Re: An oil industry leader's perspective on abundance, etc.

Al Koop wrote:

"I was including Glenn Morton, Colin J. Campbell, Jean H. Laherrère,
Kenneth Deffeyes, etc as the scientists who are asking the hard
questions, not as oil industry representatives who seem to be obligated
(pressured?) to present a rosy picture to the public. I wonder if the
reason is that they haven?t thought it through or if they see no way to
keep their jobs and keep stockholders happy if they call attention to
problems that appear on the horizon but may not be evident for a few
years in the future."

We can assume oil industry execs are well aware of the availability of hydrocarbons worldwide and have mulled over future prospects at length. So I was probably not correct in speculating that they "haven't thought through the issues." That's not the kind of people they are.

But why should they "present a rosy picture to the public"? Well, what have they got to lose? There's at least a remote chance that technological innovations will prove them right. If events prove them wrong, they'll say, "Aw, shucks, we were wrong. Somehow we'll have to get used to our assets' being worth a lot more today than they were yesterday." Stockholders won't complain! The CEO we had at the time I retired would have liquidated the company in an instant for the right price.

Because rising oil prices have instantaneous political consequences, ordinarily one might think industry execs would want to prepare their customers for any price shock or persistent upward trend. Of course, the reality is that their customers would not believe them anyway and would assume they were just planning to manipulate markets to increase profits.

Could the rosy pictures be intended to keep people from getting serious about switching to alternate energy sources? If so, the industry people would be doing the world a disservice. I have difficulty believing they're that duplicitous. On the other hand, it's safe to assume they aren't going to intentionally damage their company's prospects.

Don
Received on Fri Dec 12 06:12:37 2003