The Oil Drum: Europe

Bob Hirsch talking "Worst Case Scenarios" for Oil...as in "maybe $500/bbl" in the next few years...with increasing uncertainty/volatility (yes, that's right, oil could snap back down to $100/bbl, but then snap back up even higher again in a few months...without even considering geopolitics and other "above ground factors," which of course we must.)

More under the fold--a video of the House Democrat(s?) Call for Nationalization of US Refineries, Matt Simmons on the "Truth about Offshore Drilling," a quality interview with Professor Michael Klare on "The Geopolitics of Energy" with Jim Puplava of Financial Sense, an effective 30 second Aussie commerical "Gas is "F*-ing Expensive," and a Bill O'Reilly vid to make your head explode.

TomDispatch.com writes:

Michael Klare's latest piece offers perhaps the crucial context within which to consider Cheney's urge to launch an air assault on Iran. If we are, as Klare writes, entering a "tough-oil era," if global oil supplies are already under intense pressure and oil prices ready to leap on any hint of possible oil disaster anywhere on the planet, then imagine what a major air assault on Iran before January 2009 might mean. Actually, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates helped us imagine just this at his confirmation hearings back in December 2006 when asked about the effects of such an attack: "It's always awkward to talk about hypotheticals in this case. But I think that while Iran cannot attack us directly militarily, I think that their capacity to potentially close off the Persian Gulf to all exports of oil, their potential to unleash a significant wave of terror both in the -- well, in the Middle East and in Europe and even here in this country is very real."

Yes, that's right, Klare is buying in to things a little more than he used to...

Recently, however, a spate of high-level government and industry reports have begun to suggest that the original peak-oil theorists were far closer to the grim reality of global-oil availability than industry analysts were willing to admit. Industry optimism regarding long-term energy-supply prospects, these official reports indicate, has now given way to a deep-seated pessimism, even in the biggest of Big Oil corporate headquarters.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174829/michael_klare_tough_oil_on_tap

(Of course, peak oil getting hidden by a deflationary spiral--if it continues--isn't going to help awareness much...)

Note: this story initially ran November 6, 2006. If there are other stories you would like to see re-run, email the eds box. Also, if you are so inclined, this story has been resubmitted to the link farms such as reddit and digg...

Dr. Michael T. Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. One of the world's leading experts on the energy geopolitics, Klare is perhaps best known for his history and analysis Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum. Klare is a frequent contributor at TomDispatch, where he provides a welcome alternative to the mainstream media's spoonfed pablum concerning crucial issues like America's preemptive war on Iraq, the Iranian nuclear stand-off and the global chess game to control oil & natural gas resources.

Michael Klare

Klare's presentation at ASPO-USA is nicely summarized by Chris Vernon of The Oil Drum's United Kingdom section —please read Chris' report along with this interview. At the conference, I arranged to e-mail him some questions which he kindly took the time to answer. Subsequently, we did a follow-up interview on the phone. Both the questions and answers are presented verbatim.

Professor Michael Klare addressed the Boston conference on the second day. Respected in the peak oil community for his two books Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum and Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, Klare spoke on the difference between easy oil and hard oil and the geopolitical implications of entering the second half of the oil age.

Michael Klare, ASPO-USA, Boston