The End Of Easy Oil

Ken Silverstein interviews Peter Maass, author of Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil:

The oil industry is filled with a lot of smart people whose companies possess amazing technology. There is a debate within this industry about peak oil. Chevron and BP, though denying the imminence of a peak, have been ahead of others in admitting that the era of “easy oil,” as they sometimes call it, is over. The rest of the oil that’s to be found, they say, will be in hard-to-reach reservoirs that won’t be as large as the huge ones in Saudi Arabia or Iran.

Oil executives are inherent optimists, because they are accustomed to drilling nine dry holes before finding a good one. So I think their dismissal of peak oil–the idea that the world has reached or will soon reach its peak of oil output–is genuinely felt to an extent. I also think there’s some willful distortion, because admitting to peak oil–which I define as a combination of geological and political limits on production–means their business model, which consists of extracting the stuff, has a dismal future. The major companies are of course investing in alternative energy projects, but I think these are optional bets they can afford to make and that they don’t regard as crucial to their future. Just as the railroad companies did not lead the way into automotive production, I wouldn’t expect and wouldn’t want oil companies to control the next generation of energy technologies.