[EnergyHog]

As the rest of the country seems to be fooled by the low gas prices, the Big 3 aren't buying it. Somewhat of an admission to peak oil although quite indirect...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/busin ... oref=login

“It’s way too early to tell,” said Kevin McCormick, a Chrysler spokesman. “We don’t know how long these lower prices are going to sustain.”

Chrysler’s chief executive, Thomas W. LaSorda, last month said the company was planning for gas prices to remain in the $3 to $4 range for the rest of this decade. On a conference call this week, Mr. LaSorda said there had been no uptick in sales as a result of reduced gas prices.

Mr. McAlinden said the automakers are wise to dismiss the recent drop-off and focus on improving their offerings of smaller cars with higher gas mileage.

“The executives in Detroit — finally — don’t trust this decline in gasoline at all,” he said. “Any foreign event could put us back at $3 a gallon, and I think the public senses that.”

[MrBill]

I hope you do not mind if I post this article here. A colleague sent it to me, but I do not have a link. Sorry. In any case, the next time someone tells you that no one in the media or in the government is talking about peak oil (because it is a big conspiracy or dumbthing?) you can pull this out for them to read.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Meeting Peak-Oil Challenge Will Cost $20 Trillion, U.S. Says

The world needs to spend $1 trillion
a year in alternative fuels, starting 20 years before the peak in
conventional oil production, in order to mitigate fuel shortages,
a U.S. Energy Department study showed.
Production peaks in Texas, the U.K. and Norway were examined
as part of two studies for the department that advised on ``crash
course'' efforts to cope with an eventual shortage of gasoline and
other liquid fuels. The study, led by Robert Hirsch, didn't
predict when world production will peak, though Hirsch told
reporters his guess is ``within the next five to 10 years.''
``Conventional oil will peak at some point,'' Hirsch said at
the Oil & Money Conference in London. To lessen the impact, ``we
have to start a long time before the peak or we'll have severe
liquid fuels shortages worldwide.''
Conventional oil production peaked in Texas in 1972, North
America in 1985, the U.K. in 1999 and Norway in 2001, and all of
those peaks were ``sharp and sudden,'' he said. To offset losses
when world output peaks, ``unconventional oil'' will need to be
rapidly developed, including heavy oil, oil sands, coal
liquefaction, gas-to-liquids and enhanced oil recovery. Vehicle
fuel efficiency will need to be improved.
Hirsch, who is a senior energy program adviser at research
and engineering firm Science Applications International Corp.,
said the effort required is similar to ``the race for the moon, or
the mobilization for World War II'' and consumers can't rely on
oil companies alone to make the right decisions and investments.

Industry Moves Slowly

``The market is moving into a number of these things but at a
rate which is determined by risk and public perception,'' he told
reporters. ``The character of this problem is so large and time-
consuming and difficult that we've got to move away from business
as usual and move to a crash program, otherwise we are not going
to be able to replace or save the volumes necessary.''
Governments will likely take different approaches because
some are less self-sufficient than others, putting them more at
risk of economic failure, he said.
Oil company executives have typically downplayed the peak oil
theory, saying that there are plenty of resources in the ground.
At the same time, executives such as Chevron Corp. Vice Chairman
Peter Robertson have noted shortages of equipment and skilled
labor, and restricted access to resources in some countries.
``It's not that it's not out there, but converting it from a
resource to a reserve and a reserve to production capacity is a
very slow process,'' Sadad Ibrahim al-Husseini, retired executive
vice president at Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil exporter,
told reporters at the conference.

Don't Panic

``There is no reason to panic if you have a strategy, but if
you leave it to the market to decide you are going to have these
ups and downs, with repercussions on the economy,'' al-Husseini
said. ``Getting the strategy right means you start early.''
Using the lower 48 states of the U.S. as a model, Hirsch's
study based calculations on a 2 percent annual decline in world
production once the peak is reached, leading to a large global
shortage 20 years later. Field declines may well prove to be
quicker, he said.
Delaying investment until world production has already peaked
would lead to ``worldwide fuel shortages'' and waiting until 10
years before would still cause ``serious trouble,'' he said. The
$1 trillion per year over 20 years includes research into
improving the efficiency of car engines and fuels, which may cost
the equivalent of paying $130 per barrel of oil.

No Nuclear, No Wind

Excluded from Hirsch's analysis was nuclear and wind power
because they produce electricity, which wouldn't directly replace
the loss of liquid fuels, such as gasoline. Also excluded were
hydrogen fuel cells and biomass, because the technology is either
not ready or not economical, he said.
Oil shale, which is oil-encrusted rock, was excluded from
Hirsch's 2005 study and included in a later report this year, as
prospects have improved.
The annual Oil & Money Conference, under the banner ``The End
of Cheap Oil,'' was attended by about 600 people including senior
executives from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron.
``It's a finite resource; it's not going to go on forever,''
al-Husseini said. ``Even 20 years is not that far down the line,
so if there are ways to put in place policies to reduce this
dependency, to bring in alternative fuels, the prudent thing would
be to do it and not to wait,'' he said.
Hirsch has held various other energy research jobs, including
vice president and research manager at Atlantic Richfield Co.,
which was later bought by BP Plc, and manager of synthetic fuels
research and petroleum exploratory research at Exxon.
He was director of fusion research at the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission and served on advisory committees to the Energy
Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

[joewp]

Here's a link for that story.