Wise Words | Green Energy News

May 23, 2004 – Vol.9 No.9

WISE WORDS.

Finding the truth on the nature of the world’s oil supply may be just good detective work. Words of the world’s most famous detective should be listened to.

Sherlock Holmes said this - It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

If so, why isn’t there a Congressional investigation, perhaps an international investigation, into the true nature of the world’s remaining oil supply? Why not a real, wellhead-by-wellhead, inventory taking?

And, if the world’s economies rely on the flow of oil, why don’t governments - the stewards of the world’s economies - demand to know more about remaining supplies?

Because the world’s oil producers, operating in a competitive marketplace would have to release data that would get into the public’s and competitor’s hands. Oil companies would never allow, nor play part in, an investigation that would allow competitors access to vital information about their assets, their oil reserves.

While watchdog agencies like the International Energy Agency (IEA), perhaps the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), along with shareholders of publicly traded oil companies, have some data on reserves, that data hardly could be considered an inventory taking of global oil reserves.

Thus we go back to Holmes who also said this - How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

And this - You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

Are the root of high crude oil prices the once-seemingly impossible: Is demand for oil exceeding all-possible supply? Has oil already peaked?

Unfortunately, all that analysts (the detectives) have to work with is limited information (those trifles) to convince us of the true nature of the world’s oil supply.

If we don’t determine what’s left in the ground, more words from Sherlock Holmes may eventually come true - There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.

Visit the IEA and EIA http://www.iea.org/ , http://www.eia.doe.gov/ and the detectives at Simmons and Company (see Matthew R. Simmons, speeches and papers) http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/ , Oil Depletion Analysis Center (ODAC) http://www.odac-info.org/ , Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas at http://www.peakoil.net or http://www.asponews.org/ .

Note: Very likely somewhere in the many meetings of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force are discussions of world oil supply, and Iraq’s. But the public may never be allowed to know what was said behind closed doors. The U.S. Supreme Court is now reviewing whether or not Cheney must release documents pertaining to Task Force meetings.