By JOHN NORTH

While the audience members who spoke all expressed general agreement with the two speakers’ peak-oil presentations, they nonetheless raised a number of issues for retired petroleum geologist John Sticpewich and  local sustainability activist Jim Barton to address during a question-and-answer and audience-discussion session that followed.

The two men earlier addressed the audience in a panel discussion titled “Peak Oil Perspectives” at the West Asheville Library last Thursday night. (See story that begins on Page 1 for details of their presentations.)

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John Sticpewich

Jim Barton

A woman asked, “If oil ran out, the executive (authority) would take over — would we be allowed to do this?”

“Of course,” Sticpewich replied. “You’d be saving energy. Authorities wouldn’t oppose it.”

Agreeing, Barton said, “Resiliency and transparency go together well, I think.”

A woman asked, “It sounds lovely, but I can’t see it happening.”

A man in the audience replied, “Decentralized systems and capability are more resilient. For the Soviet Union, ultimately buying decisions were being made by a few people in a room instead of people in stores across the country,” an authoritarian command-and-control system that led to the nation’s collapse.

Another man added, “There does remain hope, in the bigger picture, for people not to feel depressed.”

A woman asked, “How much is the concept of peak oil known?”

Sticpewich said there is much denial going on among many Americans regarding peak oil.

“To turn around and say Iraq contains three times as much oil as is there, is baloney. It’s just not even reasonable.”

As for the current dilemma, Sticpewich said, “It’s not a bad thing. We have the time period” to accomplish a transition to other energy sources. “They could develop a fuel cell for a car, using a renewable fuel, rather than gasoline.

“It’s there — the reversible fuel cell. You can buy one of these in a toy car for $50. But you can’t buy one in a real car because the car manufacturers aren’t ready to go there yet. But the technology is there.”

Barton added, “I think (Al) Gore should have resigned as vice president and highlighted the issue rather than underserving the country for eight years.”

More positively, Barton noted, the situation in many ways is getting better. For instance, “Shell Oil took out an ad saying we’re entering a peak oil era.”

He reiterated Sticpewich’s assessment that “oil is going to records (in pricing highs) every day.”

Sticpewich interjected, “Remember, that’s a false price. That’s measured in U.S. dollars ...

When I was in it (the industry), it was $18 to $20 per barrel 20 years ago ... The real price of oil has about doubled over the past 20 years.” The situation, he added, will only get worse, as “China’s demand (for oil) should double in about nine years.”

A man suggested, “It seems like the producers might keep it for themselves. They’re not going to pump oil until it’s gone.”

Sticpewich noted that, “If a country is producing 100 barrels, 80 barrels they own. The 20 or 15 percent (left) is the amount the oil companies get ... A lot of people believe the U.S.A. went into Iraq to change all that. I don’t think they have.”

He added that “it doesn’t take much to sabotage an oil line. All it takes is one match ... If you think you can go in and take it (oil) militarily and hold it militarily, you’re crazy. It’s scary stuff.”

On a separate matter, Barton said, “Today, we’ve mainly talked about the impact” of peak oil on the first world. Having oil reserves “is generally a curse for a country” in the third world, he noted. “It tends to be developed by people who don’t care about ecology” or cleaning up the land and water after tapping the oil.

A woman then asked about the worldwide supply of natural gas.

“Iran and Russia control most of the natural-gas supply in the world,” Sticpewich said. “There is not a lot of undeveloped gas. In the United States, the winter demand for gas is being pushed to the limit.”

A man asked, “If we’ve reached that peak-oil point, why is it such a secret? In a public-policy sense, it’s like somebody’s holding out.”

Sticpewich replied that “they want to drive it until it collapses,” insofar as the world oil situation is concerned. He added that “there is a lot (of money) to be made by the U.S. oil and automotive industries, among others, by maintaining the status quo.

“They don’t want you to ride your bike and not burn gas,” he asserted. “When your vehicle is rated on the number of cupholders,” instead of standards such as miles per gallon, “something is wrong,” Sticpewich said. “But that’s how it’s being done” in the U.S.

In answering a question about government efforts, Barton said governments “are like tankers — it takes a long time to turn them around ... It comes down to how do we fix systems problems.”

For example, he said, “it could be it’s time to restore passenger rail service” to the Asheville area in particular and many places around the U.S. in general.

If Asheville reinstituted passenger rail service, a man asked, “How will people get around once they get off the train? There’s no Rent-a-Wreck” car-rental service.

“It’s already being done today in any number of European cities — and you don’t need a car,” Sticpewich said, noting the availability of mass transit and even bicycles.

Regarding Sticpewich’s and Barton’s assertions, a man said, “It makes sense, but it goes against everything this nation ever stood for” in its rugged individualism.

Another questioner asked Barton where the money would come from to finance more mass transportation.

“I think the question of spending for war is so politicized,” Barton replied. “We do have fat in the military budget ... Sometimes, we need to approach issues sideways.”

A man said, “There certainly is a dark side to this peak oil. We’re hitting the limit on our system.”

By organizing a movement to deal with peak oil, much can be accomplished, Barton said. “We can do the impossible.”

A man asked, “What’s the time frame for peak oil to collapse our economy?”

“We’ve been running a deficit for a long time,” Sticpewich said. “More than half our paper (loans) is owned by China. They could, if they wish, reduce our economy to something like India.

“We are in a very perilous situation with a huge trade deficit, an unbalanced budget and a currency free-fall. There’s a big” mix “of things that are interacting with one another.”

Barton added, “We are skating on thin ice, based on hubris and irrational optimism.”

Sticpewich concluded, “If you price petroleum in Euros versus dollars, that would take pressure off the dollar ... As far as I can tell, there is far more oil being traded by the banking types than there is oil” through futures trading. “The impression I have is at least 50 percent more (oil) is traded than exists."