deed that we personally are needed. . . . To all mankind, they are
addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this
place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it
or not. Let us make the best of it before it is too late! Let us represent
worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned
us! It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros
and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to
the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he
slinks away into the depth of the thicket. But that is not the question.
What are we doing, that is the question.2
Why not accept the fact that fossil fuels are not the energy of the future
and start developing alternatives? Oil executives already know this,
but they have chosen to be quiet about it. There are reputations to protect
and shareholders to please. That’s the underlying story about the reserves
scandal—companies depend on their reserves to keep up with
Wall Street expectations. As one expert said, the 2004 reserve scandal involving
the Royal Dutch Shell company was just a tip of the iceberg.
Shell was forced to restate its reserves for several years. Ditto Repsol.
Fortunately, for the investors, there’s a silver lining: There is a lot of
money to be made in this business. If you ever wanted to get a piece of
the oil boom, this is your opportunity.
You shouldn’t depend on oil executives to tell you anything more than
they want you to know. That’s just not going to happen. As a matter of fact,
industry people only talk about “oil peak” when they want to shoot down
the whole idea, but you can read between the lines when they express worries
about maintaining their supply levels and replacing their reserves.
Certainly, the oil peak debate has a long history. It started in 1956
when Shell geophysicist Marion King Hubbert correctly predicted that
U.S. oil production would peak in 1969–1970 and drop rapidly thereafter.
Hubbert used the same theory that was already being used for the
study of population, but he applied it to oil growth.3
The theory is based on how population growth is influenced by the environment.
It argues that when a new population of a species starts growing
in a resource-based area, the rate of growth increases by the same
fraction each year. But once the population gets bigger than the resource
available for its existence, the growth rate of that population starts to slow.
The same is true of oil, Hubbert said, adding that the chance of discovering
new oil decreases when there’s less new oil to find. Based on
that analysis, he added, once we begin to discover less oil, it’s possible
that a time will come when we won’t get any new oil. As such, the only
4 INTRODUCTION