]]]]]]]]]]]]]]        SNAKE OIL SALESMAN           [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
                       By Werner Meyer                     (1/25/1989)
             POLICY REVIEW, Summer 1986 (Extract)

     "Even with decontrol of oil prices, we can see a 30 percent to 40 
percent decline in domestic oil production."
     Daniel Yergin
     Sierra
     July/August 1979

     "All available evidence points to a serious risk of a serious 
energy crisis in the middle or late 1980s...Putting it simply, there 
is the very great likelihood of a major world depression."
     Ulf Lantzke
     Executive Director, International Energy Agency
     The New Republic
     Februrary 25, 1978

     "We're heading into a world of considerably higher prices.  There 
will be a major impact on housing by 1983, and I'd be surprised if 
gasoline is less than $2 per gallon plus whatever inflation adds."
     Kenneth Arrow
     Professor of Economics, Stanford University
     Forbes
     February 4, 1980

     "It's obvious that gasoline could reach at least $2 a gallon 
after decontrol."
     Representative John Dingell (D-MI)
     Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Power
     Forbes
     December 10, 1979

     "Irreversible physical shortfalls in supplies may take place as 
early as 1988.  [The result] is likely to push market prices to levels 
three or four times the current one."
     Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani
     Saudi Arabian Oil Minister
     New York Times
     June 21, 1979

     "World oil prices have only one way to go in the next decade--up, 
and probably sharply so."
     John Mattill
     Editor, Technology Review
     December/January 1980

     "It would be prudent for any American contemplating the purchase 
of a new car to assume that gas will cost $2 per gallon with a few 
years and $3 per gallon during the vehicle's lifetime."
     Lester Brown
     Worldwatch Institute
     Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
     March 1980

     "During 1980 and 1981, for each barrel of oil newly produced as a 
result of decontrol, the cost to the U.S. economy could range from at 
least $56 per barrel under the most optimistic assumptions, to about 
$870 per barrel under assumptions which many experts believe are 
realistic...Thus even if decontrol does in fact stimulate a few extra 
barrels of oil, the total cost to the economy of those few barrels is 
so high as to make decontrol the most nonsensical, irresponsible, and 
expensive energy supply strategy imaginable."
     Energy Action
     March 24, 1979

     "Ronald Reagan brushed aside energy issues during the campaign, 
insisting the shortages could be overcome by unleashing private 
enterprise.  But not even his most fervent supporters in the energy 
business share that optimism.  Virtually all private forecasts predict 
declining domestic oil production and liquid fuel shortages in the 
next decade."
     New York Times
     November 14, 1980

     "There is a dwindling supply of energy sources.  The prices are 
going to rise in the future no matter who is President, no matter 
which party occupies the administration in Washington, no matter what 
we do."
     President Jimmy Carter
     March 31, 1979

     "A government role is crucial if the United States is to reduce 
its energy vulnerability...At present rates of exploitation, the 
United States will exhaust its own petroleum reserves in about 10 
years...The only long-term solution to the liquid fuel problem is the 
production of substitutes."
     Alan Madian
     Foreign Policy
     Summer 1979

     "[Because of decontrol,] the administration has placed the 
American economy, competition in the oil industry, and the public at 
the mercy of a handful of international oil companies and OPEC."
     Ed Rothschild
     Director, Energy Action
     January 5, 1980

     "Decontrol would cause a political storm because prices would 
immediately rise.  Some experts warn that gasoline prices would soar 
to $2 a gallon."
     Marshall Loeb
     Time
     July 9, 1979

     "Any surplus production capacity that individual OPEC countries 
may have developed in recent years will almost certainly vanish by the 
mid-1980s, perhaps sooner...In 1990 prices, adjusted for future 
inflation, oil could be selling for $42 to $55 a barrel."
     U.S. Department of Energy
     National Energy Plan II
     May 1979

     "The day when a tankful of gasoline costs $50 is probably not far 
off."
     Lester Brown
     Worldwatch Institute
     Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
     March 1980

     "The present oil shortage looks like the start of a long siege.  
While the demand for oil keeps growing as world population and 
economies expand, supply slows and it is difficult to see where large 
amounts of additional oil will come from in the next several years."
     Leonard Silk
     New York Times
     June 29.1979

     "It is obvious to anyone that looks at it [the oil crisis] that 
we've got a problem that's serious now.  It's going to get more 
serious in the future.  We're going to have less oil; we're going to 
have to pay more for it.  Those are the facts.  They are unpleasant 
facts. And so far, the American people...have refused to accept that 
simple fact."
     President Jimmy Carter
     May 25, 1979

     "An already serious energy problem has now become an energy 
emergency, an emergency that will persist throughout the entire 
1980s."
     Robert Strobaugh and Daniel Yergin
     Foreign Affairs
     vol. 58, no. 3
     1979

     "Mr. President, I believe we will see $1.50 gas this spring, and 
maybe before.  And it is just a matter of time until the oil companies 
and their associates, the OPEC nations, will be driving the gasoline 
pump prices up to $2 a gallon."
     Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH)
     January 29, 1981

     "Estimating $1.50 [per gallon of gas] is totally, totally 
optimistic."
     Dan Lundberg
     Gasoline price specialist
     New York Times
     February 27, 1980

     "One thing is for certain: prices will continue to rise.  We're
dealing with a scarce, finite commodity, one that will be running out 
in a couple of decades.  Traditional criteria of supply and demand 
don't apply."
     Charles W. Duncan
     Secretary of Energy
     U.S. News and World Report
     February 25, 1980

     "We're going to be on the ragged edge for years."
     Clifton C. Garvin, Jr.
     Chairman, Exxon Corp.
     Business Week
     December 24, 1979

     "With oil, surprises or changes can only go one way: against us."
     Paul Frankel
     Petroleum Economics, Ltd.
     Dun's Review
     April 1980

     "The price of oil now seems firmly locked into a steep upward 
spiral for the foreseeable future."
     Business Week
     December 31, 1979

     "At present rates of consumption, America's oil and gas will be gone 
within a decade."
     Newsweek
     July 16, 1979

     "Without rationing, gasoline will soon go to $3 a gallon."
     Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AR)
     U.S. News and World Report
     July 9, 1979
     
     "In moving towards 1990, the industrialized countries will be walking 
an `oil tightrope.' "
     International Energy Agency
     Energy Conservation
     1981

     "Because of this estimated decline in future oil production, 
estimated oil imports in 1985 have risen from 6[million] to 11 million 
barrels per day."
     Daniel White
     Professor of Finance, Georgia State University
     Business
     May/June 1979

     "A conservative assessment would project the non-Communist 
world's oil consumption as likely to advance from 51 million barrels 
daily in 1977 to 62 million per day in 1985."
     Walter J. Levy
     Oil consultant
     New York Times
     January 4, 1979

     "Most industry observers, however, believe that this time OPEC 
will be successful in keeping oil prices from falling."
     Business Week
     December 31, 1979

     "America's oil system must be nationalized as are those of Libya, 
Nigeria, Mexico, and Venezuela.  Since there is no free market in oil, 
it is idle to pretend otherwise.  There is no way a nationalized 
industry can damage or endanger us more than the present monopolistic 
structure."
     Glyn Jones
     New York Times
     October 2, 1979

     "Almost inevitably, therefore, OPEC's management of the world's 
oil supply will keep the world economy teetering on the brink of 
recession."
     Business Week
     October 29, 1979

     "Responses that might have been sufficient between 1974 and 1979 
no longer suffice; today the United States and all the world's 
importers are caught in an accute and lasting energy emergency."
     Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin
     Foreign Affairs
     vol. 58, no. 3
     1979

     "The tragic failure of U.S. energy planning is that it has 
doggedly promulgated futile market-oriented solutions to energy 
problems."
     Carter Henderson
     Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
     December 1978

     "Rationing is the fairest and most certain way to deal 
immediately with this country's oil shortage."
     Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AR)
     U.S. News and World Report
     July 9, 1979

     "We must adopt a system of gasoline rationing without delay...in 
a way that demands a fair sacrifice from all Americans."
     Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
     New York Times
     January 28, 1980

     "I believe that decontrol as a cure will prove to be worse than 
the disease of oil addiction."
     Representative Edward Markey (D-MA)
     New York Times
     January 9, 1981

     "The price mechanism must be supplemented...by governmental 
action and guidelines encouraging or requiring conservation of 
oil...It is not sufficient to rely exclusively on the price 
mechanism."
     Richard N. Cooper
     Unersecretary for Economic Affairs
     Department of State Bulletin
     December 1980

     "A Democratic energy policy must oppose the decontrol of gas and 
oil prices."
     Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
     New York Times 
     June 26, 1980
          
     "Last week President Reagan issued an Executive Order lifting 
price controls on domestic oil and gasoline...Energy prices in 
Massachusetts alone will escalate by 33 percent--the average household 
paying as much to heat itself as it does in Government taxes."
     Representative Nick Mavroules (D-MA)
     February 5, 1981

     "I think it [OPEC] has now become such an institutionalized 
structure that it would be very doubtful that anyone could break it 
down."
     President Jimmy Carter
     New York Times
     February 11, 1979

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