I am afraid that I have to agree with Memmel on the sentance:
 "I think the future will show the lack of transparency on the part of OPEC was the biggest crime commited in the 20th century.", and I have made this opinion clear in prior posts.  In todays interlinked world, simply because you own an asset does not give you the right to be secretive, and go even further and possibly be outright misleading in your public pronouncements if you wish to be an accepted and trusted supplier and modern world player.

Every modern and trusted player on the world stage, be it large company, charitable or non-governmental not for profit,  and/or natianal or governmental entity is now expected to accept standard accounting practices, outside auditing, and third party confirmation or oversight, if it expects to be accepted as modern and trusted, with the stunning exception of the energy industry, that most CRUCIAL of all modern industries.  It is truly outragous and astounding.

OPEC, and it must be said, others including private large oil firms and other governmental oil concerns around the world and energy information agencies, go further than just being secretive and silent, but instead are perfectly willing to put out their own brand of decietful "dis-information" to sway events.  This only serves to even further expand their crime of "lack of transperency" and make it a crime of misleading and false statements, false advertising (Exxon, remember?), and when they give this testimony to the U.S. government and other international governmental judicial bodies and legislatures, it elevates it to outright perjury and obstruction of justice, as well as falsifying evidence, evidence needed in the preservation of whole nations.

Memmel is correct.  If the "doomsters" are correct, and against all the misleading, lulling, comforting testimony of the oil companies and OPEC, a rapid and soon occuring decline in world oil production begins, the OPEC cartel and the private oil companies should be held accountable for making proper preparation all but impossible to win support for through their misleading statements and secretive policies.   Allow me to quote the phrase that goes right through me..."well, BP and Exxon say....and they ought to know....", which is used by every man and woman on the street to shoot down any cause for concern, and instead to continue the waste and poor policy of business as usual.

I have made this case before.  If the "peak aware" community has awoke us to a great imporatant fact that is ALREADY a fact ( because peak, let's admit, we just don't when or how it will occur yet), it is this:  The United States and the industrialized modern world is in a very dangerous position in running completely without guidence and forward visibilility.  It is like running a car down a dark road at night at high speed with no lights.  Nothing may go wrong.  But do you want to take that chance?  And if you should hit someone or something in the dark, do you think you would be held  legally accountable for your actions?
The same goes for OPEC, the private oil firms, the EIA and the IEA and the USGS, among others.  (CERA for instance, should be sued out of existance if they are as wrong about crude oil as they have been about natural gas, and keep spreading the same disabling and lulling propaganda when once they clearly know better.

In the meantime, every responisible business, Civil Defense agency, local, municipal, county, state and federal agency, along with critical services and utilities, hospitals, and on and on, have a civic obligation, and a fiduciary responsibility to their stakeholders to inform them of the blindness we are running in and the need to prepare as though the worst could happen.  One of the great services the Peak Aware community performed for me when I first discovered them (and TOD, by the way :-). was to help me see that what I thought "we knew" we most certainly did not "know", and to see the danger of the complete lack of forward visibility we are living with.   (I was blind, but now I see that I was blind, and that is a great bit of sight indeed!)

This is a service "we" must keep performing.  It is one of the most valuable services of the peak aware community.  Thank you.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout