The Winter lull is an excellent time to get involved in public affairs. No matter how cynical you tend to be, nothing ever changed without engagement. So get out there. Stand for office. Join. Volunteer.
4. Now is the time to prepare for illness - keep a stock of remedies, including useful antibiotics (although know what you are doing, don't just buy them and take them), vitamin C supplements (I like elderberry syrup), painkillers, herbs, and tools for handling even serious illness by yourself. In the event of a truly severe epidemic of flu or other illness, avoiding illness and treating sick family members at home whenever possible may be safer than taking them to over-worked and over-crowded hospitals (or, it may not - but planning for the former won't prevent you from using the hospital if you need it).
5. Most schools would be delighted to have volunteers come in and talk about conservation, gardening, small livestock, home-scale mechanics, ham radio, etc..., and most homeschooling families would be similarly thrilled. Consider offering to teach something you know that will be helpful post-peak (although I wouldn't recommend discussing peak oil with any but the oldest teenagers, and not even that without their parents permission
6. Now is the time to convince your business, synagogue, church, school, community center to put a garden on that empty lawn. If you start the campaign now, you can be ready to plant in the spring. Produce can be shared among participants or offered to the needy.
7. The one-two punch of rising heating oil and gas prices may well be what is needed to make your family and friends more receptive to the peak oil message. Try again. At the very least, emphasize the options for mitigating increased economic strain with sustainable practices.
8. Get together with neighbors and check in on your area's elderly and disabled people. Make a plan that ensures they will be checked on during bad weather, power outages, etc... Offer help with stocking up for winter, or maintaining equipment. And watch for signs that they are struggling economically.
9. Work on raising money and getting help with local poverty-abatement Programs. After the holidays, people struggle. They get hungry and cold. Remember, besides the fact that it is the right thing to do, the life you save may be your own.
10. Get out and enjoy the cold weather. It is hard to adapt to colder temperatures if you spend all your time huddled in front of a heater. Ski, snowshoe, sled, shovel, have a snowball fight, build a hut, go winter camping, but get comfortable with the cold, snowy world around you.
11. Have your chimney(s) inspected, and learn to clean your own. Learn to care for your kerosene lamps, to use candles safely, and how to use and maintain your smoke and CO detectors and fire extinguishers. Winter is peak fire season, so keep safe.
12. Grow sprouts on your windowsill.
13. Now is an excellent time to reconsider how you use your house. Look around - could you make more space? House more people? Do projects more efficiently? Add greenhouse space? Put in a homemade composting toilet? Work with what you have to make it more useful.
14. If a holiday gift exchange is part of your life, make most of your gifts. Knit, whittle, build, sew, or otherwise create something beautiful for the people you love.
15. If someone wants to buy you something, request a useful tool or preparedness item, or a gift certificate to a place like Lehmans or Real Goods. Considering giving such gifts to friends and family - a solar crank radio, an LED flashlight, cast iron pans, These are useful and appreciated items whether or not you believe in peak oil.
16. Do a dry run in the dead of winter. Turn out all the power, turn off the water. Turn off all fossil-fuel sources of heat, and see how things go for a few days. Use what you learn to improve your preparedness, and have fun while doing it.
17. Learn to mend clothing, patch and make patchwork out of old clothes.
18. Write letters to people. The post is the most reliable way of communicating, And letters last forever.
19. Make a list of goals for the coming year, and the coming five years. Start Keeping records of your goals and your successes and failures.
20. Keep a journal. Your children and grandchildren (or someone else’s) may want To know what these days were like.
21. Wash your hands frequently, and avoid stress. Stay healthy so that you can be useful To those around you.
22. For those subject to depression or anxiety, winter can be hard. Find ways to relax, decompress and use work as an antidote to fear whenever possible. Get outside on sunny days, and try and exercise as much as possible to help maintain a positive attitude.
23. Memorize a poem or song every week. No matter what happens to you, no one can ever take away the music and words you hold in your mind. You can have them as comfort and pleasure wherever you go, and in whatever circumstances.
24. Take advantage of heating stoves by cooking on them. You can make soups or stews on top of any wood stove or even many radiators, and you can build or buy a metal oven That sits on top of woodstoves to bake in.
25. Winter is a time of quiet and contemplation. Go outside. Hear the silence. Take pleasure in what you have achieved over the past year. Focus on the abundance of this present, this day, rather than scarcity to come.

The Risks of Too Much City

washingtonpost.com

By Jeremy Rifkin

The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus."

Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan.

Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight.

As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas.

Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world.

No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats.

Cultural historian Elias Canetti once remarked that each of us is a king in a field of corpses. If we were to stop for a moment and reflect on the number of creatures and the amount of Earth's resources and materials we have expropriated and consumed in our lifetime, we would be appalled at the carnage and depletion used to secure our existence.

Large populations living in megacities consume massive amounts of the Earth's energy to maintain their infrastructures and daily flow of human activity. The Sears Tower in Chicago alone uses more electricity in a single day than the city of Rockford, Ill., with 152,000 people. Even more amazing, our species now consumes nearly 40 percent of the net primary production on Earth -- the amount of solar energy converted to plant organic matter through photosynthesis -- even though we make up only one-half of 1 percent of the animal biomass of the planet. This means less for other species to use.

The flip side of urbanization is what we are leaving behind on our way to a world of hundred-story office buildings, high-rise residences and landscapes of glass, cement, artificial light and electronic interconnectivity. It's no accident that as we celebrate the urbanization of the world, we are quickly approaching another historic watershed: the disappearance of the wild. Rising population; growing consumption of food, water and building materials; expanding road and rail transport; and urban sprawl continue to encroach on the remaining wild, pushing it to extinction.

Scientists tell us that within the lifetime of today's children, the wild will disappear from the face of the earth. The Trans-Amazon Highway, which cuts across the entire expanse of the Amazon rain forest, is hastening the obliteration of the last great wild habitat. Other remaining wild regions, from Borneo to the Congo Basin, are fast diminishing with each passing day, making way for growing human populations in search of living space and resources.

It's no wonder that (according to Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson) we are experiencing the greatest wave of mass extinction of animal species in 65 million years. We are losing 50 to 150 species to extinction per day, or between 18,000 and 55,000 species a year. By 2100 two-thirds of the Earth's remaining species are likely to be extinct.

Where does this leave us? Try to imagine 1,000 cities of a million or more just 35 years from now. It boggles the mind and is unsustainable for Earth. I don't want to spoil the party, but perhaps the commemoration of the urbanization of the human race in 2007 might be an opportunity to rethink the way we live.

Certainly there is much to applaud about urban life: its rich cultural diversity and social intercourse and its dense commercial activity. But the question is one of magnitude and scale. We need to ponder how best to lower our population and develop sustainable urban environments that use energy and resources more efficiently, are less polluting and better designed to foster living arrangements on a human scale.

In the great era of urbanization we have increasingly shut off the human race from the rest of the natural world in the belief that we could conquer, colonize and utilize the riches of the planet to ensure our autonomy without dire consequences to us and future generations. In the next phase of human history, we will need to find a way to reintegrate ourselves into the rest of the living Earth if we are to preserve our own species and conserve the planet for our fellow creatures.

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of "The Age of Access" and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends.

Oil giant rejects peak oil view

Star-Telegram.com

By Dan Piller

Exxon Mobil on Tuesday lined up solidly against “peak oil” adherents, saying the estimated 4 trillion barrels of crude oil available for production will be more than enough to satisfy the estimated 60 percent increase in world demand for crude oil through 2030.

Such a view runs contrary to the peak oil argument, which warns that the world is near the peak production and any decline will weigh heavily in increased costs and geopolitical friction as demand continues to climb, particularly in China, India, Russia and the developing world.

“We are comfortable that the technology exists to produce sufficient oil through 2030,” Exxon Mobil planning manager Jaime Spellings said.

Fossil fuels will continue to make up 80 percent or more of fuels for transportation and utility use, Spellings said. Increased efficiency in automobiles, particularly the expected widespread use of hybrid automobiles and changed behaviors by consumers, will make the United States and other developed countries at least 40 percent more fuel efficient than at present.

“We think that economic output will grow faster than energy demand,” Spellings said. He added that although Exxon Mobil doesn’t predict crude-oil or gasoline prices, he said, “We feel that the current high prices for crude oil don’t reflect production costs,” and therefore, presumably, should ease.

Alternative fuels such as corn-based ethanol will account for no more than 2 percent of U.S. fuel usage by 2030, Spellings said. He said that at least 21 percent of the annual U.S. corn crop would be needed to produce that 3 percent of total gasoline use estimated for 2012.

Other estimates provided by Exxon Mobil

Global oil resources:

1984: 1.8 trillion barrels

1994: 2.2 trillion barrels

2005: 3.1 trillion barrels

Percentage of high-efficiency-technology car sales:

2005: 2 percent

2010: 3 percent

2020: 10 percent

2030: 30 percent

Daily fuel supply and demand in 2030:

Crude & condensate: 82 million barrels

Oil sands: 5 million barrels

Natural gas liquids: 8 million barrels

Biofuels: 1 million barrels

SOURCE: Exxon Mobil

Elephants and Quagmires: Peak Oil and the Bush Denial

By Bill Henderson

While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves."

An administration full of oilmen, cognizant of 'peak oil' and America's dependence upon a Middle East containing 60% of the world's remaining cheap oil, faced with a dictator in oh so central and tempting, incredibly oil-rich Iraq, who as a sworn enemy was threatening oil flow not only from Iraq but from the wider Gulf, chose a military solution: shock and awe and regime change.

The neocon faction within the Bush Admin manipulated 9/11 and fear of terrorism into a pretext for already planned aggression in Iraq. They broke American and international law but fantasized that a democratic, neoliberal Iraq of their creation would turn the course of Middle Eastern geopolitics to America's long term benefit (and Israel's long term benefit too, of course).

The war went incredibly well. But they mis-managed the immediate stabilization after victory and made a mess of building a client state in Iraq. And the blatant and cynically illegal aggression created an immense backlash throughout the Middle East, the wider Islamic world, and globally, inflaming potential terrorists and severely weakening America's leadership position.

A destabilized Iraq sliding into civil war now threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East. The growing Sunni-Shia conflict threatens to engulf Saudi Arabia and the other oil producing states. Military unilateralism has also heated up the quarter century old cold war between America and Iran with both sides planning potential military action around the crucial Persian Gulf. Disastrous blundering in Iraq now threatens not only the flow of oil.

America has no choice but to solve this now mission impossible. (And for all-important domestic political reasons American leadership must also at least pretend to be considering a timetable for removing troops from the quagmire.)

Given necessary lead times it is several decades too late to initiate Geogreen innovation to wean America from imported oil from the Middle East. It is in all probability too late to switch to a diplomatic strategy for pacifying a now inflamed hornet's nest even if, now in the worst of times, a Palestine-Israel settlement, an Israeli-Lebanon-Syrian settlement, an American-Iranian settlement and/or a Shia-Sunni settlement were possible.

The hawkish option is a major escalation of American military might in an effort to re-establish control. Such an escalation that would have to include Iran would in all probability risk shutting off the flow of oil from the Gulf at least temporarily, maybe for far longer, precipitating God knows what in the American and global economies. Such a major escalation of hostilities also risks a much wider geopolitical destabilization.

(It is still possible in some circles to fantasize a rebuilt Middle East put back together in an enlightened manner where all would benefit from democracy and prosperity.)

The Bush Admin choice of the resource war path in Iraq as an escalation of America's historic policy to secure Middle East oil was a serious provocation against China and Russia. Success meant American control of the Middle East and an America determined and capable of controlling needed resources globally. Failure has emboldened each and every enemy of America, but desperation could lead to far worse, presently unimagined, outcomes including a final, nuclear, world war.

The present shallow debate about American options in Iraq has mostly ignored both the central importance of American dependence upon the continuing flow of cheap oil from the Middle East and the fundamental Iraq illegality and unilateralist contempt for an international rule of law and co-operation shown by the Bush Admin. America's governing class is still in denial and so there are no solutions on the horizon, only a deepening quagmire.

The road ends in post-petro future

IndyStar.com

By Kelly Jones Sharp

Like many Americans, I came of age in the era of cheap gas, cross-country vacations, the family station wagon and the Beach Boys croonin' while I spent my high school years cruisin'.

Later, warming in the fumes of JP-4 on U.S. Air Force flight lines and relocating cross-country and around the world -- to Florida, South Korea, Washington state, Virginia, Michigan and finally Indiana -- mobility on the cheap was something I took for granted.
At a party during the 2004 election campaigns, I even said (aloud), "I don't give a damn about the environment." OK, what I meant was I didn't give a damn about it as a campaign issue among what I thought were weightier concerns like the war and civil liberties.

And when Hoosier Environmental Council activists tapped on my door a few years back with their petition to stop I-69, I told them I was not opposed to it. New construction is the quintessential "can't-please-everyone" issue. There will always be tree huggers prostrating themselves before bulldozers. If they had their way every time, nothing would ever be built.

Then I heard the phrase "peak oil production" at a presentation by self-confessed tree hugger Scott Russell Sanders at last year's Spirit & Place Festival. And it occurred to me that those words I'd heard many times before had fallen on deaf ears until that moment.

In 1971, the bubbling crude in the United States that was easiest and cheapest to get, peaked. Half of our petroleum, a non-renewable resource, had been burned up. Forever.

According to that same principle -- M. King Hubbert's 1956 "peak" -- the global supply of petroleum is likely also now half gone. Next is decline, and after that it's over.

James Howard Kunstler, in his book "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century," outlines a gloomy scenario for post-petroleum America, warning that our "reality check is in the mail." He states, "The American way of life -- which is now virtually synonymous with suburbia -- can run only on reliable supplies of dependably cheap oil and gas. Even mild to moderate deviations in either price or supply will crush our economy and make the logistics of daily life impossible."
Consider for a moment those logistics. Although I grew up in a car-worshipping culture, nearly every service our family needed was within walking distance of our house. Our schools, grocery, drug store, doctor, dentist, library and church were all within a two-mile radius. And we walked to all of them.

Today I walk to none of those places, the closest being a couple miles from my house and the farthest being about 10 miles away. Like most Americans, my daily existence is centered on my car, which is powered by a resource that will someday be unavailable.
Kunstler says, "No combination of so-called alternative fuels or energy procedures will allow us to maintain daily life in the United States the way we have been accustomed to running it under the regime of oil." Among the proposed schemes he refutes are ethanol, tar sands and shale oils, saying the energy economics due to costly extraction and pollution make these things impossible to produce on the same scale as oil.

Matthew R. Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Company International, told the World Oil Conference in Boston on Oct. 26, "It's time to wake up! Preparing for post-peak oil and gas takes careful planning and implementation."

Next to John Mellencamp's gung-ho ode to Chevy Silverados, a looming crisis seems positively surreal.

Now we hear from Gov. Mitch Daniels about his proposed Indiana Commerce Connector, a $1.5 billion outer beltway.

Perhaps the best reason to stop hemorrhaging cash into these new construction road projects is that someday we'll no longer need them. The next best reason is those dollars might be better invested in post-peak planning, mass transportation and new urbanist living arrangements such as Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard's handiwork that could help stall dependency on automobiles.

When the governor pre-accuses those who might oppose his new road project of "provincialism," he's really projecting his own myopic view. Building roads is not new thinking.

To the HEC: Bring on your petition. This time, I'm signing.

Unprecedented Efficiency In Producing Hydrogen From Water

ScienceDaily

Scientists are reporting a major advance in technology for water photooxidation --using sunlight to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuel from ordinary water.

Michael Gratzel and colleagues in Switzerland note that nature found this Holy Grail of modern energy independence 3 billion years ago, with the evolution of blue-green algae that use photosynthesis to split water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen.

Gratzel is namesake for the Gratzel Cell, a more-efficient solar cell that his group developed years ago. Solar cells produce electricity directly from sunlight. Their new research, scheduled for publication in the Dec. 13 issue of the weekly Journal of the American Chemical Society, reports development of a device that sets a new benchmark for efficiency in splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using visible light, which is ordinary sunlight.

Previously, the best water photooxidation technology had an external quantum efficiency of about 37 percent. The new technology's efficiency is 42 percent, which the researchers term "unprecedented." The efficiency is due to an improved positive electrode and other innovations in the water-splitting device, researchers said.

Southeast Asian oil output likely to peak by 2013

financialexpress.com

Oil production in Southeast Asia will reach a peak in 2013 as fewer new fields are found, forcing the region to evaluate its dependence on crude, said Michael Smith chief executive of UK-based consultant Energyfiles Ltd.

Crude oil output will hit an apex of 3.3 million barrels a day by 2013, compared to 95 million barrels a day of global production, said Smith, during a presentation at the OSEA 2006 conference in Singapore. Southeast Asia’s gas production will hit a total of 4.7 million barrels of oil equivalent a day at the same time before reaching a top level in 2020.

Smith’s research follows the theory of peak oil that believes oil production will reach a zenith some time either now or some time in the near future. The result of the predicted supply decline will be an increase in the level and volatility of prices.

‘‘This is due to a shortage of opportunities to find new oil,’’ said Smith in an interview at the venue of the conference. ‘‘The region won’t be able to sustain the aircraft and automobile growth that has happened in the past.’’ New deepwater production from Malaysia and Vietnam and supplies from Thailand will stave off the peak, said Smith.

From 2013 onward, the region will become more of a natural gas supplier, exporting 1.6 million barrels of oil equivalent a day.

The decline in production will mean exploration funding will move to higher value areas in West Africa, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caspian Sea, he said.

Scientists' warnings unheeded

The Courier-Mail

By James McCausland

In 1973, the Arab oil-producing nations convulsed most of the world by tightening the spigots on their wells and sharply reducing production. Corporations, and nations including Japan, went into crisis mode and many started to think of ways to lessen their reliance on petroleum products. As the after-shock waves began to subside and black gold started to flow again, most enterprises kicked petroleum replacement well down the agenda. Yet there were further signs of the desperate measures individuals would take to ensure mobility. A couple of oil strikes that hit many pumps revealed the ferocity with which Australians would defend their right to fill a tank. Long queues formed at the stations with petrol – and anyone who tried to sneak ahead in the queue met raw violence.

A couple of years later, George Miller conceived the scenario for Mad Max. Max (a very young Mel Gibson) was the antihero out on roads that had become battlefields where the prize was fuel. Society had corroded as a result of the reduction of supply and the rule of law deteriorated into chaos.Res Publica, put out by the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.Mad Max may have been a fantasy with apocalyptic overtones, keep an eye out on the road for people in leather jackets and souped-up cars chasing bike gangs – with the price being a few hundred litres of petrol.

George and I wrote the script based on the thesis that people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving and the assumption that nations would not consider the huge costs of providing infrastructure for alternative energy until it was too late. Sure, it contained a large element of geeks' own adventures; but at its core was a sizeable kernel of truth. That kernel has taken root, and it's called peak oil.

When an oil well is discovered, it is at peak production until it reaches about 50 per cent of its total output. After this, the remaining half becomes more difficult to extract – and much more expensive – as the ratio of water to oil expands. Ultimately the well is abandoned and the search for a new well begins.

Easier said than done.

According to many experts, the discovery of oil fields worthy of the name reached it zenith in the middle of the 1960s. As a consequence, consumption of oil is already outpacing reserves.

Peter Newman, professor in city policy and director of the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University, points out that the US now imports half of its oil needs. The price tag for the first 10 months of 2005 was $US144 billion ($A185 billion), up 32 per cent on the previous year.

Much of this can be attributed to the rapidly rising price of oil; but he posits the possibility that the underlying reason may be that the world oil production peak is occurring right now. At any rate, with reserves growing much more slowly than consumption, a peak in global oil production is inevitable.

Professor Newman published his paper in (sic). He quotes C.J. Campbell, an oil geophysicist and founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, as claiming that conventional oil peaked in 2004 and all oil liquids will peak in 2010: "The real point is not so much the exact date of peak but . . . that the first half of the oil age, which was characterised by growing production, is about to be followed by the second half when oil production is set to decline with all that depends upon it. On that at least we can stand firm."

Professor Newman argues that global oil seems to be at full capacity, and that that level may hold for a few years before the inevitable downward spiral.

To make gloomy matters grimmer. this is happening at a time when the previously dormant economies of the global economy's behemoths, China and India, are growing exponentially. China is now the world's second-biggest consumer of oil.

Of course, there are sceptics: those who believe something will turn up to mitigate the problem.

Professor Newman is hearing none of this. He quotes BP Exploration manager Richard Miller. "This is the classical economist's view; something will turn up, when the price of oil is high enough, because something always does. But there isn't anything conceivable that could replace conventional oil in the same quantities or energy densities at any meaningful price. We can't mine the oil sands in sufficient quantity because there isn't enough water to process them. We can't grow bio-fuels because there would be no land left to grow food. Solar, hydro, wind and geothermal don't yield enough energy, hydrogen (from water) takes more energy to make than it can yield, and nuclear fission and fusion are presently off most political agendas. When oil gets too expensive, surviving Americans will still obtain energy from alternative sources, but in much smaller amounts and at much higher prices."

One of the pernicious problems about peaking is that we will only be able to identify the problem after it has occurred. So preparing for alternatives has to be well under way years before the peak is reached.

So if we don't recognise the problem well in advance, a disaster of unforeseen magnitude could befall us.

Last year a report prepared for the US Department of Energy spelled it out in terms that could be plucked from Armageddon. "The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions were gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary."

The sombre fact is that no matter how dramatic the consequences, it is difficult to get anyone excited to the point of taking action.

Peak oil - the South will rise again

Augusta Free Press

By Erik Curren

Science-fiction writers like to imagine how, after a limited nuclear war, disease pandemic or other catastrophe, North America would break up into half a dozen or so smaller nations. There would be French-speaking Quebec, Yankee New England, an eco-state in the Pacific Northwest, a Latino-dominated neo-Aztec kingdom in the Southwest and of course, a risen-again Confederacy in the Southeast.

These days, such scenarios are not just entertainment; they're contingency planning. Futurists are now concerned that an energy crisis brought on by the peaking of world oil could disrupt America's economy and politics enough to strain the U.S. social fabric beyond its breaking point.

Peak oil is the idea that someday - even optimists agree that it will happen within the next 30 years - the world will reach the point where oil production can no longer be increased to meet rising demand and must begin its inevitable decline.

That doesn't mean that oil will run out right away. What it does mean is that as supplies run down and countries compete for an ever-tighter supply, prices are sure to rise. Oil is so important to modern society - 95 percent of world transportation runs on oil - that the end of cheap oil could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And unlike the editors of Wired magazine, peak-oil theorists are not optimistic that new energy from ethanol, hydrogen or wind electricity will be powerful enough to do all the things we do with oil today and meet rising demand in the future.

Instead, peak-oil analysts say that unless we start soon to radically rewire American society to use much less energy, the U.S. is likely to face economic and political collapse before century's end.

The soccer mom-cracker riots

Perhaps the best-known prophet of peak-oil doom is James Howard Kunstler, who predicts that America will suffer decades of economic hardship and political unrest after peak oil hits. In his 2005 book The Long Emergency, Kunstler writes that "it would be reasonable to wonder whether the United States will continue to exist as a unified entity, and what kind of strife the Long Emergency could ignite region by region."

Bye bye, U.S.A. Hello, C.S.A.?

Kunstler, who has chosen to ride out the Long Emergency in Upstate New York, does not think the South will fare well. Here's his scenario:

The suburban development that has powered the economic engine of the New South for the last 50 years in places like Atlanta will grind to a halt. High-gas prices will make long commutes too expensive; cul-de-sac developments and McMansions will lose their value almost overnight; jobs will evaporate as businesses go bankrupt; and tax attorneys, neurologists and bond traders and their families will find themselves suddenly destitute.

Angry suburbanites - being Southerners, many of them own guns - will join with angry Crackers (Kunstler's word) in riots and rebellions directed at local and federal authorities, who will be increasingly powerless to respond as government starts to break down.

In an energy-starved world, the South's only hope for survival will be a return to agriculture. And here Kunstler imagines a visit from the ghosts of the Southern past.

"There are two previous models for farming in the American South," Kunstler writes. "The first was the plantation system based on slavery. The second was really a modified version of the first when slavery was outlawed: share-cropping, in effect, serfdom. Both systems are essentially feudal. I doubt slavery will make a comeback, but I wonder about sharecropping, or something like it. The persistence of culture is a real phenomenon. Over a period of time, a Southern agricultural economy may reorganize itself by default along the feudal lines that existed historically, odious as it may seem."

If Dixie breaks off from the U.S., Kunstler says that its government is likely to be "despotic and theocratic," backed by fundamentalist preachers saying that the End Times have come and crying down God's judgment on a sinful society. To make things worse, its location and warmer climate will make the South will more vulnerable to new tropical diseases spread by global warming.

Well, that's the view from New York State.

Traditional values against oil culture

It's hard to argue that global warming won't hit the South harder than New England or New York. And unless we act to reduce fossil-fuel pollution fast, the Appalachians may be the only place south of the Mason-Dixon to retreat when coasts are devastated by Katrina-strength storms, and tidewater and piedmont lands are infested by mosquitoes bringing malaria and dengue fever.

Of course, we don't have to see Kunstler's vision as a literal prediction. Might it just be a rhetorical exercise, a provocation to shock us into preparing for peak oil (and, to a lesser extent, global warming)? Yet, if we want to play this scenario game, it seems fair to ask whether there might also be aspects of the South's traditional culture that are more progressive than those that Kunstler finds.

Indeed, might the South, with its small-town and agrarian values, be better off in an energy-starved world where we have to make more of our stuff and grow more of our food close to home than many places in the North that have always relied heavily on trade and manufacturing?

While the twin evils of suburban sprawl and factory farming are indeed huge threats to a sustainable future, they have not yet entirely snuffed out the traditional Southern way of life that, in many aspects, remains a model for a re-localized society elsewhere.

Many communities still retain vibrant local economies. My own town, Staunton, has seen a renaissance of its downtown, with numerous shops and restaurants in walking distance from hundreds of well-preserved Victorian homes and Mary Baldwin College. A seasonal farmer's market is increasingly popular as a source of local food from the Shenandoah Valley's many remaining family farmers.

Nearby, in the grazing land southwest of town, superstar organic farmer Joel Salatin - profiled in Michael Pollan's 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - spreads his gospel of sustainable local food one juicy steak at a time.

Perhaps Southern towns will be slower to adopt written peak-oil plans or formal re-localization efforts than places in New England or California. But the flip side of this intellectual conservatism is that the South was also slow to give up the small-town life and vibrant communities that such activist efforts attempt to rebuild.

Like Staunton, hundreds of other towns across the region have embraced (or never abandoned) farmer's markets, revamped their downtowns and nurtured the best of the South's values - family, community and stewardship of the earth.

For many, these values are entirely in line with the Southern religiosity that seems so frightening to many Northern liberals.

As a new generation of evangelical Christians (many from the South) has taught us, environmental stewardship is taught by the Bible. Today, many churchgoers in the South see it as their duty to fight global warming, to support local food and to demand clean energy as a way to protect God's creation.

Indeed, Southerners with deep roots in the land - family farmers, hunters and anglers - have practiced earth-stewardship for generations before hippies started leaving Greenwich Village for Vermont.

Southern, not Confederate, values

Finally, if there's more to Dixie than the oil-addicted suburbs of the New South - which have nothing Southern about them and are just the same sprawl as you'll find in Los Angeles - there's also more to the region than the KKK, NASCAR and vigilante justice.

Writing recently in The New Yorker (ironic, no?), book critic Louis Menand distinguishes the gems that the South should carry into the future from the garbage it must leave behind.

"The Southern point of view must not be confused with the Confederate point of view," Menand writes, "which was a vision of an expanding slave empire in which businessmen operate vast plantations on assembly-line principles and hold absolute power over people whose ancestors had once, on another continent, belonged to local communities, made a living in the traditional ways, and so on."

By contrast, Menand says, the Southern outlook is skeptical of technological advances and the power of big money. It is "the point of view of people in local communities everywhere, making a living in the traditional ways, about to be flattened by the bulldozer of modern life."

Southerners have always stood for tradition against modernity, for local community against the global economy, for humans against machines, for the farm against the factory, for the family business against the multinational corporation. No need to dwell on Gone with the Wind - more nuanced views of the South from Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker and Charles Frazier (author of Cold Mountain) literally speak volumes on the independence of the Southern spirit, black and white.

And Southerners today aren't just black and white. They're also yellow and brown. Every decent sized town now has a Chinese and a Mexican restaurant. Indian and Korean can't be far behind.

New England may have its town meetings, but democratic ideals are not alien to the South. Doesn't Dixie deserve some credit for native sons Washington, Jefferson and Madison? George Mason's 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights served as the model for the Bill of Rights later added to the U.S. Constitution.

And whether they think that the war of 1861-1865 was about slavery or about states' rights, historians agree that outside the small upper class of big planters, most Southerners owned few slaves or none at all and further, that many Southerners opposed the Peculiar Institution. Today, we can accept that slavery was an unqualified evil without tarring the whole of Southern culture with its brush.

As we plan for peak oil, we should not forget that history offers us hopeful models, as well as frightening ones, for the future. This is as true in the South as in New York or New England, where, by the way, many more people are involved in global trade, financial markets and oil-dependent manufacturing than in Tennessee or North Carolina.

Whether we think that the U.S. breaking up is just science fiction or a serious scenario made likely by peak oil, the idea of the South rising again is a powerful image to organize our thoughts and actions today.

If Southerners choose carefully from their diverse heritage - discarding racism, violence and know-nothing jingoism while embracing community, family and stewardship of the land - the rise of Dixie could be a good thing for everybody.

The CERA Report

By Jim Kunstler

Last week, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) released a report saying that there was no imminent global oil problem and that enough new oil would come on-line to permit current levels of consumption -- and beyond! -- for more than a hundred years into the future. CERA's stunningly disingenuous report flies in the face of everything that is known about the current world oil situation.

CERA is fronted by Daniel Yergin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry, The Prize. Apparently, Yergin has parlayed his legitimacy as an historian into running a disinformation service wholly owned by the IHS Corporation, a lobbying and public relations firm serving the defense, oil, and automotive industries. Apart from making a lot of money as executive vice-president of a company with about $300 million in net annual profits over about $500 million in gross revenues, it is a little hard to discern what Yergin's motives might be in shoveling so much bad information into the public arena.

Much of CERA's "story" hinges on the supposition that snazzy technology will allow the recovery of "oil" (liquid hydrocarbons) from solids that require costly mining and processing operations to covert them to liquids. In effect, CERA says that tar sands, kerogen shales, coal-to-liquids, plus super-deep ocean drilling will not only make up for currently depleting fields of easily-acessed liquid sweet crudes, but actually surpass current total production. This would seem, on the face of it, to violate everything that is known about Energy Returns on Energy Invested (ERoRI). And, in fact, the very companies working the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, have just this year steeply raised their dollar estimates of what it will take to convert that stuff into usable liquids -- it ain't a pretty story.

CERA does not acknowledge some of the fundamental facts of the current situation, for instance that the world's four super-giant fields responsible for at least 15 percent of total global production since 1980 (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Burgan in Kuwait, Daqing in China, and Cantarell in Mexico) have all passed peak and turned down into depletion. CERA doesn't acknowledge that discovery of new oil peaked worldwide in the 1960s with more than 40 years of steady decline since then. Or that there has been almost no provable meaningful discovery the past several years (and Chevron's as yet unproved deepwater "Jack" claim of 3 to 15 billion barrels total is not significant in the context of a world that now burns through 30 billion barrels a year.) CERA doesn't acknowledge that the predicted US peak of 1970 was absolutely on target and that our domestic production of regular crude has fallen from around 10 million-barrels-a-day in 1970 to under 5 m/b/d now (still declining yearly, including the Alaska North Slope fields). CERA doesn't acknowledge that current total global oil production through 2006 is at least absolutely flat and more likely falling (depending on whose numbers you look at), which would tend to indicate that the world has bumped up against the ceiling of its all-time total capacity. CERA doesn't acknowledge that exports are down nine percent this year because the nations with export capacity have growing populations and economies that require more and more of their own oil.

The CERA story also tragically gives aid and comfort to those who deny that climate change needs to be taken seriously, since it is saying, in essence, that we can easily continue pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- by burning as much coal as we can. The CERA report amounts to "don't worry, be happy."

Perhaps most tragically, there is no corrective for this mendacious PR. It's not against the law to spread lies about a business venture -- which is what the oil industry is -- even if its truthful condition is critical to the functioning of our society. There's no oversight committee or agency authorized to investigate public relations activity. It's a basic case of buyer beware. Unfortunately, the buyers in this case are America's political leaders and the news media responsible for informing the public.

The mainstream media last week swallowed CERA's PR hook, line, and sinker, without a single reflective burp. It even drove the prices on oil futures markets down a few dollars a barrel -- though the price was back up by Friday. The only cogent analysis of the CERA report took place on the Internet, and for the most part on a single site: TheOilDrum.com, which is the best-informed forum of debate on these issues operating in the United States.You can go directly to their initial response, composed by Dave Cohen by clicking on this link. It's worth taking the trouble to read.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Picking the Peak

Falls Church News-Press

By Tom Whipple

Last week Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) who characterize themselves as "a leading advisor to international energy companies, governments, financial institutions, and technology providers," sent out a press release announcing that they had a new report on peak oil for sale. For some time now, CERA has been the leading debunker of the notion that world oil production might just peak in the near future, so their reports are always of interest.

They don't say oil production will never peak, it's just that they want you to believe that the peak won't come until 2030 and after that production will decline so gradually that there will be plenty of oil right on out through the rest of the 21st century.

The occasion of a "new" report on peak oil from CERA always creates a great stir amongst followers of the peak oil story. This time was no exception. CERA is, of course, a profit-making entity that is used to selling their analyses to major corporations and rich governments for big bucks, so $1000 was set as an appropriate amount for a 16-page report debunking a subject as important peak oil.

CERA, or at least their PR folks, realized that at this price, "WHY THE PEAK OIL THEORY FALLS DOWN" was unlikely to make the best seller list, so they thoughtfully provided a tightly written four page press release covering the main points of the study. This of course allowed the world's press to write stories about the gist of the report without having to pony-up the $1000.

The purpose here is not to critique the CERA report's shortcomings for within hours of the press release's issue, numerous voices from the Internet had torn the CERA report, its logic, and argumentation into a thousand intellectual shards.

In case you are interested, there was nothing new in the report that CERA has not said many times before. The heart of their argument is that their parent company has a secret database of the world's oil fields. After studying this database, depletion rates, and likely new sources of oil or oil-like hydrocarbons, they conclude that world oil production will continue growing right on up to 130 million b/d by 2030. After that, production will bounce along on their famous "undulating plateau" for decades giving us plenty of time for future generations to go out and find some other source of energy. You should be aware, however, that several other individuals and organizations have done similar analyses and have come to far more alarming conclusions.

Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong in an organization examining a problem as complex as peak oil and coming up with an optimistic judgment that we have 25 years of plenty ahead. They start to get out of line however when they mischaracterize what serious students of peak oil are really saying and follow this up with dubious assumptions that technological advances in the near future will turn all manner of carbon deposits into affordable fuels.

This all leads to the question of just what is going on here? Why is CERA putting out the same old claims -- this time wrapped in some name-calling about the inadequacies of the people who believe that peak oil is imminent? Why is CERA ignoring reams of solid evidence that world oil production is indeed approaching a peak and that there is unlikely to be any technological quick-fix? Why are they doing this now?

There just might be a clue buried in the rather strange first paragraph of CERA's press release. "The peak oil argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions."

We might just be on to something; widespread acceptance of imminent peaking of oil production is "distorting critical policy and investment decisions?" What policies and whose investment decisions?

CERA, of course, makes a good living by selling advice about the future of energy to corporations and governments that can afford very expensive reports and consulting fees. There is also no question that many investments decisions made in 2006 are going to look brilliant or dumb depending on whether oil is cheap and plentiful or expensive and scarce ten years from now.

Moreover, there is no secret about peak oil and the path to the peak. It is all over the Internet in as much detail as one would like to know. It is highly unlikely that planners for large corporations are unaware of the concepts behind peak oil and do not know that the price of oil has increased three or four fold in recent years. The price spikes of last summer coupled with the problems that Detroit has had selling large cars should be enough to focus most decision-makers’ attention.

CERA is clearly hanging its credibility and future on the idea that worldwide oil depletion is still a long ways off. It is a popular message and probably finds a good market in corporate board rooms where a massive paradigm shift is highly unwelcome news.

Events of the last year, however, should give those accepting this optimistic view cause for concern. It is not much of leap to believe that CERA is coming under heat from those who recognize that a bad call on peak oil will be devastating. This CERA report, which is obviously an attempt to defend their position, may be a sign that the message of peak oil may just be getting through to the corporate world.

Peak Oil: Even If The Optimists Are Right, Time Is Getting Tight

nickles.com

By  Mike Byfield

Peak oil proponents and skeptics agree that world production will eventually crest. Also, both sides of this debate accept that the decline curve will be gradual rather than sudden (with a little luck). Their common ground, although limited and easily obscured by emotional intensity, is slowly growing.

Aptly illustrating this blend of acrimony and agreement was a report issued last week by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) - Why the Peak Oil Theory Falls Down: Myths, Legends, and the Future of Oil Resources - and the rebuttal from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO).

Peter Jackson, CERA's director of oil industry activity, remarks acidly that the "peakist argument is not grounded in a credible systematic evaluation of available data." Randy Udall, a co-founder of ASPO, retorts that CERA is peddling "PetroProzac" which lulls attention away from urgently needed actions.

Even so, CERA and ASPO agree on a great deal. For example, they both think the world may very well wind up more dependent on oil from the Middle East. And they agree that available data on global oil and gas reserves remains incomplete, most worryingly for those massive but ageing oilfields of the Middle East.

CERA and ASPO accept that North America's wealth-making economy rose on a foundation of cheap energy. "North Americans are predisposed to failing the energy IQ test," says Udall. Drivers here cheerfully assume that relatively inexpensive gasoline will continue to flow from their neighbourhood pump more or less forever.

Plenty of other people would like to share that exuberant confidence in prosperity but cannot. Peakists and supply optimists alike recognize that billions in Africa, Latin America and Asia will only achieve a modern standard of living through dramatically greater energy supplies and better energy conservation.

CERA and ASPO believe that world demand could well outstrip conventional oil supplies within the relatively near future. And the analysts of both organizations accept that other forms of petroleum can be developed.

Jackson and Udall also agree that supply will become particularly tight if wars and unwise governments disrupt oil developments. Above-ground factors may be more limiting in the near term than geology.

So where do CERA and ASPO actually disagree?

* Udall thinks global oil flows will crest within a decade, possibly sooner. Jackson pegs the crest within 50 years and not before 2030.
* CERA believes alternative supplies can be brought on stream through oilsands, very deepwater reserves, condensate and gas liquids, and conversion of both natural gas and coal to liquid form. ASPO, while acknowledging that those resources are vast, questions how quickly they can be brought on production.

In terms of oil demand, the consensus seems quite clear. Since 1950, world consumption has increased eight-fold, and humanity will urgently require more energy in the near future.

In terms of supply, everyone agrees that oil and liquids supply will be likely be constrained but it's impossible to pinpoint when. Even optimists, however, think the deadline may fall within 30 years.

Three decades. To develop new world-scale supply technologies - whether for alternative types of petroleum or for other energy forms like sunlight and so forth - 30 years is not a long time. In fact, it's the near future.

For instance, Alberta's very first barrel of synthetic crude was produced four decades ago, and the oilsands have only now shown up as more than an insignificant blip on the world production map. Even CERA's limited optimism rides on improving that performance by a huge margin in future.

The international consulting agency guesstimates that the world's productive capacity can rise by 50% within 30 years but the increase depends entirely on non-conventional sources for oil. And even if the forecast prove correct, billions of people would apparently remain mired in poverty.

William Ramsay, deputy director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), warned a Toronto conference earlier this month that global energy numbers are not adding up well. "The way we are going, we are on course for an unstable, dirty and expensive energy future," he said.

Ramsay, a former American ambassador, handled energy and petrochemical issues when the North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated. In Toronto, he made an impassioned appeal for aggressive government action on mandatory energy conservation.

Conservation, while excellent as far as it goes, at most buys time. An energy-rich world will require billions of dollars in research, trillions for development. It's probably worth remembering that the oilsands could not have been developed without efficient co-operation between governments and oil producers.

Historian says peak oil production is still a quarter-century away

McClatchy Washington Bureau

By Kevin G. Hall

Far from being a nearly exhausted resource, the world's oil reserves are three times bigger than what some popular estimates state, and peak global oil production is still about a quarter-century away, according to a new study by Pulitzer Prize-winning oil historian Daniel Yergin.

The remaining oil resource base is about 3.74 trillion barrels, according to a report released Tuesday by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which Yergin runs. That's more than three times the 1.2 trillion barrels that "peak-oil" theorists suggest.

CERA's report, titled "Why the Peak Oil Theory Falls Down," challenges an increasingly popular view that the world is about to run out of oil. On the contrary, CERA argues that the world is likely to begin running out of oil between 2030 and the middle of the century. Even so, CERA says, efforts are needed now to push that date back, such as new oil field discoveries, new technologies, energy conservation and alternative energy sources.

Peak-oil theorists warn that the world is on the cusp of a disastrous and rapid decline in oil production. A leading proponent of the theory is oil banker Matthew Simmons, who in the popular book "Twilight in the Desert" suggested that the world's top producer, Saudi Arabia, has entered an oil-production decline and will take the world down with it. Last month, Simmons told a forum that the world might have reached peak oil production last December.

The peak-oil theory has gained supporters since late 2004, when surging global demand for oil began tightening up available supplies and driving up world oil prices. The price hit $78.40 a barrel in July, but has fallen to less than $60 a barrel in recent months.

The CERA study debunks the so-called Hubbert Peak Oil Theory, first espoused in 1956 by geologist M. King Hubbert. Working at the time for Shell Oil Co., he predicted that world oil production would follow a bell-shaped curve in which production grows steadily until it peaks, followed by a rapid decline.

Hubbert was pretty accurate on the timing of U.S. peak oil production, coming within two years of 1970, the year experts now recognize as the peak of continental U.S. production.

But his theory failed to recognize that new technologies enabled reserves to grow over time. His theory preceded the exploitation of massive oil reserves in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

That's why Yergin dismisses talk of peak oil.

"This is really the fifth time we've `run out of oil,'" Yergin said in a teleconference with journalists on Tuesday. He recalled past predictions dating back to 1880 of an end to oil or gasoline production.

Yergin's views carry weight because he won the Pulitzer for his 1991 book "The Prize," an exhaustive history of oil economics.

He and colleagues believe that the decline in oil availability will play out as an "undulating plateau," in which annual production produces a series of ups and downs, eventually peaks and then declines slowly.

"We see the undulating plateau existing one or two decades, rather than a sharp decline," said Peter Jackson, CERA's director of oil industry activity. He sees outright decline beginning no earlier than 2030 and perhaps after 2050.

Future oil supplies, said CERA, will be accessible by new technologies that permit drilling more than 7,000 feet below the ocean's surface or extracting oil from tar-like deposits in sandy soil found in western Canada.

"Ours is not a view of endless abundance of resources," said Jackson, cautioning that he doesn't want CERA's findings to "distract us from addressing real issues."

Another source of optimism for this energy-hungry world emerged from another report this week, this one a technical paper from the Los Angeles-based think tank Rand Corp. It ran 1,500 simulations of varied energy prices and technology costs to estimate future supplies of both renewable and nonrenewable fuels.

It concluded that up to one-quarter of the electricity and motor fuels consumed in the United States in 2025 could be produced from renewable sources, up from only 6 percent today. For that to happen, the price of fossil fuels must remain high and the costs of producing alternative energy must keep falling.

"The renewables case could displace about 2.5 million barrels a day of petroleum products in the United States in 2025, or 20 percent of total consumption," the Rand report said.

Together, the two reports give hope that energy will be plentiful for another generation or more.

"I've never seen so much activity in terms of energy technology all along the spectrum," Yergin said. "I think the system is responding."

For more on the CERA study, click here: Study at www.cera.com

For the Rand report, click here: Rand Study

Does the Peak Oil 'Myth' Just Fall Down? -- Our Response to CERA

The Oil Drum

By Dave Cohen

With the release of Why the "Peak Oil" Theory Falls Down — Myths, Legends and the Future of Oil Resources by Peter M. Jackson, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) attempts to cast doubt on the credibility of those with imminent, empirically-based concerns about our future oil supply.

CERA's "Decision Brief" requires a response because since 1870, the health of the world's economies have hinged on a secure, dependable and growing flow of "conventional" oil. Their forecast, shown in Figure 1, predicts that the oil supply will continue to grow and sustain economic growth.

Click to read entire article.

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Studies

Falls Church News-Press

By Tom Whipple

Across the world governments are scrambling faster and faster preparing for the coming energy crisis. Delegations from China are everywhere making deals for a share of the soon-to-dwindle oil flow. Almost weekly there is a new announcement from Beijing regarding plans for more wind, solar and biofuels. Japan and Korea are looking for alternative sources of energy supply. Sweden is saying, flat out, that peak oil is coming and is making plans for a fossil fuel-less future.

The European Union is all over the map with plans for alternative fuels, new regulations on energy consumption, and efforts to guarantee an energy supply for the continent.

Meanwhile, energy exporters are reveling in their newfound wealth and influence while in the poorer corners of the world people are quietly shutting off the lights. For many, the oil age ended when oil reached $60 a barrel.

Here in America, however, there is as yet little sense of urgency about the future of our energy supply. Last summer when gasoline was $3+ a gallon and warnings of devastating hurricanes were in the air, Congress was indeed thrashing about in an attempt to reassure the voters they would do something prior to the fall elections. But the storm subsided, the hurricanes went away, oil stockpiles climbed, gasoline settled back to $2, and all was well. With a sigh of relief, the Dow-Jones surged to a new all-time high.

Should any of you be feeling complacent, however, let me reassure you that the world is still burning 85 million barrels a day (b/d), there really have not been any important new discoveries, no world-saving technological breakthroughs have come to light, and you are only continuing to drive because so many of the world's peoples can't afford $60 oil.

Beneath the surface in America, however, there is movement. The Democrats now control the Congress and are already floating proposals that could help with the coming crisis. These include rolling back tax breaks for the major oil companies, probing off-shore lease deals, providing more money for renewable fuels, pushing for diesel and electric cars, and settling the spent nuclear fuel issue.

Of more long-term significance, however, two major studies of the prospects for world energy supplies are currently underway in Washington. The first of these is being done by the Government Accountability Office and is to be released on February 28. This study will actually deal with the prospects for "peak oil" -- when it will come and what can be done to mitigate the consequences. The GAO was asked by the House of Representatives Science Committee to undertake this study that has been underway for over a year.

The second and what on the surface sounds the most in-depth study of world energy resources ever undertaken is being done under the auspices of the National Petroleum Council (NPC). This council, a federally chartered and privately funded advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy, was established by President Truman in 1946. Its purpose is to represent the views of the oil and natural gas industries with respect to any matter relating to oil and natural gas. Note the words "the views of the oil and natural gas industries" as they just may come back to haunt us after the two studies are released.

On October 5, 2005, Energy Secretary Bodman sent a letter to the NPC asking what the future holds for oil and gas supplies, can supplies continue to be found at affordable prices, and just what does the oil and gas industry recommend to ensure our prosperity? The issue was promptly accepted for study and the next seven months were spent planning and getting organized. Two weeks ago the NPC released an updated status report outlining the details of just who is studying what.

The scope and work plan for the study are truly impressive. Task groups are to work on supply, demand, technology, and geopolitics. The task groups are to be overseen by a coordinating sub-committee that in turn reports to a Global Committee and finally to the NPC leadership itself. These task groups are supported by 25 "cross-cutting" subgroups, which are to examine smaller topics such as biomass, nuclear power, and "non-proprietary data." At last word some 200 people were involved in the NPC effort. The study also is reaching out to nearly everyone who can spell "oil" -- academia, laboratories, professional societies, consultants, governments, industry and you-name-it.

From reading the work plan for the study, one can't help but be impressed by how thorough and comprehensive the study will be. Of particular interest is the opportunity to use and assess proprietary information about the world's oil reserves and prospects for production held by participating oil companies.

What can we expect from these studies? The GAO effort will almost certainly be the straightforward professional exercise we have come to expect from this organization. The study will probably acknowledge that world oil production will peak someday and the researchers, who work for the Congress, will do their best to give a balanced answer to questions of when production will peak and what might we do about it.

As for the NPC study, it would be unfair to prejudge something that has not yet been written. Considering its proposed scope and the number of people involved in the drafting, it may provide much valuable new data and many insights into the prospects for the earth's energy resources. It could even turn out to support the idea that severe energy shortages lie just ahead and give a balanced presentation of the prospects for energy during the next 25 years.

On the other hand it is hard to avoid noting that several of the leaders of the NPC study have long records of vehemently opposing the idea that world oil production will peak within the next 10 years. Moat notable of these are the study's chairman, Lee Raymond, formerly of ExxonMobil, and Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Research Associates.

If one were cynical, you could believe that the NPC study, which by definition is to provide the oil and gas industry's position, was commissioned to provide a counterweight to the independent GAO study should it conclude that peak oil is for real and imminent. The timing of the two studies' release will of course give the NPC plenty of time to incorporate or attempt to refute whatever evidence or logic the GAO cites in reaching its conclusions.

No matter what the studies conclude, the possibility that our oil supplies will decline in the near future is one of the most, if not the most important issue facing the world in the coming century. These studies are bound to play a major role in the coming debate.

Congressional peak oil caucus responds to CERA study

EnergyBulletin.net

By Roscoe Bartlett and Tom Udall

Congressmen Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD) and Tom Udall (D-NM), cofounders and cochairmen of the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus, said that a new report released today by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), Why the Peak Oil Theory Falls Down: Myths, Legends, and the Future of Oil Resources, confirms the urgency for the United States government to adopt a crash program to mitigate the devastating consequences of peak oil.

Congressman Bartlett said, "The CERA report agrees that world oil production will peak and projects it will occur within 20-25 years. However, world demand is growing exponentially - faster than production so the CERA report confirms the likelihood of future shortages of liquid fuel and much higher and volatile prices. A major flaw in the CERA report is its reliance upon questionable assessments of global reserves by the USGS. USGS estimates of future world reserves equate a 50 percent probability with a 50th percentile or mean. That is a bizarre and totally inaccurate use of statistics. It almost doubles the amount of projected reserves compared to the 95 percent probable estimate. Actual discoveries are tracking the 95 percent probable trend. That means world oil production will peak much sooner than CERA projects in this report."

Congressman Udall said, "CERA's report is one of the most optimistic predictions for the peak in global oil production to date, and it still underscores the need to address this problem immediately. Whether it is Peak Oil, global warming, or the fact that some of the money we send overseas to support our oil addiction comes back to us in the form of terrorism, the U.S. cannot wait any longer to develop sensible and sustainable alternatives to oil."

Congressman Bartlett added, "The February 2005 'Hirsch' report by the U.S. Department of Energy and a September 2005 report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers both note that it would take a minimum of 20 years to avoid devastating consequences from peak oil. The CERA report supports the urgency and necessity for the U.S. government to adopt a crash mitigation program. A crash program will need the total participation of the American public like we had with WWII Victory Gardens, the technological focus of the Apollo Moon program and the urgency of the Manhattan project."

"I look forward to two forthcoming reports about peak oil to move this policy debate forward," said Congressman Bartlett. "A report that I requested from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is expected in early 2007."

Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman commissioned a report by the National Petroleum Council (NPC) expected to be released in mid-2007.

Global Oil Output Won't Peak for 25 Years, Yergin's Group Says

Bloomberg.com

By Joe Carroll

Global oil production will increase for at least the next 25 years as new drilling and refining techniques make it possible to tap heretofore untouchable reserves, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the consulting firm run by Daniel Yergin.

The world probably has 3.7 trillion barrels of oil left, more than twice the estimates of geologists and analysts such as Matthew Simmons, of the investment bank Simmons & Co., who argue global output is close to a peak, said Peter Jackson, director of oil-industry research for the Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm.

``The peak-oil theory causes confusion and can lead to inappropriate actions and turn attention away from the real issues,'' Jackson said in remarks prepared for a conference call today with analysts, investors and reporters. ``Oil is too critical to the global economy to allow fear to replace careful analysis about the very real challenges.''

The late geologist M. King Hubbert, working for a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, first put forward in 1956 the theory that output from a specific oil deposit or region would peak and then start to decline following a predictable curve. His ideas have gained currency as oil prices tripled in the past five years and producers struggled to keep pace with rising demand in China.

The theory is ``misleading'' and based on incomplete data, according to today's report from Cambridge Energy. Worldwide oil production will rise by more than 50 percent to about 130 million barrels a day around 2030 before output plateaus, the report said. Yergin, the firm's founder, wrote ``The Prize,'' a Pulitzer-winning history of the oil industry.

When global crude output begins to fall around 2050, the decline probably will be gradual, giving policy makers, industry and energy producers time to develop new alternatives to petroleum-based fuels, the report said.

Peak Oil Study Group

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil estimates the world has 1.46 trillion barrels of oil left and that production will peak in 2010, according to the group's November newsletter. The group's leaders include British geologist Colin Campbell, who helped popularize the peak-oil theory with his 1997 book, ``The Coming Oil Crisis.''

An August report from Cambridge Energy that took issue with the peak-oil theory was criticized by the President of the peak oil association, Kjell Aleklett, as a money-making vehicle based on proprietary data that the firm was unwilling to submit to impartial scientific review.

Aleklett said Cambridge Energy analysts were too optimistic about the ability of big producers including Saudi Arabia to increase output.

Congress

U.S. Representatives Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, and Thomas Udall of New Mexico, formed the House Peak Oil Caucus to promote the theory among lawmakers. Bartlett and Udall endorse the peak oil association's prediction that output will start declining after 2010.

``There is not much time to act,'' Udall, a Democrat, told a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel in December. ``Since oil provides about 40 percent of the world's energy, a peak in global oil production will be a turning point in human history.''

Refiners have used about 1.08 trillion barrels of crude since the birth of the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania in 1859, according to Cambridge Energy.

Undiscovered fields probably hold 758 billion barrels, followed by 704 billion trapped inside a very hard type of rock known as shale, and 662 billion in the Middle East, according to the report. The rest of the firm's 3.7 trillion barrel total comes from untapped reserves in the deepest seas, the Arctic and places such as Canada's tar sands and Venezuela's Orinoco basin.

Fifth Time

``This is the fifth time that the world is said to be running out of oil,'' Yergin said in an e-mailed statement. ``Each time -- whether it was the `gasoline famine' at the end of World War I or the `permanent shortage' of the 1970s -- technology and the opening of new frontier areas has banished the specter of decline.''

Oil prices have climbed 24 percent in the past two years and touched an all-time high of $78.40 a barrel in July. Economic growth in China, India and the U.S. has boosted demand while hurricanes and militant attacks crimped production in some regions, including the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which advises governments, oil companies and financial institutions on energy issues, is not the only skeptic of the peak-oil theory.

Stuart McGill, a senior vice president who oversees Exxon Mobil Corp.'s oil and gas business, dismissed the peak theory in a Nov. 1 interview as being without merit. Irving, Texas-based Exxon is the world's biggest oil company, pumping more crude than every member of OPEC except Saudi Arabia and Iran.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net

Chevron's Don Paul on the future of oil

Business 2.0 Magazine

As Big Oil celebrates a huge victory in California, Chevron's chief technologist talks to Business 2.0 about the end of oil, new energy sources, and the $4 billion tax voters shot down.

By Saheli S.R. Datta

Excerpt:

Are we running out of oil?

And if so, can technology really solve the problem? What I call unconventional fuels are going to be an integral part of meeting our energy demands over the next 20 or 30 years. That includes everything from the tar sands of Athabasca in Canada to biofuels to hydrogen. All of these involve significant advancements in the underlying science and technology. So the unconventional fuel business in many ways is all about technology.

But I would say first that exploration and production today is every bit as technologically intensive as alternative fuels. I remember in the late 1970s seeing my first truly 3-D image on a screen. It took a Cray supercomputer to display it. I said, "That's going to change the way we're going to do things." And, in fact, that's the case. It changed how we discover new oil fields. Nobody thinks about it today, of course.

But what's really striking is the advancement in the technology of molecular transformation. Remember back in the Middle Ages, you had kings who employed alchemists to turn lead into gold? That's a useful metaphor for what you can do today, with molecular science becoming so advanced. You hear about things every day on the biological side - genetic engineering, wondrous pharmaceutical development. In the energy business, we're in range of the same thing: the ability to take any kind of feedstock and synthesize the fuels you want.

That kind of alchemy is still ahead of us, but I don't see any impediments to getting there. So when people ask me whether we're going to run out of oil, I say, "Well, frankly, the real question you should ask is whether we're ever going to run out of fuel, and the answer is no." I find that pretty exciting.