Get Ready for the Peak Experience
Date: Monday, August 30, 2004 @ 22:08:15 GMT
Topic: General


By Kelpie Wilson, TruthOut.org. Posted August 30, 2004.

Thanks to the collusion of industry, financial and government interests, the coming decline in oil production is portrayed as so impossibly far off in the future that there is no sense talking about it – but talk we must...

...So I was mildly shocked to hear Texas oilman and corporate raider, T. Boone Pickens declare on NPR's Morning Edition last week: "The peak is now."



Pickens is certainly not the last word on peak prediction, but other serious analysts come close to his views. Petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of the breakthrough book "Hubbert's Peak," predicts the peak will fall on Thanksgiving Day in 2005. Others are more reluctant to pinpoint the peak and say it may be a few more years yet, but certainly before 2010. That's five, six years at the most to get our ducks in a row and ready to face a world of vastly accelerating oil prices.

Contrast this news with what governments and oil companies and have been saying. According to the US Energy Information Agency, oil production won't peak until 2035...

Oil companies do not want the word to get out. On Aug. 24, Shell Oil agreed to pay a $150 million fine for inflating its proven reserves by 4.5 billion barrels. Shell is the third largest oil company in the world and one fifth of their stated reserves were a lie. They did it to protect their stock value...

But we have got ourselves in a very dangerous situation. The potential exists for oil prices to increase quickly and radically. There won't be much time to manufacture the new energy infrastructure. Belt tightening will be needed. Economies could turn to dirty coal for a quick energy fix and the competition for the remaining oil could heat up into further wars.

For this reason, accurate, widely disseminated information about energy is absolutely critical. At all costs, we must not allow the media game that went on with global warming to happen with peak oil...

For too long, the world have been chained to the petro-dollar. New possibilities await. Let us go forward not in fear, but in the spirit of adventure.

Read the whole story at: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/19719/





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