No 'peak oil' for several decades?

Two Cheers for Expensive Oil

Leonardo Maugeri

Foreign Affairs March/April 2006

THE MARKET AT WORK

Widespread fears of waning oil reserves are obscuring the real reasons for the cost of crude oil today. The truth behind high prices is mundane: they are the result of extreme economic processes, not geological limitations. The current "crisis" is being driven by the reduced availability of crude on the world market and the inadequacy of the oil industry's refining capacity. Both conditions were brought on by years of low oil prices, inadequate investment in infrastructure, and producers' fears of surpluses. Since 2003, the situation has been exacerbated by an unexpected increase in the global consumption of crude.

As market forces have kicked in, high prices have already started to generate more investment, which will boost both production and refining capacity in the future. In other words, high oil prices are a painful but necessary cure for the disease that has affected the oil market for about 20 years.
Still, the danger remains that prices could stay too high for too long, provoking a drop in demand just when new production and refining capacity start to come on-stream. This, in turn, could send prices spiraling downward and put an end to the current move toward greater investment, leaving the fundamental problems of the oil market unsolved. Such a development would delay needed changes in the consumption habits of industrialized societies and set them up for another crisis in the future.

NOT SO DRY

Despite all the predictions of impending catastrophic shortages, the world still possesses immense oil reserves. "Proven" reserves alone, more than 1.1 trillion barrels, could fuel the world economy for 38 years even at current rates of consumption. And this figure understates potential production, because the accepted definition of proven reserves includes only those reserves that can be exploited with currently available technology at conservatively projected prices. An additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves are not classified as proven but will probably meet that standard in a few years as technological improvements, increased knowledge of the subsoil, and the economic incentive created by higher oil prices (or lower extraction costs) come into play. Consider, for example, that only 35 percent of the oil contained in known oil fields worldwide can be recovered today with existing technologies and based on current economic fundamentals (up from 22 percent in 1980). Current estimates of recoverable supplies also ignore large deposits of so-called unconventional oil, such as ultraheavy Venezuelan oil and oil that can be extracted from Canadian tar sands. Moreover, huge areas of the planet have yet to be thoroughly explored.

In other words, what little is known about the world's underground oil resources justifies a positive view of the future, not the alarmist vision of oil catastrophists. The pessimists assume that the world has been fully explored, that neither the dynamic of crude prices nor technological progress has any bearing on the "finite" nature of oil resources, and that consumption is bound to increase more and more, inexorably depleting the existing oil stock. Their pseudoscientific fatalism, camouflaged with quasi-sophisticated models, has ...

End of preview: first 500 words of 4,584 words total.

To purchase article ($5.95): https://www.foreignaffairs.org/olsa/cart/addtocart?u=%2F20060301faessay85212%2Fleonardo%2Dmaugeri%2Ftwo%2Dcheers%2Dfor%2Dexpensive%2Doil%2Ehtml&aid=85212

First Saudi feature film

Daring to Use the Silver Screen to Reflect Saudi Society

Hassan M Fattah

New York Times 28 April 2006

RIYADH — It is time for Sahar to marry, but she dreams of a career, not a husband. Her fundamentalist brother wants to pick her mate and is already planning her life as a homemaker.
In "Keif al Hal" ("How's It Going?"), a big-budget Arab film due out this summer, family members find themselves torn between modernity and tradition.
The plot may seem mundane but in important ways, "Keif al Hal" is a landmark project with big ambitions. It is the first feature film from Saudi Arabia, a country with not a single legal movie theater.
The movie, financed by a Saudi prince, aims not only to raise delicate questions about social oppression but also to generate a Saudi movie industry and force the opening of theaters, some of which are reportedly under construction without licenses or legal status.
"Keif al Hal" follows the release of several short films and documentaries by Saudi filmmakers over the past two years that do not shy away from controversial themes. "Thalal al Sampt" ("The Oppression of Silence"), by Abdullah al-Moheissin, is an art house science-fiction film about government oppression, while "Cinema 500 km" chronicles one man's drive to Bahrain to watch a movie, a statement about Saudi Arabia's narrow personal freedoms.
But "Keif al Hal," produced by Rotana, one of the Middle East's fastest growing media companies, which is owned by the Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal, takes things several steps further, with a relatively big-budget, mainstream film that aims to provoke questions.
"I am correcting a big mistake, that is all," said Prince Walid, sitting in his office high above Riyadh. "I want to tell Arab youth: You deserve to be entertained, you have the right to watch movies, you have the right to listen to music."
The mere existence of the film will be a challenge, he says. Saudi Arabia does produce dramas and soap operas for television, and satellites dishes can pick up movie channels and music videos, though they are not legal. But movie theaters, where the sexes can mingle in the dark, have until now remained out of the question. Last year, a movie theater in Jidda opened briefly to show children's films, but the vice patrol shuttered it within weeks.
Prince Walid, who commands special power within Saudi Arabia, is betting he can present the vice police with a fait accompli.
"There is nothing in Islam — and I've researched this thoroughly — not one iota that says you can't have movies," he said. "So what I am doing right now is causing change."
Nonetheless, he shot the film, written by an Egyptian and filmed by a Canadian, in Dubai.
"Keif al Hal," which is set in a Riyadh home, begins with the college graduation ceremony of Sahar, played by a Jordanian actress, Mais Hamdan. Sultan, an orphaned cousin of the family, played by a Saudi heartthrob named Hisham al-Huwaish, plays out his romantic dream of becoming a filmmaker in a place where the arts are not respected, while staring twinkly-eyed at Sahar, his secret love.
Sahar's elder brother, Khaled, a fundamentalist, begins dictating what she needs to do.
The tensions grow when Khaled comes to believe that his sister is having a secret romance.
"The struggle within the different elements of Saudi society today is almost as strong as that between America and the Arab world," said Ayman S. Halawani, the producer. "Many families have moderates and extremists. I don't mean terrorists, but the bedrock of where these terrorists come from. And we want to show the struggle that happens within."
Among the film's firsts, says Prince Walid, is the first Saudi movie actress, Hind Muhammad, who plays Duniya, Sahar's best friend. For years Ms. Muhammad, 25, worked on Saudi radio in soap operas, and later as a voice on cartoons. Until now, Saudi dramas have always used women from other countries.
Her arrival is thus another notable advancement for Saudi women, who until a few years ago were completely hidden from the public. Now their photographs appear in newspapers and they have their own identification cards rather than appearing as names on their husbands' or fathers' cards. Women are now training as architects and lawyers, divorce is easier and women no longer need a man to register a company.
"I believe in social change, in advancing, and not in staggering," Prince Walid said. "If all this can help the cause of ladies, advance the cause of social change, I will do it for sure."
The film makes use of jokes and one-liners to tell the story of Saudi Arabia's hidden lives. In one scene the fundamentalist Khaled and his friend crash in on the grandfather and several of his grandchildren, believing they were planning to watch a racy film, only to find the grandfather giving a religious sermon. In another scene, a character sends his phone number in a spitball to a woman, a common Saudi dating technique, only to discover that the woman, covered from head to toe, is his mother.
Mr. Halawani, who lived in the United States for 16 years and has years of experience in movie finance, believes he can make money on the film.
He plans to chase Saudi audiences where they play this summer, with the movie opening in Cannes, London, Beirut, Cairo and numerous resorts in the Arab world. Only after that, the prince says, will it go out on satellite, where it will reach a mainstream audience.
"We are changing perceptions, because they are not reality," said the prince, who said he planned to make several other Saudi films this year. "We will change the way people think."
The vice police? "I'm going to face them, not confront them," he said, "by logic, by being rational, by saying the things that make sense."

Review of two recent books on Saudi Arabia

Shifting Sands

Toby Jones

Foreign Affairs March/April 2006

Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership With Saudi Arabia. Rachel Bronson. : Oxford University Press, 2006, 368 pp. $30.00

Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis. By John R. Bradley. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 224 pp. $22.95 (paper, $13.95).

Four and a half years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Saudi Arabia is still under intense scrutiny in the United States. And with good reason. Even as Saudi leaders have struggled to shut off homegrown support for jihad, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Saudi citizens have made the trek to fight in the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq. The government's responses -- such as broadcasting the miniseries Deceit in the Name of Jihad -- have smacked of desperation. Saudi Arabia's rulers, it appears, are more frustrated than confident and less in control than they would like to be.
Some observers even question how earnest these efforts have been. Last June, Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and several other senators introduced the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005, which claims that the kingdom continues to abet international terrorism. Such suspicion runs deep in the United States, not least because the current mujahideen problem in Iraq is partly the result of the Saudi regime's support for jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and home to a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves, has also failed to convince the rest of the world that it is doing all it can to rein in record petroleum prices. High gas prices and burgeoning winter heating bills in the United States have increased the American public's frustration with U.S. reliance on foreign sources of energy. Anti-Saudi opprobrium is now so prevalent among Americans that it supports a cottage industry of television commercials, sensationalist cinema, and best-selling books smearing the kingdom.
Still, it is unthinkable that Washington will seek anything other than smooth relations with Riyadh, because Saudi Arabia will continue to be the world's most important source of oil for at least the next half century. After an April 2005 summit between then Crown Prince Abdullah and President George W. Bush, U.S. officials signaled that they would continue to tolerate the political status quo in Saudi Arabia, at least publicly, even though the achingly slow pace of reform there has frustrated the Bush administration's hopes for democratization in the Middle East. (The Saudi regime has clung to its authoritarian ways even since Abdullah, ostensibly a reformer, acceded to the Saudi throne last August.) The problem for Washington will be to balance its security concerns, energy needs, and aspirations for political reform abroad. Two new books, Thicker Than Oil and Saudi Arabia Exposed, consider the scope of the challenge by examining what U.S.-Saudi relations have been, where they stand now, and how changes within Saudi Arabia could shape them in the future.
BEYOND OIL
Rachel Bronson's Thicker Than Oil is a thoughtful history of U.S.-Saudi relations. It challenges the common characterization of the relationship as a bargain in which the Saudis provide easy access to oil in exchange for U.S. security guarantees. Bronson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that this simple generalization "ignores overlapping strategic interests that drove together successive Saudi kings and American administrations." Oil has been the principal reason for the United States' interest in Saudi Arabia since World War II, but it has not been the only one.
The fight against communism is among the interests Washington and Riyadh have shared, and it figures prominently in Bronson's book. Saudi Arabia became an important strategic partner for the United States during the Cold War, not only in the Middle East but also globally, partly, according to Bronson, because anticommunism often advanced Saudi security goals. During the 1950s and early 1960s, for example, Saudi leaders challenged Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who openly sought weapons and aid from the Soviet Union in pursuit of regional hegemony. "Saudi Arabia's anti-Communist activity was particularly helpful during the 1970s when the United States was licking its wounds from the fighting in Vietnam," Bronson notes. "Confronted by an inward-focused America, Saudi Arabia, France, and others built a coalition to challenge Soviet adventurism, independent of American efforts." Often acting on their own initiative, Saudi leaders funded anticommunist efforts in faraway places, including Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.
Geography, Bronson argues, has also been a critical factor in the relationship. Saudi Arabia was a key staging area for the U.S. military throughout the twentieth century. The United States maintained an airfield in the eastern Saudi town of Dhahran from 1952 to 1996. Located within a thousand miles of the Soviet Union, the airfield played a strategic role during the Cold War; in the 1980s, Bronson writes, it served "as a transit hub for American-procured weapons headed for Afghanistan." During the Persian Gulf War, the United States stationed over 500,000 troops in Saudi Arabia. It maintained a scaled-down but significant military presence in the kingdom as late as 2003, and it has been quietly using a handful of northern Saudi airfields for air support in the current war in Iraq.
Bronson's most novel argument is that religion has also been a key factor in U.S.-Saudi relations. "In addition to oil and geography," she argues, "America has since the dawn of the Cold War valued Saudi Arabia's religiosity." According to Bronson, "Oil by itself does not explain why, in the late 1950s, the United States sought to transform the Saudi king into a globally recognized Muslim leader. The Saudi leadership's claim to Mecca and Medina and the importance this had for America's anti-Communist agenda is a more powerful explanation."
Thicker Than Oil offers compelling evidence that U.S. policymakers sought to capitalize on Saudi Arabia's religious conservatism as early as the 1950s. Members of the Eisenhower administration championed King Saud, the kingdom's second monarch, as an "Islamic pope" and a potential rival to the Arab nationalist Nasser. Bronson rightly claims that subsequent U.S. administrations considered Saudi Arabia, "a deeply religious state," to be "the perfect prophylactic against the spread of Communism and a natural American partner." This belief intensified in the 1980s. The importance of Saudi religiosity to the U.S.-led struggle against the Soviet Union played out most obviously in Afghanistan, where the two governments supported the efforts of thousands of mujahideen. Saudi Arabia promoted the anti-Soviet jihad by mobilizing its mosques in the fight and encouraging thousands of its citizens to participate.
Although Bronson's effort to write religion into the U.S.-Saudi relationship is of considerable interest, she stretches the point too far. She does not really support her claim that "in a neat division of labor, Saudis attacked godlessness while Americans fought Communism." Likewise, she overreaches when she argues that "because Soviet-inspired Communism was based on a hostility toward religious belief, the more religious a country, the more likely it would be to rail against Communism and look toward the United States." The internal motivations that turn the wheels of policy inside the kingdom are too complicated to justify Bronson's simplification.
It is plausible that religion helps explain Saudi Arabia's foreign policy and its anticommunism, but the point is hardly obvious. In fact, throughout the twentieth century, Saudi monarchs were far from consistently pious, let alone openly concerned about the religiosity of those around them. King Saud barely concealed his disinterest in matters of faith during his reign, from 1953 to 1964. King Faisal, Saud's successor, was a deeply religious leader, but anticommunism probably did not inform his efforts to promote Muslim unity and spread Saudi religious influence abroad by founding international Islamic institutions. King Fahd, who ruled from 1982 until his death last summer, did emphasize religion, but like Saud, he was better known for his worldly excesses.
It was not until the 1980s, as Bronson notes, that the Saudi government married religion and foreign policy, and the move was more an effort to address pressing domestic threats than an expression of long-standing ideological convictions. The Saudi decision to embrace the jihad in Afghanistan was a response to the 1979 occupation of the mosque in Mecca by Sunni radicals, which threatened the regime's religious credentials. Fearful that radicalism might find popular support among the kingdom's disgruntled citizens, the royal family realized the expediency of co-opting the radicals' message. It was only then that the complete integration of religion and foreign policy took shape.
NOT SO SPECIAL
Although U.S.-Saudi relations were strong during the Cold War, it would be a mistake to conclude that the two countries' shared interests led to consistently smooth ties. As Bronson notes, despite an auspicious beginning, U.S.-Saudi ties have not always been harmonious. President Franklin Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud, Saudi Arabia's founding monarch, established close official ties during their only meeting, in February 1945. But their special relationship died with Roosevelt six weeks later, and U.S.-Saudi ties quickly succumbed to competing political interests. Successive U.S. presidents and Saudi monarchs proved much less enamored of one another, particularly in the period between Ibn Saud's death, in 1953, and Fahd's accession to the throne, in 1982.
Even when Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan made clear that Saudi Arabia was the United States' most important strategic and security asset in the volatile Persian Gulf region, the relationship was hardly smooth. Tensions were partly the legacy of the oil embargo and the subsequent skyrocketing oil prices of the mid-1970s. But they were also the result of competing strategic visions on the part of various U.S. officials. The U.S. Congress often played the most adversarial role, going so far as attempting to block arms sales to the kingdom in the 1980s.
The end of the Cold War was a transformative moment for U.S.-Saudi relations. Even though the two countries cooperated closely in expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, the shared strategic interests that had shaped the relationship for five decades faded with the fragmentation of the Soviet Union. Official relations drifted during the 1990s, as did the American public's interest in the kingdom.
Then came 9/11. The revelation that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens in the service of the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden raised deeply troubling questions about the goings-on inside the kingdom and the threat they posed to the United States. In many ways, the attacks established that Saudi Arabia had become more of a liability than an asset to U.S. security.
John Bradley's Saudi Arabia Exposed, based on the author's two and a half years of extensive travel as a journalist inside the country, shows how insecurity in Saudi Arabia challenges U.S.-Saudi relations today. Regional and ethnic tensions are potentially destabilizing for the ruling family. But more ominous in the long term for both Saudi and U.S. security interests are the pressures that result from the kingdom's high unemployment rates and large population of alienated and restless youth who, although attracted to U.S. technology and elements of U.S. culture, are also enamored of al Qaeda's anti-American ideology.
Bradley is at his best when he profiles common Saudis, juxtaposing their humanity with the brutality and profligacy of the Saudi regime. He humanizes liberal-minded men and women, particularly in the western region of Hejaz, where he spent most of his time. He also examines the plight of expatriates laboring under difficult conditions, courageous Shiites who challenge the religious orthodoxy, and even progressive members of the royal family.
Saudi Arabia Exposed brings to life the tensions between rulers and ruled, offering poignant evidence of widespread disillusionment with the royal family. Saudi rulers are responsible for much of this bitterness. They have long undermined a sense of belonging among their subjects. Rather than embracing diversity, which the kingdom has in great supply, the regime has relied on an austere religious ideology to enforce a narrow range of permissible behavior. Although Saudis are pious to varying degrees, most of them bristle at the often-suffocating hold of religious scholars and of those empowered to police and maintain the moral order. Many people even dislike being called Saudi, preferring to identify with their own communities and expressing cautious criticism against the government in the privacy of their homes. Without a coherent sense of nationhood, some have found solace in extremist political networks such as al Qaeda -- occasionally with catastrophic results for the United States and Saudi Arabia alike. Even those Saudis who do not embrace violent militancy are sensitive to al Qaeda's political message, particularly its dual attack on Saudi rulers and their U.S. allies.
In its attempt to make sense of why some Saudis take up jihad, however, Saudi Arabia Exposed is disappointing -- and startlingly shallow given its other strengths. Not only does it fail to ask why some Saudis are now choosing violence, but it also claims that 9/11 and other acts of anti-Western terrorism were inevitable events. Except for during the kingdom's founding, in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the Saud family groomed religious warriors to help it conquer the Arabian Peninsula, Saudis have not been particularly violent and have not used religion to justify attacks on either the West or their own government. Bradley's suggestion that all along the royal family was "quietly cultivating a Wahhabi religious establishment that placed at the center of its ideology the goal of completely destroying the West" is inaccurate and sensationalistic. And he oversteps when he claims that "the foundations of the Saudi state [were] built on active fault lines," and that "sooner or later, a seismic shift was sure to shake that state to the ground. Pulling in one direction is the internal demands of the Wahhabis; pulling in the other is the fundamentally absurd and self-contradictory 'special relationship' between the United States and Saudi Arabia that has stood since February 1945." Elements of the relationship do now appear self-contradictory, if not absurd. But this was not always the case.
Equally confounding is Bradley's occasional descent into pop psychology. Struck by the contradictory impulses of young Saudi men -- "ticking time bombs," he calls them -- Bradley argues, dubiously, that their ability to maintain their religious conviction while straying from it (for example, by browsing the Internet for pornography) is an essential feature of the Arab mind. "They dwell psychologically in a series of logic-tight compartments that touch each other but never overlap," he writes of young Saudi men, adding that "their behavior does not reach the self-conscious level of hypocrisy, of believing one thing and doing another, for it is a set of dissonant beliefs that they do not even recognize coexist at the same time." Bradley overlooks the fact that people in most societies display the same kind of cognitive dissonance. He sees the exceptional in Saudi Arabia where none exists.
KEYS TO THE KINGDOM
Access to Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves will remain part of the strategic calculus that determines U.S. policy toward the kingdom. Bronson suggests that the United States will likely tolerate higher oil prices, which the Saudi government is almost certain to seek since they enable it to stave off dissent at home. "Saudi Arabia and the United States are bound in a less political and more transactional relationship," she argues. "Both states will attempt to maximize their own profits without damaging the overarching, economically beneficial relationship." She also suggests that although Saudi and U.S. interests no longer converge as they did during the Cold War, the two states, driven together by mutual concerns over Iranian power in the Persian Gulf and instability in Iraq, "will likely seek ways to establish a strategic accommodation."
Bronson and Bradley have contrasting visions of how to manage that accommodation. They agree that the Saudi government's inability to deal convincingly with domestic support for militant violence is particularly troubling and dangerous. Bronson points out that "Saudi Arabia's religiosity, once defined by Washington as an asset, is today a political liability." Washington is also part of the problem. It, too, opportunistically cultivated Islamic militancy in the closing decade of the Cold War, and both the conflict in Iraq and Washington's broader war against terrorism have arguably made the problem considerably worse. But precisely because of that past and because Washington lacks the credibility to win a war of ideas against Islamist radicals, the burden of tamping down radicalism falls to the Saudis.
So what can and should Washington do? Not much, says Bradley, because "the ability of an outsider to influence [the Saudis] is highly limited." At best, he argues, one can encourage cultural understanding: "Those in power in the West would be wise, it seems to me, to listen to those who advocate change in the Middle East not by war but by the expenditure of similar amounts of money on language schools, cultural projects, and exchange programs that would give young Arabs access to the best that Western culture has to offer." The advice is unhelpful. It underestimates the role that Washington can play, mischaracterizes the problem as inherently cultural (it is political), and overlooks the fundamental point that the main proponents of change in the Middle East are not westernizers enamored of American culture. Those local leaders who most directly challenge radicals must continue to do so in a language that makes sense in the region. The best antidote to extremism is not greater exposure to Western values, as Bradley suggests, but greater involvement by moderate Islamists.
Bronson, who has a better grasp of the political challenge facing Washington, argues that the United States must now decide whether to distance itself from the Saudi royal family or encourage it to adopt more moderate politics. She encourages the latter, noting that the task "will be hard, complicated and might fail," but that "even if it does fail, Washington would be no worse off" than if it chose to distance itself from the kingdom. In particular, Bronson argues that U.S. engagement with Saudi Arabia should include promoting stability in the Persian Gulf, enlisting the Saudi government in the effort to stabilize Iraq, and remaining actively involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
For Bronson, calling for greater reform in Saudi domestic policies is "of secondary importance." She acknowledges that such reform, "if pursued deftly," could reassure the United States' natural allies in the Middle East and help defuse "the virulent anti-Americanism that permeates the region." But she is skeptical that political reform, in particular, could help curb extremism: "Violent religious fighters have not emerged simply as a response to authoritarian rule. ... Quickly opening up political space will not quell their violence. It will only allow them a space in the political process."
Although Bronson's caution is understandable -- in theory, radicals could benefit from political liberalization and come to dominate the Saudi political system -- it seems excessive. In the 2005 Saudi municipal council elections, for example, voters in Riyadh and Jidda did not choose the most radical candidates on the ballot; they opted for more moderate Islamists, who at least claimed to be interested in serving the community. Islamist candidates lost even in the town of Buraydah, the spiritual heartland of Wahhabism. Almost all Saudis, liberal or not, are critical of the United States, and it is possible that the most outspoken among them would pursue a more decidedly anti-American agenda if they rose to power. But it is just as plausible that their anger would subside if Washington seriously pressured the royal family to include them in the Saudi political process. Moreover, as Bradley shows, Saudi Arabia is hardly homogenous. Opening up its political system would likely create a culturally, religiously, and ideologically complex nation -- and a far worthier partner for the United States.
Toby Jones was the Persian Gulf analyst for the International Crisis Group from 2004 to 2006.

Peak Oil - books published since January 2005

Books from January 2005 on peak oil and allied subjects

Bilaal, Abdullah
Peak oil paradigm shift: the urgent need for a sustainable energy model
Trinidad and Tobago: Medianet Limited, 2005
ISBN 9769513709 (hbk) ISBN 9769513717 (pbk)
Publisher: explores the rate at which the world is using up its hydrocarbon energy reserves and the resulting potential for serious dislocations when previously low cost energy from these sources become increasingly scarce and expensive with serious implications for both rich and poor nations.

Blanchard, Roger D
The Future of Global Oil Production: Facts, Figures, Trends and Projections, by Region
McFarland & Company, Inc, 2005
ISBN 0786423579
Publisher: This work brings data together in a coherent study of the future of global oil production. An examination of U.S. capacity is followed by a look at the production futures of Western Europe, Mexico and Canada, South and Central America, Asia, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, and Africa. Alternatives to oil are also discussed. With world oil production likely to peak in approximately 2010 and natural gas production in 2020, this is a timely look at an vital global issue.

Board on Energy and Environmental Systems
Workshop on Trends in Oil Supply and Demand, Potential for Peaking of Conventional oil production, October 20-21, 2005
National Academies Press, 2005
ISBN 0309101433
[From Introduction]: Key questions:
What is oil peaking in terms of supply and demand? Will it happen? When? Is peaking predictable? Will there be timely warnings? Can market forces overcome S/D gaps over the next 25-30 years? What role can non-convoil, coal, natural gas, and renewables play ? How much discovered recoverable conventional oil exists? How much undiscovered conventional oil exists? Can energy efficiency significantly mitigate the impact of peaking? Is oil price a significant factor? Is advanced technology a significant factor? What lead time is required to significantly mitigate the impact of peaking? What global actions are required to address potential peaking? Why is potential peaking a concern and why worry now? Full text of presentations on http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bees/trends_in_oil_supply.html

Brown, Lester R
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble
Norton, 2006
ISBN 0393328317
Publisher: The world faces numerous environmental trends of disruption and decline such as rising temperatures, falling water tables, shrinking forests, melting glaciers, collapsing fisheries, and rising sea levels. In Plan B, Lester R. Brown notes that in ignoring nature's deadlines for dealing with these environmental issues we risk the disruption of economic progress. In addition to these environmental trends, the world faces the peaking of oil, the addition of 70 million people per year, a widening global economic divide, and the spread of international terrorism.

Campbell, Colin J
Oil crisis
Multi-Science Publishing Co. Ltd, 2005
ISBN: 0906522390
Why has Shell repeatedly re-stated its oil reserves? Why is oil above $50 a barrell? Why do Goldman-Sachs think its going to go over $100? Why did America invade Iraq? Why is central Asia in turmoil? Because there is an oil crisis. And in his new book, Colin Campbell explains why, in a work that's accessible to both layman and professional. The grand old man of depletion studies, and currently president of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, Colin Campbell distils a lifetime's study of oil reserves into this book. In his previous acclaimed book, the Coming Oil Crisis, he explained why a crisis was imminent. Now, in OIL CRISIS, he argues it's here, and the world is hopelessly unprepared for the consequences. Well meaning enthusiasm for renewables and high hopes about hydrogen will be seen for what they are when the wells stop pumping. It's a crisis of truly historic proportions.

Campbell, Colin J
Colin Campbell: Petroleum Geologist: A Seminal Interview On Oil Depletion
New Society, 2006
ISBN 097675102X [DVD]
Publisher: In clear and accessible terms, veteran petroleum geologist Colin Campbell explains Peak Oil, the basics of petroleum geology, how oil affects and inflames geo-politics, and the unhelpful role of free market economics in hastening oil and gas depletion.

Chiras, Dan
The Home Energy Survival Guide: Energy Independence from Wind, Solar and Other Renewables
New Society Publishers, 2006
ISBN 086571536X
Publisher: The coming energy crisis caused by a peak in global oil and natural gas production will profoundly affect the lives of all North Americans. As the price of these vital fuels rises, homeowners will scramble to cut their fuel bills. Two options for meeting the upcoming challenge are dramatic improvements in home energy efficiency and efforts to tap into clean, affordable, renewable energy resources to heat and cool homes, to provide hot water and electricity, and even to cook. These measures can result in huge savings and a level of energy independence. The Home Energy Survival Guide tells you how. It starts by outlining the likely impacts of fossil fuel shortages and some basic facts about energy. It then discusses energy conservation to slash energy bills and prepare for renewable energy options. Focusing carefully on specific strategies needed to replace specific fuels, the book then examines each practical energy option available to homeowners: *solar hot water, cooking and water purification*space heat: passive and active solar retrofits*wood heat*passive cooling*solar electricity*wind-generated electricity*electricity from microhydropower sources, and*emerging technologies -- hydrogen, fuel cells, methane digesters and biodiesel.

Corsi, Jerome R
Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil
Cumberland House Publishing. 2006
ISBN 1581824890
Publisher: Experts estimate that Americans consume more than 25 percent of the world's oil but have control over less than 3 percent of its proven oil supply. This unbalanced pattern of consumption makes it possible for foreign governments, corrupt political leaders, terrorist organisations, and oil conglomerates to hold the economy and the citizens of the United States in a virtual stranglehold. In this book, the authors expose the fraudulent science that has made America so vulnerable: the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and that it is a finite resource. Jerome Corsi explores the international and domestic politics of oil production and consumption, including the wealth and power of major oil conglomerates, the manipulation of world economies by oil-producing nations and rogue terrorist regimes and the shortsightedness of those who endorse expensive conservation efforts while rejecting the use of the oil reserves currently controlled by the U.S. government.

Darley, Julian
Matt Simmons: Energy Banker: Saudi Oil Presentation & Four Interviews
New Society, 2006
ISBN 0976751003 [DVD]
Publisher: Features Matt Simmons' seminal 2004 presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC and four exclusive interviews documenting the controversy over whether Saudi Aramco will be able to increase oil production over the next several decades.

Darley, Julian, et al
Relocalize Now!: Getting Ready for Climate Change and the End of Cheap Oil, A Post Carbon Guide
New Society, 2006
Publisher: On hearing about the coming energy crisis Many people ask: But what can I do? "Relocalize Now!" provides the best answers to date. This timely guide from the Post Carbon Institute analyses the full depth of the crisis of industrial civilisation, outlines the centrality of the global economic system in this crisis, and then proposes a plan for the global relocalisation of our way of life. It promotes the idea of people recreating local communities - or 'outposts' - at the level of neighbourhood and nation that can begin to build 'parallel public infrastructures' for survival. It does this through presenting specific programs to create local money, energy, transportation, governance and food systems designed to help communities become self-reliant right now, and broader policy strategies that must be addressed at the political and institutional level to help communities create a long-term system adapted for a post-carbon age. The book's innovative project ideas such as a community retirement fund and corporate disobedience - nonviolent ways to disengage from globalisation - are supplemented by practical tools for relocalising and examples of charter outposts from LA to Alaska and Toronto.

Davis, Jerome (ed)
The Changing World of Oil: An Analysis of Corporate Change and Adaptation
Ashgate, 2006
ISBN 0754641783
Publisher: Most energy analysts now predict an imminent global energy crisis. With the rapid industrialization of places like China and India world oil demand has soared while geo-political tensions and natural disasters have thrown supply questions to the fore. This book considers the turbulence in the oil industry as a process of industrial change. In a unique analysis of the issues, leading commentators and international specialists present a ground-breaking view of the future of the industry; one where corporations are considered to be the dependent variables, not the future production and demand for oil and gas. Particular attention is paid to 'mega-mergers', the on-going process of downsizing and outsourcing and the significance of such restructuring for the. A further feature of the work is the use made of recent theories of the firm, demonstrating how such theories can be used to analyse one of the world's most critical industries.

Deffeyes, Kenneth
Beyond oil – the view from Hubbert’s peak
New York: Hill and Wang, 2005
ISBN 0809029561
Publisher: With world oil production about to peak and inexorably head toward steep decline, what fuels are available to meet rising global energy demands? That question, once thought to address a fairly remote contingency, has become ever more urgent, as a spate of books has drawn increased public attention to the imminent exhaustion of the economically vital world oil reserves. Deffeyes, a geologist who was among the first to warn of the coming oil crisis, now takes the next logical step and turns his attention to the earth's supply of potential replacement fuels. In Beyond Oil, he traces out their likely production futures, with special reference to that of oil, utilizing the same analytic tools developed by his former colleague, the pioneering petroleum-supply authority M. King Hubbert.

Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research
Gulf Oil in the Aftermath: Stategies and Policies
Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research, 2006
ISBN 9948007530 (hbk) ISBN 9948007522 (pbk)
Publisher: The first major survey of the Iraqi oil industry since the US-led invasion, this book is essential for understanding the direction of the world oil market. The contributors to this book are heavyweight players. The disruption in Iraqi oil supply and the prospect of its resumption carries both short and long term implications: for Iraq, the Gulf states, OPEC and the world oil market. On the new world oil map, the geographical focus of exploration and production is now shifting away from the Gulf to newer areas such as Russia, the Caspian basin, Venezuela and the West African rim. With global energy demand set to grow phenomenally, especially in Asia, both OPEC and non-OPEC countries must make strategic investment and production choices to meet anticipated supply challenges.

Goodstein, David L
Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
W W Norton & Co Ltd, 2005
ISBN 0393326470
Publisher: Our rate of oil discovery has reached its peak and will never be exceeded; rather, it is certain to decline—perhaps rapidly—forever forward. Meanwhile, over the past century, we have developed lifestyles firmly rooted in the promise of an endless, cheap supply. In this book, David Goodstein, professor of physics at Caltech, explains the underlying scientific principles of the inevitable fossil fuel shortage we face. He outlines the drastic effects a fossil fuel shortage will bring down on us. And he shows that there is an important silver lining to the need to switch to other sources of energy, for when we have burned up all the available oil, the earth's climate will have moved toward a truly life-threatening state.

Heinberg, Richard
Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse
New Society Publishers. (09) 2006
ISBN 0865715637
Publisher: The Oil Depletion Protocol is the best collective hope for avoiding global chaos as the Oil Age winds toward its inevitable end. This book is a brief explanation of the document and its implications for the world.

Heinberg, Richard
The party’s over: oil, war and the fate of industrial societies
New Society Publishers, 2005, ISBN: 0865715297
Clairview Books, 2nd ed, 2005, ISBN 1905570007
Publisher: The world is about to change dramatically and forever as the result of oil depletion. Within the next few years, the global production of oil will peak. Thereafter, even with a switch to alternative energy sources, industrial societies will have less energy available to do all the things essential to their survival. We are entering a new era as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times. "The Party's Over” deals head-on with this imminent decline of cheap oil.

Hiro, Dilip
No Oil: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Supply
Nation Books, (10) 2006
ISBN 1560255447

Hirsch, Robert L (ed)
Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, And Risk Management
Nova Science Pub Inc, 2006
ISBN 1600210538
Publisher: The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking. Dealing with world oil production peaking will be extremely complex, involve literally trillions of dollars and require many years of intense effort. To explore these complexities, three alternative mitigation scenarios are analyzed: scenario I assumes that action is not initiated until peaking occurs; scenario II assumes that action is initiated 10 years before peaking; scenario III assumes action is initiated 20 years before peaking. For this analysis estimates of the possible contributions of each mitigation option were developed, based on an assumed crash program rate of implementation.

International Energy Agency
Saving Oil in a Hurry
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2005
ISBN 9264109412
Publisher: During 2004, oil prices reached levels unprecedented in recent years. Although world oil markets remain adequately supplied, high oil prices reflect increasingly uncertain conditions, and many countries are considering ways to improve capacity to handle market volatility and possible supply disruptions in the future. In light of these concerns, this publication sets out a new quantitative assessment of the potential oil savings and costs of rapid oil demand restraint measures for transport, useful for both large-scale disruptions, and for smaller, localised supply disruptions in individual countries. It examines potential approaches for rapid uptake of measures such as telecommuting, ecodriving, and car-pooling; as well as discussing methodologies for adapting policy measures to national circumstances.

Jaccard, Marc
Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy
Cambridge University Press, 2006
ISBN 0521861799 (hbk) ISBN 0521679796 (pbk)
Publisher: More and more people believe we must quickly wean ourselves from fossil fuels - oil, natural gas and coal - to save the planet from environmental catastrophe, wars and economic collapse. Professor Jaccard argues that this view is misguided. We have the technological capability to use fossil fuels without emitting climate-threatening greenhouse gases or other pollutants. The transition from conventional oil and gas to their unconventional sources including coal for producing electricity, hydrogen and cleaner-burning fuels will decrease energy dependence on politically unstable regions. In addition, our vast fossil fuel resources will be the cheapest source of clean energy for the next century and perhaps longer. By buying time for increasing energy efficiency, developing renewable energy technologies and making nuclear power more attractive, fossil fuels will play a key role in humanity's quest for a sustainable energy system.

Kuhlman, Alex
Peak Oil survival guide: preparing for the coming global crisis
Network resource, 2005
ISBN 0955169100
Publisher: This unique E-guide gives many suggested preparations that are well within the realm of practicality. In addition to financial recommendations, it includes a powerful analysis of countries and regions for strategic relocation, while discussing the complex mixture of advantages and disadvantages of living in an isolated retreat versus a community. New Edition, now including NASA based analysis. Essential Reading to prepare you and your family for the inevitable day of Reckoning. Available on: http://www.oildecline.com/guide.htm

Kunstler, James Howard
The long emergency – surviving the converging catastrophes of the 21 st century
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005
ISBN 0871138883 (hbk) ISBN 0802142494 (Grove Press, 2006, pbk)
Publisher: Kunstler offers a shocking vision of a post-oil future. As a result of artificially cheap fossil-fuel energy, we have developed global models of industry, commerce, food production, and finance over the last 200 years. But the oil age, which peaked in 1970, is at an end. The depletion of nonrenewable fossil fuels is about to radically change life as we know it, and much sooner than we think. The Long Emergency tells us just what to expect after the honeymoon of affordable energy is over, preparing us for economic, political, and social changes of an unimaginable scale. Riveting and authoritative, The Long Emergency is a devastating indictment that brings new urgency and accessibility to the critical issues that will shape our future.
Extract from the book’s text on http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0802142494/reviews/026-9643748-8147662

Leeb, Stephen; Leeb, Donna
The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself from the Coming Energy Crisis
Little, Brown, 2005
ISBN 0446694061
Publisher: Financial guru Stephen Leeb predicts an inflationary 'perfect storm' that will lay waste to millions of portfolios if investors don't prepare ahead of time. In this perilous period, it will be essential to pay attention to the price of oil. As Foreign Affairs recently pointed out, to support the world's population, oil production must rise in the next 20 years from 75 million barrels a day to 125 million - a 66 per cent increase! And yet all over the world - from the North Sea to Mexico to Venezuela - come reports of production capacity maxing out. Result: pressure to raise output will mean higher production costs, which will mean vastly more expensive oil. But there is a way to diversify away from disaster: by investing in energy producers. Here, Stephen Leeb helps readers pick the 'energy-producer star performers', reveals the 'double payoff' to investing in metals like platinum and silver, explains why the stocks of 'mega-insurers' are a safe bet, and shows how investing in real estate does not have to mean actually owning it.

Leggett, Jeremy
The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe
Random House, 2005
ISBN 97814000652751
Publisher: The oil topping point–the day half of all the world’s oil is used up–will be reached, by many calculations, sometime soon. In fact, it may already be upon us. When the financial markets realize what’s happening, an economic crash and soaring energy prices will result. The entire global marketplace we all inhabit will crack and crumble.Oil companies and governments don’t want you to know this. They have been covering up depletion, while stoking addiction and holding back alternatives. Leggett shows how major energy producers have been exposed providing false information about climate change and underground reserves. He describes how governments collude with private enterprise and one another to keep the global economy hooked on oil. And he explains the science behind oil extraction, demonstrating with unimpeachable expertise why the well is indeed running dry a lot faster than we think. Yet Leggett also points the way forward. All the technology we need to get off the road to disaster is already at hand. A new Manhattan Project for energy can save us if we can wake up and confront the problem directly.

Leggett, Jeremy
Half gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis
Portobello Books Ltd, 2005 and (06) 2006 (pbk)
ISBN 1846270049 (hbk) ISBN 1846270057 (pbk)
Publisher: An expose of the oil industry's cover-up of the diminishing oil supply, that paints a bleak picture of the future in which the price of oil skyrockets, economies and communities shudder worldwide, and the globe must move to renewable source to give it power.

Lovins, Amory B
Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs and Security
Earthscan Publications Ltd, 2005
ISBN 1844071944
Publisher: Winning the Oil Endgame shows how a country can eliminate its need for oil over the next few decades. Advanced energy efficiency and alternative fuels, such as modern biofuels and saved natural gas, already cost less than oil's market price, let alone its true cost to society. Displacing oil is therefore profitable and will be led by business, not public policy, with enormous gains available to early movers. Oil is integral to the major geopolitical, business and environmental issues of the 21st century. This new book by Amory Lovins shows, in practical detail, how much the conventional oil-dependent sectors have to gain by moving away from oil through innovation and new technology, in addition to the enormous benefits to be reaped by the rest of society.

McKillop, Andrew with Shelia Newman (eds)
The final energy crisis
London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto, 2005
ISBN 0745320937 (hbk) ISBN 0745320929 (pbk)
Publisher: Oil and gas are running out faster than the vast majority of people realise and this will have seismic consequences for the whole world. Even by the year 2005, oil will start to become in short supply, prices will start going up, and politicians will opt for the nuclear energy option - with all the consequences that this option implies.

Mabro, Robert
Oil in the Twenty-First Century
OUP, (09) 2006
ISBN 0199207380
Publisher: Oil is hitting the headlines once again. The big increases in oil prices over the past two years are upsetting consumers and puzzling producers. The reasons are difficult to understand, since few people are familiar with the complex workings of the price regime for oil in international trade. It is said that sluggish investment is a major cause, but what are the reasons for inadequate investment in oil producing and refining plants during the last 20 years? Does oil have a future? We are told that oil production will soon peak because the rate of production is higher than replacement rates. Climate change problems are casting a shadow over the future of fossil fuels. There may, however, be a solution to the nefarious CO2 emissions in, for instance, technologies that sequestrate carbon. Oil's stronghold is the transport sector: cars, trucks, railway engines, planes, ships. The demand for oil would suffer a fatal blow if technical innovations in car engines make it possible to use an alternative fuel to petrol or diesel. New energy sources - wind, solar, tide, waves, geo-thermal - are both renewable and environment-friendly. Do they represent a threat to the future of oil?

Mast, Tom
Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage
Hayden Publishing, 2005
ISBN 0976444003
Publisher: A concise summary of the urgent oil shortage issue. It provides a balanced and factual picture of the medium-to-long range role of oil in supplying the world's energy needs, as well as an understanding of the many technical and social implications of the alternatives to oil. A foundation in understanding energy is provided by the early chapters on energy concepts, history, uses, and sources. Then, the focus shifts to understanding oil. Oil alternatives are reviewed with the alarming conclusion that we don?t know which of them can overcome their many technical and social issues to fill some of the gap that will be created by declining oil production. The case for more and better organized research and development of alternatives to oil is made.

Maugeri, Leonardo
The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World's Most Controversial Resource
Praeger Publishers Inc, (05) 2006
ISBN 0275990087
Publisher: The history of the oil market has been marked, since its inception, by a succession of booms and busts, each one leading to the same psychological climax and flawed political decisions. Today we are experiencing a global oil boom that, paradoxically, seems to herald a gloomy era of scarcity combined with growing consumption and overshadowed by the threat from Islamic terrorism in the oil-rich Middle East. The author believes, however, that the pessimists are wrong. He debunks the main myths surrounding oil in our times in the second part of his book. Are we running out of oil? What is the real impact of Islamic radicalism on oil-rich regions? By translating many of the technical concepts of oil productions into terms that the average reader can easily grasp, Maugeri answers these questions, concluding that the wolf is not at the door, and that we are facing neither a problem of oil scarcity, nor an upcoming oil blackmail by forces hostile to the West. Only bad political decisions driven by a distorted view of what our problems are, and who is to blame for them, can doom us to a gloomy oil future.

Mobbs, Paul
Energy Beyond Oil: Could You Cut Your Energy Use by Sixty Per Cent?
Matador, 2005
ISBN 1905237006
Publisher: In order that you can share the argument, this book explores the issues in detail. The data. The trends. The projections. The possible outcomes. Hopefully, at the end of this process [about peak oil], you will be able to understand what it is we are facing, and perhaps find your own resolution to the potential difficulties we will all face over the next ten to twenty years. The message you take from this book should be a positive one...that Western society is about to undergo a massive, collective shock. But, by applying basic principles of sustainable development we can live through this period...albeit without the ready-meals, cheap flights to Spain, 4x4's, Britney Spears videos, Formula One racing, plastic umbrellas...

Olah, George A, et al
Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy
Wiley, 2006
ISBN 3527312757
Publisher: In this masterpiece, the renowned chemistry Nobel laureate, George A. Olah, discusses in a clear and readily accessible manner the use of methanol as a viable alternative to dangerous and dwindling energy resources. Following an introduction Olah looks at the interrelation of fuels and energy, and at the extent of our non-renewable fossil fuel resources. Despite the diminishing resources and global warming, the author covers the continuing need for hydrocarbons and their products, while balancing the envisioned hydrogen economy against its shortcomings. The main section then focuses on the methanol economy, including converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into safe liquid methanol to for fuel (and fuel cells) and as a raw material for hydrocarbons. The whole is rounded off with a glimpse into the future.

Orwel, George
Black gold: the new frontier in oil for investors
Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, (06) 2006
ISBN 9780471792680
Black Gold offers in-depth analysis of how the falling production and rising demand of oil has enabled savvy companies and investment banks to cash in on this phenomenon. Best of all, this guide also provides readers with investment suggestions-from ETFs and energy futures to hedge funds-that will allow them to reap substantial profits from current and future situations in this market. Drawing on historical background, current issues, and expectations of the energy road ahead, Black Gold has a breadth and depth of information that industry professionals will appreciate and that the general public can understand. Besides exploring how to implement profitable investment strategies-which are backed by detailed charts and graphs-within this industry, Black Gold also contains short human-interest stories that illustrate every issue discussed. It also provides a different timeframe for the peak of oil production-one that is more realistic and gaining acceptance by both scientists and economists. Practical and informative, Black Gold will show readers how to make the most of a market that is poised to grow exponentially in the years ahead.

Podobnik, Bruce
Global energy shifts: fostering sustainability in a turbulent age
Temple University Press, 2006
ISBN 1592132944
Publisher: In the year 1900, the industrial world was almost entirely reliant on coal for its commercial energy. Only 50 years later, a new system - based on oil - had spread across the entire globe. By the end of the twentieth century, yet another system - based on natural gas - was achieving world-wide diffusion. Global Energy Shifts explores the societal forces that led to the expansion of these energy systems and demonstrates that the convergence of specific geopolitical, commercial, and social conditions can generate rapid and far-reaching transformations in the energy foundations of our world. In an important concluding chapter, Podobnik describes opportunities for fostering a similarly rapid shift toward renewable energy systems in the twenty-first century drawing on lessons from world history.

Roberts, Paul
The End of Oil: The Decline of the Petroleum Economy and the Rise of a New Energy Order
Bloomsbury, 2005 ISBN 0747570817
Mariner, 2005 ISBN 0618562117
Publisher: The pursuit of fuel is relentless. It can shape the diplomatic, economic and military strategies of nations, perverting the cultures and politics of entire regions; it props up corrupt governments and dictators; it fosters the instability and resentments that have already spawned Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In this devastating piece of reportage, Paul Roberts shows what is likely to happen, why the transition from oil will be complicated, traumatic and possibly dangerous, and what it will mean for our daily lives.

Segal, Mary
Getting Through The Wilderness: the Fuel Crisis, Global Warming, and The Hydrogen Frontier
AuthorHouse, 2005
ISBN 1420896784
Publisher: But in 2005, the emergency emerged! Many people cannot afford the price of heating oil and natural gas and electric heat or even wood this year. Gasoline for cars is also high in price. Katrina and Rita complicated an already narrow margin. She expedited this manuscript with AuthorHouse, to get out an explanation of why we are in this shortage, and to offer suggestions and hope about what steps we could follow that could probably get us through this wilderness. She cares about every American and feels a profound need for unity amongst us to face this crisis with cooperation and dedication to one another, rich, just comfortable, and poor alike. We would be showing the world a new democratic example and new technical ecology.

Simmons, Matthew R
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2005 / 2006
ISBN 047173876X (hbk) ISBN 0471790184 (pbk: 06, 2006)
Publisher: Saudi Arabia is the most important oil producing nation in history. The secretive Saudi government repeatedly assures the world that its oil fields are healthy beyond reproach, and that they can maintain and even increase output at will to meet skyrocketing global demand. But what if they can't? Twilight in the Desert looks behind the curtain to reveal a Saudi oil and production industry that could soon approach a serious, irreversible decline. In this exhaustively researched book, veteran oil industry analyst Matthew Simmons draws on his own three-plus decades of insider experience and more than 200 independently produced reports about Saudi petroleum resources and production operations. What he uncovers is a story about Saudi Arabia's troubled oil industry, not to mention its political and societal instability, which differs sharply from the globally accepted Saudi version.

Standlea, David
Oil, Globalization, And the War for the Arctic Refuge
State University of New York Press, 2006
ISBN 0791466310
From the cover: The global consumption of fossil fuels is dramatically rising, while inversely, the supply is in permanent decline. The "end of oil" threatens the very future of Western civilization. Oil, Globalization, and the War for the Arctic Refuge examines the politics of drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Tertzakian, Peter
A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World
McGraw Hill, 2006
ISBN 0071468749
Publisher: In 2006, world oil consumption will for the first time exceed one thousand barrels per second. That’s the jumping off point for A Thousand Barrels A Second, in which ARC Financial Corporation’s Chief Energy Economist Peter Tertzakian shares the results of his unique analysis of the world’s energy trends, past and present. He examines how energy crises, or "break points," develop, including the pressure build-up the world is experiencing now before the next break point occurs in the coming decade. He explains the issues behind our energy dependency, explores the ramifications of fuel consumption for our nation and emerging powers such as China, and explains the most likely solutions for satisfying the world’s hunger for more energy, especially oil, and the opportunities that lie ahead.

United States: Congress, House: Committee on Energy and Commerce: Subcommitte on Energy and Air Quality
Understanding the peak oil theory: hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Ninth Congress, first session, December 7, 2005.
Washington : U.S. G.P.O, 2005
[From introduction by Ralph M. Hall, Chairman] So I will recognize myself for just a moment. I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today as we look at the theory of Peak Oil. We are having this hearing today to learn more about the theory, to hear different opinions, and to learn what we can do about it, if anything. While some theorists believe that we have reached our peak, the point at which the rate of world oil production cannot increase at any time, there are others that tell us that we are not going to peak any time soon, and others who still believe oil is continuously being created and will therefore never peak.
Also: full text on:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:25627.pdf

Girls of Riyadh: article and extract

Driven to attraction

By Roula Khalaf

Financial Times April 14 2006

I will write about my friends,
the story of each of them,
I see in it, I see myself,
a tragedy like my own tragedy,
I will write about my friends,
about the prison that sucks the years of the prisoners,
about the time devoured by the columns of magazines,
about doors that don’t open,
about desires slaughtered at birth,
about the huge prison cell,
and about its black walls,
and about the thousands of female martyrs,
buried without names,
in the cemetery of tradition.

From a poem by Nizar Kabbani, cited in The Girls of Riyadh

It is possible for most adolescents in the world not only to think, dream or anguish about their first date but also to have one, probably followed by a second, maybe a few more. In Saudi Arabia you can do the dreaming and worrying, but you may very well end up with no more than one date, especially if you are a girl, and you are likely to have little more than a walk-on part in it.
Marriages are for the most part arranged, and it is not unusual for a couple to meet for the first time after their parents agree to the union. So much in Saudi social life seems to be built around the idea that girls and boys should not meet, even to prepare themselves for marriage. There are no cinemas or concerts or parties to go to. Single young men, thought to be disruptive, aren’t allowed to go to the mall on Thursday, “family night”, the busiest night of the week, and they must eat in separate sections at restaurants. So they sit in their cars outside, blocking traffic. The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, religious policemen who wear long beards and refuse to look at a woman’s face, keep an eye on them and intervene if the mall’s security guards let them slip in. The young men sit and wait for a glimpse of a woman entering or leaving. They are unlikely to see any more than her eyes, the rest of her shape and form dispossessed, hidden beneath a robe. If they get so much as a look, one of the men may write his phone number on a piece of paper and throw it out the window, hoping she will have the courage to pick it up. Some stick their phone numbers on their car windshields in the hope of getting a call.
Determination and technology, however, have made life a little easier for young Saudis. Satellite television bombards them with images of the way other people live. Mobile telephones and internet chat rooms have made it less painful to get to know each other, once families have signed off on wedding plans. A common way to flirt is to turn on the wireless bluetooth facility on your mobile phone, allowing messages to be sent to other bluetooth-enabled phones within reach, even when the number is not known.
Into this clash of centuries comes a novel that captures it all. Written as a series of e-mails, The Girls of Riyadh records the trials and tribulations of four high-society city girls. They wear expensive designer clothes, sprinkle their speech with American jargon, make references to Sex and the City, and sometimes drink champagne. But under it all they continue to live in their Saudi world, smothered by the severe interpretation of Islam that prevails, where their most natural feelings are denied expression. Though the lifestyles of Sadeem, Gamrah, Mashael (nicknamed Michelle) and Lamees are more elite and far more liberal than many other Saudis, their experience is the experience of Saudi youth.
The Girls of Riyadh is written by Rajaa al-Sanie, a 25-year-old dental student who comes from a family of professionals, has lived most of her life in Riyadh and attended King Saud University. A kind of Arab Bridget Jones’s Diary, the novel is popular across the Arab world and a bestseller at book fairs all over the Middle East. Published in Beirut last September, it was officially banned from distribution in Saudi Arabia until last month, a prohibition that created even more excitement. In Saudi Arabia itself, tens of thousands of copies have been circulating - from the internet or the black market. It is being read by men as much as women, its impact has been debated in newspapers and on television, and Rajaa has become a celebrity.
In an exchange of e-mails with me, Rajaa insists that The Girls of Riyadh is not based on her own life or that of her friends, but rather on stories that she’s heard. “I hate to disappoint you, but I have not found true love,” she says. She started writing it six years ago as a hobby, and she plans to write more novels as she continues her postgraduate dental studies in the US.
In the book, three of the girls have relationships that go badly wrong, frustrated by conservative families and conservative men. The girls meet (sometimes bringing a boyfriend) in the house of Um Nuwayyer, a friendly neighbour who shares their secrets and advises them. Um Nuwayyer’s son is gay. Her husband left her to live with his second wife, after beating up his son. Homosexuality is only one of the taboos the author confronts in her book. Another is the hostility that even the least conservative of Sunni Wahabi society feels towards the minority Shia Muslims. Lamees refuses to heed her sister’s advice and becomes friendly with Ali, a Shia. But the affair ends when the religious police find them together in a cafe. “Poor Ali. He was a nice guy and, frankly, if he weren’t a Shia, she would have loved him,” says the narrator, who is portrayed as a friend of the four girls.
Perhaps more shocking, is that Rajaa dares to show that Saudi girls are keen to meet boys, despite the oppressive social barriers. “At the entrance to the mall, the girls followed a group of boys, who stood hesitant before the security guards. The defeated boys dispersed, except one, who walked towards Michelle. It seemed to him that she and Lamees were brave girls looking for adventure. He asked if he could go in with them as a member of the family in exchange for 1,000 riyals. Michelle was shocked by his defiance but quickly agreed.”
Funny and tragic, silly and serious, the book is written in a mix of colloquial and classical Arabic. Some readers have dismissed it as cheap melodrama. Others say it is a revealing study of one of the world’s most secretive societies.

Rajaa did not intend it to be a social or political message. “I hate it when people think I was trying to deliver a message. In the Arab world, most writings are tarnished with motives or political messages that turn them into propaganda and I hate for my book to be categorised as such. I leave it to the reader to come to his own conclusions.” Maybe so. But many Saudis saw in the book a passionate cry for an end to religious interference in people’s lives. “The book also exposed society,” a Saudi man and fan of Rajaa told me. “It says you can’t stop people from loving, that telephones and the internet have facilitated this, that parents might leave girls at the doors of university but they might get picked up by boys.”
Rajaa says she did not expect her book, which will be published in English later this year, to cause such a furious reaction. Yet she starts every chapter with a fictionalised account of the responses to her weekly mail, some conveying gentle praise, others spitting outrage. But as Abdelaziz al-Qassim, a young reformist expert in Sharia law, tells me, the most surprising thing about the book is that it provoked a debate, instead of a vicious religious backlash. True, Rajaa was vilified by conservatives writing in internet chat rooms but there was no official condemnation of her work. “She put the behaviour of the girls of Riyadh on the table - and it just went by,” says al-Qassim. “Four years ago there would have been a huge scandal and she could have been sent to jail.”
In some way The Girls of Riyadh reflects the changing times. It is part of the struggle between the religious forces that have taken Saudi Arabia into cultural xenophobia, and the more liberal voices who have wanted to liberate society in recent years. Until the attacks of September 11 2001, the al-Saud royal family had given clerics virtually a free hand in controlling Saudi society, while its own members went about governing the kingdom and living their own, often ostentatious lives. But having discovered that this policy had created young fanatics, the government has been trying, slowly and sometimes grudgingly, to curtail the powers of the clergy.
The succession in August last year of King Abdullah who, even at 82, seems to want more relaxed social rules, has reinforced this trend. His labour minister and close adviser Ghazi al-Gosaibi, himself a poet with several books banned in Saudi Arabia, endorsed Rajaa’s book with a comment printed on the back cover: “This book deserves to be read - I expect a lot from this novelist.” Islamists were furious that a figure so close to the king could hold such views. One prominent activist, Mohsen al-Awaji, used al-Gosaibi’s support for the book as part of a scathing attack on the minister in an article published on the internet. Al-Awaji was harshly punished and briefly thrown in jail, an over-reaction it is difficult not to feel disappointed by.
The government is steering social relaxation -it wants to sponsor more cultural events, and more books are now allowed in, including some that discuss religious beliefs other than Wahabism. But cinemas and concerts are still banned and if you’re a woman you still aren’t allowed to drive a car (which means that if you’ve got one, you have to be alone in it with a man, usually a foreigner, called your driver).
Even if Rajaa insists it is not her intention to change all that, she can claim to have made a small contribution to young Saudis’ war of liberation. “Everyone is amazed that I dare to write this, and blames me for breaking taboos that we are not used to discussing in our society with such frankness,” writes the narrator in The Girls of Riyadh. “But doesn’t everything have a beginning? I may find a few believers in my cause today and I may not, but I doubt that I will find many opponents half a century from now.”


Extract from the novel:

The Girls of Riyadh

By Rajaa al-Sanie

The man thinks he has reached his goal when the woman surrenders to him, while the woman thinks she will never reach her goal unless the man appreciates what she has given him.
Honore de Balzac

Sadeem’s legs could barely carry her as she nervously entered the living room with her father where Waleed Al-Shary was waiting. She refrained from extending her arm to him to shake hands, remembering that Gamrah’s mother had warned her not ever to shake Rashid’s hand when he came to see her during the elro’yah elshariya. Waleed stood up respectfully to greet them, then sat down again after she and her father were seated. Her father then started asking him questions that seemed random to her and which she found difficult to concentrate on. After a few minutes, her father left the room, allowing Sadeem and Waleed to talk freely and get to know each other.
Sadeem noticed Waleed’s interest in her appearance from the way he looked at her the minute she walked in. Although she hadn’t raised her head for long, she had seen him looking at her body and it made her so self-conscious she had almost stumbled. Little by little, and with Waleed’s help, Sadeem managed to overcome her nervousness and shyness.
He asked her about her studies at college, her plans for the future, her hobbies.
He asked: “What about you? Don’t you want to tell me anything? Or ask me something?”
After thinking a while, she replied: “I want to tell you that I wear glasses.” He laughed, and she laughed along with him.
Then he tried to provoke her: “By the way, Sadeem, my job demands a lot of travelling abroad.” Sadeem raised an eyebrow, as if challenged, and then answered: “That’s not a problem. I love to travel!”
He admired her wit and cheeky answers, and she bowed her head after her face blushed fiercely. She felt she would have to learn to control her tongue or else the groom would run away! She was saved by the return of her father a few minutes later which gave her the opportunity to excuse herself and leave. She gave Waleed a big smile on her way out; he returned it with an even bigger one. She left the room with a heart full of butterflies.
She thought Waleed was a very handsome man, although he wasn’t her favourite type. She preferred tanned skin; Waleed’s complexion was fair with a pinkish hue. His light moustache with the goatee and the silver wire frames of his small spectacles added to the attraction.
After Sadeem left the room, Waleed asked her father for permission to phone her so that they could get to know each other better before announcing their marriage. Her father agreed and gave Waleed her mobile number.
Waleed called late that night. Sadeem hesitated before answering. He began by saying how much he admired her. He would talk a little, and then remain silent for a short while, as if expecting her to respond. She told him she was happy to meet him, but said no more. Then he told her that she had bewitched him and he couldn’t wait till Eid Al Fitr to marry her.
After that, Waleed called her dozens of times a day, the first being the minute he woke up, the last a long conversation before bed, sometimes stretching through to the dawn. He even phoned and woke her so that she could listen to a song he had requested for her on the radio. And every day he asked her to go to various shops and choose something, such as a watch or perfume or glasses, for him to buy later so that everything he wore would be to her liking.
The other girls began to envy Sadeem. Especially Gamrah, who always felt sorry for herself when Sadeem told her how much she loved Waleed, and how he adored her in return. Gamrah started making up stories about how happy she was with Rashid, what Rashid did and what Rashid bought for her.
Soon the marriage of Waleed and Sadeem became official. Sadeem’s aunt cried during the milkah as she thought of her sister - Sadeem’s mother - who died when Sadeem was still a young girl. She also cried secretly for her son, Tariq, whom she had hoped would marry Sadeem.
During the official proceedings Sadeem had asked to be allowed to sign the marriage book, but the families insisted she stamp it with her fingerprint. “My girl, just stamp your print,” her aunt told her. “The sheikh says she shouldn’t sign. Only men sign.”
Afterwards, Sadeem’s father threw a grand banquet. Waleed came the following evening to meet his bride whom he hadn’t seen since the elro’yah elshariya. For her milkah gift, he bought her the latest mobile phone.
During the next few weeks, Waleed’s visits became more frequent, most of them made with her father’s knowledge, though a few were without. He usually came after isha prayer and would not leave before 2am. At weekends his visits would last till dawn. Every couple of weeks or so he would invite her out for dinner at a classy restaurant. On other evenings he would bring along dishes or desserts that she loved. They spent their time talking and laughing, or watching a movie he had borrowed from one of his friends or she from one of hers.
Then things began to develop and one night she tasted her first kiss. Waleed was used to kissing her cheeks when saying hello or goodbye. But one night his parting was hotter than before. Maybe the movie they watched together helped create the right atmosphere for him to plant a long kiss on her virgin lips.
At about this time Sadeem started preparing for the wedding, browsing the shops with Um Nuwayyer, or Michelle, or Lamees. Even Waleed would accompany her at times, especially when she was shopping for evening gowns.
The wedding date was set for the summer vacation. Sadeem had asked for this because she feared that if it had been during Al Hajj vacation it would have interfered with her studies for her final exams. She had always wanted to get good grades. Her decision upset Waleed, who was anxious to have the wedding as soon as possible, so she decided to make it up to him. One night she wore the transparent black gown he had bought for her (at the time she refused to try it on in front of him), and invited him over without the knowledge of her father, who was out camping with friends in the desert.
Not the red roses scattered on the sofa, nor the candles here and there, nor even the soft music coming from the hidden stereo were able to catch Waleed’s attention as much as the black gown that revealed more of her body than it concealed. And since Sadeem had vowed to please her Waleed that night, she allowed him to go over the line with her to erase any grudges he might still hold about the wedding being delayed. She did not try to stop him as she always had whenever he went beyond the limits she had set since the early milkah days. But now she was convinced that he wouldn’t be completely satisfied unless she presented him with more of her “femininity”, and she wouldn’t mind that at all. Anything to please Waleed, her love. For his sake she would exceed all limits.
Waleed left after fajer athan as always, but this time he seemed distressed and troubled. She thought he must have been feeling as nervous as she was after what had happened. She waited for his usual call when he reached his house, especially since she needed to talk to him and feel his tenderness after a night like this, but he didn’t call. Sadeem didn’t allow herself to call him and waited till the next day, but he didn’t call then either. As difficult as it was for her, she decided to give him a few days to calm down before calling him.
Three days passed, but not a word. Sadeem decided to drop her resolve and called, only to find his mobile phone was switched off. She tried calling again throughout the week at different times, desperate to reach him, but his phone remained switched off, and his room number was always engaged. What’s going on? She wondered. Has something bad happened to him? Is he still angry, even after all her efforts to please him? What about all she gave him that night? Did she make a mistake by surrendering herself to him before the wedding? Oh no! Had Waleed gone mad? Could that possibly be the reason behind him avoiding her since that day? But why? Wasn’t he officially her husband from the milkah? Or does getting married mean the ballroom, the guests, the singer and dinner? What is marriage? And did she deserve to be punished for what she did? Wasn’t he the one who started? Wasn’t he the stronger side? Why did he force her to commit the sin then walk out on her? Which one of them was the sinner? And was what happened a sin to start with? Was he testing her? And if she did fail that test, would that imply that she didn’t deserve him? He must’ve thought she was an easy girl. What stupidity! Isn’t she his wife, and does he not have a right to her? Didn’t she stamp her fingerprint that day in the huge book beside his signature? Weren’t there agreements, witnesses and an announcement? Or did all that mean nothing and she wasn’t legally his wife without the wedding party?
No one had ever told her any of these things before. Is Waleed going to make her pay for her ignorance? If only her mother were alive, she would’ve warned her and directed her, then none of this would have happened. Besides, she had heard a lot of stories about girls who had done what she did with Waleed and more during the milkah period and before the wedding! She even knew about cases where the brides had had babies just seven months after the wedding! And only the people who follow such details notice them, so where had she gone wrong?
Who would help her draw the thin line between what she should and shouldn’t do? And is that line the same in our religion as it is in the mind of a young Nadji man? Waleed would always blame her whenever she tried warding him off by saying that she was his wife according to the religion of God and his prophet, but her aunt and Um Nuwayyer always warned her about getting carried away with him because she was only his fiancee! So whom should she believe? Who would explain to her the Saudi man’s psychology so that she would be able to understand? Did Waleed think she was an “experienced” woman?!! Would he have preferred it if she prevented him? She hadn’t done more than respond to him in the same way she saw couples on TV do or would hear from her married or experienced friends, and he did the rest! So what’s her fault if all she did was play along and naturally knew how to deal with him under the circumstances? It did not require rocket science! So what is all this catastrophic stupidity and idiotic thinking that is taking over Waleed’s mind?
She phoned his mother but was told that she was sleeping. She left her name with the housemaid and asked her to inform her mistress she had called, but there was no response. Should she tell her family? Should she tell her father what happened that bloody night? How will she tell him? And what would she say? And if she managed to keep it a secret, would she be able to do so till the wedding? But what would people say then? The groom bailed out?! No! Waleed couldn’t stoop to such cruelty! He must be in a coma in hospital somewhere. Him being in a hospital was a thousand times more bearable than him avoiding her!
Sadeem was afloat in her confusion, waiting for a word or a visit from Waleed, dreaming he would come to her, begging forgiveness. But he didn’t come and he didn’t call. Her father asked her what was wrong but she refused to answer.
And then the answer came from Waleed: divorce papers! Sadeem’s father tried all he could to find out what lay behind this miserable surprise, but she collapsed in his arms and exploded into tears without confessing anything. He angrily went to Waleed’s father, who said he was surprised and did not know what had happened. All that Waleed had said was that he had developed some uneasiness towards his bride so he preferred calling everything off now rather than waiting until the wedding party.
Sadeem kept her secret and licked her wounds silently until the next shock came: she had failed her exams in more than half of her subjects.

Edited extract from “The Girls of Riyadh” by Rajaa al-Sanie.

GLOSSARY
Nadji: a person from Najd, the central region of Saudi Arabia known for being very conservative
Elro’yah elshariya: Men are allowed to see women only once before marriage to decide whether they want to marry them
Eid Al Fitr: The holiday that falls at the end of Ramadan
Milkah: The signing of official marriage documents
Milkah period: The time between the official marriage-signing and the wedding. According to Islamic and Saudi state law, the couple are officially husband and wife, but tradition forbids them practising their rights until after the wedding
Sheikh: Religious official
Al Hajj: A pilgrimage to Mecca during the month of Dhu’l Hijja
Athan: The call to prayer
Fajer athan: The first of the five prayers, paired with dawn
Isha: The last of the five prayers, paired with nightfall

Gospel of Judas

JESUS LAUGHED

In the “Gospel of Judas,” the renegade is redeemed.

by ADAM GOPNIK

New Yorker 17 April 2006

The great wheel of history always turns, if slowly, and so, at last, the ultimate betrayer, Judas Iscariot himself, comes around again for another inspection, a potential record-clearing moment occasioned by the publication of “The Gospel of Judas” (National Geographic; $22), a very ancient, though not actually contemporary, rendering of Jesus, as seen by the man who ratted him out. Written in Coptic, and found, three decades ago, within a papyrus codex that contains other non-canonic writing, the manuscript has known a bizarre Calvary of its own—including a papyrus-damaging sixteen-year residence in a safe-deposit box in Hicksville, New York—and has only now been edited and translated into English by an international group of scholars, each of whom has provided his own commentary. The event feels uncomfortably hyped; there is an accompanying book, “The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot” (National Geographic; $27), by Herbert Krosney, devoted to the tale of the Gospel’s rediscovery and sale, an all too human story suggesting, once again, that Mammon’s servant problem is more easily solved than that other master’s. Still, it is a genuine occasion, offering much to think about for believer and doubter alike.
Known to exist since the second century, this “Gospel of Judas” is, in one way, simply another of the Gnostic Gospels, like those found at Nag Hammadi, in Egypt, sixty years ago: unorthodox Christian documents, written by, or at least circulated within, communities of eccentric faith that flourished in the first and second centuries. These Gospels play with a series of variations on Christian belief: the irredeemable corruption of the world we live in, the hidden truth that the Old Testament God who created it was an ignorant or malevolent demiurge, and Jesus’ essence as a being of pure spirit, an emissary from another and higher realm. What makes this second-century Gnostic Gospel different is, perhaps, the extreme aggression of its heresy; it represents “Christianity turned on its head,” in the words of one commentator, the religious historian Bart D. Ehrman, by making the villain in the story the hero. Its editors think that its significance is enormous (“one of the greatest discoveries of the century”), and right out of Dan Brown; the Krosney book quotes an American scholar saying that “it could create a crisis of faith.”
It certainly makes for odd bedside reading. “The Gospel of Judas” isn’t actually a gospel by Judas, or, really, a gospel at all in the sense that we might expect: an account of the life of Jesus, from birth to death and rebirth. It is, instead, a mystical riff on a life already assumed to be familiar. It begins just before Jesus’ last Passover in Jerusalem, as the disciples are offering a prayer to God over the dinner table. Watching them, Jesus laughs. “Why are you laughing at us?” the nettled disciples ask, and Jesus says that he is laughing not at them but at their strange idea of pleasing their God. (One of the unnerving things about the new Gospel is that Jesus, who never laughs in the canonic Gospels, is constantly laughing in this one, and it’s obviously one of those sardonic, significant, how-little-you-know laughs, like the laugh of the ruler of a dubious planet on “Star Trek.”)
The disciples are furious at Jesus’ condescension, except for Judas, who thinks he knows what the laughter signifies. “I know who you are and where you have come from,” Judas says, standing before him. “You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo.” Apparently startled by his insight, Jesus tells Judas, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the Kingdom.”
The true mystery, as Jesus unveils it, is that, out beyond the stars, there exists a divine, blessed realm, free of the materiality of this earthly one. This is the realm of Barbelo, a name that gnostics gave the celestial Mother, who lives there with, among others, her progeny, a good God awkwardly called the Self-Generated One. Jesus, it turns out, is not the son of the Old Testament God, whose retinue includes a rebellious creator known as Yaldabaoth, but an avatar of Adam’s third son, Seth. His mission is to show those lucky members of mankind who still have a “Sethian” spark the way back to the blessed realm. Jesus, we learn, was laughing at the disciples’ prayer because it was directed at their God, the Old Testament God, who is really no friend of mankind but, rather, the cause of its suffering.
What gives “The Gospel of Judas” a peculiar pathos is the sacrificial role that Judas must play in the divine story. Jesus is going back to Barbelo, and to get there he must “sacrifice the man that clothes me”; that is, his mortal body. The only way to do this is to accept his own death, and he urges Judas to become the agent of it. (Presumably, self-slaughter would not get him back.) But Judas has reason to worry that if he obeys his Lord he will be stuck with a bad reputation forever. “In a vision,” he says, “I saw myself as the twelve disciples were stoning me.” Jesus assures him that though “you will be cursed by the other generations . . . you will come to rule over them.” At the end, he supplies Judas with a beatific vision of a luminous cloud, and, in this Gospel’s one truly poetic note, tells him, “Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star.” Judas accepts the bargain—temporal libel in exchange for eternal luminosity—and agrees to turn Jesus over to the high priests. The Gospel’s very last lines have an extraordinarily modern feeling of Hemingwayesque understatement, achieved perhaps inadvertently, by textual omission: “They approached Judas and said to him, ‘What are you doing here? You are Jesus’ disciple.’ Judas answered them as they wished. And he received some money and handed him over to them.”
The conundrums that produced this Gospel are long familiar: if Christ is a full member of the Godhead and divine, how could he possibly be “betrayed,” and since his death is, anyway, the pivot point of human redemption, how could he be peeved at Judas, the agent who brought it about? In “The Gospel of Judas,” all problems are solved by making the Christ a pure spirit, and the Crucifixion his necessary, and presumably painless, crossing over. (The situation, really, is very like that at the end of “The Little Prince,” where the snake, like Judas, has to be persuaded to bite the celestial visitor in order to send him back, once again, to his star. And the last image of that book, too, is the single lonely personal star.)
Obviously, “The Gospel of Judas” appears at a time of a new fashion, not to say rage, for “alternate” Gospels and revisionist retellings of the Jesus story. These are not the egalitarian, feminist versions of the story that were among the first fruits of the Nag Hammadi discovery. Instead, the new obsession is to introduce, or reintroduce, into Christianity something hidden, strange, and cultic—to reveal a deliberately suppressed story. And yet an odd double rhythm is at work. By making the Gospel story more occult, one also drains it of its cosmic significance; making it more mysterious makes it less mystical. (If Dan Brown or the authors of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” are right—and they aren’t—then Jesus is reduced from the Cosmic Overlord to the founder of a minor line of Merovingian despots.) “The Gospel of Judas” turns Christianity into a mystery cult—Jesus at one point describes to Judas the highly bureaucratic organization of the immortal realm, enumerating hundreds of luminaries—but robs it of its ethical content. Jesus’ message in the new Gospel is entirely supernatural. You don’t have to love thy neighbor; just seek your star. The Gospel of Judas is, in this way, the dead opposite of the now much talked of Gospel of Jefferson, the edition prepared by the third President, in which all the miracles and magic stuff are deleted, and what is left is the ethical teaching.
Orthodox Christians will point out, correctly, that there is no new “challenge” to the Church in the Judas Gospel, much less a crisis of faith. This is an ancient heresy, dealt with firmly, not to say brutally, throughout Church history. The finding of the new Gospel, though obviously remarkable as a bit of textual history, no more challenges the basis of the Church’s faith than the discovery of a document from the nineteenth century written in Ohio and defending King George would be a challenge to the basis of American democracy. There are no new beliefs, no new arguments, and certainly no new evidence in the papyrus that would cause anyone to doubt who did not doubt before.
Yet the Judas Gospel is an eye-opener anyway. First, because it is useful to be reminded, in a time of renewed fundamentalism, that religions actually have no fundament: that the inerrant texts and unchallenged holies of any faith are the work of men and time. Any orthodoxy is the snapshot of a moment. That the Church has long had answers to gnosticism, in all its varieties, does not mean that gnosticism was always doomed to heresy. Bart D. Ehrman has recently written, touchingly and convincingly, of his own migration away from a fundamentalist Christianity on the basis of an increasing understanding of how time-contingent and man-made the foundational Gospels really are. As Borges once suggested, had Alexandria, where gnosticism flourished, triumphed rather than Rome, we would have had a Dante making poetry out of the realm of Barbelo.
And then the new Gospel casts a spell—for sympathetic freethinkers, especially—because it reminds us of the literary strength of the canonic Gospels, exactly for their marriage of the celestial and the commonplace. We want a bit of Hicksville and a bit of Heaven in our sacred texts, matter and man and magic together. Simply as editors, the early Church fathers did a fine job of leaving the strong stories in and the weird ones out. The orthodox canon gives us a Christ who is convincing as a character in a way that this Gnostic one is not: angry and impatient and ethically engaged, easily exasperated at the limitations and nagging of his dim disciples and dimmer family relations, brilliantly concrete in his parables and human in his pain. Whether one agrees with Jefferson that this man lived, taught, and died, or with St. Paul that he lived and died and was born again, it is hard not to prefer him to the Jesus of the new Gospel, with his stage laughter and significant winks and coded messages. Making Judas more human makes Jesus oddly less so, less a man with a divine and horrible burden than one more know-it-all with a nimbus. As metaphor or truth, we’re sticking with the old story. Give us that old-time religion—but, to borrow a phrase from St. Augustine, maybe not quite yet.