The CIA's Interest in Peak Oil

[TennesseeWalker]

Article excerpted from Richard Heinberg's Museletter.com site. It deals with Peak Oil, the CIA, and potential repercussions from the administration's current adventures in Iraq. Just food for thought. I truly believe that Cheney's Energy Task Force, Peak Oil and the current War in Iraq are very closely related.

http://www.museletter.com/archive/cia-oil.html

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A recently declassified CIA document casts new light on some of the most significant geopolitical events of the past quarter century. This document, an Intelligence Memorandum titled "The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis (ER 77-10147)," was issued in March 1977 by the Office of Economic Research and classified "Secret" until its public release in January 2001 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. (1) Until now the document has prompted little discussion.
The Memorandum predicts an impending peak in Soviet oil production "not later than the early 1980s" (the actual peak occurred in 1987 at 12.6 million barrels per day, following a preliminary peak in 1983 of 12.5 Mb/d). "During the next decade," the unnamed authors of the document conclude, "the USSR may well find itself not only unable to supply oil to Eastern Europe and the West on the present scale, but also having to compete for OPEC oil for its own use." The Memorandum predicts that the oil peak will have important economic impacts: "When oil production stops growing, and perhaps even before, profound repercussions will be felt on the domestic economy of the USSR and on its international economic relations."

The significance of the document requires some unpacking. First, we must understand the historical context in which it appeared.

Oil production in the US had peaked in 1970, just a few years earlier. This was arguably the most important economic event of the past half-century: until then America was the world's foremost oil producer; for much of the twentieth century it was also the world's foremost oil exporter. American oil won both World Wars for the Allies and made the US the world's richest and most powerful nation. Meanwhile, throughout most of this same period the USSR remained the world's second foremost oil-producing nation.
War in Iraq are very closely related.

[mhr]

1. Thanks for the Link

This is one that I did not know about!

Here are some more:

http://www.oilcrash.com/
http://www.asponews.org
http://www.gulland.ca/depletion/depletion.htm
http://www.dieoff.org/
http://www.oilanalytics.org/
http://www.greatchange.org/
http://www.oilcrisis.com/
http://www.after-oil.co.uk/
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/
http://hubbert.mines.edu

Energy Resources
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/

Alas Babylon
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlasBabylon/

Running on Empty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2/

[el_gato]

2. kick

this is one of my "pet" issues.

thanks for posting

[Jacobin]

3. This issue is at the core of the reactionary adminstration's

policies which ignore the fact that continued dependance on fossil fuels will lead us back to the Stone Age.

This is THE issue, IMHO.

If we had had an administration in 1900 like the one we have now, they would have insisted that automobiles wouldn't be practical because there were no gas stations and that cars scare horses, will mess up the oat and buggy whip business, and that there is plenty of coal and wood and we just have to go cut down Yosemite's trees to get at what we need.

[BeFree]

4. More bad Knews

Look here, now... the sheeple can't handle the truth. The sheeple don't want the truth. That's why they love AWOL, he lies them to sleep.

If we started today, with a program to economize and conserve, coupled with a program to begin producing alternative energy supplies, we might make it to 2020 fairly intact. But that woudn't be good bizz for Exxon and Shell et al. And the sheeple would lose sleep.