U.S. Racing the Clock to Find Alternate Fuels

WASHINGTON – 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 oilfields 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.”

Common Dreams