I don't think that too many Americans were concerned about forced energy conservation in poor Third World countries, but as it moves up the income ladder, it becomes more personal. The problem of course is that "Those poor suckers" progressively becomes "What will happen to me?"

Continuing apologies: "Ask not for whom forced energy conservation comes, it comes for thee."

Did Simmons say that about gas???

Yes he did say it, notice that he didn't defend himself in regard to that point. However, I don't think Simmons was really so far off regarding the problem of refining capacity. Before the real threat of peak oil became apparent, we shut down quite a few refineries in the US for the purpose of propping up refinery margins (which are slim). Even so refineries are taking a big hit when it comes to the current prices. From what I've seen the refineries are taking a smaller cut in the sense that they aren't proportionally raising prices.

In a circular sort of way that justifies not expanding refining capacity because they can argue that refineries are too expensive to build. Never mind that we have a lot that aren't being used and could be retrofitted without shutting in current capacity.

The major problem the world is facing right now regarding refining has to do with the lower grades of crude that are replacing the light sweet crude. This has been discussed many times here, but the needed investments haven't been made. Simmons was essentially correct in that there is a big refining problem. There are gasoline shortages, but they are largely hidden by demand destruction in the US. Look to Asia and you'll see where the shortages are. He was right about shortages, he just may have erred in specifically stating they would be here AND related to refineries (but the year isn't over either). If the US economy could somehow strengthen greatly within a short span, we would see shortages here too. That's why the real problem of peak oil still doesn't register as such for the average person.

At worst he made a mistake of synthesizing two essentially correct ideas: A) There is a refining problem here B) There will be shortages of gasoline this year. More important BY FAR is how unprepared these supposed experts in the financial industry are. What I can't believe is that they would have found experts (unnamed conveniently) to consult with, but they somehow managed to overlook all the people who made correct (or very close) predictions.

Not that many years ago I used to do IT work for BP and Oxidental. I remember how cheap energy was circa 2000/2001. Stock price for BP was floundering and Lord Browne (Lord Browne of Madingley) was worried that the shareholders and employees would call for his head. His only hope was to raise the profitability of the company. BP was no different than the other majors, they bought Amoco, Arco, and Burmah Castol. Eliminate the competition... a time tested tactic.

I worked the night shift for a while and spoke to a lot of people at refineries and fuel depots. Mostly I remember feeling bad for the people working there because they seemed to get the short end of the stick on a regular basis. When critical systems were down and people were supposed to be paged/called, few people would give a damn. My hands were often tied because I couldn't go on site to resolve issues that needed attention. I was on very good terms with a lot of these people and they realized I was doing all I could within a giant conglomerate.

I felt frustrated on a regular basis when I would get urgent calls from the same people again and again. All I could do is offer empathy to them. Maybe my empathy turned to sympathy somewhere along the way. Perhaps one good thing about my experiences with large companies has been the exposure to really how ineffective over-sized organizations really are.

At least they had the foresight to begin investing in wind and solar. On the other hand they (BP and the other majors) have done some unforgivable things as well. For decades they have bought up competing technologies and anything they thought might threaten their business model. Sometimes they've used threats of harm and goons to get what they wanted.

Agreed, Bob Hirsh put his point across well.

Haha Fox news. The few clips I've seen of it are so funny. I wish we could see it here in Europe. Better than the comedy channel I think.