L’ancien ministre de l’énergie des Etats-Unis, le Dr James Schlesinger, affirme aujourd’hui que la bataille intellectuelle autour du « Peak Oil » a été gagnée et que dans les faits, « nous sommes tous des partisans de cette théorie aujourd’hui. »

James Schlesinger répond aux questions de David Strahan, journaliste.

Dans un discours d’introduction à la première journée de la conférence sur la déplétion pétrolière organisée par l’ASPO à Cork en Irlande, Schlesinger a indiqué qu’aujourd’hui, les dirigeants de l’industrie du pétrole concèdent en privé que le monde fait aujourd’hui face à un pic imminent de la production de pétrole. Il propose l’idée que le récent rapport du National Petroleum Council qui regroupe les industries du pétrole US constitue une « admission implicite que nous allons rencontrer un moment de vérité d’ici une ou deux décennies. »

Dans une interview pour Lastoilshock.com couvrant un vaste spectre de sujets, le Dr Schlesinger — qui fût aussi ministre de la défense et directeur de la CIA — explique pourquoi il pense que « la bataille est finie et que les partisans du Peak Oil l’ont gagné. » Il évoque également les illusions de la politique énergétique US en Irak, ainsi que l’Iran et le prix du baril à 100$. [1]

David Strahan : Dr Schlesinger, thank you for talking to me. You said today in your speech that conceptually the battle is over, the peakists have won. That’s an astounding bold claim. I was astonished. What do you mean by that ?

James Schlesinger : If you speak to people in the industry, they will conceed that whatever my company may say publicly, we understand that we are facing decline in our own production and worldwide, we are not going to be able to produce more fuel liquids or crude oil in the near future and if you look at pronouncements by governments including the Energy Information Administration in the United States, the National Petroleum Council, what they show is that by the early 2020, we are going to have peaked out in terms of conventional oil production and that is an immense change from what we have seen before in the attitude of the industry.

DS : But it is not what we are hearing publicly, is it, from the executives, from governments, from environmentalists, all seem to be in denial or ignoring this issue, don’t they ?

JS : Well denial may be too strong, ignoring it is probably right. One does not what to be the bearer of bad tides, Cassandra has never been an appropriate role model for politicians. You do not ask the public to make sacrifices. If you conceed that indeed that the peak is coming, that we ought to be making adjustments now, those adjustments will be costly and the public will bear the cost, which means, other things will be equally at decline and the standard of living. That is not a way to successful reelection.

DS : Tell me a bit more what you hear from the industry. Who is it that is telling you amongst the industry really that they do accept that the peak is relatively imminent.

JS : I was recently at a conference in New Mexico, sitting next to one of the recent CEOs of a major oil company and he, in response to a question from the audience, said "of course I am a peakist, it is just a question of when it is coming" and I think that that is illustrative of once one is retired as a CEO, one is freer than one was in position to say I am a peakist. And what you hear privately from almost all people is we are coming to it. The National Petroleum Council said the limitations aren’t a limitation of resources, they are a limitation of access and even if you have full access to the OPEC countries, the peak would come a little later.

DS : That was going to be my next question. The NPC report did list quite a lot of problems facing the oil industry and other organizations, the International Energy Agency for instance, has predicted an oil supply crunch in 2012 I think, but I think both of those organizations deny hotly that they were talking about Peak Oil.

JS : Indeed, the argument is really about is there a resource limitation, which neither of them would accept, they talk about either access in the case of the National Petroleum Council or in the case of the IEA, insufficient investment. If you have insufficient investment, you are not going to be able to produce the amount of oil that they think might be available if you had greater investment. Or in the case of the National Petroleum Council, if we have full access to the resources of the Arabian peninsula, we would not face a peak in the near term. In a way, none of that matters because what we are facing is, for a variety of reasons, a limitation on our ability to increase the production of crude and other liquids.

DS : So, am I right in thinking you think basically that those are distinctions without meaning really ?

JS : They are distinctions which are important conceptually but not practically.

DS : Tell me a bit more about the government side of this because, you touched on in your speech the extend to which democratically elected politicians have difficulty with policies which involve taking all those toys away, put it that way. Do you think that democratically elected politician are in effect congenitally unable to deal with this problem in advance.

JS : Well I think it varies by country. The United States for example has been so fortunate with regard to economic issues that it is harder in the United States, even harder than in other countries and what we have seen is that the American public has been coached into believing that we can have energy independence, which is not attainable as long as we depend on the internal combustion engine and at the same time, as we get energy independence, we can lower the price of energy. These are simply unattainable but they are regularly promised and indeed after the democratic takeover of the Congress in 2006, it was promised that we would achieve both energy independence and lower prices and we would stop the gouging of the public by the big oil companies.

DS : Well one wonder if it is supposedly so easy, why it hasn’t happened already ?

JS : Well, what has happened is that it was steadily promised going back to 1973, the Project Independence, which was supposed, if you have read the Project Independence’s blueprint to make the United States self sufficient in oil by the year 1980, all they needed at that time of low prices, was a $7 oil price. However by 1980, despite much higher oil prices, the importation of crude had increased by 60% and now it has more than tripled.

DS : So briefly, what is your assessment of US and perhaps UK energy policy and how do you rate it ?

JS : Well, I think that what one should understand that there is not going to be a turnaround until you have public support and the public has got to be frightened by a serious crisis which persuades us that indeed the wolf is at the door.

DS : How risky a policy is that for a politician to pursue ?

JS : I think that many of these politicians will ultimately find that the public blames them for its failure to warn them. Of course in a sense the public is responsible because it is the present public attitude to which politicians play up, and tell them what they want to hear but when the view of the world changes, what the public wanted to hear some time ago is no longer what they want to hear in the future.

DS : Cause one of the thing that I think a lot of people believe is that a spectacularly bad piece of US American energy policy was the invasion of Iraq and that is a view held more widely probably on my side of the Atlantic than yours but we did just here in the conference that Alan Greenspan apparently has come to the conclusion that « yes, Iraq was all about oil ». Where do you sit on that ?

JS : Well, the reality is that concern about the supply of oil is always a consideration because the Middle East contains so much of the oil. That is why we stopped Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991 but what some people are suggesting is that the invasion of Iraq was to get control of Iraq oil supply. No we were determined to leave it up to free market pressures and to the extend that the thought of the US was reaching for control, that is plain wrong.

DS : I argue myself in my own book the last oil shock a slightly different position in that that there was an awareness in the leadership of both America and Britain of impending oil shortage, Peak Oil if like, and that it wasn’t about a land grab or about company profits as you say but actually about simply raising production. Iraq was and remains the only country of the planet as far as I know which could significantly, appreciably raise global output in a relatively short space of time. Do you not think that that awareness was a factor, and perhaps a decisive one ?

JS : I don’t now whether awareness is the right term, it may have been part of the hope. The fact of a matter is that it has been the lack of profitability in Iraq and the greater profitability of exploitation elsewhere that led to the slow development of Iraqi oil resources. Investments were made in other places, Iran, Saudi Arabia rather than Iraq and for a variety of reasons, Iraq was not favored. For that reason, it has more unexploited resources but I want to state quite clearly that war is not the way to increase production near term.

DS : Well I think that is pretty clear from the events on the ground. I find Iran harder to read. What is your take on this. How likely do you think an attack by either the United States or Israel is on Iran and what if so, would be the impact of this on the world energy supply ?

JS : Well the impact is quite clear : it would be detrimental. I am not in the game of making prediction about military actions by the United States and less so about military actions by Israel. One of our presidential candidates, John McCain has said that the only thing worse than a military attack on Iran is Iran having nuclear weapons. So I cannot exclude the possibility that such an attack will occur even though I regard it as unlikely.

DS : If such an attack would occur, what would be the impact on our energy system, on our energy supply and do you think it would in fact advance or delay the date of Peak Oil and its attendant crisis.

JS : Well the happy aspect of it is that it would delay Peak Oil because we would be producing much less oil, leaving more in the ground to be exploited later. On the other hand, the immediate impact would be highly detrimental, in that not only would Iran’s production be reduced but given the temperament of Iran government, given the activities of the revolutionary guards, one could see a spillover into the production in Iraq and possibly even some of the Gulf’s states.

DS : And in which case, we would have presumably ... well how high do you think oil prices would go in those circumstances ?

JS : Under those circumstances, it would go well above $100.

DS : What is that you think we should be doing about Peak Oil ? You say, politicians are not doing enough in advance because they can ? What should they be doing in fact ?

JS : Well, in fact we should be helping oil prices rise particularly for gasoline. That is a particularly difficult subject in the United States because of the diffusion of power and congress is not going to act unless they can blame it on the president and possibly on external events. Most importantly higher price for oil would stimulate entrepreneurial juices, which would lead to the technology developments. It will take time to deploy new technology but we might as well get on with it as rapidly as we can.

DS : Do you think there is any way, given what you think about the difficulties of politicians and about the length of time that these technological advances will take, that there is any way of avoiding a substantial crisis ?

JS : We are going to face great difficulty in the near future, whether or not it is defined as a crisis depends on how do you define crisis. But there is great difficulty ahead.

James Schlesinger, né en 1929, a été successivement directeur de la CIA, secrétaire à la défense des présidents Nixon et Ford, puis a occupé le poste de secrétaire à l’énergie nouvellement créé par le président Carter. Après un passage dans la banque, il intervient désormais au titre de conseiller auprès de diverses agences gouvernementales.

David Strahan est journaliste et réalisateur de documentaires. Il travaill régulièrement pour la BBC, et est l’auteur de The Last Oil Shock