Dick Cheney, Peak Oil and the Final Count Down
by Kjell Aleklett
Kjell Aleklett is the President of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil
PDF version of this article with graphics is available here:
www.peakoil.net/Publications/Cheney_PeakOil_FCD.pdf
In the April 2004 issue of the magazine the Middle East I found a statement that Vice- President Dick Cheney had made in a speech at the London Institute of Petroleum Autumn lunch in 1999 when he was Chairman of Halliburton. A key passage from his speech was: “That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.”
It suggested that he was fully aware of the issue of peak oil. A full text of the talk had been available on the website of the Institute of Petroleum, but has now been removed (wwww.petroleum.co.uk/speeches.htm). Nevertheless, further research did bring to light a printed version, dated 24.08.00, as follows:
energybulletin.net
full speech
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Published on 11 May 2004 by Association for the Study of Peak Oil. Archived on 11 May 2004.
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Published on 1 Nov 2005
KUNSTLER: Matt, this is Jim and I really am compelled to ask you this because people have asked me this repeatedly. Matt Simmons has on many occasions has consorted with and talked to the leaders and business and politics in America. You have advised George Bush at various times over the last 5 years and we really are puzzled about whether these guys get it or not.
SIMMONS: You know ironically I think they are starting to. I think part of the problem is that, yeah, that I speak out loudly when I'm in Washington and I speak out loudly when someone calls me, but so do lots of other people lobby to say we have no problems and I'm expert…..trust me we have no problems. It's very interesting though. There is a Congressman from Western Maryland Roscoe Bartlett, who was elected to Congress 14 years ago, who, from our website, got very concerned about peak oil. Congressman Bartlett - when he was elected to Congress 14 years ago was 66 years old - has his Ph.D. in Science. And he has basically spent a better part of an hour in the Oval Office with President Bush discussing peak oil. President Bush has asked the National Petroleum Council to gear up, roll up their sleeves and do a very serious analysis about how real is this issue. We are going to have to battle a lot of entrenched people that basically just…they don't believe it's an issue. And I don't think they have any axe to grind. They just basically don't think it's an issue because Adam Smith rules the oil business.
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Matthew R. Simmons, head of Simmons & Company International, a Houston-based energy investment bank, doesn’t just believe that peak oil has already happened. He told EnergyTechStocks.com that in another year or so the world will wake up and say – in Simmons’ words – “Oh, damn. We peaked in May 2005.”
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