A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future
    —anonymous

Deceptive statements now dominate the political discourse on America's oil crisis in the 2008 presidential campaign. The confused debate about Republican supply-side measures versus Democratic demand-side measures entirely misses the central point: domestic oil production is about to experience a mini-peak in the years 2010-11 and then resume its inevitable decline.

[On June 27th, Ray Leonard showed 18 slides and delivered 20 minutes of remarks to a private invited group of roughly 50 different players—from industry, government, academia, think tanks, etc.—who were all focused on key energy issues during a three-day seminar. Leonard gave permission for his remarks and the contents of his slides to be summarized and posted here.

Ray Leonard is Vice-President-Eurasia with Kuwait Energy Company, the first non-national oil company based in the Middle East. During a 19-year career with Amoco he served in Trinidad, Norway and West Africa. In 1989 he was appointed Director of New Ventures for the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. In 1998, he became Exploration VP for a newly formed company in Kazakstan. He became VP-Exploration and New Ventures for Yukos in 2001, with responsibility for diversifying the upstream portfolio into East Siberia, the Russian Shelf and Central Asia. He holds a B.S. in Geology from the U. of Arizona and an M.A. in Geology from the U. of Texas-Austin.]

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