Leading Energy Consultants
Tell Key Washington Think-Tank
Peak Oil To Arrive As Early As 2014
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/peakoil2014.htm
As Deutsche Bank Report Warns Of Global Conflict
Over Oil And Gas

'Peak Oil' Update -  4 January 2005

The Truth Is Out

ACORE Conference attendees
in the Cannon Caucus Room of the U.S. House of Representatives
December 2004

"I fear we're going to be at war for decades, not years ..... one major component of that war is oil."
James Woolsey, Former Director of The CIA
Report On The Annual Policy Forum Of The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
Washington, 6-7 December 2004
RenewableEnergyAccess.com, 14 December 2004

"[Former Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Frank] Gaffney cited the growing scarcity of resources in a world with burgeoning economies and populations, such as China as having the potential to create a 'perfect storm.' Faced with a scenario of increasingly insatiable and expensive demands for energy, countries like the U.S. and China could find themselves at the brink of war."
Report On The Annual Policy Forum Of The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
Washington, 6-7 December 2004
RenewableEnergyAccess.com, 14 December 2004

"The election campaign is over and it is time for both parties, and the Administration and the Congress, to be honest about energy."
US and Global Dependence on Middle Eastern Energy Exports: 2004-2030
Center for Strategic and International Studies, 29 November 2004

"The signs are mounting that a physical scarcity of mineral oil must be expected much sooner than anticipated.... In all probability a battle will break out over shares in the globally diminishing [oil and gas] reserves, particularly of oil..... the really interesting date is not the time at which the use of reserves comes to an end, but the time of maximum production. When output starts to decline from this peak, with demand remaining constant or even continuing to rise, strong reactions in prices and economic upheaval are possible..... The end-of-fossil-hydrocarbons scenario is not therefore a doom-and-gloom picture painted by pessimistic end-of-the-world prophets, but a view of scarcity in the coming years and decades that must be taken seriously. Forward-looking politicians, company chiefs and economists should prepare for this in good time, to effect the necessary transitions as smoothly as possible.... Going forward, the supply situation will become increasingly critical in the markets for mineral oil and, later, natural gas. At the latest when demand outstrips reserves, energy prices will climb significantly."
Energy Prospects After The Petroleum Age
Deutsche Bank Research, 2 December 2004

"World oil production is likely to peak in the next decade, much earlier than many international forecasts, a senior BP executive has told The Business. BP exploration consultant Francis Harper said he estimated the world's total original usable oil resources - the amount of oil before drilling began - at about 2.4 trillion barrels of oil. This is considerably less than the 3 trillion assumed by bullish commentators such as the US government's Geological Survey. This points to oil production peaking between 2010 and 2020. He added that oil companies' public positions on the issue masked debate within them. 'There are people in BP who happen to be economists and so happen to think there's no problem, and there are people in BP who are geologists who are saying it's getting hard to find.'..... Seth Kleinman at PFC Energy said oil companies had held back from such statements. 'There's a certain degree of hesitancy for oil companies to go on the record and say, 'we are doing well with oil prices where they are now, but 10 years down the road things actually look pretty dire'."
Oil supply to peak sooner than we think, says BP scientist
The Business, 7 November 2004

"Over the last 20 years, the size of oil discoveries has fallen off dramatically. We are finding more fields than in the '60s and '70s, but they're much smaller. We're producing three barrels of oil for every one barrel of oil that we find. The U.S. government should consider the possibilities raised by the peak-oil people. We have to be prepared to deal with all plausible situations, and it has to be reflected in policy. People don't want to face this reality. Once you accept it as a possibility -- not even as a certainty, but just as one of many possible scenarios -- then you have to make all sorts of changes (in the way you live), because it would not make sense not to."
Michael Rodgers, PFC Energy
CNN, 3 November 2004

2014

When Is The Tipping Point in a High (2.4%) Demand Growth
Scenario?
(World Oil Demand/Supply - Millions Of Barrels Per Day)
"Based on estimates of remaining OPEC reserves and persistent negative annual petroleum balances, there will come a time when OPEC production will not be able to fill the growing gap between demand and non-OPEC production capacity. In a high demand growth scenario [2.4%], OPEC production will likely not be able to meet global demand as early as the middle part of the next decade."
PFC Energy’s Global Crude Oil and Natural Gas Liquids Supply Forecast
Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004

"....this month, PFC Energy, a respected Washington energy - consulting firm, released a report essentially endorsing Dr. Campbell's gloomy prediction [on global oil supplies]. PFC puts the peak a bit further out than Dr. Campbell does -- sometime between 2010 and 2015. But Michael Rodgers, the PFC senior director who coordinated the report, agrees with Dr. Campbell that the precise year of the peak is less important than the conclusion that it is coming. Mr. Rodgers says PFC officials debated whether to stake their reputation on the side of those whose pessimistic predictions have been wrong before. But they concluded that the decline in global oil discoveries has become so pronounced that the industry can't count on technological breakthroughs to bail it out in time..... Mr. Rodgers, the PFC senior director, says he is convinced that Dr. Campbell's criticism is valid. He says oil production is either reaching a plateau or declining in 33 of 48 major oil-producing countries, including six of the 11 OPEC countries. Mr. Rodgers also points to a separate set of numbers. Over the past decade, he says, the percentage of major oil companies' exploration-and-production budget that has gone to exploration has dropped to about 12% from about 30%. That, he reasons, is because they have concluded that there aren't many more large caches of oil for them to profitably find. 'Despite the fact that we're in the highest oil-price era, the level of exploration is not increasing,' Mr. Rodgers says. 'The reason it's not increasing is that, in so many regions of the world, the fields have gotten so small that even though you might be able to drill a well and get a positive rate of return, the incremental value doesn't mean a lot.'"
Dire Prophecy: As Prices Soar, Doomsayers Provoke Debate on Oil's Future
Wall St Journal, 21 September 2004

"The supplies side is limited. We are reaching the limits of the planet very soon. We can't produce much more oil than we are producing today..... I am talking about two to three years from now.... It is always a supply problem. It is never a demand problem. The oil fields cannot produce enough oil anymore..... If what I predict is going to happen in 2006 or 2007 then you will have a constant oil shock after that. So everything is going to change..... [When this oil crisis happens] You will cut demand first but then the supply is going to go down as well. In the previous ones it was not like that. You would cut demand and supply would go up and you would recalibrate the whole system...... This time you will not be able to recalibrate. What I'm saying is that you don't have any more spare capacity neither in the Middle East, nor in OPEC, nor anywhere else. That's why a problem like Yukos, which is a small problem after all, becomes such a big problem today."
Dr Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, Vice President of the National Iranian Oil Company
Oil demand will soon outstrip supply: industry planner
ABC (Australia), 9 August 2004

"The signs are mounting that a physical scarcity of mineral oil must be expected much sooner than anticipated.... In all probability a battle will break out over shares in the globally diminishing [oil and gas] reserves, particularly of oil..... "
Energy Prospects After The Petroleum Age
Deutsche Bank Research, 2 December 2004

".... it is pretty much a betting certainty that the White House is fully conversant with the arguments of 'the peak-oil people'. It's just that they have no 'Plan B' to deal with the issue. So for those who prefer not to see the lifespan of their sons and daughters shortened by more wars precipitated by the destructive policies of the myopic 'no Plan B' crowd, the looming energy crisis message needs to be got out loud, clear, and immediately. This is an absolute imperative if there is to be any hope of avoiding the escalation in international chaos that has already begun to emerge from this situation. Otherwise there are going to be an awful lot more dead people out there as the Deutsche Bank report implicitly warns...... at least until someone shows some constructive leadership and comes up with that elusive 'Plan B'. But until the real scale of the issue registers with a higher proportion of Joe Public that's unlikely to happen. So you'd better get on and spread the word."
Peak Oil To Arrive As Early As 2014
'Peak Oil' Update, 4 January 2005

"Over the next 25 years, a new world energy economy will arrive in three waves. We are near the top of the first and smallest one, a warning wave. A second more powerful wave likely will hit in the 2009-2010 period when the non-OPEC world may reach its all-time highest output of crude oil, subsequently declining to become ever more dependent on OPEC for incremental barrels of production. The final wave should break around 2020, or earlier, as even OPEC's vast reserves are tapped at a maximum rate of production. After that, oil volume should head down and keep falling, never to revive..... An international economic disturbance of this magnitude will create potential conflicts between nations and civil competition within societies. These could be a trial for us and for our children, made worse in the early years by our lack of preparation and our failure to understand what is already happening to us."
 The Gathering Storm
Energy Bulletin, 15 November 2004

4 January 2005

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington based think-tank led by former US deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, has been focused since at least the second half of the 1990s on increasing geopolitical threats to America's energy security as competition for access to global oil supplies intensifies.

CSIS is highly influential in the corridors of power. Its trustees include Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Adviser under Jimmy Carter), Henry Kissinger (National Security Adviser under Richard Nixon), Brent Scowcroft (National Security Adviser under George Bush Snr) and James Woolsey (Director of the CIA under Bill Clinton).

Last autumn CSIS made available on its web site a copy of a presentation from a leading energy sector consultancy. The presentation was made to CSIS 8 September 2004 by Washington based PFC Energy (formerly known as the Petroleum Finance Corporation). PFC describes itself as "one of the pre-eminent strategic advisory firms in global energy". PFC's chairman, J. Robinson West, was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Economic Affairs for Gerald Ford and had responsibility for US off-shore oil policy during the Reagan Administration. He currently sits on the US Energy Secretary's Advisory Board.

A full copy of the PFC presentation is available from the CSIS web site at http://www.csis.org/energy/040908_presentation.pdf. However, key points and selected graphs from the report are made available below for ease of reference.

Importantly the PFC oil production forecasts include output from anticipated new discoveries, including non-conventional sources such as natural gas liquids (NGLs) and oil sands. Whilst there has been much discussion about the latter in a variety of circles, PFC forecast only between 2 and 4 million barrels per day (bpd) of production from oil sands by the time global oil production peaks.

PFC forecast a total global production at the peak of around 105 million bpd. This compares with:

• Current consumption of around 82 million bpd

• US Energy Information Administration forecast demand of 121 million bpd by 2025

• International Energy Agency forecast demand of 121 million bpd by 2030

But whilst the PFC presentation only refers by name to the oil sands of Canada, other analysts in Germany have projected oil sand production from both Canada and Venezuela combined of only 1.5 million barrels per day.

A major 'tipping point' (where global daily oil production reaches a top plateau and then declines, more colloquially referred to by others as 'Peak Oil') is predicted by PFC to arrive as early as 2014 under conditions of surging global demand for oil. This will be most likely if countries such as China and India continue to achieve rapid rate industrialisation.

Under an energy demand growth scenario of 1.8% approximating to the recent historic average the date slips back, but only to 2018. Under these scenarios the arrival of the critical peak oil 'tipping point' is therefore projected on a ten to fifteen year time horizon.

The most pessimistic PFC scenario is based on a projected high annual oil growth demand of 2.4%. This compares with global oil demand in 2004 increasing at the unexpectedly high rate of around 3% in large part driven by high demand from China.

Production from the Former Soviet Union will peak around 2012, whilst production from many other non-OPEC countries has already peaked according to PFC. PFC state that OPEC as a group is itself already depleting at a rate of about 1% per year, even taking into account new discoveries.

Importantly PFC's forecasts include provision for projected new exploration discoveries, the rate of which is expected to continue to decline as a result of fundamental geological constraints.

PFC concludes that there is no alternative to the curbing of global demand for oil. This presumably means increasing conservation measures, and developing alternative energy sources. Or it means global economic recession. Or it means a combination of these.

Ten years is, however, a very short space of time in which to fundamentally change the way the world produces and consumes its energy.

Is the western political system prepared for this? Or will Washington and London simply continue to seek control of oil rich countries (and oil transit route countries) through 'regime change' as time runs out in a strategic environment where no credible 'Plan B' for alternative sources of energy has been put in place? From the false-pretext toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the apparent British sponsorship of a failed coup d'etat in oil rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004, the situation is looking increasing desperate.

And how viable is such an approach in any case? PFC suggest that as the role of OPEC becomes increasingly pivotal regime change in such countries will prove more challenging as a direct result of rising oil prices. PFC states "Higher volumes and higher prices will bring back large financial surpluses to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The new-found wealth will alter the present strategic relationship with the US: despite louder calls for reforms from the US, the region will spend its way out of reforms, and the regimes will have the opportunity to use their financial might to co-opt and divide the different interest groups".

In the context of the recent history of 'regime change' as a foreign policy tool, it is interesting to note that the PFC figures show that within OPEC the country whose oil reserves are least depleted in percentage terms is Iraq. Besides its importance as a new military platform from which to police the whole of the Gulf, Iraq (with the third largest reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran) therefore has the greatest proportional capacity for increased production within OPEC.

The US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) 2004 International Energy Outlook report has Iraq moving up the table of OPEC daily production from fourth in 2001 behind Iran and Venezuela (both these countries' production is already close to or past peak according to PFC data), to second in 2025 with only Saudi Arabia remaining ahead.

To 2025 the EIA is projecting an increase of 136% in Iraqi production over 2001 levels, a higher increase than projected for any other country in the world.

Realising as much as possible of this Iraqi potential will become increasingly important as the global 'peak' gets closer. However, the White House miscalculation of the Iraqi response to the occupation of their country has resulted in the opposite effect. Iraqi oil production has fallen as the fighting continues, thereby threatening an acceleration of the onset of the global peak all the time the situation has not been recovered (according to the London Times 4 January the director of Iraq's intelligence service estimates there are more than 200,000 insurgents in the country, a figure now greater than coalition forces).

Since its publication PFC's oil supply-demand forecast has been followed by the surfacing of a similar prognosis from a senior exploration geologist at BP who issued a separate 'peak oil' warning in November 2004. This forecast predicts the arrival of the peak oil tipping point some time between 2010 - 2020.

However, prognoses such as those emerging out of PFC and BP are not the most troubling available. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil's November 2004 forecast gives an earlier date for global peak oil of 2007.

This is not new.

In 1999 current CSIS trustee James Woolsey (a former director of the CIA during the Clinton administration) warned in a paper co-authored for the Council On Foreign Relations that: "Optimists about world oil reserves, such as the Department of Energy, are getting increasingly lonely. The International Energy Agency now says that world production outside the Middle Eastern Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) will peak in 1999 and world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. This projection is supported by influential recent articles in Science and Scientific American. Some knowledgeable academic and industry voices put the date that world production will peak even sooner—within the next five or six years.... The recent report by the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology... concluded  'A plausible argument can be made that the security of the United States is at least as likely to be imperiled in the first half of the next century by the consequences of inadequacies in the energy options available to the world as by inadequacies in the capabilities of U.S. weapons systems.  It is striking that the Federal government spends about 20 times more R&D money on the latter problem than on the former.'... At present, the United States is not funding a vigorous program in renewable technologies.... The United States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources. Our growing dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's game—there is no way for the rest of the world to win. Our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change—or through all of the above."

At a conference of the American Council On Renewable Energy in Washington in December 2004 Woolsey reflected on how things have since developed. Woolsey (who reportedly drives a hybrid-electric Toyota Prius and has a solar PV system on his home) ruefully told delegates: "I fear we're going to be at war for decades, not years ..... one major component of that war is oil."

A report by the research department of Germany's Deutsche Bank published in December 2004 has also echoed many of these concerns. Some key extracts from the report (as well as the full report itself) may be accessed by clicking here. However, the following quotation from the study gives the essence of what the bank believes lies ahead: "The signs are mounting that a physical scarcity of mineral oil must be expected much sooner than anticipated.... In all probability a battle will break out over shares in the globally diminishing reserves, particularly of oil..... The end-of-fossil-hydrocarbons scenario is not therefore a doom-and-gloom picture painted by pessimistic end-of-the-world prophets, but a view of scarcity in the coming years and decades that must be taken seriously. Forward-looking politicians, company chiefs and economists should prepare for this in good time, to effect the necessary transitions as smoothly as possible."

Dr Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, Vice President of the National Iranian Oil Company also gave the following warning in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 9 August 2004: "The supplies side is limited. We are reaching the limits of the planet very soon. We can't produce much more oil than we are producing today..... I am talking about two to three years from now.... It is always a supply problem. It is never a demand problem. The oil fields cannot produce enough oil anymore..... If what I predict is going to happen in 2006 or 2007 then you will have a constant oil shock after that. So everything is going to change..... [When this oil crisis happens] You will cut demand first but then the supply is going to go down as well. In the previous ones it was not like that. You would cut demand and supply would go up and you would recalibrate the whole system...... This time you will not be able to recalibrate. What I'm saying is that you don't have any more spare capacity neither in the Middle East, nor in OPEC, nor anywhere else. That's why a problem like Yukos, which is a small problem after all, becomes such a big problem today." This certainly fits with PFC's analysis which suggests that Iran itself is at or close to its peak production plateau despite having the second largest reserves in the world.

As PFC themselves have put it "10 years down the road things actually look pretty dire".

If these experts are to believed then the time for work to begin in earnest on creating a non-oil based global economy is now. But as former British Energy minister Tim Eggar recently told the BBC this may not happen: "The problem with people wanting to tussle with energy strategy, energy policy is that as long as the lights are on, people are relaxed".

A report on the related subject of climate change by Roger Harrabin for the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme 3 January also highlighted the weaknesses of the political system in democratic countries in addressing such long term problems which tend to be swept under the carpet for short term electoral advantage. The experience in the UK, for example, is that whichever party in power seeks an increase in taxation on energy consumption - for example VAT on domestic fuel by the Conservatives or the fuel tax escalator by Labour - it will be attacked by the opposition, and usually successfully.

The problem is even more acute in the United States where cowering electoral candidates allow gasoline to remain at around $2 per gallon (a fraction of the heavily taxed cost in Britain of around $7), with gargantuan consumption in the US as a result. But the hidden price the American public is now paying for this is war - backed by a $1 billion per day Pentagon budget.

In short the American public, with their ballooning federal deficit inflated by huge war expenditure, are paying the price in any case. It's just that more of them die doing it this way.

Back in the UK Harrabin encapsulates this type of political syndrome in relation to energy consumption and climate change, where a similar principle applies, as follows: "[Natural] Gas prices still aren't high enough to make most people take energy conservation seriously. So there's clearly a problem here. Rich democratic governments who would like to protect the planet for future generations regularly shift their positions when faced by powerful lobbies or by opposition parties stirring up public resentment over a short-term electoral cycle."

The electoral effect is powerful. Anthony Cordesmans is Fellow in Strategy for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. In the words of his paper on global dependency on Middle Eastern energy exports published on 29 November: "The election campaign is over and it is time for both parties, and the Administration and the Congress, to be honest about energy."

So if former energy minister Tim Eggar is proven right, then just like the drug addict who knows he is sick but refuses to seek help, there is going to be an enormous amount of pain a few years down the road for the 'civilised world' if its economic reliance on the shrinking availability of oil is not addressed with the full urgency that it requires.

In short the world is facing the prospect of an unprecedented economic and geo-political tsunami with no official advance warnings being given to the public or any major pre-emptive protection measures having been put in place.

When the tsunami arrives (assuming insufficient change in our behaviour in the meantime), ironically it will be the voters who will be the first to demand answers as to why this problem was not anticipated and addressed. In reality it will be because the politicians were more frightened of the voters in the short term, than they were of the prospect of the tsunami in the longer-term. Once arrived, however, the tsunami is likely to be much more devastating than any electoral failure (or any terrorist attack from al Qaeda for that matter).

At the level of the nation state this dilemma can only be sensibly tackled if rival political parties (in a spirit of surrendering to the 'the greater national good') jointly develop and agree a common platform on how to rigorously address the issue - perhaps through the creation of a national commission for the anticipation and management of peak oil.  With such a mechanism in place, then however immediately unpalatable the medicine might be coming out of it, political rivals would be confident that they could enter an election without partisan vulnerability in this area, whilst remaining free to compete in other areas of national policy.

But don't hold your breath waiting for such principled statesmanship - at least not until the tsunami is only a few hundred feet from the shoreline. Perhaps at that point we may see the formation of governments of 'national unity' in relation to this subject, but by then it may well be too late for most of the pain to be averted.

The scale of the challenge is indeed large. Such an unusual spirit of co-operation is also needed on an international level, quite possibly with the aim of introducing a global oil depletion protocol (as far-sightedly proposed by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil), just as Kyoto has attempted to achieve in relation to climate change. Without this the pain of the anticipated 'peak oil' tsunami is likely to be intense.

Meanwhile, as the struggle for control of the Persian Gulf continues, those who are living and fighting in Iraq right now are already feeling some of the first waves of that pain. But they are also already spilling over into other areas as the struggle for state control of Yukos in Russia has shown.

President Putin is starting to play the oil and gas geopolitical card ruthlessly because he knows he cannot compete militarily with the US which has revived itself as a major post cold war external threat. American and NATO military bases are now encamped directly on Russia's own borders as the various former buffer states have been falling away one by one - the most recent of which is the Ukraine. But if either the Kremlin or the White House overplay their hand in their by now fragile post-9/11 'security' relationship the risk of more war in new theatres will be great, particularly as the US becomes more economically desperate over time.

This is a dangerous situation which will most likely get only more so unless there are urgent moves towards a world economy based on sources of energy not derived from oil and gas. A map of where most of the world's oil and gas reserve lie provides a picture worth a thousand articles (map source, BGR, the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hanover, May 2000). This pre-9/11 map shows the 'strategic ellipse' referred to in Deutsche Bank's report of 2 December 2004.

Colouring on map shows countries with largest gas deposits
Red = countries with more than 20 trillion m3 of natural gas reserves (i.e. Russia and Iran)
Click here to see full map including the Americas
Will the hydrocarbon era finish soon?
Geosciences in Exploration and Production: Information exchange for research and Industry, Hanover, 23.05.2000

A glance at the map shows that much of this global oil and gas ‘strategic ellipse’(which also covers associated crucial transit routes to ports on the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea) coincides with where the United States is immersed most directly in confrontations of great geopolitical tension. The key regions within the ellipse are:

1. Persian Gulf
2. Central Asia/Caspian/Caucasus
3. Western Siberia
(for a more detailed map of oil and gas reserves in this region see: 'Putin Strikes Back - Peak Oil Era Struggle For Power Intensifies')

The last two regions are in Russia's traditional zone of control. The first two fall within the Arab and wider Islamic world. How realistic is it to presume that the west can win this struggle for oil and gas, not least when China wants to lay its hands on these resources too? The experience in Iraq to date suggests not.

Not only will China conduct its first ever joint military manoeuvres with the Russians in 2005 as America seeks to enhance its dominance within the strategic ellipse, but it turns out that the Chinese are also tied into Putin's seizure of part of Yukos in a deal which may give them a 20% stake in the enterprise. "These agreements are part of strategic agreements between the Russian and Chinese leadership on the expansion of their partnership in the energy sector" the Russian energy minister told the BBC 30 December.

The military manoeuvres are, of course, intended to deliver a strong "You'd better keep out of here" message to the White House. But this also occurs at a time when China is developing major energy ties with Iran. Asia Times comments 2 December that "For a United States increasingly pointing at China as the next biggest challenge to Pax Americana, the Iran-China energy cooperation cannot but be interpreted as an ominous sign of emerging new trends in an area considered vital to US national interests..... Even short of joining forces formally, the main outlines of a China-Russia-Iran axis can be discerned in their mutual threat perception... For now, however, the quantum leap of China into the Middle East and Caspian energy markets has become a fait accompli, no matter how disturbed its biggest trade partner, the US, may be over its geopolitical ramifications".

The growing impact of China is expected to be large according to a piece entitled 'This is the Chinese century' by Lord Rees-Mogg in the London Times 3 January :"We all assume, as Washington undoubtedly assumes, that we are still living in the era of American hegemony, though it is already clear that China may be an emerging superpower. I think that we may be missing an idea familiar to economists, which was developed in the second half of the 19th century. That idea is 'marginalism'. It is one of those concepts universally accepted by professionals, but little understood outside. All that the 'marginalist revolution' really amounted to was the recognition that economic change is determined by what happens at the margin of transaction. The extra apple sets the price for all apples; if there is one apple short, all apples cost more; one surplus, and they all cost less..... Clearly, the United States is still by far the largest and most powerful economy on earth, with the most powerful defence technology. Yet it is China, not the United States, that is changing the global economy. As a producer, an exporter and as an importer, the growth of the Chinese economy is changing the marginal levels of global supply and demand. Over the weekend I was reading many forecasts by eminent economists of the world economy in 2005. I was also listening to similar forecasts on television, including CCTV International, the Chinese 24-hour news service. The unanimity was astonishing, as one buzzed from channel to channel, subject to subject, and economist to economist. What is the prospect for the dollar? That depends on China. The euro? China. The oil price? China....."

The US is the world's biggest consumer of oil, but China has become the second largest moving ahead of Japan. China knows it has got to compete with the US for world oil resources.

This growing competition is probably nowhere more clearly expressed than in the oil deal China is now developing with Venezuela, the biggest OPEC producer outside of the Persian Gulf and traditionally a major supplier to the United States. President Chavez is offering to help China build a strategic reserve using Venezuelan oil. This has significant implications for the US.

Associated Press reported 24 December "[President] Chavez, on a five-day visit to China, signed new agreements with Beijing allowing Chinese companies to explore for oil, set up refineries and produce natural gas in the South American country. Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest petroleum exporter and a main supplier of the United States, is also offering to supply China with 120,000 barrels of fuel oil a month, Chavez told Venezuelan state-run radio. China is eager to secure new sources of energy for its booming economy, which is struggling with power shortages. Venezuela wants to find new customers to reduce reliance on the United States, its No. 1 market but also a critic of Chavez's six-year-old government. 'We have been producing and exporting oil for more than 100 years but they have been years of dependence on the United States,' Chavez said at a meeting of Venezuelan and Chinese entrepreneurs. 'Now we are free and we make our resources available to the great country of China."

And according to Venezuela's internet news service VHeadline.com 2 January India and Brazil are part of these energy related tectonic shifts too: "After Iraq it is oil rich Venezuela led by Hugo Chavez that has become the center for confrontation between America and the Euro Zone. Chavez is dead against America and Euro Zone needs him to keep the oil balance -- the power symbol in 2005. But this time the equation is a little different. A new regional and super power coalition of India, China, Russia and Brazil is making a huge difference. Russian President is in the zone to pull Brazil in the coalition and influence on Chavez for mutual support......Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is leveraging his country's oil resources to build new geopolitical relationships with key regional powers like Russia, China, India and Brazil..... According to think tanks, it is not Iran but Venezuela will be the next epicenter of confrontation for oil supremacy. But this time both Euro zone and America will face a real formidable super power coalition -- the combined resources of India, China, Russia and Brazil."

Another piece from VHeadline 30 December reports that "On November 10, Russia took the lead role in coalition with China, India and Brazil to challenge the super-power supremacy of the US. Brazil and Venezuela are very open to the coalition concept where these large countries support each other in terms of trade, economics, international politics and defense. This coalition is composed of 75% of the world’s population and 80% of its natural resources. Iran is about to join the coalition due to their US$200 billion energy deal with China.... With the oil and gas deals between China and Iran and Venezuela, these two countries have come under the protection of China".

Christian Science Monitor 20 December cites PFC Energy in a piece covering the international political leverage Venezuela's oil assets are yielding, as well as reporting on the supply of 50 MIG-29 fighters that the country is currently negotiating with Russia. Inter Press Service also confirmed 15 December that "in Russia [Chavez] signed energy cooperation accords and agreements to purchase military helicopters to secure Venezuela's borders, as well as 100,000 assault rifles for the army..... He is urging that country, along with India, Iran, Russia and Venezuela's South American neighbours, to forge new strategic alliances to act as a counterweight to the United States, the world's only superpower."

Get the picture?

Uniting countries like Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and others, against the United States in a manoeuvre with a prominent energy dimension  may go down in history as one of the more remarkable blunders of the Bush administration. Ultimately the deliberately exaggerated White House response to the attacks of 9/11 are proving to be profoundly damaging to the long term interests of the American people.

Indeed, with new potential rivals comprising major energy producer and consumer countries like these who's worried about fringe outfits like al Qaeda (who no-doubt are increasingly delighted with the way the whole thing is turning out)? No one except the Vice President and his 'neoconpoops' has ever succeeded in uniting the Russians and the Chinese like this before - yes, Mr Cheney "That's another fine mess you've gotten us into".

Thanks to the 'patriots' back at the White House who have no energy Plan B, there's a massive global geopolitical realignment going on in order to contain the aggressive behaviour of the United States whose recent destructive 'interventions' overseas have been directly related to its perennial vulnerability to shortages in world oil supplies. But it could get nasty. Very nasty.

According to the Toronto Sun 26 December " .. in 1973.... the Arab oil embargo temporarily left the U.S. unable to satisfy its voracious appetite for oil. That created a deep sense of vulnerability — a rare experience for the world's most powerful country. Preventing the U.S. from ever being vulnerable like that again has been a key objective of American strategic planners ever since. The 1973 embargo sparked a new hawkishness in Washington. An article in the March, 1975, issue of Harper's, titled 'Seizing Arab Oil,' unabashedly outlined plans for a U.S. invasion to seize key Middle East oilfields and prevent Arab countries from having such control over the modern world's most vital commodity. The author, writing under a pseudonym, wasn't just any old right-wing blowhard; it turned out to be Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. But seizing Arab oilfields was too risky as long as the Soviet Union existed. The Soviet collapse in 1991 opened up new possibilities."

Yup, that really is the way these "we ain't got no stinking Plan B" people think.

Bob Baer was a key CIA operative in the Middle East during the 1990s, even becoming involved in a failed Iraqi coup attempt against Saddam Hussein in 1995. Here's what he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation 30 April 2003, little more than a month after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq: "....we could have the perfect storm if there were a revolution in Saudi Arabia and no one can really predict how bad it would be, or would it spill over into the other Gulf countries... what I'm saying is I think we should anticipate for it. If the United States keeps on its policy of, you know, aggressive, pro-Israeli policy in the Middle East, it could affect Saudi Arabia in terms of a revolution and we have to be prepared for the consequences... this sounds.... like a hawk now, but you know, we have to be prepared. We, the West, have to take over those oil fields if there's a serious Islamic revolution in the Gulf that affects all these countries. ...... It's a world commodity, oil, and it has to be protected for our survival ..... Now whether, you know, whether it's seizing the oil fields or putting them under the United Nations' control or accommodating Saudi Arabian public opinion.... I think [the war in Iraq is] ultimately destabilising because we've essentially effaced a country in the Middle East, which is Iraq."

In fairness to Baer, he consistently opposed the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq because of the potentially destabilising effects. But now that there is a danger of that instability spreading to Saudi Arabia seizure of the kingdom's oil fields may be a necessary option as far as he sees it. For Baer it is no less than an issue of 'survival'.

Since making those remarks the US has become heavily bogged down in Iraq, but Baer was not entirely out on a limb in expressing them. According to the Washington Post 6 August 2002 "A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.... The briefing did not represent the views of the board or official government policy, and in fact runs counter to the present stance of the U.S. government that Saudi Arabia is a major ally in the region. Yet it also represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration -- especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership -- and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers."

So can we rely on the press to vociferously raise the alarm about what has really been driving such geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East as we await the EIA's 121 million barrel per day global gorge-out hoped for by 2025?

Here's more from the Toronto Sun: "Decades from now, historians will likely calmly discuss the war currently raging in Iraq, and identify oil as one of the key factors that led to it. They will point to the growing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, the importance of oil in the rising competition between the U.S. and China, and the huge untapped store of oil lying unprotected under the Iraqi sand. It will all probably seem fairly obvious. Just don't expect to hear this sort of discussion now, however, when it might actually make a difference. In fact, a year-and-a-half into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, with the carnage over there spiralling ever more out of control, don't expect media discussions of Iraq to stray much beyond the issue of 'fighting terrorism.' Indeed, while ordinary people around the world apparently suspect Washington was motivated by oil, not terrorism, there continues to be a strange unwillingness in the mainstream media to probe such a possibility."

Well the press may be too timid to probe the Iraq saga motives in any real depth (after all the story is simply too shameful to dwell upon), but they are beginning to sniff around 'peak oil' and related geo-political energy issues. Newsweek has certainly begun breaking into the big picture. Citing PFC as one of its references the 20 December edition includes a piece entitled "Yet Another Great Game - Beijing's aggressive petrodiplomacy in Africa has put it on a collision course with Washington".

The article calmly informs the reader that "If a report circulating among senior members of America's defense establishment is any guide, the Sino-American war for future petroleum supplies has already begun. According to the 80-page study, Beijing has identified the United States as 'a paramount threat to its energy security and economic stability' and is busily establishing a 'string of pearls' - forward deployments of surveillance stations, naval facilities and airstrips-to safeguard the petroleum-transport route from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. Once it controls Asia's vital sea lanes, the report goes on, China may then move on some of the world's key oil reserves-perhaps by replacing the United States as Saudi Arabia's patron and protector, or by seizing a strategic oil pipeline in the Russian Far East. The Chinese, the report says, 'equate energy security with physical possession or control of energy supplies' and 'have a tendency to see securing their energy security as a zero-sum game.' Nowhere is that more clear than in sub-Saharan Africa, where Chinese oil and natural-gas companies have over the past several years inked deals with regimes such as Sudan's.....'In Africa,' says Jamal Qureshi, an oil-markets expert at PFC Energy in Washington, 'you've got new players, with China as a possible counterweight to the U.S. There could be elements of confrontation.... In October Beijing agreed to buy up to $100 billion in Iranian petroleum and gas and to help develop a major Iranian oilfield near the Iraqi border-evidence of an evolving Sino-Iranian alliance that is featured in the Pentagon report. Earlier this year Beijing signed a 25-year deal to develop natural-gas reserves in Iran-despite U.S.-led sanctions-and it is increasingly active in the Gulf states..... Africa, though, remains the new oil frontier for both China and the United States....... Once oil-independent, China has over the last decade become increasingly reliant on imports, which now account for 60 percent of its oil consumption, up from 6.4 percent in 1993.'.... While the United States appears to have conceded Sudan to China, it is active elsewhere in Africa. U.S. President George W. Bush has made a point of meeting with leaders of such countries as Chad and Congo, which in the past barely registered on Washington's foreign-policy map.... Some analysts even suspect that the deliberate way in which the United States lifted sanctions on Libya earlier this year was a move to check China's growing influence in Africa. If China sees energy security as a zero-sum game, so, it appears, does its American rival."

Back in November CNN quoted some telling comments from Michael Rodgers of PFC: "The U.S. government should consider the possibilities raised by the peak-oil people. We have to be prepared to deal with all plausible situations, and it has to be reflected in policy. People don't want to face this reality. Once you accept it as a possibility -- not even as a certainty, but just as one of many possible scenarios -- then you have to make all sorts of changes (in the way you live), because it would not make sense not to."

Unfortunately experience to date means that such sound advice is unlikely to cut much ice with the Bush administration. Moreover, it is pretty much a betting certainty that the White House is fully conversant with the arguments of 'the peak-oil people'. It's just that they have no 'Plan B' to deal with the issue.

So for those who prefer not to see the lifespan of their sons and daughters shortened by more wars precipitated by the destructive policies of the myopic 'no Plan B' crowd, the looming energy crisis message needs to be got out loud, clear, and immediately. This is an absolute imperative if there is to be any hope of avoiding the escalation in international chaos that has already begun to emerge from this situation.

Otherwise there are going to be an awful lot more dead people out there as the Deutsche Bank report implicitly warns. Just take a look at the influence of oil on even the post-Soviet conflict in Chechnya and the omens for the future do not look good -  at least until someone shows some constructive leadership and comes up with that elusive 'Plan B'.

But until the real scale of the issue registers with a higher proportion of Joe Public that's unlikely to happen.

So you'd better get on and spread the word.

NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
nlpwessex@btinternet.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex

Key Extracts From PFC Presentation - Click Here
Key Extracts From Deutsche Bank Report - Click Here

"There's a certain degree of hesitancy for oil companies to go on the record and say, 'we are doing well with oil prices where they are now, but 10 years down the road things actually look pretty dire'."
Seth Kleinman, PFC Energy
The Business, 7 November 2004

"For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Dick Cheney, Chief Executive of Halliburton, now Vice President of the United States
Speech at London Institute of Petroleum, Autumn Lunch 1999

"This is about America's energy security. It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
Bill Richardson 1998, US energy secretary,
on US policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil
'A discreet deal in the pipeline - Nato mocked those who claimed there was a plan for Caspian oil'
Guardian, 15 February 2001

Click Here For Full Copy Of PFC Presentation (CSIS Web Site)
OR
Extracts As Below

PFC Energy’s Global Crude Oil
and Natural Gas Liquids

Supply Forecast
September 2004

(General Situation)

• The world is not in imminent danger of running out of oil, but certain countries/regions are depleting much faster than others. This will cause a shift in the geographic dominance of production sources

• In spite of high oil prices, Non-OPEC production has been stagnant with the notable exception of the FSU. This trend is likely to continue through this decade

• Exploration results in the last 10 years (with a few exceptions like Angola, Sudan, Mauritania) have been much less significant than in previous decades. Without a significant reversal of this trend, Non-OPEC production is likely to peak just after 2010 and begin a long term decline

• Every year, in every region (including OPEC), the world produces more oil than it finds. It is only logical to conclude that inevitably this will lead to dwindling supplies

• As demand continues to grow beyond 2010 and Non-OPEC production capacity plateaus or falls, OPEC will have an increasing burden to make up the difference resulting in an inevitable increase in dependency on OPEC sources.

• OPEC production capacity and reserves will suffer from the additional strain and some models suggest that even OPEC will struggle to fill the differential between Non-OPEC supply and global demand beyond 2015-2020

• PFC demand scenarios in historical context: demand (excluding the FSU - Former Soviet Union) grew by 1.7% between 1980 and 2004

(Non-OPEC Countries Already In Decline)

Non-OPEC Countries that are Either in Decline or Currently in a Plateau
PFC Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004

• The above bars show the onset and duration of documented production peaks or plateaus – tracking country life cycle shows an acceleration of the number of countries passing from peak to decline
  
• Tracking depletion level is a good way to anticipate the cessation of growth and the onset of decline
  
• Several significant producers are rapidly approaching critical (60 – 65%) depletion levels which typically signal the onset of production declines

(World Production excluding OPEC, Former Soviet Union, Natural Gas Liquids and Canadian Oil Sands)

Historical Crude Production
(excluding OPEC, FSU, Natural Gas Liquids, and Canadian Oil Sands)
PFC Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004
[Note: plateau since 1996]

• Several key producing regions have reached or exceeded the critical depletion point of 50-60% which typically marks the onset of production decline. It is worth noting that production gains from large new projects have not increased the aggregate production capacity of these regions for about 8 years

• Countries within this block of production have in aggregate been producing up to 4 billion more barrels each year than they have been finding through exploration since the mid 1980s

• Models suggest that the flat trend noted since the late 1990s is very likely to continue through the end of this decade with production declines beginning in the early part of the next decade – going forward it is possible that for a few years production could increase before declines start in the next decade or it is possible that production could start a gentle decline sooner

(Former Soviet Union)

FSU Crude Oil Production Forecast with Exploration
PFC Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004
[Note: trough relates to post Soviet economic crisis]

• Post 1998 Non-OPEC conventional crude oil production growth was largely driven by growth in the FSU and specifically Russia

• PFC Energy’s models suggest that Former Soviet Union production could grow though the end of this decade (peaking at about 14 million barrels per day)

• However the increasing level of reserve base depletion will inevitably result in production declines in the next decade

(Canadian Oil Sands Production Forecasts)

Production Forecast from Canadian Oil Sands
(P90=90% probability, P10=10% probability)
PFC Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004

• A review of various project proposals suggests that in an optimistic case Canadian Oil Sand production could quadruple by 2020 although the Canadian Government has stated the most likely case is a doubling of production by 2012 and continued growth beyond

(NGL Production Forecast - Natural Gas Liquids)

• NGL Production will grow as large scale global gas projects are built to supply growing demands for natural gas

• Much of the NGL growth is located within OPEC group countries like Qatar, UAE, Nigeria and others

(Global Non-OPEC Total Liquids with Exploration - Forecast Production)

Non-Opec Total Oil Liquids Production Forecast with Exploration
(including NGL and Canadian Oil Sands)
PFC Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004

• There are forecasts out there or coming out which argue that the peak is already here or very close – most forecasts do not build in an exploration component which been attempted in PFC Energy’s methodology

• A combined forecast of Non-OPEC crude as well as Non-OPEC natural gas liquids and Canadian Oil Sand production suggests that production will grow to between 52 and 55 million barrels per day with declines beginning in the early to middle part of decade

(Existing Supply Problem Indicators)

Expected Growing Gap Between Global Demand and Global Non-OPEC Supply in the Next Decade
PFC Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004

• PFC Energy’s data analysis indicates that Global Non-OPEC crude production is currently exceeding volumes discovered by as much as 8 billion barrels per year – this continuing depletion of the reserve base will ultimately lead to the inability to continue growing production
  
• OPEC’s creaming curve [for oil discoveries] is no different from creaming curves for other basins, countries, or regions – hundreds of new fields were discovered during the period 1975 to Present but like other areas they are considerably smaller than fields discovered in years prior
  
• Like all other areas of the world, PFC Energy’s data analysis indicates that Global OPEC crude production is currently exceeding volumes discovered. OPEC specifically is producing about 8 billion barrels per year more than it has been finding

(OPEC Depletion)

Depletion Levels (OPEC)
PFC Presentation To Centre For Strategic And International Studies, 8 September 2004

• OPEC as a group is depleting at a rate of about 1% per year, even taking into account new discoveries – during the 1990s reserves likely depleted by another 10 percentage points
  
• OPEC as a whole is depleting but some countries are depleting faster than others
  
• Based on estimates of remaining OPEC reserves and persistent negative annual petroleum balances, there will come a time when OPEC production will not be able to fill the growing gap between demand and non-OPEC production capacity
  
• In a low demand growth scenario [1.1%], OPEC production will likely meet global demand in the through the end of the next decade but not beyond 2025
  
• In a base case demand growth scenario [1.8%], OPEC production will likely not be able to meet global demand in the latter part of the next decade
  
• In a high demand growth scenario [2.4%], OPEC production will likely not be able to meet global demand
  as early as the middle part of the next decade

(Price Implications)

• The excess capacity that existed after 1985 has now disappeared
  
• Between 2005 and 2008, both West Africa and the FSU will bring large projects on line, creating a window of vulnerability for oil prices (depending on the demand scenario)
  
• In the medium term, if the key producers do not build excess capacity (beyond the 1.5 million b/d that Saudi Arabia appears to be willing to maintain), prices will move structurally higher, and face greater volatility

(Strategic Implications)

• Higher volumes and higher prices will bring back large financial surpluses to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf
  
• The new-found wealth will alter the present strategic relationship with the US: despite louder calls for reforms from the US, the region will spend its way out of reforms, and the regimes will have the opportunity to use their financial might to co-opt and divide the different interest groups
  
• The US will face more competition from emerging strategic players to secure access to oil
  
• There is no alternative to dependence on Middle Eastern oil, but there will be alternatives to oil
  
• Managing demand becomes a key strategic issue for the US

Click Here For Full Copy Of PFC Presentation (CSIS Web Site)

"By 2020, we will probably be importing three-quarters of our primary energy needs – and we will need to adapt to that.... I will be tasking our Ambassadors and High Commissioners in priority posts overseas to take personal charge of implementing this [International Energy] Strategy and delivering its objectives..... we will be enhancing our [diplomatic] posts' capacity on energy issues...."
Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary
Launch of the UK International Energy Strategy, Foreign Office, 28 October 2004

'PEAK OIL'
GLOBAL ENERGY CRISIS LOOMING
Click Here For More Information
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/energycrisis.htm

"Optimists about world oil reserves, such as the Department of Energy, are getting increasingly lonely. The International Energy Agency now says that world production outside the Middle Eastern Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) will peak in 1999 and world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. This projection is supported by influential recent articles in Science and Scientific American. Some knowledgeable academic and industry voices put the date that world production will peak even sooner—within the next five or six years. The United States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources.... Our growing dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's game—there is no way for the rest of the world to win. Our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change—or through all of the above."
James Woolsey, former US Director of Central Intelligence
Council On Foreign Relations, 1999

"Our industry can certainly be proud of its past achievements. Yet the challenges we will face in the coming years will be every bit as great as those encountered in the past, due in part to ever-increasing global energy use. For example, we estimate that world oil and gas production from existing fields is declining at an average rate of about 4 to 6 percent a year. To meet projected demand in 2015, the industry will have to add about 100 million oil-equivalent barrels a day of new production. That's equal to about 80 percent of today's production level. In other words, by 2015, we will need to find, develop and produce a volume of new oil and gas that is equal to eight out of every 10 barrels being produced today."
John Thompson, President of ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company
The Lamp (published for ExxonMobil shareholders), 2003, Vol. 85 No.1


Graph from ExxonMobil report 4 February 2004, p4 (2004 marker added for illustration)
'A Report on Energy Trends, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Alternative Energy

"The energy crisis we are in today is entirely different from the temporary problems we experienced in 1973-74, 1979-86, 1990-91 and 2000..... There was always sufficient worldwide geological capacity to produce additional barrels of crude oil to meet the world's needs. No longer. In the next major energy crisis, that capacity will likely be eroded. So the crisis should have a severe impact, be global in scope, and be difficult to solve. Plainly, it will be unprecedented.... Over the next 25 years, a new world energy economy will arrive in three waves. We are near the top of the first and smallest one, a warning wave. A second more powerful wave likely will hit in the 2009-2010 period when the non-OPEC world may reach its all-time highest output of crude oil, subsequently declining to become ever more dependent on OPEC for incremental barrels of production. The final wave should break around 2020, or earlier, as even OPEC's vast reserves are tapped at a maximum rate of production. After that, oil volume should head down and keep falling, never to revive..... An international economic disturbance of this magnitude will create potential conflicts between nations and civil competition within societies. These could be a trial for us and for our children, made worse in the early years by our lack of preparation and our failure to understand what is already happening to us."
 The Gathering Storm
Energy Bulletin, 15 November 2004

NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
nlpwessex@btinternet.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex