By Michael Noble, executive director, Fresh Energy

Randy Udall is a legend among clean energy advocates, some say a legend in his own mind.

He will appreciate the backhanded compliment. The day I met him a dozen years ago, I sat in a distant city, in a room full of utility and energy types, and he introduced the luncheon slide show with a picture of the twisted faces of a team of rugby players piled upon each other, buried in a rugby scrum. Without any hint of irony or malice, Randy began his talk thus: “Here is Michael Noble and his buddies in Minnesota, mugging the CEO of Northern States Power.” I had never met the guy and had no reason to think he had any idea who I was. It got a laugh—at my expense—but it was a backhanded compliment (I think).

A couple of weeks ago, Randy and a colleague picked up an obscure news story from Saudi Arabia, an announcement by the Saudi Supreme Ruler. King Abdullah announced that new oil discoveries should be left in the ground to benefit future generations of Saudis. Randy wrote about it on an obscure website of a group that he helped to found. It’s followed by oil and gas industry analysts and the tiny fraction of the American public tracking the topic of peak oil—ASPO USA, the US chapter of the global Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.

You see, the problem is that most official forecasts of global oil supply and demand have presumed the ability and willingness of Saudi Arabia to increase oil production by about 30 percent and sustain that level of production for thirty years. As Matt Simmons wrote in his book Twilight in the Desert, and testified in Chairman Bill Hilty’s Energy Policy and Finance committee this session: what if the Saudis do not, or more importantly, CANNOT increase oil production at all?

What if it’s true—what only a teeny sliver of oil analysts were discussing even 3 years ago—that global oil is now approaching peak production, so-called “peak oil?” What if—in the midst of the explosion of oil-sucking economies like China and India—Saudi Arabia’s oil production stays flat, or worse, what if it begins to fall?

Randy and his colleague canvassed the views of oil and gas industry experts whom they respect. See their post at ASPO to hear what oil analysts think of Saudi Arabia keeping future oil finds in the ground.

Thanks Randy, for keeping us on our toes; I am sure Goldman Sachs reads your stuff every morning.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 2:05 pm by Fresh Energy and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.