Articles by David Roberts

Wall Street and peak oil

At this point, predictions of peak oil are no biggie. But it seems significant that a Wall Street research and analysis firm -- John S. Herold Inc. -- is getting in the game. The analysts at Herold ...

... have begun estimating when each of the world's biggest energy companies will peak in its ability to produce oil and gas. Herold's work shows that the best minds in the energy industry are accepting the reality that the globe is reaching (or has already reached) the limit of its own ability to produce ever increasing amounts of oil.

...

Since last fall, Herold has done peak estimates on about two dozen oil companies. Herold believes that the French oil company, Total S.A., will reach its peak production in 2007. Herold expects 2008 to be critical, with Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., BP, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and the Italian producer, Eni S.p.A., all hitting their peaks. In 2009, Herold expects ChevronTexaco Corp. to peak. In Herold's view, each of the world's seven largest publicly traded oil companies will begin seeing production declines within the next 48 months or so.

Of course Herold's specific predictions are controversial, but the firm itself is quite well-respected. Peak oil is slowly but surely sinking into mainstream discourse. If Herold is correct, says Salon:

• Oil prices -- which are already at record levels -- will continue rising as demand outstrips supply. In a few years, gasoline prices of $2 per gallon could seem like a bargain.
• State-owned oil companies like Mexico's Pemex, Venezuela's PDVSA (Petroléos de Venezuela) and Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco may be unable to increase their production enough to meet burgeoning global demand.
• The producers who belong to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and Saudi Arabia in particular, may have even more leverage over the global oil market in the coming years.
• The United States will be ever more reliant on oil imported from countries filled with people who don't like George W. Bush or his policies.

Read the whole thing.

Rorschach poll

There are any number of ways one could interpret the results of this poll.

If you're cynical, you might conclude that people are liars. If 66% of people (even 57% of conservatives! even 67% of NASCAR fans!) think driving a fuel-efficient car is patriotic, then why aren't they driving fuel-efficient cars? One might conclude that patriotism is a handy way to attack people you dislike, but somewhat hollow as an actual motivation for sacrifice, or even changing one's own behavior.

If you're a more optimistic type, you might conclude that this level of support for fuel efficiency -- 89% think it's important for government to act to reach 40mpg -- is a vast, largely untapped political force. One might think that an aggressive program of education and advocacy would open people's eyes up to the fact that their government is in fact doing very little, and get them fired up.

Or one could just conclude that polls don't mean much at all.

(The full results of the poll are in a press release here as a PDF.)

Also, check out 40mpg.org, launched today in the wake of the poll. Very cool site.

Wolfowitz and the World Bank

Nobody is entirely sure what to make of the appointment of neocon radical Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. However, this Bloomberg story contains an ominous tidbit:

Under Wolfowitz, the Bush administration may now try to narrow the focus of the World Bank, returning the international lending institution to its roots of primarily financing large infrastructure projects and limiting the practice of handing out zero-interest loans, analysts such as Alan Meltzer, who led a 2000 congressional inquiry into the World Bank, said.

For the past decade or two, the World Bank had been making an effort -- or at least talking more -- about making low-to-zero interest loans to social development projects in developing countries, stuff like pensions and education. This is contrast to the old school, wherein the WB would make enormous loans to huge infrastructure projects -- highways, hydropower, etc. -- that would enrich the huge American companies (see: Halliburton) that built them, leave the poor poor, and put the countries themselves in crippling debt to the U.S., which they could never possibly hope to escape from, leaving them, effectively, permanently indentured American colonies.

Here's a bit of an interview with John Perkins, ex-international development consultant and author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man:

The electricity, the highways, the ports were seldom even used by the people who needed them the most. But the country would be left holding a huge debt and it would be such a large debt that they couldn't possibly repay it. And so at some point in time, we economic hit men, we go back into the country and say, "Look, you owe us a lot of money, you can't pay your debts. Therefore sell us your oil at a real cheap price or vote with us at a UN vote or give us land for a military base or send some of your troops to some country where we want you to support us."

Looks like Wolfowitz -- and unreconstructed advocate of American Empire -- may be sent to return the WB to its "good" old days.

(All this comes via Digby, whom you should be reading more often.)

(See also this dystopian scenario from Billmon.)

Update [2005-3-18 8:28:46 by Dave Roberts]: More support for this theory in an American Prospect column.

Update [2005-3-18 10:8:57 by Dave Roberts]: And see this Salon piece on Wolfowitz's 30-year record of incompetence.

Terror alert level green!

The first 'graph of this Post-Gazette story really says it all:

The [Pennsylvania] state House approved a measure yesterday to impose harsh penalties against "eco-terrorists," even though legislators sharply disagreed on what types of activity constituted eco-terrorism.