What a year it's been.
At this writing, 12 months have passed since OGJ published the first in a series of six special reports on the theme of Future Energy Supply (OGJ, July 14-Aug.18, 2003).
The actual work began months before the first report hit: compiling files, reading thousands of pages of research papers, spending countless hours researching via the internet, conducting dozens upon dozens of interviews, then preparing graphics and writing the final articles. Somewhere in the bowels of a home PC (this work was done mainly while sequestered at home, to minimize distraction) reside about 200,000 words of raw copy—the journalistic equivalent of petrochemical intermediates, if you will. This was processed into about 40,000 words spread over the six reports.
OGJ readers can speculate to their hearts' content as to the hubris and possible delusional nature of a journalist who would singlehandedly tackle such a vast, complex, and controversial subject as the debate over the imminent demise of Hydrocarbon Man. And to then try to meet six consecutive weekly deadlines in the process, some at the last possible minute, as colleagues can attest.
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Reactions
As it turned out, it was a good idea. There have been in-house attaboys and some publishing-industry awards recognition, but the truly gratifying response to all this effort has been the readers' response. Actually, "overwhelming" response is a better description. Not in this editor's memory have readers responded so strongly to something published exclusively in OGJ—with myriad phone calls, e-mails, letters, and participation in OGJ's online forum. Knowing that you've reached a reader is the highest accolade of all.
Most importantly, OGJ has received a slew of new articles from our readers, offering their own special expertise, elaboration, dissent, qualification, analysis, etc., in responding to one or another aspect of last year's series. We've published a number of these already, and some of those have already catalyzed other readers to write their own articles in a dominolike response. This week starts another string of them, in a series dubbed "Hubbert Revisited," beginning on p. 18.
Becoming the story
However, something weird and unsettling happened this past spring to the perpetrator of all this—he somehow "became" the story.
Geraldo Rivera excepted, no serious journalist wants to train the spotlight on himself. True objectivity is unattainable, but journalists serious about the craft strive for balance and neutrality. That gets complicated when a journalist is the center of a story, so we avoid intruding ourselves into the story.
The issue came up at this year's Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.
The buzz generated by the Future Energy Supply series prompted some OTC committee chairs, who should have known better, to invite a trade journal editor, of all people, to present a paper on the theme of Peak Oil at a special OTC panel. That was unsettling enough. But it became downright disorienting when some on the OGJ editorial staff suggested that the executive editor's OTC panel presentation should be covered along with the rest of the panelists' talks, sparking a fierce in-house debate. The views ranged from "We're short-changing the reader if we don't cover all the presentations" to "It's kind of incestuous."
Fortunately, in having the final word on OGJ news coverage, the decision was mine—the queasiness over an OGJ editor assigning a staffer to cover his speech won out.
It was a terrific panel that included some of the leading proponents of both sides of the peak-oil debate. But when not only some staffers but also some panel audience members suggested OGJ publish my remarks in some form even after demurring on news coverage, I agreed to a compromise: The speech is posted on our General Interest forum, where there are thousands of other forum participants' words on the subject.
Last year's series on Future Energy Supply had to be balanced and neutral. But the OTC paper provided an opportunity to take potshots at both sides of the debate and to leverage last year's education on the subject into some new ideas about the need for a global hydrocarbon inventory initiative.
Read more about it at http://ogj.pennnet.com/forum/display_messages.cfm. Let's hope it triggers some more discourse. The growing public awareness and consequent politicization of the peak-oil issue, with its echoes of global warming and Middle East upheaval, could make M. King Hubbert a prophet—but for all the wrong reasons. Even if you don't ultimately buy the theory that global oil production will peak soon and decline precipitously immediately thereafter, that prospect alone makes it the most important issue facing the oil and gas industry today.
