Editors

Prof. Goose is Kyle Saunders, associate professor of political science at Colorado State University. "PG" graces us with a post now and again about energy politics and policy, sociology, and psychology, with a little bit of economics, research methodology, and modeling techniques thrown in for good measure. Behind the scenes, he is the managing editor of the site.

Nate Hagens has a master's degree in finance and is completing a Ph.D. in Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. Nate's particular areas of interest are the principles of net energy and the bio-physiological factors that drive our energy demand. You can read more about Nate here.

Contributors

Heading Out is Dave Summers, a Curators' Professor of Mining Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology (UMR until last year). He has directed the Rock Mechanics and Explosives Research Center at MO S&T off and on since 1976, but mainly, for the past 43 years, he has been involved in transitioning the use of water under pressure into industry as a cleaning and cutting tool. Since he has drilled a lot of holes in his time, he tends to write more on the technical aspects of energy production.

jeffvail is an energy intelligence analyst and former US Air Force intelligence officer. He has a B.S. in engineering and history from the US Air Force Academy and a Juris Doctor from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. His interests are in global energy geopolitics and the the "rhizome" theory of social and economic organization. He is the author of the political anthropology book A Theory of Power and maintains a blog at http://www.jeffvail.net.

Khebab has a master's degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in remote sensing. Khebab has been following oil depletion issues since 2004 and maintains GraphOilogy, a blog on Peak Oil. He has been a regular contributor on TOD and TOD:Canada since June 2006.

Robert Rapier has a master's degree in chemical engineering, and bachelor's degrees in chemistry and mathematics. He has 15 years of experience in the petrochemicals industry, including experience with cellulosic ethanol, gas-to-liquids (GTL), and butanol production. He holds several U.S. and international patents, and is currently employed by a major oil company. Robert maintains an energy blog at http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com.

The Oil Drum: Canada

benk is completing his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in Canada. His research focuses on the fine details of solid oxide fuel cells, dealing with ceramics and long equations. He attributes his initial interest in energy to the documentary The End of Suburbia, which he first saw about four years ago. Since then he has felt a duty to get the good word out and has been the host of theWatt Podcast talking about various energy issues.

The Oil Drum: Europe

Chris Vernon leads two lives. A principal engineer, he spends 9-5 working in wireless telecoms network design making use of a master's degree in Computational Physics. After hours, he studies towards an M.Sc. in Environmental Decision Making with a particular interest in the dwindling UK electricity generating capacity and the relationship between climate change and peak oil.

Euan Mearns has B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in geology. He worked as a researcher at The University of Oslo and then The Norwegian Institute for Energy Technology for a total of 8 years and in this time became a proficient Norwegian speaker. In 1991 he set up a company in Aberdeen, Scotland providing radiogenic and stable isotope analyses to the international oil industry with the principal focus on oil and gas reservoir characterisation. His company worked for over 60 exploration and production companies world wide but eventually ran out of reservoirs to characterise and the company was sold in 2001. Euan is a relatively new peak oiler and is seeking to forge a niche within Scotland and the UK where he can influence the government's response to energy security issues. Objective 1—to get his government to recognise that an energy problem exists.

Luís de Sousa was born in Lisbon in 1978. He holds a degree in Informatics and Computer Engineering and an MSc in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from IST (Instituto Superior Técnico). Currently he is an assistant teacher and researcher in the Department of Civil Engineering at IST, being involved in several research projects. He also researches the hydrocarbon depletion subject from the perspective of population growth, being developer and editor of PicoDoPetroleo.net, a Portuguese language website on Peak Oil. He has been part of ASPO-Portugal since its formation.

Jérôme à Paris is an investment banker in Paris, specialised in structured finance for energy projects, in particular in the wind power sector. After graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, he wrote his Ph.D. in economics in 1995 on the independence of Ukraine, with a strong focus on the gas relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and he worked on financings for the Russian oil & gas industry for several years after that. He is the editor of the European Tribune, a community website on European politics and energy issues. He has written extensively about energy issues, usually from an economic or geopolitical angle for the European Tribune and for DailyKos where he led a collective effort to draft an energy policy for the USA, Energize America.

Rembrandt Koppelaar is co-founder and President of ASPO Netherlands (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas). In this role he attempts to influence policy-makers to quickly diminish our dependence on fossil fuels by means of writing articles, conducting radio interviews and expert meetings. He maintains his own database with oil field startup projects which was the basis for his 2005 world oil production & peaking outlook, which will receive a follow-up in mid 2007. Besides his activities at ASPO Netherlands, he is currently finishing his bachelor degree in environmental economics at Wageningen University of Life Sciences. He is also a frequent contributor to the award winning Dutch weblog www.sargasso.nl.

The Oil Drum: Local

By day Glenn is a market researcher in corporate America, but by night he puts his public policy Master's degree into use as a local activist. He has edited the NYC page of The Oil Drum since joining TOD in Sept 2005. In early 2006 he founded and is now President of Upper Green Side, a local neighborhood environmental group on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a fairly powerful neighborhood. Their first major accomplishment was to bring two new greenmarkets to the area. He also writes for Streetsblog, the official blog of the New York City Streets Renaissance campaign. Glenn freely admits that he is not an engineer or scientist although if he had known about Peak Oil 15 years ago, he might have made different choices.

The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

Big Gav studied Engineering at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Since then he has travelled widely and worked in the oil and gas, power generation, defence, technology and banking industries. He has been blogging about peak oil for almost 3 years at Peak Energy (Australia) and is probably the most prolific example of a techno-optimist in the peak oil world. He may be alone in thinking that peak oil represents a great opportunity to switch to a clean energy based world economy, rather than the trigger for the end of industrial civilisation.

phil hart studied Materials Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne before spending five years with Shell UK Exploration and Production. He worked on two new North Sea oil and gas field development projects before joining the Brent field maintenance team as a corrosion engineer. In late 2006, Phil returned to Melbourne and is an active member of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He has provided briefings to local government, fund managers and other businesses and presented on the issue at community events and local oil industry forums.

Emeritus

Stuart Staniford is originally a Physics Ph.D., and now a researcher and entrepreneur in computer security who has now become obsessed with peak oil. Stuart does a lot of modeling and data analysis stuff, fights with passing economists, and occasionally wanders around interviewing prominent oil-persons.