Tag: Simmons

March 15, 2006

Matthew R. Simmons

This book, does, as at least one reviewer notes, “drag on,” but it does so because it is a meticulously presented case, a case that would stand up in Court, on the death of Saudi Arabia and its oil reserves.

The book concludes with an Appendix C, “The 1974 and 1979 Senate Hearings,” that I believe should be used to impeach, retrospectively, the Senators then responsible for Energy oversight. The documented public record is quite clear, and the Senate and media and banking and industry cover-ups are also quite clear and carefully documented: all of the Brahmins, including Dick Cheney, knew in 1974 and then again in 1979, that Peak Oil had been hit and we were on a downhill slope. For purely short-term political and profiteering motives, the oil industry and the U.S. Senators responsible for energy oversight, conspired to keep silent. This is, in a word, treason.

Exxon's CEO today, on the basis of this book, is either stupid, mis-informed, or a world-class criminal. I don't think he is stupid. I do think he is mis-informed. I also think that if he does not come to grips with reality soon, he will be proven to be a world-class criminal before 2008. The other energy CEOs, with British Petroleum a possible exception, are clearly duplicitous and in my own mind, display behavior that demands a nationalization of the energy industry, and a draconian criminalization of information withholding on this extraordinarily vital aspect of national security and prosperity.

This book has a world class bibliography, a world class index, and is, alone, sufficient to indict the energy company CEOs for high crimes against the Nation and the rest of the world.

For the reviewer upset that the author did not offer alternatives, I would make two points: 1) that is not the point of the book, it is about revealing the decrepitude of Saudi Arabia and the dishonesty of both the U.S. Senate and the oil industry executives in America; and 2) go to the two WIRED magazine articles, the one on doubling electrical output by creating a two-way system and localizing production; the other on the price points at which oil makes all other energy alternatives cheaper.

For those who want alternative views:

on Oil and 9-11: Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

on Oil and Other Converging Catastrophes: James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

on Saudi Arabian and US corruption, Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism and Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

on US Political Incompetence and Corruption, Peter Peterson, Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It William Greider, Who Will Tell The People? : The Betrayal Of American Democracy and Tom Coburn, Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders as well as The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy).

See my 1000+ other books. This book is the tip of the spear that just went into the heart of the CEO of Exxon and his pals, all of whom will be held accountable by the American people, as will the corrupt politicians that have sold out to Wall Street and to bribery from lobbyists. We are in for a very rude and rough 20 years.