Are you interested?

Teaching & Helping will be fielding teams of Mentors and volunteers on October 10 to weatherize and insulate as many homes as we can. We expect to be able to simultaneously do 6-10 homes, train 15-30 volunteers, and reduce annual energy use at least $150 and CO2 production by at least 1500 pounds (probably more). We will be doing some combination of weatherization, insulation, and window replacement, depending on the houses’ needs.

On October 10, you can participate, regardless of your income. If you own your own home and are of modest income, we have a County grant to cover the cost of the Mentor and overhead. You pay for the materials. If you have more income, you can still take part in October. The Mentor and overhead cost will be about $300 +/- as well as the materials. Someone will inspect your house in September and give you a closer estimate of the total cost. (Weatherization involves caulking, sealing, and/or weather-stripping outlets, switches, plumbing penetrations, light fixtures, doors and windows.)

Also, if you meet the County’s requirements, we are looking for two homes to weatherize were we can train some of our experienced volunteers to be team leaders on October 10. An experienced Mentor will lead a small volunteer team to practice the special techniques we are developing for efficient weatherization of older homes.

If you are interested in finding out more — either to include your home in the project, or to participate as a volunteer and learn yourself and help others — please contact me, Tres English, at 795-3413 or tres@sustainabletucson.com.

More details are available at www.beantreefarm.com.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/water-footprint-calculator/

Local Food Concepts, the Tucson-based, local food information resource headed by writer/consultant Judith Mattson, has announced the schedule for a series of workshops and farm tours this fall.  Advance registration is required; tour size is limited.

• Saturday, September 18, 2010               Walking J Farm (Double Check), Amado
• Sunday, October 3, 2010                        Sunizona Family Farms, Willcox
• Saturday, October 16, 2010                    San Xavier Co-op Farm, Tucson
• Saturday, October 30, 2010                    Chiva Risa Goat Ranch, Hereford
• Saturday, November 13, 2010                Sleeping Frog Farms, Cascabel

The Local Food Workshop & Tour series is designed to lead participants — and those who sit at their tables — to the next step on the evolving food journey.  Participants will have the chance to explore new, local food information and to consider the nuances of sourcing personal food choices in southern Arizona.

Each of the five locations provides a special opportunity to go to the source, see the day-to-day activities that contribute to the creation of our local food supply, and to interact with the host – a knowledgeable Southern Arizona local farmer or rancher.

The event includes a workshop presented by Local Food Concepts to help participants explore topics such as how to find the foods you choose to eat, what is your “food belief system”, or how do you make food choices for yourself and those at your table?  Armed with new facts and insights, participants will be encouraged to consider a fresh approach to food and eating in this unique foodshed.

Early Registration for each scheduled workshop and tour is $70 per adult, with discounts for a spouse or friend, and is only available if reserved two or more weeks prior to each tour date.  For additional information, email LocalFoodConcepts@comcast.net, or contact Local Food Concepts at 520-395-0663.

Published by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas – USA (ASPO-USA) on Mon, 08/16/2010

Original article: http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2010/08/remembering-the-remarkable-matthew-r-simmons/

Matt Simmons was arguably the most influential individual on this side of the Atlantic to warn about the coming peak-and-decline of world oil production. Beginning in 2001, when he published his ground-breaking white paper on the world‘s giant oil fields, Matt alerted presidents, politicians and whoever else would listen that our energy joyride was headed for deep trouble. He drove himself tirelessly, riding the speaker circuit at breakneck speed, visiting some 25 countries to deliver over 400 fact-filled energy talks to industry, investment, academic, and general interest audiences.

Then, suddenly, he was gone. Matt died Sunday evening, August 8th, at his home in Maine. He will be missed enormously by his wife Ellen, five daughters, his close associates, and all of us who knew and respected him.

Matt was a contrarian thinker with high-level access and influence. The access was due to his decades of stunning success in the energy investment banking business, where he made his fortune; the influence came from his research, timing, acumen and luck-and from swimming ahead of the crowd. Matt‘s energy investment firm, Simmons & Co., Int’l., helped clients navigate through the oil industry‘s historic down cycles. By the mid-1990s, with a high-profile column in World Oil magazine and a growing number of top-level media appearances, Matt began to leverage the reach of his ideas.

How high up the ladder did his viewpoints climb? To the very top. Matt co-chaired the energy task force of presidential candidate George W. Bush in the fall of 2000. (He also shared his energy insights with staffers for a Democratic candidate earlier in the year.) Matt helped Bill White win election as Mayor of Houston, and provided advice and support to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in his 2008 campaign. During a short session in the Oval Office with President Bush in early 2001, Matt shared his concerns about our emerging energy crisis. In subsequent years, he would testify before several House and Senate committees, an experience he would compare to “shouting down a well.” More recently, he gave a one-hour presentation in the Pentagon auditorium that stretched another hour with intense questioning.

In 2003, Matt began questioning the conventional wisdom that Saudi Arabia could someday produce 15 or even 20 million barrels a day. This forced the Saudis to publicly defend their reserves and production capacity. In early 2004, at a symposium sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Saudi Aramco officials worked hard to directly rebut Matt’s claims that their oil fields were depleting faster than acknowledged.

Of course, Matt wasn‘t the only one speaking about peak oil. In 1998 Campbell and Laherrere had published a landmark piece in Scientific American, “The End of Cheap Oil.” A number of excellent books soon appeared, from Deffeyes, Heinberg and others. But Matt, along with other industry analysts like Charley Maxwell, Henry Groppe and Tom Petrie, helped bring peak oil to the boardroom and to Wall Street. He doggedly pushed the topic on cable news shows, buttressing peak oil‘s intellectual and numeric underpinnings, reinforcing its respectability. In doing so, he helped animate a new generation of researchers whose findings would be published in books, magazines, and websites like theoildrum.com

When Matt’s opus, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, appeared in May 2005, it was an instant sensation. Within Saudi Aramco, engineers fixated on a few of the book‘s factual errors, thereby missing the big picture. On the world stage, however, the book brought a harsh dose of reality to the happy talk proffered by Cambridge Energy Research Associates and others. Daniel Yergin might remain a cheerleader for abundance, but no longer could it be assumed that Saudi Arabia‘s “endless oil” could solve the world‘s larger energy problems.

In response to Twilight’s assertions, Saudi Aramco mounted a PR campaign, stating it could boost production to 12 million barrels a day and maintain that level for decades. Ironically, this knocked some stuffing out of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, whose annual forecasts often seemed like a vision in search of reality, particularly those which foresaw Saudi production reaching 20 million barrels per day by 2020.

Matt was flooded with speaking requests. His presentation style was always memorable: the phrase “drinking from a fire hose” borders on understatement. Passionate, animated, face flushed, words flowing, Matt commanded the podium, bombarding his listeners with facts, figures and original graphics that often connected established dots to make new points. His material was usually fresh, always insightful, often provocative. He brought a teacher‘s mindset as much as a businessman‘s to his talks and appearances. Periodically, he made outlandish statements. Though we admired his chutzpah, Matt‘s $5000 bet with a New York Times columnist in 2005 that oil prices would average $200 a barrel by 2010 struck us as ill-advised.

Throughout this period, several key threads flowed through Matt’s papers and presentations. One was his relentless plea for data transparency; the lack of reliable production numbers frustrated him no end. The most important “missing evidence” was depletion data from mature oil fields. Although drillers took depletion for granted-waged war against it incessantly in their own fields “they hated to talk about it in public. Matt lent his voice early and often on the need to obtain better data on decline rates, thus helping to spark the decline rate study that the International Energy Agency published in 2008. He also called attention to -rust,” the aging of energy infrastructure and trained workforce, and to the high-wire act that is deepwater drilling.

Apart from his book, Matt‘s most insightful analyses derived from two early papers: “Revisiting Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome Have Been Right?” (October 2000) and “The World’s Giant Oilfields” (late 2001). In “Revisiting Limits,” Matt swam upstream against cornucopian groupthink, which held that resource limits would never constrain economic growth. When he reread the book, what he found surprised him.

In September 2000, Matt emailed: “I have just finished the most important white paper I‘ve tackled…I always thought this Club of Rome thing was some bad joke. But I am now of the opinion that historians will mark the book as perhaps the most important piece of ‘writing that got ignored’ in the last half of the 20th Century.” Seven years later, Matt hadn‘t changed his mind about the value of the “Limits” study: “The world sleep-walked for three decades while believing all natural resources would last forever.”

The research that fully awakened Matt to the impact of oil field depletion, however, was his trail blazing “Giant Oilfields” paper. In early 2001, he had noted a worrisome fact: almost 30 years had elapsed since the discovery of the last super-giant oil field that could produce 1 million barrels a day. Then he dug into the numbers. The resulting paradigm-shifting paper proposed that, rather than projecting the world‘s oil future by examining the size of its debatable reserves, “perhaps it is time for the energy world to focus on the critical role played by today‘s aging giant oilfields.”

Although he was forced to guesstimate production for some fields, the paper highlighted how critically important giant fields are to world production; the largest 3% of fields produced 47% of the world‘s daily supply. Pair Matt‘s “Giant Oil Fields” with Chris Skrebowski‘s research on future mega-project development and you have all you need to convince alert scientists and astute businessmen that it would be wise to start planning for a pending peak in oil production.

“Petroleum is industrial oxygen,” Matt liked to say. The more he looked, the more convinced he was that much of our energy system was being red-lined, run on the ragged edge of disaster. Matt was alarmed, and sometimes-as with recent ill-advised comments about BP‘s Gulf of Mexico oil spill-he could be alarmist. But no matter. The contribution he made was titanic, in every sense of the word.

Aspects of the private Matt that few knew: he painted with water colors, often used on his Christmas cards. He was a devoted family man – his presentations were sometimes delivered via live webcast so that he could attend a daughter‘s graduation from high school or college. He loved to play the marimba. He liked to cook for his family to relax after a hard day. He and Ellen revived the historic Strand Theatre in his adopted Maine hometown of Rockland-one of the many “pay it forward” endeavors that will be the legacy of this remarkable man.

Let‘s give the last word to him: -As oil becomes a scarce resource, its use will have to be rationed in one way or another. There are ways to allocate oil use and direct it to its most valuable applications. But achieving such a rational plan will require a carefully orchestrated global effort. Left unattended, this process could quickly evolve into genuine chaos. The global economy can function after oil supplies peak, but not in the same manner in which we live today.‖ (Twilight in the Desert, p. 347)

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Other remembrances from colleagues and friends

Matt’s impact on the petroleum industry stemmed from his incisive analyses of underlying fundamentals and his willingness to be an effective iconoclast when dictated by his conclusions. As a result, we didn’t always agree, but he sure challenged us to think, and often rethink, our views and expectations of the future. In sum, Matt epitomized “energized thinking outside the box.” Tom Petrie, a vice-chairman of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch

I think there were several important aspects to Matt‘s personality that made him stand out and endeared him to his friends. He was dynamic, diligent and outgoing. He focused on both the big picture as well as the details and was not afraid to speak his mind when he thought the issues were significant. Those who criticized his conclusions missed the global issues he was addressing: maturing oil resources, an over-extended industry, runaway energy demand, and the absence of a “Plan B”. Those issues remain and we are still looking for “Plan B”. Sadad al Husseini, consultant, retired executive vice president of E&P for Saudi Aramco

With the sad and premature death of Matt Simmons, we have lost an important analyst who played a prominent and successful part in raising awareness of the critical issue of so-called Peak Oil. His experience as an investment banker helped him penetrate the barriers of lax reporting to establish the true position. He drew the media’s attention to this critical turning point for Mankind, and he will be sorely missed. Colin Campbell, retired petroleum geologist, founder of ASPO

Matt was a gentleman, a patriot, a talented analyst, a nice man, and a good friend. His contributions to informing the public about the impending dangers of the decline in world oil production are legion. The country and the world owe him a debt of gratitude. Bob Hirsch, senior energy advisor at MISI

Matt’s passion for better understanding all energy issues was stimulating and inspiring to all who had the privilege of knowing and working with him from the time he came to Houston. We will miss him intensely. Henry Groppe, cofounder oil industry consultants Groppe, Long & Littell

As an environmentalist, I found Matt Simmons to be a delightful surprise: a wealthy Republican who talked openly and intelligently about limits to growth! He refused to be held back by friends, colleagues, and perhaps even by clients in the oil and banking businesses who no doubt wished he’d just shut up and go back to making money. He went where curiosity and evidence led him, and that meant probing the inscrutable monolith of the oil industry–Saudi Arabia. I don’t know of anyone else who would have had the courage and respect within the industry to accomplish what he did. Richard Heinberg, senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute

I first met Matt in 1989 when he presented an analysis of the state of the drilling industry and what it would take to get it back to profitability. His presentation featured the insightful analysis, backed up with superb graphs, that we have all become used to. Because I have a hobby of checking out predictions, I followed the drilling business with unusual interest over the next few years. And Matt’s analysis was correct on what it took to slowly evolve back to profitability. I learned a lot from Matt’s analyses of the productive capability of oil and natural gas fields through the years. You might not always have agreed with what he said, but if you ignored what he said, you did so at your own peril. Vince Matthews, State Geologist of Colorado

I first met Matt around 1982 at his Investment firm. Roice Nelson, a founder of Landmark Graphics, was there to introduce me to Matt, but it never got that far. Matt came charging into his “trophy room” with all its glass mementos to the millions of shares of hundreds of companies his company had invested in, shaking both our hands while launching into a blistering dialogue on the “rusting” of the offshore oil industry worldwide. Matt had just calculated, on the literal back of an envelope that he produced on the spot, that within 20 years industrial accidents from rusting old rigs would “explode”. I reflexively thought of Matt when I first heard of the Deepwater Horizon” explosion this spring. Though it was “brand new”, I knew Matt would come out railing. We will sorely miss Matt’s always frank, often politically incorrect, prodding of what he considered “the established group think” of the oil industry. Roger N. Anderson, Con Edison Senior Scholar, Columbia University.

Matt touched my life in a profound way. Within weeks of reading Twilight in the Desert, I was flying to Denver to hear him speak at the ASPO-USA conference. With book and camera at the ready, I pounced on him as he left the podium and he graciously honored me with both a picture and an autograph. Our paths have crossed numerous times since then but I will be most grateful for our last visit this past spring when I had the good fortune to sit with him for several hours and talk about our energy future and to personally thank him for making my life richer and deeper. Matt, we will miss you. Debbie Cook, former City Council Member and Mayor of Huntington Beach (CA)

Matt saw Peak Oil as heralding the end of an era. It was something that struck him with alarm and something which he knew we needed (as a society and as individuals) to prepare for so that it would not sweep away our way of life. He did not have the satisfaction of knowing that his calls to a new preparedness were being answered because he was taken too soon, but he did sound a “certain trumpet” in respect to what he saw ahead. Therefore, his passing could be an occasion when experts and the public alike might take a moment to reconsider Peak Oil as a global force for imminent change. Charles T. Maxwell; senior energy analyst, Weeden & Co.

Mrs. Green is on the hunt for companies and workplaces that are miles
ahead of the pack when it comes to keeping it green and making conscious efforts to be more eco-friendly.

Do you work for (or know of) a company that takes great steps to save
energy, reduce waste, and provide a nontoxic work environment? We want to hear about it and feature them in the challenge!

We’re taking submissions for green workplaces during August and
September. And, starting September 7th, anyone can vote for which
workplace they think is the greenest!

Enter your nominations here now!

You can read the original study here.

Are you interested in improving the energy efficiency
of your home?

Approximately 300 homes located within the City of Tucson will be selected to receive energy efficiency upgrades to reduce the home’s energy use by 15-20%.

Residential energy efficiency retrofit work may include things like substituting compact fluorescent light bulbs for incandescent light bulbs, installing low-flow faucets and showerheads, installing solar screens on the windows on the west side of the house and improving overall weatherization of the home.

The City will contract with a non-profit organization to conduct the energy efficiency retrofit work. The organization will meet with each homeowner to identify the areas of greatest need in the home. There is no charge to the homeowner.

To be eligible for the program, you must meet certain criteria.
Please read the INFORMATION SHEET carefully to determine if you are eligible.

Visit the site to get more information here.

Lots of of Zero-Race.com serendipity is happening!  The Electrics are coming to town!  So now it’s time to tap into furthering the wellspring of EVnthusiastism with Sustainable Tucson.  Many around the country are jumping in as “Indians” and just being players on the Zero Race Regional Coordinating Teams (RCTs).  EVolunteers are needed for the RCT – Arizona, which with “boots on the ground,” its teammates will determine the AZ routing of a composite of Zero Race EV Teams coming into Kingman, AZ and just before arriving at Lordsburg, NM.  Zero Race is being led by the renown Louis Palmer of the SolarTaxi fame, who was the first to do an EV around the world and in a mere 534 days.

The RCT - AZ also looks at locating 240-volt/30 Amp charging stations, setting up the media, and seeking out lodging, if able.  The RCT – AZ will also be taking a hand-off from the RCT – Nevada, composed of mainly Electric Auto Association (EAA) Chapter member–Las Vegas EVA, and guiding the same to New Mexico and then to hand off to RCT – Texas in El Paso, TX, if at all possible.

Furthermore, there’s also a definite need to have a voluntary Regional Coordinator (RC) or Co-RCs to lead RCT – Arizona.

See www.Zero-Race.com for further detailed updates as well as the launch announcement, set for 15 August in Geneva, Switzerland.

Do scroll below for background read, especially the scheduling Zero Race EV Teams on runs through Las Cruces, NM/El Paso, TX after its departure from Tucson, AZ, NV, on Monday, 15 November and before its afternoon arrival in Las cruces/El Paso or vicinity, on Tuesday evening, 16 November (with one overnight stay anticipated either in Las Cruces or El Paso).

On Monday, 15 November, the Zero-Race should be en route down from Phoenixto and on Tuesday afternoon, 16 November, it’s on-ward and Eastward to Lordsburg, NM, then Las Cruces, El Paso, …then some 600 miles to San Antonio, and possibly Austin before going South towards Brownsville, TX on Friday, 19 November and on into Matamoros, Mexico on Saturday, 20 November.  That’s it for the moment…!

EVer in the Year of the Plug-ins…with Zero Race leading the World into 2011,

J. “EVJerry” Asher   Zero Race Coordinator-in-Chief for North America   (202) 486-5450 …and situated here in Tucson at Milagro Cohousing

Statement by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas  – USA

August 9, 2010

ROCKLAND, Maine — Matt Simmons, Chairman of ASPO-USA’s Advisory Board, died Sunday night at his home in North Haven Island, near Rockland, Maine.

The founder of Houston-based Simmons & Co. International, Matt wrote the 2005 book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” addressing  concerns about Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves and the impending peak of worldwide crude oil production.

Simmons also founded The Ocean Energy Institute, a think tank and venture capital fund in Rockland to promote offshore wind energy research and development.

The institute is a part of the consortium led by the University of Maine, which aims to design and test floating deep-water wind turbine platforms.

“Matt Simmons was an innovative thinker who pushed ideas that have the potential to yield a more environmentally and economically sustainable future for Maine and the world,” said Maine Gov. John Baldacci, who attended the opening of the institute’s headquarters last month.

Matt was an unstinting supporter of ASPO-USA and an outspoken energy reform advocate. He wrote and spoke fearlessly to warn us about the dangers of status-quo energy policy.

It is impossible to define Matt by any single aspect of his wide ranging interests or any one period of his life and work.  He was a husband and father, an investment banker, an author, and a friend and visionary who lent his name and energy to the organization and evolution of ASPO-USA.  He will be missed by us all.

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The Death of Matt Simmons is a Great Loss

By Kjell Alecklett, Geophysicist, Uppsala University, Sweden and President of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas International

August 10, 2010

Yesterday afternoon I received a message from Matt Simmons’ assistant Laura Russell that I found difficult to believe – it read that Matt had died suddenly. A few hours later the news had spread over the entire world . It is with great sorrow that I now write these words.

In the autumn of 2001 I visited Colin Campbell in Ballydehob in Ireland. During the visit we discussed the possibility of organizing an international workshop on Peak Oil in Uppsala during the spring of 2002. I remember that I said that we needed speakers from the Middle East, Russia and the USA if we were to call the conference “international”. From the USA we thought of Matt Simmons. Matt had just studied future conventional natural gas production in the USA and was of the view that the conventional gas production had reached its peak. He was also very concerned about the impending peak in world oil production. We contacted Matt and he agreed to attend.

Our workshop was held during a Thursday and Friday at the end of May in 2002. I remember that Matt was feeling stressed because that Saturday his daughter was to receive her high school diploma. Matt gave his presentation on Thursday and on Friday morning he flew back to Houston. We had managed to interest Bruce Stanley of AP, Associated Press of London, in attending. He came to Uppsala and wrote about our workshop. When Matt awoke on Saturday morning in Houston he could read on the first page of his local newspaper that he had been and spoken in Uppsala. It was in that article that the expression “Peak Oil” was used for the first time in the international press :

”The dispute centers on the precise timing of what is variously described as “peak oil” or “the big rollover” — the predicted date when existing oil production, together with new discoveries of crude, can no longer replenish the world’s reserves as quickly as consuming countries are depleting them.”

The thing that made Matt’s involvement especially interesting was that in 2000 he had been an advisor on energy to George W. Bush during his presidential campaign. Matt’s lecture in Uppsala became the beginning of a deep engagement with Peak Oil.

Since the first Peak Oil conference it was a given to invite Matt Simmons to all those that followed. Together with Colin Campbell his presence was one of the main attractions.

In 2005 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences established an energy committee and their first project was to research oil depletion, i.e. whether “Peak Oil” was close at hand. I was given the task of organizing a symposium on “Global Oil Reserves” in Uppsala and they wanted me to invite a number of important speakers.

It was obvious that I should invite Matt to this important meeting and, since he also thought it important, he took a plane from Houston and came to the meeting on 23 May, i.e. three years after our first Peak Oil conference in Uppsala. I know that the discussions that the energy committee had with Matt had a significant impact on their final report, ”Statement on Oil”.

During the years since our first meeting we met in person about 10 times but through email and over the phone Matt was always close at hand when I needed his help. We will miss him greatly. Naturally, my thoughts go to his wife Ellen who used to accompany him on his trips. Normally they had time for a dinner or some other social activity. I hope that Ellen will also be with us in future when we ASPO folk meet.

Matt Simmons’ engagement with Peak Oil will continue via innumerable presentations on, for example, YouTube and through his writings. His book on oil production in Saudi Arabia, “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy” is already a classic that has been translated into several languages.

Thank you Matt for all you did – we needed you also in our future.

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Maine Governor Mourns Passing of Matthew Simmons

Statement by the Ocean Energy Institute

Augusta, Maine (August 9, 2010) — Governor John E. Baldacci today learned of the death of Matthew Simmons of North Haven. Simmons was a leading energy investment banker, a former White House energy advisor, an author and the driving force behind the Ocean Energy Institute, based in Rockland, Maine. The Ocean Energy Institute (OEI), founded by Simmons in 2007, is a nonprofit think-tank and venture capital fund dedicated to expanding offshore energy through research and development.

“Matt Simmons was an innovative thinker who pushed ideas that have the potential to yield a more environmentally and economically sustainable future for Maine and the world,” said Governor Baldacci. “I visited Matt and his team last month and thanked them for their partnership with the State as we aggressively build an independent energy future for Maine. Our State has been viewed as a leader in alternative energy in part because of the groundbreaking work spearheaded by Matt Simmons and the Ocean Energy Institute. His leadership and commitment to a better world will be missed, and we need to continue Matt’s work and vision as a way to honor him. Matt was also a kind and generous man. At this difficult time, we send our deepest sympathies to his family.”

Simmons is the author of the 2005 book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” which laid out an argument of peak oil, that the world was approaching peak oil production. Simmons believed that to meet future energy needs, we need to look beyond fossil fuels and to develop energy by harnessing our vast natural resources in a responsible way. He met with the Governor a number of times and the Ocean Energy Institute is a part of the consortium led by the University of Maine that has received millions of dollars from the federal government to research and develop offshore wind turbines. Governor Baldacci also recognized Matt Simmons’ leadership during his State of the State address delivered earlier this year.

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Matt Simmons Embodied Integrity

By Nick Snow,  Oil and Gas Journal, Washington editor

What I remembered first when I learned that Matthew R. Simmons died at his summer home in Maine on Aug. 8 was the anguish in his voice when we spoke by telephone in early 2001 as it became increasingly clear that Enron Corp.’s problems extended to other companies and businesses.

“It’s truly awful,” he said when I mentioned my dismay that the so-called Chinese Wall between investment banks’ research and marketing departments had simply disappeared. “It will take years, if not decades, for our business to regain the trust it has lost. I’m not certain that it ever will.”

Trust mattered a lot to Matt Simmons. Several years before, when his brother, L.E., bought a share of another trade publication I worked for, the two of them tracked me down during the Offshore Technology Conference because I had cited a Simmons & Co. International report in one of my stories. They weren’t satisfied until I assured them I’d used the material because it was good, and not because it came from a company run by the brother of one of the newspaper’s new owners.

I saw Matt frequently in Washington at trade association and government events. Often, he would be on his way out the door to get to the White House or Department of Energy for meetings, yet he always made time to talk. His concerns about the actual extent of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves still make some people nervous. They deserve to be taken seriously because his track record on other issues is so good.

When he started the Ocean Energy Institute after he retired from the helm of what probably is Houston’s most successful energy investment bank, Matt made OEI a venture capital fund as well as a think-tank to address the challenges of US offshore renewable energy.

“OEI approaches energy R&D and investment from a systems point of view; not just generation, but usage, storage and transmission all together as an interdependent set of opportunities and the next driving force of the international economy,” its web site notes. “OEI is working to coordinate the diverse factors that will help make ocean energy a reality: energy system architecture, offshore wind technology, environmental interests, stakeholder concerns, industrial partners, academic research, financial firepower and political factors.”

“Oceans are the last energy frontier, yet we know so little about how to harness them,” he said. “The Ocean Energy Institute’s mission is to quickly fill this knowledge void and let our oceans supply us the energy that fossil fuels have provided for the last hundred years.” Others share that vision but aren’t working out specific solutions. Matt and other thoughtful men and women began to do something about it. They will continue the work he started. More information about OEI is available online at www.oceanenergy.org.