Move past era of oil, experts say

Former CIA Director James Woolsey paints a dire scenario: A terrorist attack causes a months-long, 6 million-barrel reduction in Saudi Arabia’s daily petroleum output, sending the price of oil skyrocketing past $100 a barrel.

Industry banker and author Matthew Simmons says the kingdom’s oil fields are deteriorating anyway. And a recent New York Times story cited an intelligence report suggesting the Saudis lack the capacity to pump as much oil as they boast they can.
Even if nothing disrupts the projected flow of Middle East petroleum, Energy Department consultants warned earlier this year that “the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking” of global oil production — a problem “unlike any faced by modern industrial society.”

They wrote that the United States and other nations are in a race with the clock to find alternative sources for oil, “the lifeblood of modern civilization,” and avoid potential economic disaster.

Raleigh News and Observer