I enjoyed the article by Luis E. Giusti with the Center for Strategic & International Studies in OGJ, Jan. 1, 2001, p. 18. It was a scholarly and well thought out prediction for the "Outlook for oil in the new century." However, I disagree with the general tenor that except for Iraq, everything is rosy and "availability of oil and gas is secured well into the 22nd Century."
In October of last year, British Broad-casting Corp. (BBC) sent a team over to the Permian Basin of West Texas to film our oil industry, and the film was included as part of a 30 min documentary on the oil industry. This documentary showed several experts testifying that world oil production should peak in the next 10 to 20 years and the world will run short of oil. They site statistics such as 80% of the oil produced today flows from fields that were found before 1973. Also, the discovery of oil in the world peaked in 1962 at 40 billion bbl of oil, and in 1991 it was already down to 7 billion bbl of oil. The King Hubbert Institute at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden predicts world oil production will peak in the next 10 to 12 years also. King Hubbert was a geologist who predicted in 1956 that oil production in the US would peak in 1996, 13 years later. He missed it by 1 year.
Almost every year for the past 100 years, someone has cried, "Wolf," predicting that the world is running out of oil. It has never happened. Now, in my opinion, the "Wolf" is at the door and everyone is saying it is not going to happen.
It is self-serving for the oil industry to say that we have an abundant supply of oil. The industry does not want to accelerate a movement towards alternative fuels and reduce the demand for oil. But the US cannot afford to be complacent and wake up one morning and find that the world is running short of oil. The time to prepare for that is now. We must have a national energy policy and we must realize that there is a possibility oil production will peak in the near future and the world will run short of oil.
James C. Henry
Henry Petroleum Corp.
Midland, Tex.
