I recently attended the ASPO-USA annual conference in Washington, DC. Overall, I found the presentations and discussion to be very engaging. The vibe this year had much less of a doomsday feel than last year and the topic of how best to tell an engaging Peak Oil story came up often. In the notes below I attempt to recap the sessions I attended with the caveat that these notes reflect primarily what I paid attention to. No attempt is made to be complete or unbiased in my coverage of the conference. I apologize in advance for any omissions or misrepresentations. In the next few weeks ASPO should make videos of the presentations available on aspo.tv.

Dr. James Schlesinger gave one of the keynote talks at the recent ASPO-USA Conference. Dr. Schlesinger comes with a wealth of experience: He was the first Secretary of Energy, from 1977 - 1979. Prior to that, he had been Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, US Secretary of Defense, and Director of Central Intelligence.

The video can be viewed (for free) at ASPO.TV. Thanks to ASPO-USA for letting us know about these videos. We understand more free videos will be added over the next few weeks.

Below the fold is the text of his 11 minute talk, talking about the fact that oil production has been flat for six years. The "Peakists" have won the intellectual debate, but the political order will not respond.

One of the helpful aspects of the ASPO-USA organization is that they post the videos and presentations that were given at their conferences. Obviously these need to be tweaked after being recorded, and so do not go up immediately but, for example, they have just posted the video of the Jeff Rubin talk on their site. I am going to conclude my summary of the conference itself with this report. I was not able to stay for the final afternoon, and so Gail has kindly furnished a summary that I will add to cover that section of the Conference. As usual I will then give a short summary of what I felt were the highlights, but which is more opinion that content – the goal of these initial posts.

Turning therefore to the Saturday morning meetings, these began with a slight change, since Terry Backer the scheduled speaker was, unfortunately, ill. Paul, one of his advisors, spoke on his behalf, noting that Connecticut – where they are from – has no indigenous coal, oil or natural gas. They had a plan for moving forward that had received support for a significant effort to insulate houses, but unfortunately even though it would have provided a number of jobs, it fell victim to the recession. They are now looking to see the potential for micro-hydro in the state.

The first session was chaired by Ted Patzek and was focused on the Gulf oil spill and the likely consequences.

Jim Baldauf, a co-founder of ASPO-USA, provided the opening remarks to the Plenary Sessions of the day. He noted that with a coal mine explosion, the concern over hydrofracks, and the Gulf oil spill, this year could be considered Hydrocarbon Hell. The Macondo well is evidence that we are now having to seek the more difficult oil, with the associated costs.

He also noted that, with a change in Board membership, ASPO-USA will also be moving to Washington, to have a greater ability to influence opinion, and it will also then serve as the site for next year’s Conference.

Michael Klare chaired the first session and introduced Chris Skrebowski to discuss “The Latest Analysis of Future Oil Supply Capacity.” Chris noted that, with the recession hitting in the last two years, it has become more difficult to be predictive, since not only must the capacity available be assessed, but now also the demand levels are a lot more uncertain.