[This is the third and final part in a series on peak-oil theorist/neo-Malthusian Matthew Simmons (1943–2010). Part I by Rob Bradley examined the Simmons’s peculiar interpretation of the Club of Rome’s 1972 Limits to Growth. Part II by Michael Lynch reviewed the false arguments behind Simmons’s peak-oil views.]
Matt Simmons was confident past a fault about the coming decline of world oil output–and record oil prices in the face of growing demand. His 2005 book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, announced that production in Saudi Arabia had peaked or was about to. In his words:
…Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future.