Wolf at the Door
TALK ABOUT GREAT ENTRANCES! For investors, anyway, they don't make them any better than the memorable one staged by that precocious calendrical infant, 2008. That is, if you're an investor who happens to have a portfolio chock full of gold and overflowing with oil...
Matt Simmons, boss man at Houston-based Simmons & Co., which covers energy the way Willie Mays used to cover center field, put out one of his rare personal reports on oil, and it doesn't make for pleasant reading. Matt lays out the case quite persuasively that global production peaked in 2005 at 74,298,000 barrels a day and is now a couple of million below that, while daily consumption has continued to climb and is rapidly approaching 88 million barrels. To fill the gap, he reports, various sources are being tapped, all of which share one quality -- they're not sustainable.
That suggests to him, among many more horrific things, that we'd better get used to $100-a-barrel oil, which he reassuringly reflects "is the equivalent of only 15 cents a cup." Somehow, that doesn't make us feel any better, even if it isn't "social chaos and widespread geopolitical conflict or war," possibilities he also alludes to if we don't get off our butts and do something about finding new energy sources, seriously pushing conservation and weaning ourselves from "a chronic addiction" to fossil fuels.
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