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PARIS PEAK OIL CONFERENCE REVEALS DEEPENING CRISIS
by Michael C. Ruppert May 30, 2003,1800 PDT, From The Wilderness(FTW), PARIS –
Research presented on May 26th and 27th at the French Institute
for Petroleum (IFP) by a wide variety of experts from varying and often
competitive perspectives disclosed that, in the year since the first conference
of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) supply, constraints have
worsened and the realities of energy depletion are becoming more apparent. A
year of violent political history centered on oil and ever-more unforgiving
production results have begun to force reluctant political and economic
acknowledgement of Peak Oil's threat to civilization.
* Bush Advisor Matt Simmons Who Advised Cheney's Energy Task Force Confirms
Peak Oil is Major Concern of Bush Administration
* Peak Oil Symptoms More Apparent
* Recoverable Reserves May Be Less Than Hoped
* Natural Gas Shortages May Appear in US This Year
*Hydrogen Vastly Overrated and Not Likely to Offer Solution
The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO's founder), Professor Colin
Campbell, and his colleagues, retired TotalFinaElf Exploration Manager, Jean
Laherrère, and Physics Professor, Kjell Aleklett, have good reason to be pleased
with the second-ever ASPO conference. Two hundred people from more than twenty
countries attended this year, doubling attendance for the inaugural event held
last May in Uppsala, Sweden. In an acknowledgement of Peak Oi's penetration of
official consciousness, the event was partially subsidized by the French
Institute for Petroleum, the oil services firm Schlumberger, and the French oil
giant, Total. The fact that it was held at a government institution was,
according to Campbell, evidence of the fact that Peak Oil can no longer be
completely ignored, even by politicians.
Olivier Appert, Chairman of the French Institute for Petroleum (IFP), bluntly
acknowledged that many oil experts have concluded that world oil depletion is
between five and ten per cent per year and that 60 Million barrels per day
(Mbpd) of new capacity is needed to meet demand. On that basis he concluded in
his opening remarks, "It is timely to reopen the debate." Appert however told
the audience that he was an optimist basically because he predicted that new
technologies would produce new discoveries and better recovery in the future.
But quiet, official support of the conference fell far short of the political
and economic mobilization the organizers believe necessary to respond to a
crisis that might start grinding national economies to a halt and causing
massive dislocations in short order.
As one conference organizer told From The Wilderness (FTW), "The fact that
several governments have asked to be kept ‘fully informed,' or that the French
government allows us to use their facilities, or that major oil companies and
automakers like Daimler-Chrysler come to make presentations is a way of
listening closely to what we are doing without having to publicly accept what we
are saying. The political and economic ramifications of that are too drastic
from their perspectives, but each hour of delay only assures that the eventual
crisis will be worse once it has been acknowledged."
IFP Chairman Appert's optimism was belied by experts like Laherrère, whose
brutally honest graphs and plots not only mirror the truth of declining
discovery and production but also establish scientifically that there are no
more major significant reserves to be found. Other experts established
definitively that wildly exaggerated hopes for polar or deep sea discoveries, or
tar sands production are both unfounded and dangerously deceptive because of the
excessive production costs and the investment required to develop what will
likely prove to be disappointing yields.
In the end, the most realistic and integrated analyses were delivered by
political scientist and author Michael Klare and Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of
Princeton, a one-time colleague of the late M. King Hubbert, whose Hubbert Curve
predicted today's events with startling accuracy some six decades ago. These two
conference presenters gave integrated presentations incorporating real-world
current events and showed clearly that Peak Oil is here now.
BBC SETS THE TONE
One of the first presentations of the conference was the screening of a new BBC
documentary which aired on March 26, 2003, titled, "The War For Oil." In stark
and irrefutable detail the film verified every major aspect of Peak Oil
including declining production, vanishing discovery rates, smaller field sizes
and increasing demand. It pointed out that worldwide production capacity was
stretched to the limit and that the US would be importing seventy per cent of
its oil by 2020 and ninety per cent by 2050.
The BBC documentary also quoted oil expert and Bush administration advisor,
Matthew Simmons, as stating very clearly that the United States government was
very worried about Peak Oil. Simmons should know. He runs a Houston-based
investment bank for the energy industry and was an advisor to Vice President
Cheney's secretive, 2001, National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) which
has refused to make its records public. He remains a close advisor to George W.
Bush.
CONFIRMATION OF PEAK OIL'S ROLE IN 9/11
Starting in October 2001 FTW reported, and has continued to maintain, that Peak
Oil was the driving factor behind the US government's highly questionable and
illegal conduct and what we believe was its actual complicity in the attacks
themselves. This was necessary in order to motivate public support for a war
which otherwise would not have been acceptable to the American people. Simmons
has never deviated in his public support for the Bush administration and his
stated belief that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had nothing to do with
oil. Yet Simmons, a CFR member who also contributed to the (James) Baker
Institute-CFR energy report released in April, 2001, delivered the strongest and
clearest warning about Peak Oil of the entire conference. And, his conference
statements provide the first-ever hint at some of the topics that were discussed
behind closed doors in the months leading up to the attacks.
FTW also got the chance to question him about oil and war. Speaking at the end
of the conference via satellite from his Houston offices, Simmons said:
"Is peaking an important question or issue? First of all, if you start out by
saying usable energy is the world's most critical resource then obviously it is
an important issue. Without …energy, we have no sustainable water, no
sustainable food, and no sustainable healthcare… "What peaking does mean, in
energy terms, is that once you've peaked, further growth in supply, is over… So
is this issue important, I think the answer is an emphatic yes. Why does this
issue evoke such controversy? Well, I think for several reasons, first of all,
the term "peaking" unfortunately, does suggest a bleak future. It also suggests
high future energy prices and neither are a pleasant thought. I think it is
human nature, basically, to say that we really like to have pleasant thoughts.
The one crying wolf is abandoned unless the wolf turns out to be already at the
front door, and by then, the cry is generally too late. And crises are
basically problems, by definition, that have gone ignored. And all great crises
were ignored until it became too late to do anything about it..."
Simmons pointed out that five-sixths of the world barely uses any energy but
that this is where demand is growing fastest. FTW reported recently that auto
sales in China jumped 50% in 2002 alone. Simmons indicated that deep water oil
was "the last frontier" and then made the not too cheery observation that two
thirds of the exploratory wells were turning out to be dry holes. Dry holes were
also becoming commonplace in the Middle East on dry land.
NATURAL GAS APPEARED TO BE AN EVEN MORE PRESSING ISSUE.
US natural gas supply must come from the North American continent because there
are too few LNG ports, tankers, or terminals, and LNG conversion results in
significant energy loss. Looking at the North American picture, Simmons observed
that in 1990, there was large growth in natural gas production in the US. By
2001, with record drilling, there was no increase in supply, and by 2003,
production was in serious decline. These statistics are not surprising to those
who have watched gas prices quadruple over the last eighteen months. And,
confirming the pattern seen with oil discoveries, Simmons noted, "New Texas
[gas] wells decline by eighty-three per cent one year after drilling." Unlike
oil, natural gas production tends to reach a plateau and then fall straight down
a cliff because the gas moves quickly from the well until there is no more
pressure and then it just stops.
Confirming that the once-hoped-for Caspian Sea oil bonanza had proved to be a
major bust, Simmons noted that in 2001, twenty out of twenty-five new wells sunk
in the Caspian basin had produced dry holes. That was the same year that
Kazakhstan's supposed giant Kashagan field was opened but by 2002, British
Petroleum and Statoil had withdrawn from it, and by 2003, the rest of the
original major investors also had pulled out.
THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE AND "PLAN B"
In an ironic reference to the Southeast Asian region known for its
CIA-connected cultivation of the opium poppy, Simmons observed that the Middle
East was still the "Promised Land," and that eighty-five per cent of all Middle
Eastern oil was in a golden triangle running from Kirkuk, in northern Iraq,
through Iran to the United Arab Emirates, then west through Saudi Arabia's
central oil fields, then northwards and back up to Kirkuk. In Simmons' analysis,
Saudi Arabia was "home court."
Referring to a 1960's report from The Club of Rome suggesting that there were
limits to growth, Simmons observed that, "The world has no Plan B." During a
brief question and answer session, this writer posed a question to Simmons which
evoked laughter from the audience and a blushed, bowed head from Simmons.
Q. Mike Ruppert: I have two questions. In the Baker Institute CFR Report from
April, 2001, you were kind of dissenting and you called for a Manhattan
Project-type investment program to address energy, what would that entail?
My second question is in The War on Terrorism since 9/11, we have gone to
Afghanistan, and we've seen some pipeline development across Afghanistan, we've
seen Iraq, now Saudi Arabia, developments in West Africa, also in Colombia where
the terrorism coincidentally seems to appear exactly where the oil is, either in
large reserves or in swing producing nations, do you believe that is all
coincidental? (Audience laughter)
A. Simmons: (More laughter) Those are pretty intelligent questions. What I
encouraged people to think about when the Council on Foreign Relations and the
Baker Institute were doing the energy blueprints was to think in terms of future
energy plans the way we did the Marshall Plan in rebuilding Europe. It was about
collecting the largest group of experts we could and having them fan out across
Europe and figure out how we could get from A to Z.
I still believe that there is an urgent need for an Energy Marshall Plan. I
think we need to couple that with a water, a water energy program..
. On the terrorists, I don't know if you can draw any parallels on why does it
seem that every place we have energy we also have terrorism other than just
musing about the fact that over the last twenty years while we have apparently
benefited from these unbelievably low bargain oil prices, the prices were so low
that none of the host nations were able to basically create any semblance of a
modern society. And over a 20-year period of time, all of their populations
exploded, they all have high birthrate, very young people, and terrible
economies. Unfortunately, we ended up with an oil price that was so low that it
was hard for them to maintain a healthy infrastructure and there was nothing
left over to start rebuilding their societies. I suspect that had they been
lucky enough to have had energy prices two to three times higher and then worked
carefully with these producing countries to be enlightened about how they should
spend this newfound wealth instead of putting in some young and powerful leaders
to start creating a middle class then the people would have started focusing
more on how to become more prosperous. I guess in hindsight that is easy to
say.
Another questioner asked Simmons why there was such an unbelievable disconnect
between oval office policy and Simmons' stated views. The first words out of
Simmons' mouth in reply were, "The US has some unbelievable energy problems."
[A full transcript of Simmons' statement at the ASPO conference will be made
available shortly. – Ed]
DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONS, SOME CONSENSUS, and ALICE IN WONDERLAND
The ASPO conference was attended by oil company experts, academics from the
fields of geology, and the sciences, such as political science, alternative
energy advocates, economic and financial concerns like Deutschebank, government
research facilities, and, journalists. Three "camps" emerged fairly quickly.
The Peak Oil camp generally represented those who felt that oil and gas
depletion was extremely serious and about to become the paramount issue on the
planet because there are no suitable alternative energy sources either in the
near or intermediate term that will soften the effects.
The Alternative Energy Panacea camp generally agreed that Peak Oil was
imminent but argued that alternative energy sources would generally permit life
to go on as usual.
The Flat Earth camp, generally comprised of oil company employees, oil
industry representatives, representatives of the International Energy Agency
(IEA) and investment banks, and, politicians, all off whom generally assumed
that demand and increased investment would somehow produce all the solutions and
energy necessary to solve any problems and, that new technology would find the
oil and gas that most attendees of the conference – especially after the
presentation of data from undisputed experts – agreed was nonexistent.
DISHONEST RESERVE REPORTING AND DEFINITIONS
There was no defense raised from any of the attending camps for overstated oil
reserve estimates previously produced by either the US Geological Survey (USGS)
or the IEA. It took little effort from experts like Campbell, Laherrère,
Aleklett, Chris Skrebowski of the UK's Institute of Petroleum, and Professor
Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton to demonstrate that the books on oil reserves are
as cooked as the books of Enron.
The chief misleading error always committed by both oil companies and
government institutions is their failure to backdate reserve discoveries. When
oil companies drill their first successful well in any field they generally have
a reasonable idea of how much oil will be ultimately recoverable. The first
problem is, that if they report the anticipated size of the field in the year of
discovery, they have to pay taxes on all of it. Naturally, they report the
reserve estimates as increasing over time to spread out the tax burden. They do
it also to keep share prices up and stable, and to stimulate continued
investment by reporting the discovery of new reserves in older fields that are
not new discoveries at all. And in cases where national production is determined
by stated "proven" reserves, estimates are sometime changed, as with the OPEC
nations in the mid 1980s, simply as a result of an accountant applying an eraser
to the previously stated reserves when more cash is needed as a result of
increased production.
Experts like Campbell and Laherrère insist that all reserves everywhere should
immediately be backdated to the first successful borehole in a field and then
the amount pumped subsequently subtracted as a means of accurately determining
how much oil is really left.
To engage in honest discussion of what is really there, terms like Probable,
Estimated, and even Proven Reserves need to be thrown out in favor of Ultimately
Recoverable Reserves (URR) which have been properly backdated. Anything else is
pandering to the needs of an accountant, a politician, or a stock market
analyst. There is a reason why -- in spite of all the reserve numbers put out
by governments, oil companies and market analysts -- a company called Petroleum
Consultants in Geneva Switzerland publishes an annual report on oil reserves
country by country and charges a reported million dollars per copy. The CIA is
reported to have a hand in its drafting and is a recipient of the work product.
That is a testament in itself to the unreliability of reserve estimates from
other sources.
EMERGING VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
There were crossovers of opinion and these descriptions are not all inclusive.
One oil company executive, Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, Ph.D., of the National Iranian
Oil Company, was firmly in the Peak Oil camp and he presented startling figures
on oil depletion in Iran as well as analyses that showed that Saudi Arabia's
vaunted reserves of 250 billion barrels (Gb) might be far lower than reported.
"Saudi Arabia has already produced 100 Gb out of ultimately recoverable reserves
of 260 Gb. It may have less oil and may have passed mid point of production
which means decline," he said.
As FTW has repeatedly reported, once a field, a nation, or the planet passes
the peak of production, each new barrel produced on the average requires more
money and more energy, while at the same time tending to be of declining quality
and thus more expensive to refine.
Bakhtiari's assessments were supported by other presentations showing that even
though 43% of the world's Ultimately Recoverable Reserves (URR) may be located
in the Middle East their size may be far less than hoped for and the nations in
the region may be actually peaking much sooner than expected.
The sobering numbers tended to reinforce Simmons' position as presented to the
Bush administration and debate frequently turned to alternative energy sources.
No one at the conference presented any evidence of any combination of
alternative energy sources which would replace hydrocarbon energy and no one
alleged that even if such a mix was available it could be implemented in time to
prevent major economic and human catastrophes.
This writer walked away with the conclusion that as a result of political and
economic denial, as the lights started going out, as cars stopped running, as
fertilizers and pesticides became too expensive for third world nations, and as
famine started to hit the planet, coal and nuclear would be the knee-jerk
solutions reached for and that they would not prove to be effective for anything
except an immediate finger-in-the-dyke solution.
One conclusion generally accepted by almost every attendee was that hydrogen,
contrary to popularly accepted comfort promotions by writers like Jeremy Rifkin,
was not a solution either in the near or long term because of intensive costs of
production, inherent energy inefficiencies, lack of infrastructure and
impracticalities. Speaking for Daimler Chrysler, which paid lip service to Peak
Oil yet acknowledged that it had done extensive research on hydrogen vehicles,
Dr. Jorg Wind told the conference that his company did not see hydrogen as a
viable alternative to petroleum-based internal combustion engines.
"WE USE FOSSIL FUELS TO MAKE HYDROGEN.
That does not result in a significant CO2 reduction. We predict that by 2020
only 5% of fuel use will be hydrogen and that infrastructure and the political
framework is the most important factor. In order of relevance and likelihood
from the standpoint of the auto industry Wind stated that we would see improved
conventional vehicles, starter hybrid vehicles, electric hybrid vehicles and,
finally, fuel cell vehicles as solutions, but he had little optimism that fuel
cells would ever amount to a significant market share.
In a telling left-handed acknowledgement of Peak Oil, Wind noted that one third
of all diesel fuels currently used in Germany were biodiesel relying on recycled
waste and or plant feedstock. He was particularly critical of ethanol stating
that it was not energy efficient. French presenters confirmed that ethanol was
only viable in France due to a three hundred per cent government subsidy to
farmers. Otherwise it was a net energy waster.
When asked by FTW if Daimler-Chrysler had estimated the costs for
infrastructure changes and capital investment to produce fuel cell vehicles Wind
stated that the company did not know these costs. The implication was that
having evaluated the technology involved in the vehicles themselves the company
didn't consider it worthwhile to undertake further financial evaluation. Wind
elicited groans from the audience when he asserted that everything was customer
driven and that corporations bore no responsibility for the shortage of
practical solutions to the looming crisis.
"IT MAY NOT BE PROFITABLE TO SLOW DECLINE"
Dutch economist Maarten Van Mourik of the Netherlands Economic Institute
delivered some chilling facts and then offered perhaps the most memorable quote
of the entire conference. He had little hope for deep sea exploration, stating
that deep water non-conventional oil would represent only five per cent of world
supply by 2020. Ultimately it would produce only about 5 Gb. The world is
currently consuming a billion barrels of oil every twelve days. "It is way too
expensive. The cost is fifty to sixty million per rig and there is little
guaranteed return." He noted, not surprisingly, in view of recent developments
in the "war against terrorism," that West Africa was the best deep water oil
prospect with Angola being the most likely candidate for new activity. After
looking at more of the various alternatives, Van Mourik revealed an underlying
truth that is certain to exacerbate the effects of Peak Oil, "It may not be
profitable to slow decline."
HYDROGEN'S LEAD FINANCIAL BALLOON
Pierre-Rene Bauquis, Vice President of the French Energy Institute, associate
IFP professor and former special advisor to the president of TotalFinaElf,
confirmed prior research by FTW citing hard scientific data showing that
hydrogen is not a practical solution. As a member of Environmentalists for
Nuclear Energy he made no secret of his advocacy of nuclear power. And it is
quite probable that if Total or any other oil company could make a profit from
hydrogen they would rush to do it, especially since they know that they are
running out of their current product.
Noting that one half of all oil is used for transportation, Bauquis insisted
that renewable energies sources would not solve the problem and stated flatly
that "Hydrogen is not the fuel of tomorrow." He noted that the first internal
combustion engine, built in 1805, was a hydrogen engine and that it was quickly
discarded because of the problems hydrogen poses with transportation, storage
and efficiency. Bauquis observed that, "Commercial production of hydrogen is
two to five times the cost of the fossil fuels used to make it. Transportation
is impossible. It is two times as costly to transport hydrogen as it is to
transport electricity. The storage costs for hydrogen are one hundred times the
cost of liquid petroleum products."
He was equally unforgiving when it came to ethanol. "To replace forty per cent
of the oil in use you would need three times the currently available farmland
just for feedstock."
Bauquis drew some groans from the audience when he insisted that the
"Chernobyl" disaster was a hoax perpetrated by Green Peace which had grossly
exaggerated the number of deaths resulting from the 1986 nuclear accident but
his observations about hydrogen are consistent with a wide number of scientific
studies from a number of differing political and economic interests. He did
acknowledge that perhaps in several decades, so-called green or white hydrogen
(produced by electrolysis rather than from methane) might become feasible but
only as a result of nuclear energy to power the conversion process.
One audience member elicited boisterous audience laughter by asking another
presenter, "Now we have one situation in the market in which we get conventional
fuel, namely oil, we burn it in a combustion engine, and we do work. Now what I
understand the hydrogen defendants are promoting, led by Mr. Jeremy Rifkin, is a
hydrogen economy consisting basically in getting the conventional fuels again
and producing alternative/solar energies or clean energy… or a wind generator
…to produce electricity to then split the water molecules into hydrogen and
oxygen and then compressing the liquefied hydrogen for transportation and
storage and then injecting the hydrogen into the fuel cell to produce
electricity to do work in the machine. Do you really believe that this is efficiency?"
RUSSIA'S GOT GAS
J. Peter Gerling, head of the Energy resources section of Germany's Federal
Institute for Geosciences, after repeating that worldwide reliance on oil and
natural gas was increasing rather than decreasing, observed that Russia has an
estimated one-half of all the estimated ultimately recoverable reserves of
natural gas on the planet. The tiny nation of Qatar, where the US has located
its Central Command headquarters, has more natural gas than North and South
America combined. This does the US little good for the time being until massive
LNG tanker fleets and infrastructure are built but it goes a long way towards
explaining why Paris and Berlin have been slowly forming an economic partnership
with Russia. It also explains why experts like Colin Campbell believe that the
UK will ultimately join the European Union.
Chris Skrebowski of the UK's Institute of Petroleum had previously noted that by
2007, Britain will be in its second year of gas imports and its first year of
oil imports, the once proud North Sea fields having been nearly depleted by that time.
STICKY TAR SANDS IN CANADA
Professor Kjell Aleklett made a stunning graphic display of how the world's oil
is distributed by using twenty champagne bottles to represent the two trillion
barrels of oil with which the planet was endowed. After removing ten bottles to
indicate what had already been used he put two bottles aside to represent the
oil that had been given to the US.
Showing that one bottle was empty, he then poured one last glass from the
remaining bottle and stated that America has just poured the very last glass
from its endowment of oil. Four of the remaining ten bottles he indicated were
in the Middle East and of those three represented the oil in Saudi Arabia and
Iraq.
He then turned to tar sands projects which had once been heralded as Canada's
(and America's) salvation but which have been proven to be a financial and
ecological disaster. A previous speaker had noted that the process of obtaining
oil from tar sands which involves washing the strip mined sand with steam
requires three barrels of fresh water for every barrel of oil produced.
Aleklett then noted that Canada was using such a tremendous amount of natural
gas to boil the water that its own domestic heating needs were being
compromised.
Other speakers had previously commented on the fact that under the NAFTA and
FTAA agreements, Canada was obligated to sell natural gas to the US at low
prices even to the point of not meeting its own requirements. There clearly is
not enough natural gas to produce tar sands, which have not been profitable to
date, even as the wastewater and strip mining destroys much of Alberta's
pristine landscape. As a result, said Aleklett, Alberta is now considering the
construction of a nuclear reactor for the sole purpose of making steam to work
the tar sands. No one needed to ask about energy returned on energy invested.
STATING THE OBVIOUS
American Five College Professor of Peace and World Security, Michael Klare,
author of the book, Resource Wars, provided the much needed integration of Peak
Oil issues with world events by noting that US oil imports passed fifty per cent
for the first time in 1999 and that this share has been steadily increasing.
Correctly noting that the US war machine is dependent upon petroleum he started
by looking at the actual text of the report of the NEPDG Cheney energy task
force published shortly before the attacks of 9/11.
As is so often the case with government reports such as those produced by the
CIA's Inspector General evaluating the CIA's role in the drug trade, it is
necessary to discard letters of transmittal and summaries to find out what the
report really says. Klare noted that Chapter 8 of the Cheney report disclosed
that what the secretive body really advocated was an increased reliance on oil
and natural gas. The report stated that US demand would increase by 7.7 Mbpd
between 2000 and 2020 and that all of that increase would necessarily come from
the Middle East.
As FTW has reported on numerous occasions, throughout the Clinton years, the US
steadily prepared for military conflict by engaging in many joint military
operations and base expansion throughout the region. The greatest focus was on
Saudi Arabia.
Klare's analysis left no doubt that the military operations witnessed since
9/11 were indeed the result of an elaborate plan put into place and executed
steadily for more than a decade and that US energy, military, and anti-terrorism
policies were really three strands of the same rope, all meshing perfectly in
global and hegemonic conquest.
Princeton Professor Kenneth Deffeyes – a colleague of King Hubbert and author
of the book, Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World oil Shortage, argued that Peak
Oil actually arrived in 2000 by noting that production has actually been
declining since that time. As further evidence of the production peak, Deffeyes
noted that since 2000, there has been a 30% drop in stock values, interest rate
cuts have not helped, two million have become unemployed and the employed have
been unable to retire, budget surpluses have vanished, the middle class has
vanished, and the World Trade Center has vanished.
He added that the only way to meet the delusional USGS oil discovery
predictions for the United States would be to make Iraq the 51st state. One of
his greatest concerns, he said, was the cost of fertilizer production for the
Third World, implying that natural gas shortages and related electrical
manufacturing and transport costs might precipitate a famine of unimagined proportions.
From FTW's perspective the reality of Peak Oil has been almost completely
transparent since 9/11. As a cosmological explanation of the sublimely
convenient attacks of 9/11, abetted by the US government, the sequential war to
control the largest oil reserves on the planet, the near hysteria over
biological warfare, the steady assault on civil liberties, and the continually
declining economic performance, there is no other construct which provides a
canvas on which these developments fit. The second annual ASPO conference in
Paris only deepened our conviction.
