Slippery future

Experts are saying that global oil production will peak soon. Congress needs to ensure that the U.S. has alternatives

The time inevitably will come when global oil production peaks, with less and less of the product available to be pumped. That could happen a decade or a century from now, but in either case, the moment likely will collide with the sharp increase in demand for energy in China and India.

The reality is a big worry for the United States, whose economic muscle is fed by a cheap, reliable energy supply. Indeed, the new Third World demand is partly to blame for the price spikes here recently. Rattle America’s energy supplies, and everything from paychecks to food on the table will be adversely affected.
That point is being made, with no time to spare, by several sources, from consultants for the U.S. Energy Department to global-strategy heavyweights such as former CIA Director James Woolsey and industry banker Matthew Simmons. Oil is “the lifeblood of modern civilization,” Energy Department consultants wrote earlier this year in a report that outlines this nation’s race against the clock to find alternatives to oil.

If it’s a race, then Congress is the tortoise. Dire warnings for several decades about oil reserves eventually waning have prompted neither speed nor enlightened thinking from Congress. That’s despite two drastic oil supply interruptions — in the 1970s and again this fall — that showed the gut-wrenching consequences of an oil shortage in this country. Long lines and fistfights at the gas pump are bad. Worse, and with longer-lasting consequences, are price hikes for consumer goods and cost increases for industry.

Raleigh News & Observer