Oil Expert Predicts Apocalypse, But Few are Listening

Newhouse News Service ^ | August 20, 2005 | Alexander Lane

[minerboy]

hink high gas prices are bad?

Get a load of what ex-oilman and ex-Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes believes are following closely behind:

"War, famine, pestilence and death," he said. "We've got to get the warning out."

The threat? Peak oil.

The term refers to the time when the worldwide production of oil peaks and begins a rapid decline. From then on, this incredibly efficient fuel source, which still costs less than most bottled water, will be ever more scarce and ever more costly.

Highly respected sources, including the U.S. government, think that day is distant, and most mainstream economists think it won't cause much of a ruckus.

But Deffeyes thinks peak oil is coming in November, and could bring humankind to the brink.

"It's been like pulling teeth to get public awareness," he said.

So who is this well-credentialed Chicken Little?

Deffeyes grew up next to gushing oil wells. He is a former petroleum geologist himself, having worked for Shell Oil for six years after earning a doctorate from Princeton.

He is a devotee of former Shell geologist M. King Hubbert, who correctly predicted U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Deffeyes is also the author of "Hubbert's Peak" and "Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak," which was published last spring.

He is among a cadre of peak-oil proponents who sketch out a frightening near-term future in which the American way of life is upended as the United States, China and great nations scramble after oil fields like desperate players in a game of musical chairs.

[Just mythoughts]

Ok.

[Paul Ross]

Yes. Gore and Xlinton sold Elk Hill for what, only 15% of its real worth, by having misrepresented the quality of the oil and the reserves? This makes the Teapot Dome scandal look like pretty small potatoes by comparison. But the GOP Congress did SQUAT about this. Just let it slide through. They were too corrupt themselves to be pointing any fingers apparently...