The last 3 days have been quite interesting in terms of slow acceptance of Peak Oil, and talking about in the public political landscape.

First up, we had some interesting reports about what the Saudi’s were up to next. They guys over at PowerSwitch was where I first saw this, but to summarise.

Hiding An Oil Panic In Plain Sight.

The Saudis are the “central bank of oil,” right? So how come this
central bank is scrounging for loose change under the couch cushions?

Earlier this month came news that Saudi Arabia hired five Rowan jack up
oil rigs for drilling offshore oil wells on a three year contract.
Those rigs are currently under contract in the Gulf of Mexico, so that
means Saudi Arabia outbid somebody to get those rigs – and rig rates
have already run up to obscenely high levels – 30% to 50% more than a
year ago.

Drilling for oil underwater is very expensive. You’d expect the Saudis
to be drilling out their cheapest oil first. Don’t they have a freaking
desert full of this stuff? So why are they suddenly going whole hog
for underwater oil, and willing to pay a premium to do it?

Unless…maybe the Saudis don’t have as much oil in their land-locked
fields as they say they do.

Meanwhile on Friday, British Gas has said that there would be another price rise, this time 14%.

While all this was going on, Gordon Brown and a bunch of other EU Ministers got together and had a bit of a chat about these rising oil and gas prices. Hmmmm, they all thought. This is not so good is it! Their solution was…
“Oiii, Saudi, produce some more oil! Its your fault.”
This then got reported on Channel 4 news, and Matthew Simmons had a pretty good rebuttal, that Saudi (and OPEC) just CANNOT up their production, goes they are already going flatout. Matthew Simmons warned that the UK could be facing a difficult winter, because of our lack of Gas. There is a video of this here. Mind you, some of us were already saying this.

Now, where things get interesting is Brown’s attitude goes through a subtle change over the Saturday it seems. While still putting some blame on OPEC on Sunday, in a BBC radio interview with Andrew Marr, he also starts calling for data transparency from OPEC, and looking into alternative source of energy as well. Mind you, got to stop the stock market from panicing, so he threw in the comment about believing prices can come down. Yeah right! This was also reported here.
So, although there was an attempt at sounding ‘business as usual’ there has been a subtle changing in his thinking I think.