Feb 5, 2008
Today, state legislators listened to the dire warnings of an energy leader at the Minnesota State Capitol.
The world’s oil reserves are drying up according to Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker from Houston who has recently written a book on the subject.
Simmons says oil production has already peaked and soon supply won’t be able to keep up with demand.
Already, a major oil company is recognizing the seriousness of this of this potential crisis.
Simmons says Shell Oil CEO Jeroen van der Veer is already preparing his company for a bleak future.
“He sent it out to every world-wide employee of Shell Oil Company and he basically said we’re at a critical crossroads in history and by 2015 the world’s demand for oil is going to outpace any way to supply it,” says Simmons.
Even though we currently have enough oil, Simmons is warning people to plan for the worst case scenario.
“I think for planning purposes we should assume we’ve already passed the peak for crude oil a couple years ago and we might be lucky enough to hang around the current base for 3-4 years but we shouldn’t plan on it. If you plan for something worse it makes it easier to adjust,” says Simmons.
To conserve our remaining stores of oil, Simmons urges people to make dramatic lifestyle changes, such as traveling less and working from home.”
“The first thing we need to do on a global basis is liberate the workforce as profoundly as when cell phones took over landlines,” says Simmons.
Simmons says if this problem isn’t solved, future generations will suffer.
“My wife and I have been the luckiest people on earth and we have five daughters and I’d like to think that they’d have some of the lovely lifestyles that we had, but if we don’t figure this out they won’t,” says Simmons.
Even though Simmons says the oil fields are drying up, the ocean could serve as an alterative energy source to oil.
Oceans cover 70-percent of the globe and the energy potential is massive.
However, the technology is not quite there yet to harness the ocean’s power.
back on March 10th, 2005
- The world’s network of crude oil pipelines also is now operating at virtually 100% capacity. For almost all of 2004, the world’s tanker system operated at full capacity too. This sparked an unprecedented rise in taker rates, which added up to $5 to $6 per barrel to the wellhead price of oil in some key long-haul export routes. – Matthew Simmons. Why are no more tankers being built? Because soon there won’t be enough oil to ship to cover what it would cost to build them.
- Petro Canada has decided to invest $3 billion in the development of Alberta’s tar sands in spite of high costs, enormous environmental destruction and dwindling supplies of natural gas needed to make steam to wash the sands. – The Globe and Mail, March 2, 2005.
- Royal Dutch Shell, which has downgraded its reserves four times in the last two years (as a result of fraudulent bookkeeping), has announced it may experience a 5% production decline this year. – Forbes, March 2, 2005. The truth comes out.
- Officials of Mexico‘s state-owned oil company PEMEX have announced that Mexico’s largest oil field, Cantarell, will enter permanent decline this year. – Bloomberg, March 1, 2005.
- Chinese energy shortages have resulted in what may be selective blackouts of Japanese auto and other firms manufacturing in China. – Asia Times, December 9, 2004.
- As frictions intensify between Japan and China [Knight-Ridder, Feb. 15, 2005], Japan – America’s strongest ally in the Pacific – has been forced to sign an oil agreement with Iran [New York Times, Feb. 16, 2005]. This agreement came as a slap in the face to the US which had opposed it.
- China is beginning a push to control the strategic Straights of Malacca through which 80% of its imported oil passes. This strategic waterway – only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest point – lies between the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. – Asia Times, March 2, 2005. Yes, and 40% of the world’s piracy occurs there.
- Indonesia has sent warships in an escalating dispute with Malaysia to an island off its west coast. The subject of the dispute: Malaysian oil exploration. – www.news.com.au, March 6, 2005.
- The following day Indonesia dispatched F16 fighters to the Malaysian border, escalating the oil conflict. – The Standard, Match 7, 2005.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has traveled to New Delhi, India where he chose to make a public statement that he would cut off Venezuelan oil supplies to the US in the event of any intervention or a US-directed attempt on his life. The Indian government has thus tacitly endorsed the threat. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Venezuela has imponderably replied that if that happened the US would just go somewhere else to get its oil. [Where? Iran? Canada (which is signing contracts with China)? West Africa? There is no elasticity anywhere.] – Multiple sources.
- Venezuela has sold its (already in decline) San Cristobal oil field to India. – Times of India, March 6, 2005
- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has stated that high oil prices are threatening the global economy and that those prices will be one of the most important items on the agenda of the coming G-8 summit. – The Daily Star, March 1, 2005.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031005_globalcorp.shtml