The impending global energy crisis
Michael Klare is warning in a new article (Reaching The Saudi Peak, June 27, 2005) that the world is likely going to face a serious energy crisis in the foreseeable future. Dire predictions of a decline in oil production seem to be common but this piece caught my attention. Klare's forecast is based on a new book by Matthew Simmons, "chairman and CEO of one of the nation's leading oil-industry investment banks", called Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy that details why the assurances of long-term, high output oil production coming from Saudi officials are wrong.
Klare concludes that:
Eventually, in the not-too-distant future, Saudi production will begin a sharp decline from which there is no escape. And when that happens, the world will face an energy crisis of unprecedented scale... Oil will still be available on international markets, but not in the abundance to which we have become accustomed and not at a price that many of us will be able to afford. Transportation, and everything it effects, which is to say, virtually the entire world economy, will be much, much more costly. The cost of food will also rise, as modern agriculture relies to an extraordinary extent on petroleum products for tilling, harvesting, pest protection, processing and delivery. Many other products made with petroleum paints, plastics, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and so forth will also prove far more costly. Under these circumstances, a global economic contraction with all the individual pain and hardship that would surely produce appears nearly inevitable... If we act now to limit our consumption of oil and develop non-petroleum energy alternatives, we can face the "twilight" of the Petroleum Age with some degree of hope; if we fail to do so, we are in for a very grim time indeed.
I presume that the upper echelons of the U.S. government have not been relying upon the word of the governmentrnemnt and are well aware of the impending crisis. As oil becomes more scarce and thus more valuable it will only become more important for U.S. planners to control the countries that possess it.
Klare concludes that:
Eventually, in the not-too-distant future, Saudi production will begin a sharp decline from which there is no escape. And when that happens, the world will face an energy crisis of unprecedented scale... Oil will still be available on international markets, but not in the abundance to which we have become accustomed and not at a price that many of us will be able to afford. Transportation, and everything it effects, which is to say, virtually the entire world economy, will be much, much more costly. The cost of food will also rise, as modern agriculture relies to an extraordinary extent on petroleum products for tilling, harvesting, pest protection, processing and delivery. Many other products made with petroleum paints, plastics, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and so forth will also prove far more costly. Under these circumstances, a global economic contraction with all the individual pain and hardship that would surely produce appears nearly inevitable... If we act now to limit our consumption of oil and develop non-petroleum energy alternatives, we can face the "twilight" of the Petroleum Age with some degree of hope; if we fail to do so, we are in for a very grim time indeed.
I presume that the upper echelons of the U.S. government have not been relying upon the word of the governmentrnemnt and are well aware of the impending crisis. As oil becomes more scarce and thus more valuable it will only become more important for U.S. planners to control the countries that possess it.
posted by Steve Fake at 6/27/2005 03:00:00 PM
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