Peak oil and energy imperialism

Monthly Review

Volumn 60, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 12-33

  Foster, John Bellamy ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 48949092083     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-03-2008-07_2     Document Type: Review

References (74)

1. Influential mainstream political analyst (and former Nixon White House strategist) Kevin Philips has recently argued that oil in the Middle East and elsewhere has emerged as perhaps the single most important strategic (non-monetary) factor in "the Global Crisis of American Capitalism," and is closely tied up with the world's need to shift to a "new energy regime." See Phillips, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (New York: Viking, 2008), 124-27. Indeed, the struggle to control world oil can be seen as the centerpiece of the new geopolitics of U.S. empire, designed at the same time to combat the decline of U.S. hegemony.
2. See John Bellamy Foster, "A Warning to Africa: The New U.S. Imperial Grand Strategy," Monthly Review 58, no. 2 (June 2006): 1-12.
3. Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), 82.
4. Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère, "The End of Cheap Oil," Scientific American (March 1998): 78-83;
5. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook, 1998 (Paris: OECD, 1998), 94-103.
6. Matthew R. Simmons, "Has Technology Created $10 Oil?," Middle East Insight (May-June 1999), 37, 39.
7. Matthew R. Simmons, "An Oil Man Reconsiders the Future of Black Gold," Good Magazine, February 11, 2008, http://www.goodmagazine. com/section/Features/the_accidental_environmentalist/. The insert in square brackets in the quote is in original.
8. Matthew R. Simmons, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2005).
9. John Wood and Gary Long, "Long Term World Oil Supply (A Resource Base/Production Path Analysis)," Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, July 28, 2000, http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/ petroleum/presentations/2000/long_term_supply/.
10. See Klare, Blood and Oil, 13-14.
11. st Century, 3 volumes (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2000), vol. 1, xvi-xxiii; vol. 2, 30-31; vol. 3, 19.
12. Edward L. Morse, chair, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, cosponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations (Washington, D.C: Council on Foreign Relations Press, April 2001), http://www.cfr.org/content/ publications/attachments/Energy%20TaskForce.pdf, 3-17, 29, 43-47, 84-85, 98;
13. see also Edward L. Morse, "A New Political Economy of Oil?," Journal of International Affairs 53, no. 1 (Fall 1999), 1-29.
14. White House, National Energy Policy (Cheney report), May 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/National-Energy-Policy.pdf, 1-13, 8-4.;
15. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, International Economic Outlook, 2001, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/ieo01/pdf/ 0484(2001).pdf, 240;
16. International Petroleum Outlook, April 2008, tables 4.1b and 4.1d;
17. Klare, Blood and Oil, 15, 79-81.
18. Klare, Blood and Oil, 82-83.
19. Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence (London: Penguin, 2007), 462-63.
20. James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy, "The Changing Role of National Oil Companies in International Markets," Baker Institute Policy Report, no. 35 (April 2007), http://www.bakerinstitute.org/publications/ BI_PolicyReport_35.pdf, 1, 10-12, 17-19.
21. Fareed Muhamedi and Raad Alkadiri, "Washington Makes It's Case for War," Middle East Report, no. 224 (Autumn 2002), 5;
22. John Bellamy Foster, Naked Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006), 92.
23. U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, International Petroleum Monthly, April 2008, tables 4.1b and 4.1d.
24. Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over (Garbiola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers, 2005), 127-28;
25. Michael Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), 41;
26. Greenpeace, "Stop the Tar Sands/Water Polluton," http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/tarsands/threats/water-pollution.
27. Energy Watch Group, Crude Oil: The Supply Outlook, October 2007, http://www.energywatchgroup.org/filadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Oilreport_10-2007.pdf, 33-34.
28. The distinction between "early" and "late" peakers is to be found in Richard Heinberg, The Oil Depletion Protocol (Garbiola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers, 2006), 17-23.
29. For some representative works from the "early peaker" perspective see Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert's Peak (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001);
30. David Goodstein, Out of Gas (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004);
31. and Heinberg, The Party's Over. Cambridge Energy Research Associates is the leading independent representative of the "late peaker" view. See http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/home/home.aspx.
32. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook, 1998, 83-84. The increased prominence of unconventional oil has recently led to increasing references to "liquids" as opposed to "oil" as such in Department of Energy reports.
33. See Michael T. Klare, "Beyond the Age of Petroleum," The Nation, October 25, 2007.
34. Richard Heinberg, Power Down (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2004), 35;
35. 2 emissions, stretching from approximately 2016 to 2036.
36. Pushker A. Kharecha and James E. Hansen, "Implications of 'Peak Oil' for Atmospheric CO2 and Climate," Global Biogeochemistry (2008, in press), http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/inpress/Kharecha_Hansen.html, figure 3.
37. "Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production," Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2007;
38. Klare, Beyond the Age of Petroleum."
39. Phillips, Bad Money, 130-31, 153; Energy Watch Group, Crude Oil: The Supply Outlook, October 2007, 71.
40. Phillips sees this descrepancy between the analysis at the top and public statements in Washington as due in large part to a desire to keep from the public the view that the U.S. system is itself peaking. See Phillips, Bad Money, 127.
41. Robert L. Hirsch, project leader, Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management, U.S. Department of Energy, February 2005, http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL. pdf, 13, 23-25. A different and more official position was issued by the EIA in 2004-2005 in the form of a presentation on "When Will World Oil Production Peak" by EIA administrator Guy Caruso at the 10th Annual Oil and Gas Conference, Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, June 13, 2005. The central scenario, however, estimated the world oil peak occurring in 2044, a figure too out of line with all other studies to be considered credible. See http://www.eia.doe. gov/neic/speeches/Caruso061305.pdf.
42. Robert L. Hirsh, "The Inevitable Peaking of World Oil Production," Bulletin of the Atlantic Council of the United States 16, no. 2 (October 2005): 8.
43. Daniel F. Fournier and Eileen T. Westervelt, U.S Army Engineer Research and Development Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Energy Trends and their Implications for U.S. Army Installations, September 2005, http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/challenges/overstretch/2005/09energytrends. pdf, vii.
44. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook, 2005 (Paris: OECD, 2005), 510-12;
45. Simmons, Twilight in the Desert, 170-79;
46. Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, 38.
47. United States Government Accountability Office, Crude Oil: Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production, February 28, 2007, 4, 20-22, 35-38.
48. Bloomberg.com, "Goldman's Murti Says Oil 'Likely' to Reach a $150-$200 (Update 5)," May 6, 2008;
49. "The Cassandra of Oil Prices," New York Times, May 21, 2008; ;
50. Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, 121-22;
51. Joroen van der Veer (interview), "Royal Dutch Shell CEO on the End of 'Easy Oil,'" http://www.cfr.org/publication/15923/end_of_easy_oil.html? breadcrumb=%2F; "Not Enough Oil is Lament of BP, Exxon on Spending (Update 1)," Bloomberg.com, May 19, 2008;
52. Mike Nizz, "Market Faces a Disturbing Oil Forecast," The Lede (New York Times blog), May 22, 2008, http://thelede.blogs. nytimes.com/2008/05/22/market-faces-a-disturbing-oil-forecast.
53. Lester R. Brown, Plan B 3.0 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 41;
54. Fred Magdoff, "The World Food Crisis," Monthly Review 60, no. 1 (May 2008): 1-15, and "The Political Economy and Ecology of Agrofuels," in this issue.
55. Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. Al-Rodhan, The Changing Risks in Global Oil Supply and Demand, Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 3, 2005 (first working draft), 8, 13-19, 55-59, 79, 83.
56. John Deutsch and James R. Schlesinger, chairs, National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependence, Council on Foreign Relations, 2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/11683/, 3, 16-30, 48-56.
57. James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University, "The Changing Role of National Oil Companies in International Oil Markets," Baker Institute Policy Report, no. 35 (April 2007), http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/BI_PolicyReport_35.pdf, 1, 10-12, 17-19.
58. Kunstler, The Long Emergency, 76-84;
59. Baker Institute, "Changing Role of National Oil Companies," 12.
60. Roger Stern, "The Iranian Petroleum Crisis and the United States National Security," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 1 (January 2, 2007): 377-82.
61. Foster, "A Warning to Africa";
62. Michael Watts, "The Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the New Scramble for Africa," Monthly Review 58, no. 4 (September 2006), 1-17;
63. Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, 146-76.
64. "U.S. Military Sees Oil Nationalism Spectre," Financial Times, June 26, 2006;
65. Council on Foreign Relations, "The Return of Resource Nationalism," August 13, 2007; http://www.cfr.org/publication/13989/ return_of_resource_nationalism.html;
66. Eva Golinger, Bush vs. Chavez (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008).
67. Simmons, "An Oil Man Reconsiders the Future of Black Gold."
68. Carlos Pascual, "The Geopolitics of Energy," Brookings Institution, January 2008, http://www.cfr.org/publication/15342/brookings. html, 3-4.
69. Daniel Litvin, The Guardian (UK), "Oil, Gas and Imperialism," January 4, 2006.
70. Joshua Kurlantzick, "Put a Tyrant in Your Tank," Mother Jones 33, no. 3 (May-June 2008), 38-42, 88-89.
71. See Richard Heinberg's excellent chapter on "Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism" in his Peak Everything (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2008), 141-57.
72. 2 emissions from coal-fired power plants peak by 2025 and that coal-fired plants without sequestration be phased out completely "before mid-century."
73. Pusher and Kharecha, "Implications of 'Peak Oil' for Atmospheric CO2 and Climate."
74. Rachel Carson, Lost Woods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 210.